Malaysia an important hub for Dell

> Cyber security and data analytics seen as growth areas

CYBERJAYA: Dell, which has identified cyber security and data analytics as its growth areas, sees Malaysia as an important hub that serves the US computer technology and IT giant’s regional and global functions.

On Dec 10, 2015, the company celebrated its 20 years in the country with more than 4,000 team members across Dell Malaysia’s three sites in Penang and Cyberjaya.

Dell Global Business Centre in Cyberjaya is a Dell global IT and services hub. The site in Bayan Lepas, Penang, provides business process outsourcing, while the Bukit Mertajam site manufactures high-end desktops and servers for the Asia Pacific, excluding China.

Dell Malaysia managing director Pang Yee Beng ( pix) said there may be internal roles and opportunities in the US that may be deployed over to Malaysia given that costs may be a concern in the corporation.

“This is because the ringgit has depreciated, so the cost of employment is lower here (Malaysia),” he told SunBiz in an interview recently.

Malaysia is among Dell’s top eight countries in terms of team member count, with the company’s operations in the county underpinned by its people strategy.

The Malaysian hub services Dell’s operations for the global, Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) as well as Malaysian markets. The services cover IT support, planning and application development. Over half of its global support is for APJ.

“If the Asia Pacific economy is good, there is more opportunity for us to increase our headcount,” said Pang, who is also Dell Asia Pacific & Japan vice-president of commercial channels.

Overall, he said, Dell Malaysia does not feel much pain from its exposure to the weakening ringgit. He said some components are purchased in US dollar but it gains on lower labour and logistics costs. In addition, Dell, he added, does not keep a huge inventory and purchases components as it goes along.

“As we do that, we adjust the price accordingly (to the fluctuation of the currency) and we sell in ringgit so there’s not much exposure in that sense,” Pang said, adding that it also practises currency hedging.

He said there is an impact from the challenging economy but noted that the company has the right mitigation plan.

“We’re affected as much as anyone else in terms of the economic situation in Malaysia. We’re well positioned in Malaysia in terms of our coverage in both corporate and government and public sectors.

“We’re optimistic and we’re here for the long run. If the economic situation improves, we’ll be fully positioned to take advantage of that,” said Pang.

He added that despite the challenging economic climate, Dell continues to invest in sales and marketing across APJ and Malaysia.

“We continue to hire. We know the economy will recover, and we want to be ready when it’s full blown. We’re doing good business here and it’s profitable.”

Moving into its 20th year of growth in 2015, Pang said, Dell Malaysia has scaled down on manufacturing and added more planning, finance, tech support functions, while marketing and sales, as well as IT services support in Cyberjaya have also grown, with some of Dell’s global applications being managed here.

“We’ve now moved our employees profile up into more executives or knowledge workers than operators. We’ve moved from manufacturing-centric facility to more IT services support, shared services planning and marketing and sales.”

He said the aspiration is for Dell to move from a PC company, as it is known last time, to a complete IT solutions provider.

Pang said Dell Malaysia’s next area of growth is in cyber security and data analytics due to market demand.

“More things, tools, processes are going to be online so we need to make sure whatever we put online has the right security. And as things get more sophisticated in our business and we move further into customer infrastructure, we need to have data analytics to support our customers,” he said.

In Malaysia, based on International Data Corporation data (May 2015) in unit shipment terms, Dell is number one in branded workstations market in Malaysia with a 59.85% market share, number two in x86 server market in Malaysia with a 28.06% market share.

It is also number one in total PC in the government sector in Malaysia with a 45.1% market share and number two in total PC in the commercial sector in Malaysia with a 21.8% market share.