SHAH ALAM, Apr 14 (The Star) -- The just launched i-City cybercentre here will need 50,000 knowledge workers by 2015 when the entire RM2bil commercial ­development project is completed.

William Chau, chief technology officer for i-Berhad which is the ­developer, said the knowledge ­workers will be required for everything from software ­development to datacentre ­management.

He believes the nation’s talent pool for knowledge workers will be more than enough to satisfy the needs of i-City.

Nearby is Universiti Teknologi Mara and Universiti Selangor, which will help provide the knowledge workers needed, Chau said at the launch of i-City’s datacentre, known as DataCentrePark, last week.

i-City is being built as an intelligent city from the bottom up, and will be a hub for businesses savvy in utilising technology in their operations. i-Berhad intends the technologies to be as ubiquitous as water and electricity (see In.Tech, Aug 26, 2008).

Its Shah Alam location is ­surrounded by mature communities such as Petaling Jaya, Subang Jaya and Klang, which are IT savvy. Also, its high-tech facilities have already attracted several foreign companies.

“Among them is a British systems-integration company, called Logica, which has placed its disaster recovery centre here,” Chau said.

Future is here

Phase One of i-City, comprising about 300,000sq ft, is open for leasing.

“The datacentre occupies 200,000sq ft of that space, making it one of the largest in a single location in the ­country,” said Chau, adding that most datacentres are usually 300sq ft.

Two companies have signed on for i-City’s datacentre services and several others are in negotiations, announced i-Berhad at the event.

i-Berhad partner, ICT (information and communications technology) solutions provider Kompakar Inc Bhd, is managing Data Centre Park, which is scheduled to go live in June.

Phase Two of i-City, with its 200,000sq ft of office space, will be completed by the third quarter of this year.

The entire project takes up 72 acres and will comprise a shopping mall with cinemas, several office towers, a 40-acre lake and park, as well as a hotel and residential apartments.

i-City structures will be linked via fibre-optic network, that will provide telecommunications facilities and high-speed Internet access with speeds of 10 megabits per second — 10 times what is currently available in the country.

i-Berhad said companies in i-City will be able to lower operating costs by 33%, thanks to the various technologies that will be in place, such as state-of-the-art intelligent-building systems.