STAYING AHEAD OF THE CURVESTAYING AHEAD OF THE CURVELiterally translated as “That Moment”, the award-winning mobile application enablesusers to organize private and public events, invite their friends to join their activities anddiscover social activities happening in their area.events, invite their friends to jointheir activities and discover socialactivities happening in their area.“Masatu enables you to captureyour life moment in a fun and coolway. It encourages users to socializewith their friends in real life as well asallowing them to discover the activitiesthat are happening near themat that particular moment of time,”said Steven Low, Agmo Studio’sbusiness development manager.“It’s a social-activity mobile application.For example, let’s say youwould like to invite your friendsto a gathering. You can create theevent on Masatu, pinpoint the locationof your gathering, specifythe time frame and insert an imageof your gathering.“You can invite your friends andset the privacy settings for yourevent to either private, limited tofriends and contacts on Facebook/ Masatu or public. If you set yourevent to private, only those whomyou have invited will be able to seeyour event, and if you set it to public,then all those within the vicinitywill be able to see your event,”said Low.Those who attend your event cangive their feedback, exchange commentsand share photos of theevent with their friends and otherMasatu users.Upload photos in bulk onMasatuWhen you have a number ofpeople taking pictures using theirown camera phones or cameras,getting them to share their photosafter the event has ended is alwaysa challenge. However, Masatu enablesyou to upload photos in bulkand allows you to customize youralbum i.e name, date and timeas well as your album’s privacy settings.You can also tag your Facebookfriends and upload the albumdirectly from Masatu to your Facebookaccount, followed by postingon your Facebook Timeline withjust one touch.“The beautiful part is that you willalways have the complete set ofphotos for all your precious moments,”said Low.Masatu supports location-baseddiscovery where you can discoverpast, present and future activitiesaround you using the Masatu mapor augmented reality. Augmentedreality is where you can use yourphone’s camera and scan your surroundings,and if there is (or was)an activity in your vicinity, a notificationof the event will pop out onyour screen.You can then click on it and get thedetails of the event such as the time, location,description and its participants.Digital time capsuleMasatu also has a digital timecapsule,which allows the user tosurprise their friends by hiding amessage or an image which canonly be accessed by their friendsor contacts within a specific timeframe and at a specific location.“The digital method allows theuser to geo-point the location ofthe time capsule. To unlock thetime capsule, one would have to bewithin 500 metres of the locationat a particular moment of time tobe able to see the secret message orimage hidden there,” said Low.Masatu is the winner of MYEGMake the Pitch 2011 – a realityshow hosted by NTV7 that featuresinnovative ideas from Malaysianentrepreneurs.Masatu has also won the MSCMalaysia Asia Pacific ICT Awards(APICTA) 2012 (Best Media andEntertainment category) and theSilver Award from the Asean ICTAwards. It was also appointed as theofficial social media app for AsianBusiness NGO Forum 2012.“It took us three months to developthe app. We started in Februarylast year and we launched theapp in May. So far, we have over3,500 users, and most of them areMalaysians. But it’s available oniTunes for iOS devices and AndroidMarket for Android devicesand it’s free,” said Low.Agmo Studio has also developedother mobile applications such asthe My Home Loan Calculator,Malaysia LRT, Malaysia Food andBeverage, Penang Offline MuralMap, MyPLUS Highway, My-Gold Price and Malaysia 4D.“Unofficially, we’ve been aroundfor the past two to three years, butwe registered as a company afterwe collaborated with MYEG andreceived funding from them in early2012. We’re a small team, there’sonly the four of us in the developmentteam and we have three administrativestaff which we sharewith MYEG,” said Low.Challenge of growing thebusinessLow added that as a start-up company,they have had to face a numberof challenges, namely in termsof getting investors and fundingand developing the business.“As a company which focuses onmobile application, we cannot applythe traditional way of marketingto sell our products. We faceglobal competition and we have tokeep ourselves up-to-date with thetechnology. It’s both challenging,and interesting.“The Mobile application businessis very new, and even though youcan see that there are an increasingnumber of companies focusingon mobile applications in theUS, locally not too many peopleare so into it as yet because someof them can’t see the potential formobile applications,” he said.Both Agmo Studio director, TanAik Keong and Low are ‘graduates’from Malaysia’s MultimediaDevelopment Corporation(MDeC) Integrated ContentDevelopment – Developer AssistanceProgramme (ICONdap), aprogramme which provides fundingassistance to technical gurusand creative geniuses with innovativeideas and concepts to createcontent for online and mobileapplications. The programme alsohelps them to turn the ideas intoproof of concept and prototypes.“We’re still working together withMDeC to create an ‘eco-system’ toencourage more mobile developersto come forward and investorsto come in to develop the mobileindustry community,” said Low.“The MDeC and MSC programmeis very helpful in the developmentof the mobile industrycommunity. It is an ongoing process.I hope this programme willgo on. The government has alsobeen very helpful to us in terms ofnetworking basis, as they wouldrecommend us to companies whoneed mobile developers.”The future looks bright for AgmoStudios.“We are in the midst of developingapps which would encouragelocal communities to share informationon community activities,as well as a few other mobile applications,so look out for our newproducts on Apple App Store andAndroid Market!” said Low.48 <strong>INNOVATION</strong> <strong>LEADERSHIP</strong> <strong>INNOVATION</strong> <strong>LEADERSHIP</strong> 49
CLOUD GROWING IN ASIA36 percent of companies surveyed are “currently using”cloud computing and 40 percent are “currentlyplanning” to use cloud in the coming year.• More companies, including those in Malaysia, areembracing the cloud in Asia Pacific, according to anew study by Forrester• With adoption comes new challenges: Skills to dealwith cloud implementation; and broadbandinfrastructure cost and reliabilityCLOUD computing has attainedwider adoption and more companiesare open to its use in enterprisesacross Asia, although thereare still some challenges arisingfrom companies adopting thecloud, according to a new studyby Forrester Research.Michael Barnes (pic), vice presidentand research director of ForresterResearch, said that 75% ofAsia Pacific organizations have astrong understanding of cloudcomputing.Along with this, 67% believethat their IT organizations areready to run the company’smost strategic apps in either aprivate or hybrid cloud environment,but the higher adoptionrates also brings with it newchallenges, the analyst noted.Dubbed the VMware Cloud Index,the online-based survey queried4,799 senior IT practitionersacross Asia Pacific (including Japan)in September 2012. Comissionedby the cloud and virtualizationplayer, the countries coveredin the survey included Australia,Singapore, India, Taiwan, Indonesia,Hong Kong, Malaysia, Korea,Thailand, and China, and thesurvey is in its third year running.In Malaysia, the survey polled 49senior influencers of IT in multinationals,44 in local/regionalcompanies, and 16 in public sectororganizations, or a total 109IT professionals. Barnes said thatacross Asia Pacific generally, thematurity of cloud computing hasprogressed, noting that 74% ofrespondents view the cloud as toppriority or highly relevant to theirrespective organizations.“This percentage rises to 88% forvery large organizations of over10,000 employees and stands atabout 68% for small organizationsof fewer than 500 employees,”he said.Also interesting was the fact thatnearly 80% of respondents believethat the cloud can help themcompete more effectively in themarketplace, and that nearly 70%believe that by failing to pursuecloud initiatives their companiesrisk falling behind their competitors,Barnes noted.Malaysian trends,challenges facedThe Malaysia-specific survey resultswere encouraging as 36% ofcompanies surveyed are “currentlyusing” cloud computing and40% are “currently planning” touse cloud in the coming year.Barnes pointed out that theabove cumulative figure of 76%(36%+40%) was above the regionalaverage of 74%. “Seven in10 respondents also believe thatcloud computing makes theirjobs less complex,” he added.Notwithstanding this, the VMwareCloud Index study also revealedsome significant challengesfor those who have adopted or areabout to adopt the cloud.The first had to do with lack ofcontrol over employee access tonon-sanctioned, third-party applications,while the second hadto with the reliable and affordablebroadband infrastructure neededfor the cloud computing to thrive.Barnes said that while 56% ofMalaysia respondents believe thattheir organizations currently have50 <strong>INNOVATION</strong> <strong>LEADERSHIP</strong> <strong>INNOVATION</strong> <strong>LEADERSHIP</strong> 51
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