JUST LAUNCHED: Aimi (centre), Softlakes Sdn Bhd CEO Azmin Abdullah (left) and Softlakes product management vice-president Yazleen Mahmood introducing Softlakes at a press briefing.

By JO TIMBUONG

e-BUSINESS specialist, the Skali group, believes that dividing its operations into five subsidiaries will help it be more focused.

“Breaking up our operations allows us to focus our energies ­efficiently in the sectors that we dwell in,” said Aimi Aizal Nasharuddin, Skali group president.

He was speaking after ­introducing Skali’s subsidiary company, Softlakes Sdn Bhd, at a press briefing in its Kuala Lumpur office last week.

Softlakes, Aimi said, will be the company’s technology aggregator and will be responsible for ­researching and developing new products and technologies for the company’s portfolio.

One of the first products that Softlakes will be pushing is a ­business process-management tool called Frontier, which will help an organisation keep better track — and define the scope — of its projects.

According to Softlakes’ vice-­president of product management, Yazleen Mahmood, Frontier enables organisations to track project ­activities to help the companies understand what needs to be done or fixed.

The product is scalable and is targeted at small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), as well as enterprises.

Aimi said Skali is putting a lot of focus on the SMB market as it is a fairly new niche for it.

“Not many companies specialise in this market, so we see this as an opportunity for us,” he said, adding that Skali and Softlakes are ­discussing how Frontier can be packaged to be more appealing to SMBs.

The first version of Frontier is being used within the Skali organisation and by some of its existing clientele to monitor internal projects.

“We regard using the first version as a learning curve to identify the faults and traits of Frontier v.1,” Aimi said.

Softlakes is in the midst of further developing a second version of the product to prepare it for ­commercialisation in the fourth quarter of this year.

Softlake said it has embarked on strategic partnerships with two giants in the IT industry, but declined to provide details at this time.