Malaysia’s Pikom recognises winners at annual tech industry awards night

• 5 schools, 3 unis among 28 MSC Malaysia APICTA award recipients announced at PIKOM ICT Awards 
• PIKOM Leadership winners include Andrew Tiang from N2N Connect for Technopreneur Excellence

TWO IoT (Internet-of-Things) and robotics-enabled experimental projects which focused on boosting production in the agricultural sector in Malaysia were among the MSC Malaysia APICTA award-winning entries recognised at the PIKOM ICT Awards event held last night.

Air Project developed by SJKC Yuk Chai pupils, is aimed at performing small-scale farming activities at home and to encourage the young generation to take an interest in farming while EdSense created by KDU University College undergraduate students, is aimed at easing the monitoring work of crops and livestock for farmers while increasing production levels in a cost-effective manner.

These two educational institutes are among the five schools and three universities who will represent Malaysia at the 18th International Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards (APICTA) at Guangzhou, China to be held from October 9^th to 13^th.

The other six are SMK Damansara Jaya, Foon Yew High School (Johor Baru), SMK  Damansara Utama, Foon Yew High School (Kulai), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman.

Thirteen SMEs, entrepreneurs and organisations will also join these younger recipients at the International APICTA awards which will also see participants from 16 other economies vying for top spots in six major categories with 28 subcategories.

The objective of the MSC Malaysia APICTA Awards is to recognise outstanding individuals, students, entrepreneurs, SMEs and organizations in Malaysia who have contributed to the development of the MSC Malaysia initiatives as well as develop applications and services to benefit Malaysians. The awards, organised by Pikom (The National ICT Association of Malaysia), is an initiative of the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC).

As the national ICT association, Pikom’s membership currently stands at over 1,000 companies involved in a whole spectrum of ICT products and services which command about 80% of the total ICT trade in Malaysia.

The awards are broadly divided into eight categories namely, Student, Consumer, Industrial, Inclusions and Community Services, Business Services, Public Sector & Government, Cross Category and Technology. These categories are further split into 27 sub-categories.

The International APICTA Awards aims to increase ICT awareness in the community and assist in bridging the digital divide for each of the member economies in the Alliance.

Pikom also honoured the contributions and achievements of the recipients of the PIKOM Leadership Awards in four categories namely CIO Excellence Award, Member Excellence Award, ICT Organisation Excellence Award and Technopreneur Excellence Award.

The winner of the ICT Organisation Excellence Award was Affin Bank while the Member Excellence Award recipient was FireEye Malaysia.

The Technopreneur Excellence Award was presented to Andrew Tiang from N2N Connect while the CIO Excellence Award recipients were Chong Chin Kan from QSR Group and Sher Khan Akbar Khan from UEM Group.

Guest of honour Mohd Redzuan Md Yusof, Minister of Entrepreneur Development presented the awards.

More than 1,000 guests attended the biggest awards night in Malaysia’s ICT Industry and they included PIKOM Council, PIKOM Members, representatives from Ministries and government agencies, corporate leaders and captains of the industry.

Each of the guests also received a copy of the first issue of the PIKOM’s quarterly magazine, my.iT which was launched by Mohd Redzuan.  The magazine is aimed at providing a platform for PIKOM to connect closely with all their members.

my.iT will highlight issues and concerns close to their hearts of the member companies, providing updates on all five PIKOM Chapters and featuring products, services, and events that would interest the industry and the public at large.  my.IT will also hit the newsstands at a retail price of RM10 per copy.