The government should focus on the establishment of energy-efficient datacenters with world-class facilities in the country, said Cisco Malaysia's managing director, Kumaran Singaram.
As energy costs continue to escalate, he said datacenters needed to be redesigned to minimise power consumption, while at the same time maximising data availability, storage efficiency, security and compliance.
This is an area that Malaysia can provide regional leadership, given the abundant supply of land and the presence of an excellent basic infrastructure, he explained in a statement.
"Cisco sees many multinational companies looking for places in the region to site their datacenters. Malaysia should capitalise on this to achieve the goal of attracting private investment," he said.
He pointed out that Cisco had the technology and the expertise to help organisations in the country build the next generation datacenters.
Cisco also recommended that the government ratify further standardisation of taxes on information technology (IT) equipment as capital expenditure was a big concern for the small and medium businesses(SMBs).
Kumaran said there was a need to evaluate and re-classify advanced technology such as unified communications which could deliver proven business benefits to organisations.
Subsequently, he added, a lower and consistent tax structure should be imposed to ensure that SMBs were able to afford the technology.