IMDA partners Amazon Web Services to launch joint innovation centre

Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to launch Southeast Asia's first Joint Innovation Centre (JIC) this week. The new centre is set to accelerate industry innovation and to support the growth of promising start-ups.

According to IMDA in a statement, the JIC will provide organisations in the corporate and public sector with access to tech showcases and demonstrations, innovation methodology for successful adoption and deployment, PIXEL’s workshops for design thinking, over 200 fully featured AWS technology for experimentation, and project-based consultation by IMDA and AWS’ experts.

PIXEL is IMDA’s Innovation Hub in which JIC will be housed. 

Don't miss: IMDA and STB launch SG$10m fund to support films and shows shot in Singapore

The aim of the new JIC is to get organisations to increase their adoption of tech solutions as well as to provide a connection to IMDA’s and AWS’ network of corporates and start-ups across Southeast Asia. Participating organisations will also benefit from the AWS Partner Network, which will provide corporates and start-ups access to customers in various industries including government, education, and healthcare, in Singapore and internationally.

JIC will refresh every four to six months and will feature tech solutions that are built on AWS and from start-ups that are part of IMDA’s initiatives such as the Accreditation and Spark programmes. 

In tandem with the announcement of JIC, IMDA also launched Singapore’s Digital Connectivity Blueprint (DCB) that will set the direction for the next bound of Singapore’s digital connectivity. 

Developed in consultation with the Advisory Panel on Digital Infrastructure, which is co-chaired by Dr. Janil Puthucheary, Singapore’s senior minister of state, Ministry of Communications and Information, and Mr. Irving Tan, executive vice president of global operations at Western Digital, and other industry partners, the blueprint aims at outlining Singapore's strategic priorities in order to stay ahead of the curve. 

Singapore is committed to stay ahead by growing our digital connectivity to create better lives and exciting opportunities for our people and enterprises, said IMDA in a release. 

It then laid out a number of priorities that the country will focus on going forward. These include building a seamless end-to-end 10 Gbps domestic connectivity within the next five years, driving greater adoption of the Singapore Digital Utility Stack to expand the benefits of seamless digital transactions and ensuring world-class resilience and security for our digital infrastructure. It will also look to provide capacity to enable submarine cable landings to double within the next ten years.

Additionally, Singapore will move moves in new areas in order to gain from future opportunities. Some of these include enabling innovative solutions in key industries with Low Earth Orbit satellite services, putting in place foundations for pervasive autonomy, advancing the vision of a Quantum-safe Singapore within the next ten years and working on “Green software” to mitigate intensified compute by building the nascent ecosystem for sustainable software.

The news comes shortly after IMDA and the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) revealed that it will launch a SG$10 million Singapore on-screen fund, according to a joint release by IMDA and STB.

The joint fund will support international media and entertainment (M&E) partners in producing TV and film projects that reach global audiences, and shine the spotlight on Singapore as a destination. It will also provide opportunities for local media enterprises and talent to work alongside global M&E partners in creating content for international audiences, according to the statement. 

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