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Amazon Web Services (AWS) has unveiled plans to open an infrastructure region in Thailand, investing more than $5 billion to accelerate cloud adoption with ecosystem partners central to realising growth ambitions.
The new AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region is designed to enable developers, start-ups, and enterprises -- as well as government, education and non-profit organisations -- to run applications from AWS data centres located in Thailand, allowing businesses to keep data in-country if required.
“We are committed to supporting Thailand's digital transformation through our local infrastructure investments and fast pace of innovation, helping Thailand-based customers unlock the full potential of the cloud to transform the way businesses and institutions serve their stakeholders,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of Infrastructure Services at AWS.
AWS Regions consist of Availability Zones that place infrastructure in “separate and distinct” geographic locations, with enough distance to “significantly” reduce the risk of a single event impacting customers’ business continuity, yet near enough to provide low latency for high availability applications that use multiple Availability Zones.
Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling and physical security and is connected through “redundant, ultra-low latency” networks.
“The Bangkok region will enable organisations to build with AWS technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning, data analytics and Internet of Things [IoT],” Kalyanaraman added. “With these new tools, AWS is empowering governments to better engage with citizens, enterprises to innovate for their next phase of growth, and entrepreneurs to build businesses and compete on a global scale.”
In addition, AWS will make an estimated investment of more than $5 billion (190 billion baht) in Thailand over the next 15 years to help further accelerate cloud adoption.
“AWS’ plan to build data centres in Thailand is a significant milestone that will bring advanced cloud computing services to more organisations and help us deliver our Thailand 4.0 ambition to create a digitised, value-based economy,” said Supattanapong Punmeechaow, deputy prime minister of Thailand and minister of Energy.
“The Royal Thai Government is pleased to collaborate with AWS to bring secure and resilient world-class cloud infrastructure to Thailand. AWS’ investment will enhance the nation’s competitiveness, generate significant long-term economic benefits, and help build a highly skilled workforce.”
The new Bangkok region will consist of three Availability Zones, adding to the existing 87 Availability Zones across 27 geographic regions.
Globally, AWS has announced plans for 24 more Availability Zones across eight more AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, India, Israel, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland and Thailand.
“An AWS Region in Thailand will help businesses and government agencies deliver improved digital services that will benefit our nation’s citizens for decades to come,” added Chaiwut Thanakamanusorn, minister of the Thailand Ministry of Digital Economy and Society (MDES).
“MDES and AWS have been working together to support the government’s digital transformation by moderniing legacy infrastructure and improving operations. AWS’ investment will bring our nation a step closer toward Thailand’s digital future.”
The Bangkok region will also aim to enable customers with data residency preferences or requirements to securely store data in Thailand while providing lower latency across the country. Key services available include analytics, compute, database, IoT, machine learning, mobile services, storage and other cloud technologies.
“Cloud services are one of the most essential drivers of a digital economy,” noted Narit Therdsteerasukdi, secretary general of the Thailand Board of Investment.
“We welcome AWS’ plans to build a Region in Thailand, which will help advance our position as an innovation hub in Asia and a top destination for investment. The Bangkok region will help boost the country’s global competitiveness, while driving innovation and economic productivity across all industries in Thailand.”
Partners primed to support customer transformation
The launch is expected to open up new opportunities for Thailand-based partners operating within the AWS Partner Network (APN), which includes more than 100,000 independent software vendors (ISVs) and systems integrators (SIs) around the world.
In building innovative solutions and services on AWS, the local ecosystem is now primed to provide business, technical, marketing, and go-to-market support to customers. This is in addition to helping enterprise and public sector customers migrate to AWS, as well as deploying mission-critical applications and offering a full range of monitoring, automation and management services.
Examples of leading AWS partners in Thailand include DailiTech, G-Able, National Telecom, NTT and True IDC, alongside ISVs such as 2C2P and Amity.
Specifically, consulting firm DailiTech goes to market as an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner and the 2021 AWS Consulting Partner of the Year in Thailand. Since 2014, DailiTech has helped more than 150 enterprise and start-up customers in Thailand across financial, telecommunications, media, industrial, energy, transportation, and retail sectors to innovate and digitally transform on AWS.
“DailiTech works with many financial services and public sector organisations, which means data security and governance is critical,” stated Dr. Vit Niennattrakul, managing director at DailiTech.
“Due to the highly confidential nature of customer data and operations, we need to ensure their move to the cloud meets the highest regulatory and compliance standards. The Bangkok region will make it possible for us to confidently deliver financial solutions that help customers modernise their businesses while adhering to strict data residency preferences or requirements.”
Meanwhile, National Telecom is Thailand’s state-owned telecommunications company and an AWS Public Sector Partner.
“We have collaborated with AWS since 2020 to accelerate the digital transformation of Thailand’s public sector,” said Dr. Wongkot Vijacksungsithi, senior executive vice president of Digital Business at National Telecom.
“Using AWS’s industry-leading services and infrastructure, we’ve helped more than 14 government agencies build a digital foundation to deliver more efficient citizen services, drive local economic growth, and solve some of society’s biggest challenges.
"An AWS Region in Thailand will give National Telecom more opportunities to offer solutions that can address the unique needs of our public sector customers, particularly in the area of compliance and data residency, which are priorities for governments moving their workloads to the cloud.”
Since 2020, NTT has been modernising enterprises in Thailand using AWS for mission-critical applications, operating as an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner across the country.
“We are excited about the Bangkok region because our customers increasingly demand low latency solutions such as IoT and data analytics applications to drive their next stage of growth,” outlined Sutas Kongdumrongkiat, CEO of Thailand at NTT.
“AWS’ world-class global infrastructure will enable our customers to use real-time data processing and analysis services with lower latency to make faster and more accurate business decisions to better respond to customer needs. We look forward to helping more organisations in Thailand drive innovation and business growth with AWS.”
