Following the official launch of their Big Analytics Skills Enablement (BASE) initiative in Indonesia on March 23 2017 during Big Data Week Jakarta, Cloudera has today 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.
On March 28 2017, MDEC also launched an initiative called ASEAN Data Analytics Exchange (ADAX) to facilitate the rapid adoption of data analytics as a tool for decision-making and innovation by businesses, governments, academia and professionals. ADAX seeks to be the definitive portal and resources hub for Big Data Analytics in Malaysia and ASEAN region and to foster collaboration amongst these players and build up a talent pool in the area of data analytics.
“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).
Mr. 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.”
From a training expert perspective, Dr. Yap Chee Sing, Managing Director of Iverson Associates said: “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.”