Microsoft Corporation will invest US$1 billion in Malaysia over the next five years as part of a new partnership with government agencies and local companies. The announcement comes after Malaysia in February gave conditional approvals for Microsoft, Google, Amazon and state telecommunications company Telekom Malaysia to build and manage hyper-scale data centers in the country and provide cloud services. It also comes after the country saw foreign direct investments (FDI) plunge by 68 per cent last year, the biggest decline in Southeast Asia. Malaysia has defended itself as an investment destination, with the finance minister recently saying it was looking at incentives to help attract more FDI. The investments from these cloud service providers will total between RM12 billion and RM15 billion (US$2.91 billion to US$3.64 billion) over the next five years.
Part of the Bersama Malaysia initiative, Microsoft will establish its first “data center region”, which consists of multiple data centers in Malaysia to manage data from various countries. The upcoming data center region will be a game-changer for Malaysia. It will enable the government and businesses to “transform” their operations. Under the programme, Microsoft will also assist up to a million Malaysians in getting digital skills by the end of 2023.