Kuala Lumpur (12 April 2017) — Cloudera, the provider of the leading global platform for machine learning and advanced analytics built on the latest open source technologies, announced that it is collaborating with industry software leaders Red Hat and Microsoft to cultivate a big data talent ecosystem in Malaysia. Focused on developing data scientists to find insights and solve meaningful business problems across industries, the collaboration will see the companies cross-promoting each other’s training programs through a collaboration with Iverson Associates, Malaysia’s leading professional IT training provider.
Selected in view of current job market demands and the need for data scientists, the program includes varied levels of data science courses – from fundamentals to core and applied, providing students with access to hands-on projects designed to enhance their skills and better prepare them for current and future jobs. This program is a response to Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation’s (MDEC) initiative to position Malaysia as the regional hub for Big Data Analytics (BDA) and its efforts to train 20,000 data professionals in the next four years.
“Malaysia’s digital economy is positioned to effectively connect, enable, and empower government, businesses, and citizens. Transformational technologies such as BDA play a pivotal role in creating new business value solutions and spurring significant innovation and advancements across multiple industries. Malaysia is well on our way to becoming a BDA hub in the ASEAN region. Cloudera’s collaboration with Microsoft and Red Hat, together with MDEC’s support, will help to develop more data professionals to achieve our target of 20,000 by 2020,” said Dato’ Yasmin Mahmood, Chief Executive Officer of Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC).
This collaboration is an extension of Cloudera’s recently introduced Big Analytics Skills Enablement (BASE) Initiative, an industry-led ecosystem designed to groom a future workforce of data professionals in Malaysia. Red Hat, Microsoft, and Iverson Associates are all a part of the Cloudera BASE ecosystem in Malaysia. Daniel Ng, Senior Director for Cloudera in APAC and founder of the Cloudera BASE Initiative commented: “This collaborative program is an extension of the Cloudera BASE Initiative, with a joint effort to come together as a community and develop more data professionals for Malaysia. With courses designed at multiple levels – from basic to advanced – our aim is to cater to all sorts of needs and help build Malaysia’s current and future human resource capacity in the field of data science.”
The companies teamed up to help cultivate data-enabled talent in Malaysia and have taken a collaborative development approach, true to their industry’s roots.
“Red Hat has long been an advocate for the adoption of open source and open source innovation, and enabling a skilled base of IT professionals through Red Hat’s Training and Certification programs and Red Hat Academy. We are happy to extend that collaboration with Cloudera and Microsoft with a goal of cultivating more data professionals in Malaysia. Red Hat’s Training and Certification programs offer hands-on and task-focused programs designed to equip professionals with the skills they need to tackle real-world scenarios. We hope that this collaboration will yield a new generation of skilled professionals who can contribute to Malaysia’s economy,” said Damien Wong, vice president and general manager, ASEAN, Red Hat.
“Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. This naturally translates into providing the best technology through our Azure Cloud offering. But it also means collaborating with leading players in their fields such as Red Hat and Cloudera to provide innovative end-to-end solutions, as well as enabling customers and individuals to harvest the potential of new technologies such as Big Data and Analytics through training and development. We are very proud to be part of this training collaboration and the Cloudera BASE initiative that can deliver on these three dimensions, thereby helping boost Malaysia’s talent pool and contributing to the country’s economy over the coming years,” commented Thomas Decant, South-East Asia Open Source Lead at Microsoft.
From a training expert perspective, Dr Yap Chee Sing, Managing Director of Iverson Associates also commented: “We are seeing a marked increase in the demand for skilled data professionals. To meet this demand, we are working with the software community and stakeholders to ramp up our training programs so that our IT professionals are equipped with up-to-date Big Data Analytics skill sets.”
