By Saiful Bahri Kamaruddin
Pix Abd Ra’ai Osman

BANGI, 16 February 2015 – The National University of Malaysia (UKM) and software solutions provider AGA Zone Sendirian Berhad have joined forces to improve the delivery of data storage systems, particularly the management of so-called ‘Big Data’ at the university.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed here today enabling UKM’s Institute of Visual Informatics (IVI) to collaborate with AGA Zone on research into very large data sets that are also complex to the extent that they are hard to process using traditional data processing applications.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Industry and Community Partnerships) Prof Dr Imran Ho Abdullah signed for UKM while AGA Zone director Datuk Hj Khan bin Mohd Akram Khan signed for the company.

Prof Imran, in his welcoming remarks said this was the second collaboration between UKM and AGA Zone in tackling the increasingly complex issues of information and communication technology (ICT).

The main thrust of the MoU is to conduct research at the global and local level related to Big Data and Big Data analytics to improve the country’s economy.

He said UKM and AGA Zone will also collaborate to create a patent Internet Provider (IP) based on extensive research by UKM Masters and PhD candidates.

Big Data is a term used to describe the exponential growth of both structured and unstructured data that are important to business and society just as the World Wide Web has become over the decades.

“We no longer measure data in just Gigabytes, but in tera, peta, exa and zetabytles to uncover hidden patterns and unknown correlations, as well as other useful information,” Prof Imran said.

Big Data can be applied to very complex tasks that use many correlations such as analysis of weather prediction, genomics and urban traffic.

Director of IVI, Professor Datuk Dr Halimah Badioze Zaman said looking at income per capita, Malaysia is on the right track to becoming a developed country but ICT development is still at the moderate level compared to developed countries.

“We must move faster than fellow Asian eastern countries such as Taiwan, Japan and Korea.

“ICT’s contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Malaysia is only 10.7 per cent compared to Taiwan, Japan or Korea of between 25 to 30 percent,” she said at the signing ceremony.