Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC), the custodian of MSC Malaysia, honoured 47 MSC Malaysia status companies which had earned various international standards certifications in 2008 at a gala dinner at the Hotel Imperial in Kuala Lumpur on 2 December.

Through the MSC Malaysia Capability Development Programme (CDP), 15 of them received one of the five levels of CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) certification, 19 achieved certification in software testing, 4 received ISO 27001 certification, 4 earned ISO 9001 certification and 4 more were honoured for sending their personnel to earn individual professional certification through the MSC Malaysia Professional Development Programme (CDP PD).

The 19 which received CDP software testing certification are:- Pentamaster Information Technology, Cuscapi Innovation Lab, I-XEON MSC, BriteSoft Solutions, Paradigm Systems, Extol MSC, Genting Information Knowledge Enterprise, Plant Essence Marketing, PAC Total Solutions, Chronos Process Integration, Telekom Smart School, Datacom South East Asia, PaduSoft, MYOB Asia, Efficient Soft Tech, JG Games (Malaysia), MediaCliQ and Theta Service Partner.

Recipients of the CDP Quality Management System (CDP QMS) ISO9001:2000 certification are:- RL Dynamic Engineering, KDU College, Extol MSC and IntraMAS Technology.

Excard Corporation received CDP Information Security Management System (CDP ISMS) ISO/IEC 27001:2005.

CDP CMMI recipients are:- Telekom Applied Business, InterTAC (Malaysia), Authentic Venture, Infovalley Life Sciences, iGene, Generti Biosystem, PowerComp Software, CBS MSC, Edaran Komputer, Infopro Solution, Panasonic R&D Center Malaysia, DHL Asia Pacific Shared Services and GMC Online.

CMMI certification, developed by the Software Engineering Institute at the Carnegie-Mellon University, indicates that the company has achieved a level of process improvement approach in software engineering and organizational development, and it consists of best practices for system and software development and maintenance.

CDP Professional Development recipients are:- Datacom South East Asia, MYOB Asia, Getronic Technology and Mexter MSC.

MSC Malaysia Community award recipients are:- Motorola Multimedia and Panasonic R&D Center Malaysia which received CMMI Level 5, Kompakar eBiz MSC, Kompakar eHealth MSC and Genting Information Knowledge Enterprise which received ISO/IEC 27001:2005 and Genting Information Knowledge Enterprise also received ISO 9001:2000.

“CDP was launched in 2004 and so far over 120 companies have received global standards certification and we’re no seeing a trend where companies that have already achieved a certification are now pursuing certification in other areas. This is driven by their experience of the benefits of certification,” said MDeC chief executive officer, Dato’ Badlisham Ghazali.

Company testimonials

Among the recipients, Justin Tan, Extol Corporation chief executive officer and managing director said that its benefits include it receiving global recognition for its documentation system, process, risk and so on.

“However, its largest benefit is in change management, where it’s helped top management to implement changes, which they otherwise would not accept,” said Tan.

“CMMI Level 2 certification has helped PowerComp manage our projects more effectively,” said Lim Peng Hock, its general manager – Operation. PowerComp Software produces billing systems software, currently mostly for the Malaysian market and in Brunei and the company has plans to expand overseas.

 “The CMMI assessment helped us bring our various software development processes into alignment and this has had a direct impact on our business performance,” said its managing director SV Lingam.

“On a project-to-project basis we have seen a 25% drop in our software development costs, service calls have fallen by 39% and errors during development have reduced by 46% and as a result of the process improvements and savings we have realised through adopting the CMMI we have now decide to pursue CMMI Maturity Level 3 assessment,” Lingam added.

Pentasoft was one of only five companies in Malaysia to have achieved the CMMI Level 5.

“One of the greatest benefits we have reaped is from the CDP CMMI and Software Testing programmes and the CMMI brought us business benefits through standardised processes, consistency of activities, less re-work, greater transparency across projects, processes for continual improvement and faster decision-making because we now have timely and accurate data about our operations,” said Pentasoft managing director, K Kuppusamy.

“Pentasoft also completed the CDP Software Testing programme, the benefits of which were very quickly apparent. Before undertaking the programme, we allocated 30-40% of our software development time to testing. After completing the CDP Software Testing programme our overall implementation time for standard projects has been reduced from about 1year to close to 6 months. The actual software testing time has been reduced from about 40% to 20% of the total project time.

“Pentasoft is currently pursuing ISO 20000 certification through CDP ITSM,” Kuppusamy added

 “Our job at Free Net is to manage our customer's information. The ISO 27001 certification assures our customers that we have international standards of policies, procedures and framework for information security in place, said Free Net Business Solutions chief executive officer, Billy Lee.

“After we received the ISO 27001 certification, Free Net was able to bid for overseas contracts that required the certification. Within six months we achieved a 10% - 15% increase in the number of our overseas customers and this resulted in a 20% increase in our international revenue. In 2008, we expect a further 10% rise in international revenue through overseas customers,” Lee added.

Free Net is a leading IT outsourcing service provider focused on technology infrastructure services including data center, business continuity and infrastructure outsourcing services.

“MDeC launched several new programmes in 2008, some of which include programes in management, leadership and marketing, which lost of companies are interested in,” said Eur Ing. Ir. Dr. Karl Ng, MDeC head of Capability Development. Other programmes include soft skills and human capital development.

The CPD Professional Development programme was launched in June, 2008. At about that time, MDeC tied up with IMS Asia which manages the MSC Malaysia CDP-Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert (CDP-CCIE) Lab development programme at MIMOS-CISCO Asian Centre of Excellence in Networking Technologies (ACENT) at MIMOS Headquarters in Technology Park Malaysia. (see accompanying article)

The CCIE is the highest CISCO certification and is highly regarded within the Networking Industry.

MDeC also works with the Chartered Institute of Management Accounting (CIMA) on certification in business accounting.

Around 300 professionals underwent the CDP PD programme in 2008, with 300 more in the pipeline, while MDeC also held over 50 seminars and workshops which benefited over 900 companies.