Alibaba Cloud Thailand has officially opened Thailand’s local region to provide cloud and data intelligence services here.
Tyler Qui, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence’s country manager for Thailand, says its goal is to become the top digital transformation partner in Thailand.
According to Gartner, Alibaba Cloud is the world’s third-largest infrastructure service provider and the largest infrastructure service provider in 2021 by revenue. It provides more than 27 cloud regions across the globe, covering 84 availability zones and over 2,800 CDN nodes in more than 200 countries and regions.
The cloud service provider’s core products are cloud infrastructure and technology, data intelligence technology and hardware. It works with data center partners in different regions to launch cloud services locally. Cloud resources available to the local customers include elastic computing, storage, database, and native cloud services tailored for local requirements.
“This is also what we are building in Thailand,” Qui said.
Alibaba Cloud nodes are mostly in Asia, which is its destination market.
“When compared to the other public cloud service providers, we have much more data centers and infrastructure coverages in Asia. We want to provide our customers with easy and one-stop services that they can use and leverage our infrastructure to do their business nationally and globally,” he said.
Why Thailand and why now?
Thailand already has a large market for the cloud industry, including infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). In 2020, Thailand’s IaaS market reached US$190 million, and it is expected to grow by more than 40 per cent annually for the next five years.
Thailand has seen a robust growth in digital transformation and technology trends over the past two years, with a high rate of cloud adoption among top industries. This is an area Alibaba Cloud is strong at, apart from finance, digital media and entertainment, as well as retail.
Alibaba Cloud has a strong background and experience in these industries that can be used to leverage the core technologies to build up success for businesses. Over the past two years, there has been demand from local customers in these industries for Alibaba Cloud.
Thailand has set six strategies for a 20-year national development plan on security, competitiveness enhancement, developing and strengthening human capital, social cohesion and equity, eco-friendly development and growth, and public sector rebalancing and development.
Alibaba Cloud is capable of providing technologies to help Thailand attain those strategies. For example, it can bring services and shate its experiences to help Thailand enhance its security capability to defend against global cyber-attacks.
Also, effective management of data has proved highly important for businesses. More importantly, Thailand’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) of 2019 will officially come into force in June, after repeated postponements.
“We have a successful experience serving customers with similar requirements in Europe, where the law is called General Data Protection Regulation, and in Singapore (also called PDPA). And we want to bring the successful experience to Thailand as well as to help our customers with digital transformation,” Qui said.
Alibaba Cloud’s journey in Thailand
Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud set up in 2015 its global team and regional offices in the United States, Singapore, and Australia. And in 2019, it built up the first local partner in Thailand and got the first local training partner before setting up its local equity. Then came its collaboration with Mahidol University on Alibaba Cloud Academic Empowerment Program, a localised retail solution in Thailand, and collaboration with True Digital Academy.
In 2021, it supported local game customers on Alibaba Cloud, with localised logistic solutions in Thailand, while announcing the local DC Plan and Partner 100 Program. Recently, the Thailand Local Region came into existence in April.
Alibaba Cloud services are available in Thailand with different tiers: IaaS involving computing, network, storage, security, and hybrid cloud solution; PaaS data intelligence including database, big data, and artificial intelligence; SaaS including CDN and video, and innovative solutions that work with local ecosystem partners to building vertical solutions.
“We offer products and services ranging from IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. And we place equal emphasis on all as long as they are able to support local customers’ transformation,” Qui said.
“We strive to help local customers in addressing their business issues with cloud service products. There is also increased demand for SaaS from our customers. Therefore, we have integrated our local IT partner solutions into our offerings in order to meet customer demand. We see the most potential in this aspect,” he said.
Gartner certified Alibaba Cloud as a global CDN provider with more than 2,800 CDN nodes connecting to 1 billion devices worldwide, with 60 million minutes of live streaming each day.
There are many distinct advantages for having Alibaba’s local DC and Cloud infrastructure in Thailand. Firstly, with its local data center, it is able to service industries that have stringent data residency requirements to keep their operational data within Thailand. In addition, the local data center will also reduce the latency and ensure even smoother connectivity for business operations.
Alibaba Cloud is currently working with public sector clients, and it will provide an update in due course.
Alibaba Cloud has strong vertical solutions in e-commerce, digital media and entertainment, fintech, and logistics, which are tried and tested within Alibaba Group ecosystem.
“The products we are offerings are all proven very successful and useful by our local and international customers,” said Qui.
Strategy-wise, Alibaba Cloud is focusing on several key verticals, including retail and logistics, finance and fintech, digital entertainment and public enterprise services.
Alibaba Cloud’s products and solutions supporting these industries have been proven successful with global customers including Singapore Post, Binangonan Rural Bank (Philippines), Animal Logic (Australia) and global partners such as Red Hat, Salesforce, and VMware.
It aims to recruit 100 local partners by 2023, up from 40 currently.
“We have about 40 partners with us currently, and we aim to recruit 100 of them by end of this year to service our local customers,” said Qui.
