Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company, announced plans to open an infrastructure Region in Thailand. The new AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region will consist of three Availability Zones, adding to the existing 87 Availability Zones across 27 geographic regions. 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.
The region will enable developers, startups, and enterprises, and govt, education, and nonprofit firms, to run their applications and serve end users from AWS data centers located in Thailand, ensuring that customers who want to keep their data in Thailand can do so. As part of its commitment, AWS plans an estimated investment of more than $5bn in Thailand over 15 years. For more information about AWS Global Infrastructure, visit the website.
What were the executives’ thoughts on the initiative?
“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 stakeholders,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of Infrastructure Services at AWS.
“The AWS Asia Pacific Region will enable firms to build with AWS tech like artificial intelligence and machine learning, data analytics, and Internet of Things. 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.”
“AWS’s plan to build data centers in Thailand is a significant milestone that will bring advanced cloud computing services to more organizations and help us deliver our Thailand 4.0 ambition to create a digitized, value-based economy,” commented His Excellency Supattanapong Punmeechaow, deputy prime minister of Thailand and minister of Energy.
“The Royal Thai Government is pleased to collaborate with AWS, the world’s leading cloud service provider, to bring secure and resilient world-class cloud infrastructure to Thailand. AWS’s investment will enhance the nation’s competitiveness, generate significant long-term economic benefits, and help build a highly skilled workforce,” Punmeechaow further said.
“An AWS Region in Thailand will help businesses and govt agencies deliver improved digital services that will benefit our citizens for decades to come,” said His Excellency Mr. 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 modernizing legacy infrastructure and improving operations. AWS’s investment will bring our nation a step closer toward Thailand’s digital future.”
“Cloud services are one of the most essential drivers of a digital economy. We welcome Amazon Web Services’ 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,” commented Mr. Narit Therdsteerasukdi, secretary general of the Thailand Board of Investment.
“The AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region will help boost the country’s global competitiveness, while driving innovation and economic productivity across all industries in Thailand.”
What are AWS Regions?
AWS Regions consist of Availability Zones that place infrastructure in distinct geographic locations, with enough distance to significantly reduce the risk of a single event impacting clients’ 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 security and is connected through redundant, ultra-low latency networks.
AWS customers focused on high availability can design their applications to run in multiple Availability Zones and across multiple Regions to achieve even greater fault tolerance.
The new AWS Asia Pacific Region will enable clients with data residency preferences to securely store data in Thailand while providing even lower latency across the country.
Customers from startups to enterprises to government organizations and nonprofits will be able to use advanced technologies from the world’s leading cloud to drive innovation. AWS offers the broadest and deepest portfolio of services including analytics, compute, database, IoT, machine learning, mobile services, storage, and other cloud tech. Firms in Thailand are among the millions of active customers using AWS in over 190 countries around the world.
Thai organizations that choose AWS to run their workloads to accelerate innovation, increase agility, and drive cost savings include 2C2P, CP All Plc., Digital Economy Promotion Agency, Energy Response Co. Ltd. (ENRES), Papyrus Studio, PTT Global Public Company Limited, PTT Oil and Retail Business Public Company Limited, Siam Cement Group, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, The Stock Exchange of Thailand, and more.
For use cases highlighting the ways these Thai organizations use AWS services to transform their business, visit the website. Thailand-based partners are part of the AWS Partner Network (APN), which includes over 100,000 independent software vendors (ISVs) and systems integrators (SIs). AWS Partners build innovative solutions and services on AWS, and the APN provides business, technical, marketing, and go-to-market support to customers.
AWS systems integrators (SIs), consulting partners, and ISVs help enterprise and public sector customers migrate to AWS, deploy mission-critical applications, and provide a full range of monitoring, automation, and management services for customers’ environments.
Examples of AWS Thai Partners include DailiTech, G-Able Public Company Limited, National Telecom Public Company Limited, NTT (Thailand) Ltd., and True IDC. AWS ISVs in Thailand, including 2C2P and Amity, are already using AWS to deliver their software to customers and plan to serve their Thai customers from the AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region at launch.
For the full list of AWS Partner Network (APN) members, visit the website, and for use cases from DailiTech, National Telecom, and NTT (Thailand) Ltd, visit the website.
What is the landscape of AWS Investment in Thailand?
The upcoming AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region is the latest in AWS’s ongoing investments in Thailand to provide customers with advanced and secure cloud tech. Since 2020, AWS has launched 10 Amazon CloudFront edge locations in Bangkok. Amazon CloudFront is a highly secure and programmable content delivery network (CDN) that accelerates the delivery of data, videos, applications, and APIs to users with low latency and high transfer speeds.
In 2020, Amazon Web Services launched AWS Outposts in Thailand. AWS Outposts is a family of fully managed solutions delivering AWS infrastructure and services to virtually any on-premises or edge location for a truly consistent hybrid experience. AWS plans to deepen its investment in Thailand with the launch of an upcoming AWS Local Zone in Bangkok.
AWS Local Zones are a type of AWS infrastructure deployment that places compute, storage, database, and other select services closer to the population, industry, and IT centers, enabling clients to deliver apps that require single-digit millisecond latency to end users.
To support the growth in cloud adoption across Thailand, AWS continues to invest in upskilling local developers, students, and the next generation of IT leaders in Thailand through programs like AWS re/Start, AWS Academy, and AWS Educate. These AWS education programs help learners of all backgrounds and experiences prepare for careers in the cloud.
From college courses to full-time training programs and self-paced learning content, AWS education programs offer access to skills training that can help individuals further their cloud career. Eight Thai higher education institutions in Bangkok, Chiang Rai, and Pathum Thani have incorporated AWS Academy courses into their curriculums. AWS also works directly with firms like Siam Cement Group to help build in-demand cloud skills and train employees.
AWS plans to collaborate with the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society of Thailand on a skilling plan and provide support to train more than 1,200 employees with cloud skills, on-demand digital courses, and facilitated training events so that government employees can develop the skills needed to implement cloud technologies at scale, make better data-driven business decisions, and innovate new services to drive improved outcomes for citizens.
To continue fostering entrepreneurship in Thailand, AWS offers support to early-stage startups through the AWS Activate program. This program provides access to guidance and one-on-one time with AWS experts, technical support, business mentorship, and the opportunity to access up to $100,000 in AWS service credits—all at no charge.
AWS also works with the venture capital community, startup accelerators, and incubators to help startups grow in the cloud. In Thailand, this includes accelerator organizations such as AIS The Startup and Stormbreaker to support the rapid growth of their portfolio companies.
In 2021, Amazon Web Services expanded its Startup Ramp program to ASEAN. This program is dedicated to supporting early-stage startup entrepreneurs as they build, launch, and grow solutions in health, digital government, smart cities, agriculture, and space technology.
AWS Startup Ramp works to remove barriers for entrepreneurs who want to make an impact in the public sector by providing technical design and architecture reviews, mentorship, credits, and support with go-to-market plans to help navigate hard security requirements.
Startups in their earliest stages working on finding product-market fit and meeting their first clients can apply to become Startup Ramp Innovators, and those with paying clients focused on growth can apply to become Startup Ramp Members to access program benefits.
Since 2017, AWS EdStart, the AWS educational tech startup accelerator, has helped entrepreneurs build the next gen of online learning, analytics, and campus management solutions. AWS EdStart members in Thailand include Gantik, OpenDurian, and Vonder.
These members have built innovative solutions that help students make informed decisions along their education journey, provide experiential learning opportunities for schools across the country, and enable virtual mentoring between students and entrepreneurs.
What is Amazon’s commitment to sustainability?
Amazon is committed to becoming a more sustainable business and reaching net-zero carbon across its operations by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement, as part of The Climate Pledge. Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge and became its first signatory in 2019. As part of its Climate Pledge commitment, Amazon is set to power its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of the original 2030 target.
Amazon is the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy, and as of the end of 2021, the company reached 85% renewable energy across its business. See Amazon’s public methodology for more. Firms that move compute workloads to the AWS Cloud can benefit from the net effect of Amazon’s sustainability efforts to reduce their carbon footprint.
