Internet Alliance (IA) – also known as “Persatuan Hubungan Internet Selangor dan Kuala Lumpur”, is a not-for-profit organization that collectively facilitate over 80 per cent of Malaysia’s active Internet scene.
The current IA membership comprises about 50 odd members, who are largely made up of Internet Service Provider (ISP) corporations and businesses.
President of IA, Chan Kee Siak – reappointed to serve IA for another 2 years, says, “Due to the increasing dependence of the country’s economy and business social connectivity on the Internet – IA is growing in relevance as local cloud providers and Internet players need a strong representation to the marketplace.
IA welcomes this encouraging trend and concurrently targets to double our membership to 100 members by the end of 2017.”
Established since 2010, IA’s current membership base of 50 members cover a diverse Internet operational composition that includes major website hosters, Cloud-infrastructure providers, eCommerce platform and marketplace providers, data centers, payment gateway providers. All of these members collectively enable over 80 percent of the country’s active Internet infrastructure and operations.
IA Announces 2017/18 Committee Members
IA recently held its Annual General Meeting on Friday, 18 August 2017 and new general committee members who represent a wide variety of interests were appointed to serve on the IA committee as two-term office bearers.
The newly elected members of the IA Committee are:
- President: Chan Kee Siak, Exabytes Network Sdn Bhd
- Vice President: Ng Chet Chiang, Logistics WorldWide Express (M) Sdn Bhd
- Secretary: Liew Chew Keat, CARI Internet Sdn Bhd
- Treasurer: Wong Weng Yew, Extreme Broadband Sdn Bhd
Ordinary Committee Members are:
- Lee Yip Fei, NetOnBoard Sdn Bhd
- Chia Ting Ting, FG Media Sdn Bhd
- Chew Choo Soon, MyKRIS Asia Sdn Bhd
- TK Tan, Qinetics Solutions Sdn Bhd
- Sunny Ooi, ClickAsia Sdn Bhd
New elected Honorary Auditors of 2017-2018:
– Lloyd Lee from AIMS Data Centre Sdn Bhd
– Tan Gooi Lee from rhipe (M) sdn bhd
Strong Knowledge-sharing network
Chan shares that one of the biggest values that IA provides is its active and diverse series of ICT themed knowledge-sharing events and industry-level networking activities – whereby every member gets to participate in roundtables, advisory committees, and attend every expo conference applicable.
“For example, since the beginning of the year we had roundtable discussion and training workshops covering hosting and cloud, Software-as-a-Service (Saas), Payment Gateway, What’s New in FB Marketing, IT & Professional Liability, Mobile Messenger and Bots Marketing, and many more.
All of these topics are highly relevant and with top appeal to our members, who continuously need to improve their performance and customer SLAs in the Internet business,” he says.
IA’s Increasing Relevance With Growing Issues
Chan also believes that the growing importance of the Internet’s role in the general economy and social life drives the relevance of IA’s role.
A recent example was during the set up by of the Digital Free Trade Zone (DFTZ) by the Malaysian government in joining Alibaba’s representation as China’s lead for greater eCommerce trading in the Asia region.
IA stepped into the picture by voicing out the (for example) collective import-export tax concerns that the DFTZ would have on local Internet service and infrastructure providers.
Chan says that IA’s membership offers Internet players to know first hand the concerns, issues and on-goings in the local Internet scene; gaining more visibility and being heard.
IA membership fees is at RM3,000 per annum and is opened to all Set-Ups, Startups, SMEs and companies which provide any kind of Internet-related business or service in Malaysia.
To find out more on how you can become part of IA members, please visit www.internetalliance.my
