Unsurprisingly, technologies such as AI, blockchain, and data analytics among others enhance the customer experience. While the digital experience continues to innovate in the e-commerce industry to keep users satisfied, other industries are also now realizing its importance.

Within the manufacturing industry, robotic or digital twin technologies are used to improve adaptability among its workers. However, upskilling and reskilling new employees to use and adapt new technologies takes time.

If the technology used isn’t quite complicated, the digital experience can be smooth and pleasant as skills and know-how can be easily picked up. However, any complications using the technology are likely to lead to a slower adoption rate.

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Aside from the e-commerce, manufacturing, and financial industries, the healthcare industry is finding ways to better improve its digital-first patient services and experiences.

According to VMware’s Digital Frontiers 3.0 Study, Southeast Asian consumers’ excitement for digital-enabled healthcare services has increased, with 66% of them saying they prefer remote, video-call instead of face-to-face consultations with medical professionals.

The emerging innovations in technology that have enabled more robotics, telehealth, and AI-based diagnostics are now shaping the future of digital healthcare in the region.

(Photo by Jane Barlow / POOL / AFP)

Compared to the US and Europe, the report showed that over half (54%) say they are comfortable and excited to have a more qualified doctor conducting invasive surgery via remote robotics than a less qualified doctor conducting it in-person.

More than half (55%) are also comfortable and excited with receiving a diagnosis from a powerful computer that can learn to detect anomalies such as cancerous cells, rather than seeing a human doctor.

61% also believe that digital healthcare services can provide more freedom to patients with chronic or long-term illnesses as they can live further away from a medical facility by depending on sensors and real-time data monitoring to predict when they will require medical assistance.

A robust digital infrastructure enables better digital healthcare experiences

While these figures are showing positivity, the digital experience for them is still a concern as only 36% of Southeast Asian respondents are happy to interact with healthcare services providers digitally. This is why the industry needs to ensure they have a robust digital infrastructure that is capable to harness modern technologies to not only provide better healthcare services but also improve the entire experience.

At the same time, the innovation opportunity is ripe for Southeast Asia’s healthcare sector to leap forward, with consumers embracing technologies of the future including artificial intelligence (70%), 5G (78%), and facial recognition (75%). In fact, more than one-third of respondents (37%) have said that 5G will be key in enabling wearable devices to monitor their health in real-time, allowing medical professionals to be alerted and respond to any emergency.

“New, immersive healthcare services such as remote medical consultations, wearable devices, and supercomputers have redefined the way healthcare organizations and doctors interact with the patients and respond quickly to their needs – regardless of when and where they are. In the race for vaccines and other medical solutions, technology has also played an incredibly important role in tracking the spread, managing tests, and improving the overall distribution flow,” said Devan Parinpanayagam, Country Manager, Malaysia, VMware.

Devan pointed out that VMware is committed to providing leading healthcare services providers in the region with a robust digital foundation to accelerate innovations, scalability, and agility in patient care and clinical research.

(Source – Sunway Medical Centre)

In Malaysia, telemedicine and digital health services are growing rapidly as private healthcare providers find new opportunities to deliver patient-focused healthcare services anywhere. The Malaysian Investment and Development Authority reported that private healthcare providers in Malaysia have found new growth opportunities with telemedicine after struggling to go mainstream before the pandemic.

For instance, the Sunway Medical Centre Velocity (SMCV) has set up a teleconsultation service to allow patients to receive health advice from SMCV’s specialists or medical officers from the comfort of their homes. The Sunway Medical  Centre (SMC) has also introduced four new “cat-like employees” in their pediatric wards, drawing much excitement from its staff members and patients alike. Parkway Pantai of IHH Berhad Group has also launched a teleconsultation known as eHealth Video Consultation at its hospitals in Malaysia.

Enhancing the digital experience with emerging technologies

In healthcare, emerging technologies such as the use of cloud, AI, and machine learning-based analytical tools are already bringing about changes to the way medical professionals diagnose patients today. This same technology can also be used to enhance the digital experience for patients.

For example, sensors from wearables that send patient data diagnosis to the cloud which is accessible by doctors can also be provided to patients via an app. With AI, the diagnosis can be analyzed, and the patient can be advised on their next course of action, without the need to physically see a doctor.

To enhance the digital experience with emerging technologies in the ASEAN region, VMware has outlined several key priorities for the industry to consider. They include: 

• Empowering healthcare organizations to build a multi-cloud and app future: Cloud will be prerogative in ensuring continuous innovations. However, the industry needs to understand how it can best leverage cloud services so that it can scale and innovate with minimal disruptions.
• Enabling innovation and productivity for a distributed workforce: It’s one thing about having technology, but it’s another thing about having a workforce that can work with it. Having future-ready workforce solutions will enable a seamless and more secure digital employee experience, driving greater outcomes in the new world of work.
• Intrinsic security for uninterrupted innovation: While perfecting the digital experience is desired, security needs to be prioritized as well. The healthcare industry continues to be targeted by cybercriminals. Hence, an intrinsic approach to enterprise security will provide an additional layer of robust protection for mission-critical infrastructures and patients’ personal data to build trust, fast-track healthcare innovation, and resilience.
• Software-defined, high-performing network for real-time analytics and monitoring: While 5G is slowly making its presence felt in healthcare, the industry will want to move high-fidelity, latency-sensitive data to the cloud and between edge locations to offer rapid, more securely deployed, and easily accessed virtual care solutions.

The reality is, any industry hoping to make use of more technologies needs to ensure that the experience it provides is seamless and easy to use. From healthcare to e-commerce to even manufacturing, a seamless digital experience will not only keep users satisfies but will also see them wanting to embrace it more in the future.

The post ASEAN patients prefer a digital healthcare experience appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Today’s connected customer demands proactive service, personalized interactions, and connected experiences delivered seamlessly across all channels. Be it banks, eCommerce sites, or government agencies, if they can’t deliver, they’re going to lose prospects to a competitor that can or face harsh criticism on social media.

With over a dozen major languages being spoken in the region alone, establishing strong trustworthiness and providing personalized digital experiences are becoming key factors for success.

As such, marketers and IT leaders are in a conundrum. Many marketers have heard the term “Digital Experience Platform” (DXP) but seem to still be skeptical. This is because most of them are unsure how exactly they can implement DXP to their business models and how successful a DXP platform can actually be towards their business.

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The digital platform experience conundrum

According to a survey by Progress and Pulse, only 12% of marketing and IT decision-makers have found a DXP that meets their organization’s specific needs. This is quite low given the impact personalization can have on consumers, especially in this part of the world.

The survey also showed that 35% of organizations have not implemented a DXP because the solutions available on the market offer capabilities they may not even use, and they don’t want to overpay.

For example, an eCommerce platform may not find a need for video capabilities on their DXP as their focus is more on sales.

However, with growing popularity in video and audio content like shoppertainment, more businesses are beginning to see how such capabilities can actually benefit their business. For eCommerce, video and audio content can help consumers understand the platform better.

DXP market and growth

The global DXP market size is expected to reach US$15.8 billion by 2025 with APAC to register the fastest growth from rising adoption of the internet and smartphones among the millennial population.

The Chinese and Indian markets are expected to see the biggest growth with the surging presence of the Information Technology Enabled Services Industry (ITES) across the region.

The digital experience platform market includes key players such as Adobe, IBM, Progress, Acquia Inc, SAP SE, Microsoft, and Oracle. They are constantly developing advanced functionalities for their digital platforms to enhance customer engagement and retention.

DXP has been a buzzword in the software space for the past few years. We need to define what a digital experience is all about. Is it really about a customer experience? Today, customer experiences are needed in websites, mobiles, email campaigns, text messaging, digital signages, wearables, or even kiosks.

“This surge of digital touchpoints tries to reach the customer. With increased data being generated at the same time and these new digital channels, how can businesses cope? And this is where DXP comes in,” explained John Yang, Vice President for the Asia Pacific and Japan at Progress.

To Yang, a DXP is all about providing collective, integrated products and services together to provide a consistent customer experience throughout all these channels. Customers do not want to go through the same processes every time they visit a website or app of the same company.

They want to be able to access applications conveniently without the hassle of signing in, picking preferences, and such.

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“Personalization is the future of eCommerce. A seamless experience that integrates every part of the business, which can gain intelligence, automation, and bringing the digital transformation to deliver it. This is what DXP is all about,” he added.

Building a digital platform with great customer experiences

Yang pointed out that medium-sized companies face more challenges in developing a DXP compared to large Fortune 500 companies. Large enterprises have tonnes of data and an army of IT developers to help them design the best digital platforms for their business.

For mid-sized businesses, organizations that have less than 5,000 employees need to first realize that the entire process is not going to be a walk in the park. It’s not like a subscription platform. It’s a journey that they need to build bit by bit and tweak as their business expands.

“Most mid-sized businesses would already have a marketing product stack. They need to see how they can align their DXP vision with their current business and product stack and see which areas need improvement. This will be an easier way to success for mid-sized companies,” he added.

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Mid-sized businesses also need to pay attention to their current business workflow. Most of these companies would have a customer relationship management (CRM) or email management system at hand. They need to look at their current business tools and see what’s working and what’s not. A lot of companies look at their content management system (CMS).

The CMS system is often out of date, and they are facing a new industry need that requires a CMS that is DXP compliant. It needs to be future-proof so it can support omnichannel marketing and with some level of personalization capabilities.

“Everyone wants to engage with their customer virtually. Whatever type of business you may be, nobody wants to be left behind. If you look at business sizes, most of the mid-sized are establishing themselves while the smaller ones (SMEs), are looking to join the bandwagon as well. Be it manufacturing, finance, healthcare, everyone is looking to DXP and revamping their digital strategy to create more engaging customer experiences,” explained Yang.

The SEA digital platform and customer experience market

Focusing on Southeast Asia, Yang opined that the region is very much different and vibrant compared to the rest of Asia Pacific. It is very rare to see a large enterprise with tens of thousands of employees compared to the Americas and Europe. In southeast Asia, businesses look more towards regional digital platforms offering their business.

“If a business is successful in Malaysia, they will venture into Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and so forth. Their go-to-market is multi-language and multi-region. This comes in very early, even before they become mature businesses. Not all of them have huge IT teams. Southeast Asia companies do more campaigns compared to their continental peers.

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“They want software that enables their market teams to generate results and better return of investment. Many of them are looking to update and change their eCommerce engine to scale and meet the demands of the DXP. They will take a modular approach to make ROIs faster,” he added.

At the end of the day, every business wants to win their customers. With DXP gaining popularity, the adoption will only continue to grow with better technology experiences such as the use of virtual reality.

As Yang puts it, there is no turning back from a digital experience platform with personalized experiences being the future of businesses.

The post Tweaking the digital platform experience for personalization in SEA appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Singapore’s digital awakening began nearly a decade ago when the government started investing in the technology sector with grants and sponsored tech incubators. The city-state has over the years established a winning (and necessary) combination of advanced information technology (IT) infrastructure, strong government support, intellectual property laws, and a multinational, skilled talent pool.

Today the country has one of the highest per capita GDPs with a mere 2.8% unemployment rate, a robust environment to do business, and has developed as a hotbed for technical innovation with over 270 venture capitalist funds helping to fund 4,000 technology start-ups employing close to 22,000 people in the process, according to a report by the Financial Times.

All of this is in line with the national Digital Government Blueprint (DGB) to broaden the local digital economy and to develop Singapore in a smart, digital society. The DGB lays out a three-pronged approach to seamlessly integrate digital services and governing standards across three strata that make up the country: citizens, businesses, and public officers.

The digitalization efforts are spearheaded by Singapore’s Government Technology Agency (GovTech), which has borne fruit with Singapore consistently ranked amongst the top of global rankings on digital government over the last five years.

According to Chan Cheow Hoe, the Chief Digital Technology Officer of GovTech for over six years and one of the principal architects of the DGB, building out Singapore’s internal capabilities instead of outsourcing to global consultancy giants, a common practice in many countries, is key to establishing good digital governance.

“Most governments in the world today outsource probably about 95-98% of all their technology to the industry,” Chan told attendees at Gartner’s 2020 APAC IT Symposium. “When you outsource everything you lose capabilities. Most IT project managers over time become contract managers.”

That sort of practical technical expertise could be beneficial further down the digital roadmap, but Chan says knowledge-building should start much earlier on, encouraging coding training from as young as primary school and technology internships from high school.

Those skills can then feed the Singapore digital government “pipeline”, including scholarships and programs where graduates are trained at GovTech before even setting foot in agencies. Five GovTech capabilities centers for engineering, AI, IoT, cybersecurity, and infrastructure help incubate the talent and produces new technology solutions.

Nurturing the talent is one thing, and maintaining them is another. Most governments don’t financially incentivize workers nearly as well as the private sector, resulting in a drain of the top talent. “Careers are very important. Unlike other countries, Singapore is lucky in the sense that we pay our technologists very much in line with the market. Maybe about [the] median of the market… The reality is that if you can’t fulfill the hygiene factors, you won’t be able to attract top talent,” reiterated Chan.

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To streamline digital acceptance and onboard digital services for both individuals and organizations, Singapore’s GovTech took a platform approach to digital government. GovTech introduced two platforms: one handling applications, approvals, notifications, and payments for more than 60 types of licenses across multiple government agencies, and another platform for managing government grants, standardizing the functionality for various grant programs.

Chan says interoperability is sought after for GovTech’s platforms, with both digital government platforms able to function across governmental agencies and connect backwards with legacy IT systems as well.

“This is very useful and very important,” affirmed Chan. “Mainly because it does promote reusability, it lowers the costs, improves time to market and the quality, actually, well, is tremendously better than just building your own funnel platforms.”

Singapore’s Chief Digital Technology Officer believes other governments will have no choice but to adopt similar strategies if they are serious about digitalization, but he says it will take time to cut through all the bureaucracy and the traditionally risk-averse attitude towards government tech.

“For the longest time, security people in government are trained that when you can touch a firewall, you can touch the switches, you can walk into a data center [so] it must be better than something that you can’t see,” he says about the attitude towards reverting to digital government procedures and systems.

“This is one of the biggest paradigm shifts that people have to go through.”

The post How do you digitize a government? Ask Singapore appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Alibaba Cloud is piloting its new ecosystem strategy in the Philippines, as more and more small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country pivot to adopting digital services in response to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Government-imposed lockdowns to curb the pandemic have accelerated digital transformation among businesses across a wide swath of industries. Migrating operations and services to the cloud took on a new urgency for enterprises, and Alibaba Cloud started seeing sizable growth in the country.

Philippines is currently the country in Southeast Asia with the second-highest number of active coronavirus cases, and the uncertainty of the health situation has prompted many Filipino firms to invest in cloud strategy as a longer term solution.

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, is offering a range of cloud computing services to companies of varying size worldwide, including merchants doing business on Alibaba Group marketplaces, startups, corporations, and public services.

Alibaba Cloud is introducing the new digital ecosystem strategy in the Philippines following the establishment of the Philippines Ecosystem Alliance two months ago. The alliance is a joint initiative between Alibaba Cloud and its local ecosystem partners to spotlight cloud adoption, and the use of data analytics intelligence to help businesses to streamline their transformation goals plus new innovations to improve their market presence.

“The Philippines is a booming market with a big group of the young and digital-savvy population,” said Leo Liu, the general manager of Hong Kong, Macau, Korea and Philippines for Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “There is a strong demand for digital transformation in accordance with the local government’s ‘cloud-first’ initiative. We have established local team and business coverage in the Philippines and will continue to invest in the country.”

Currently, Alibaba Cloud has over 20 local partners in the Philippines (part of its global from across the industry spectrum such as in retail, fintech, media, information communications technology (ICT), business process outsourcing (BPO), healthcare, and education.

It plans to support 5,000 businesses in the Philippines on their digital migration journeys by the end of 2023. Alibaba Cloud also hopes to train 50,000 and certify at least 10,000 IT professionals within the next three years.

Gartner data shows Alibaba Cloud as the biggest cloud services provider in Asia and third biggest globally, and is currently working with close to 10,000 partners to serve 350,000 businesses worldwide, and previously announced a $283 million investment in this fiscal year to further empower global partners and to accelerate joint innovations with them.

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“We have been serving large, small, and medium enterprises — and even individual developers — with our technology services, which enable them to accelerate their businesses digital operations,” said Lancelot Guo, the VP of Alibaba Group and the president of Ecosystem and Sales Operations, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, during a media conference held at the sidelines of Apsara Conference 2020.

“We see the cloud as a digital transformation vehicle or infrastructure essential for businesses to survive and overcome the effects of the pandemic,” Guo said.

The post Alibaba Cloud’s new digital ecosystem strategy targeting Philippine SMEs appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Despite years of record traffic growth and unprecedented profitability, the airline industry wasn’t spared from its sharpest and most sustained fall in demand brought by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

International travel has been at a virtual standstill, with a predicted net loss this year totaling a record US$84.3 billion. It will remain in the red throughout 2021, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

But, like in any other industry, the savvy and forward-thinking can take advantage of even the most challenging of circumstances. AirAsia has thrived on this mindset and, keenly investing in technology to secure its lead in Asia’s low-cost carrier marketplace. A true entrepreneur, AirAsia founder and CEO Tony Fernandes took the disruption as an opportunity to work on evolving the brand’s digital products and services — including the rebrand of its all-in-one lifestyle platform — in efforts to generate income while planes were grounded while providing value to would-be travelers.

The app, airasia.com, offers more than 15 types of products and services within the bounds of travel, e-commerce, and fintech and already clocked 75 million users and 40 million downloads, as it seeks to become ASEAN’s ‘super app’. 

“We democratized flying 19 years ago and enabled millions to travel, to explore. We pride ourselves in being a disruptive leader, connecting the Asean region, providing value, simplicity, and inclusivity, for everyone,” said Fernandes in a statement.

“Now with airasia.com, we are enabling everyone to fly, to stay, to shop, to eat, all at the convenience of one super app. We have not wasted the crisis, in fact, we’ve been using the lockdown period to finetune our platform, unify the user experience and simplify our payment to a one-click checkout,” he continued.

“Just like how we built AirAsia as a brand, airasia.com will emerge as the ASEAN super app, your best travel and lifestyle companion.”

A lesson in diversifying

AirAsia’s digital journey can be traced back to 2002 when it went wholly ticketless and rolled out online booking through its website. Soon after, it became the world’s first airline to offer SMS and mobile web booking services — allowing customers to move away from traditional ticketing and travel agents. It was also the first airline in Asia to implement the biometric facial recognition technology for flight boarding. 

The budget airline has continued to invest heavily in digitalization, growing its digital services such as BIG Duty-Free, BIG Pay, BIG Loyalty, Rokki onboard WiFi, and Xcite inflight entertainment.

Among other airlines globally, AirAsia swiftly and effectively adopted chatbots to communicate with passengers when in 2019, it developed and launched an artificial intelligence-powered chat platform, AirAsia Virtual Allstar (AVA). AVA currently handles more than 80% of customer cases while the rest is transferred to a live agent who assists directly.

Fernandes certainly sticks closely to his words and has long focused on diversifying his business in a way that means if one arm is affected, another can offset the impact. Last year, he told Tech Wire Asia that the company can’t rely on airline earnings alone given the future volatility of oil prices, adding “if you don’t innovate, you die.” While passenger numbers plummeted this year, for example, the company repurposed its grounded 247s for its freight business Teleport, launching the world’s first blockchain-based digital air cargo network, Freightchain. In Q2 this year, Teleport contributed 42% to group revenue, its highest share ever.

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Most recently, AirAsia announced the consolidation of all of its digital businesses — AirAsia.com, BigPay, Teleport, AirAsia BIG Rewards, and Santan — into one digital venture called AirAsia Digital, formerly known as RedBeat Ventures, which comprises an incubator for startups in platform, logistics, e-commerce, and financial services, a leadership and innovation academy, and a data consultancy department. 

All of this has allowed AirAsia to endure the downturn better than local competitors. In June this year, AirAsia’s airline revenue declined 98%, but year-on-year revenue was up 137%. 

The post AirAsia — a masterclass in business diversity? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

A snapshot of key insights first

With mobile devices picking up, digital ad spends will soar in 2018 | Source: Pexels

The company is bullish on digital and believes that digital media channels will power ad spend growth across the globe, growing to reach US$220.3 billion in 2018, a growth of 12.6 percent.

The forecast suggests that mobile ad spends will increase, reaching US$121.1 billion. Last year, it overtook desktop ad spends as a share of total digital spends. Desktop, said DAN, will continue to lose global share (-1.5 percent since 2016), versus mobile’s gains (8.2 percent since 2016).

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This year, digital is expected to overtake TV and will account for 38.3 percent share of total ad spend, while TV will  barely touch 35.5 percent of the pie.

Paid search accounts for the lion’s share (40 percent) of digital ad spends, with voice-activated devices accelerating its growth. Amazon’s Alexa app was the top app for Android and iPhone on Christmas Day 2017.

Events on the global stage such as the Winter Olympics & Paralympics, FIFA World Cup in Russia, and the US Congressional elections are expected to stimulate ad spend growth.

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It is expected that video (24.5 percent) and social (23.5 percent) will also drive growth within digital ad spends, powered by smartphone take-up and mobile-video in particular.

Finally, while forecasts suggest that ad spends in the United States, Germany, and India will grow faster in 2018 versus 2017, there are signs of a slowdown in the United Kingdom, Russia, and China.

Decoding these insights for your 2018 media plan

Tweaking your media plan to match trends can help your business maximize ROIs | Source: Pexels

No matter your budget, these insights can help you find ways to alter your plan for 2018 so that you’re making the most of your investments and reaching your audience in the best possible way.

First and foremost, the findings suggest that your business should implement a great and more conscious effort to promote itself on mobile devices.

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They also suggest a stronger focus on video content and video ads, balanced with a continued focus on search engine marketing.

If relevant to you, mark important events on the calendar and create a buzz around your product with targeted campaigns that leverage interest in the event though hashtags and official social media accounts to your advantage.

The post Insights from DAN’s forecasts to help you plan your ads better appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

With video content becoming such a large part of everyday life, it would follow that employees are naturally expecting the same tools to be available to them in the workplace.

A new survey by Kaltura, a leading video technology provider, has revealed large organizations are increasingly considering video content to be an integral part of the workplace.

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Videos enable employees to work with a format with which they are familiar, eliciting optimal outcomes.

“The demand [for video] stems from user behavior, but also from the fact that video actually presents unique engagement metrics for businesses to track and learn from,” said Dr Michal Tsur, Kaltura’s co-founder, president and general manager of enterprise and learning.

The use of video in organizations

Organizations across the globe are utilizing the power of video across multiple areas, including brand awareness, employee-generated content, public event broadcasting, learning and training development, internal communications and internal live broadcasts.

The Kaltura survey revealed that:

• 90 percent of respondents from large organizations believe video content and workflows should be integrated into their learning management systems.
• 89 percent into content management systems
• 77 percent into social business platforms
• 93 percent into CRM/automation systems.

Video creation by employees is actively increasing, with the survey revealing more than half (53 percent) of respondents said their organizations are curating more video content in 2017 than the year before.

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This platform serves to provide a number of benefits to businesses, including improving the culture of communication in the workplace which 98 percent of respondents found at least somewhat valuable and 79 percent found very valuable.

Another advantage of video content in the workplace is efficient employee training programs, with 75 percent of respondents finding this a valuable use.

Webcasting in particular is proving to be popular in large organizations. This can be defined as a media presentation by one or more speakers that is distributed over the Internet to simultaneous viewers. The survey revealed 49 percent of respondents from large organizations use webcasting for employee training.

On top of this, more than 90 percent of respondents suggested video content was useful for reasons such as empowering employees to share knowledge, making executives more relatable and personal, connecting employees based in different locations, celebrating corporate culture, smoothing the starting process of new employees and increasing brand awareness and the generation of leads.

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Video management solutions

With video creation on the rise, organizations are focusing on how best to improve video management. The survey revealed that 33 percent of respondents said they have already consolidated or are in the process of consolidating the various systems under a few centrally-managed solutions, while 32 percent have plans to do so.

One way in which businesses organize video content is through a video portal, with 67 percent of organizations deploying this system.

“Video is increasingly seen as a critical new data type that any system needs to fully support. With an overwhelming amount of respondents from large businesses looking for video in their existing systems, it becomes increasingly clear to us that many enterprise software platforms still have insufficient support for video,” says Tsur.

APAC leading the way with video content

Eylon Cohen, vice president and general manager of enterprise and education at Kaltura, believes that there is a huge potential for video content to flourish in the APAC region. This is in line with existing studies which identifies the audience in this region to be one of the world’s most avid consumers of video.

One eMarketer report forecasted that digital video viewership in APAC will reach an impressive 1.10 billion by the end of this year; accounting for more than half the world’s video audience!

“With APAC businesses leading the world in digital transformation, we anticipate further integration of video across the enterprise in the years moving ahead, helping employees to deliver better results at work,” said Cohen.

The post Kaltura survey points to actively increasing video adoption among enterprises appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

This service will allow startups and SMEs to rapidly develop software-based products and expand their businesses without a budget-breaking infrastructure expenditure.

M1 is enhancing its next-generation software-defined data centre (SDDC) portfolio, powered by the VMware cloud provider program, with container support through Pivotal Container Service (PKS).

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The partnership’s new cloud offering gives users access to production-grade kubernetes and natively-supported toolkits. These features offer a faster deployment of containerized workloads across private and public clouds, enabling digital startups and SMEs to innovate faster whilst also saving money in on-premises infrastructure.

“We are inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit of made-in-Singapore digital startups. We want to help advance their growth ambitions by offering them access to enterprise-grade, best-in-class tools that they may not have the resources to procure independently,” said M1 chief innovation officer Alex Tan.

SDDC offers an integrated suite of on-demand computing, storage, networking and security services.

“In addition, this will be supplemented by native container support and cloud interoperability, allowing businesses to innovate the best-in-class customer experiences and challenge the status quo,” Tan added.

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These cost-efficient cloud offerings will give Singapore’s digital startups a significant advantage in an industry full of competition and international giants.

SMEs and startups from varying industries such as retail, fintech and hospitality can scale their infrastructure on-demand and leverage enterprise tools and services in an efficient manner.

Adopting cloud services is said to be crucial in this digital age, helping businesses to accelerate in their digital transformation journey and stay ahead of the game.

“Cloud lies at the heart of all business transformation, regardless of company size or sector. Start-ups need a reliable cloud infrastructure to compete and offer a differentiated customer experience.

“As a proud partner of M1’s next generation SDDC, we are confident that this complete network and security virtualization platform will be a vital infrastructure supporting the business goals of M1’s start-up customers,” said VMware president for Southeast Asia and Korea Ron Goh.

The post M1, VMware launch cloud offering for Singaporean start-ups appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

In 2017, the APAC market experienced a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 27%, significantly higher than Europe or North America which grew 14 and 13 percent respectively.

This growth rate and estimated value are helping to increase awareness of, and use of, e-wallets and digitized payments.  

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority of the 27 percent CAGR comes from the world’s second strongest economy and most populated country, China.

China surpassed the US in terms of e-commerce market size in 2014. The country alone amounts for 75 percent of all the e-commerce sales by value among the 15 Asian markets covered in the GlobalData e-commerce analytics database.

Ravi Sharma, an analyst at GlobalData’s Payments Practice commented that the rapid growth in Asia’s e-commerce market can be attributed to the “rise in internet penetration, widespread smartphone adoption, a fast-growing middle-class population and the increased availability of convenient payment solutions.”

These factors contribute to and maintain unprecedented rates of e-commerce growth in the APAC region. With 60 percent of Singaporeans preferring to use their mobile devices to shop and online, and retailers developing user-friendly interfaces, the convenience of online consumerism is more appealing than ever.

Consumer Preference of e-commerce Payments in China Source GlobalData.com

However, perhaps more intriguing than the figures detailing e-commerce growth is Asian consumers’ approach to payments methods. 

Sharma adds that, “Consumers in Asia prefer to use digital and mobile wallets when shopping online.” These wallets include Alipay and Paytm, for example.

The digitization of consumerism has created ample space for the similar digitization of payment systems.

CHINESE TRADERS ARE CONDUCTING TRANSACTIONS THROUGH PERSONAL CHAT APPS

Tech Wire Asia | 16 October, 2017

A study by Juniper Research projects that by the end of 2017, global e-wallet spend will increase 32%, to US$1.35 trillion.

This global projection is already being implemented in APAC. GlobalData’s Consumer Payments Insight survey results showed that 47 percent of total e-commerce transaction value in APAC was made using digital and mobile wallets.

The use of payment cards has decreased to 28 percent of the total number of transactions, whilst cash and cheques only account for 13 and 11 percent.

The safety and security attached to e-wallets are ensuring the growth in awareness and users. With over 660 million smartphone users in China alone, the infrastructure for e-payment is already in place and users are acknowledging that losing an e-wallet is not as stress-inducing as losing paper money.

Through tokenization, biometrics and multi-factor authentication, e-wallet users can be assured that their sensitive data will never be exposed on a public network, and because no one else shares the same fingerprints or facial geometry, only the specific user can access the wallet.

The total share of digital and mobile wallets for e-commerce payments in Singapore doubled from 10 percent in 2013 to 22 percent in 2017, while debit and credit cards account for 42 percent – declining from 55 percent in 2013. Similarly, in India, the share of digital and mobile wallets tripled from 7 percent to 29 percent during the same period.

“The rest of the world is likely to follow Asia as digital wallets now offer a secure, quick and more convenient way to make online purchases”, noted Sharma.

It looks like the rest of the world, including banks, have some catching up to do if they wish to experience a digital future sooner. 

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According to market research firm Euromonitor International, Mattel is behind Lego with around two percent market share in China. Lego has 2.8 percent while Hasbro is in third with one percent.

The toy company plans on focusing on e-commerce, “repackaging its core brands as educational toys and connecting them to the Internet”. The revamped toys, slated for a 2018 global launch, will include Hot Wheels with smart sensors and VR-powered View-Masters which plans to cater more to a digitally-savvy millennial crowd.

Michael Shore of #Mattel talks toys and digital and there evolution #MIPTV pic.twitter.com/uFk5fywKkG

— Peter Robinson (@PeterRobinson81) April 4, 2017

Mattel’s newfound focus on connected toys has to do with its CEO, former Googler Margo Georgiadis, who was poached earlier this year. She will be cutting the toy maker’s dividends in half to fund the company’s shift towards mobile technology.

“It’s time to reinvent this company to ensure it reflects where consumers and the market are going,” Georgiadis said and notes she’ll be working to make Mattel a “future-proofed kid-experience company.”

Until Georgiadis came around, Mattel was a 72-year-old, traditional toy company that was experiencing drops in revenue. Bloomberg notes children are being raised differently these days and toys have to be redesigned to reflect the new trends, the latest being increased consumption of digital content, Internet-connected toys and educational products.

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During Georgiadis’ time at Google, she worked in the advertising and global sales units. Despite her experience not quite encompassing the consumer products and retail space, Georgiadis is future-focused and is dedicated to creating Mattel 2.0.

“I’m really focused on looking at where the industry is headed and how the world is evolving. Toys really need to adapt to this era,” she said.

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