AWS plans an estimated investment of more than US$5 billion in Thailand over 15 years

• AWS to Launch an Infrastructure Region in Thailand

• New AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region will allow customers to run workloads and securely store data in Thailand while serving end users with even lower latency

Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently 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. Globally, AWS has now announced plans for 24 more Availability Zones across eight more AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, India, Israel, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, and Thailand. The upcoming AWS Region in Thailand will enable developers, startups, and enterprises, as well as government, education, and nonprofit organizations, 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. In addition, as part of its commitment to the region, AWS plans an estimated investment of more than $5 billion (190 billion baht) in Thailand over 15 years.

“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. “The AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region will enable organizations to build with AWS technologies 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,” said His Excellency Mr. 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.”

“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,” 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 AWS’s 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,” said 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.”

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. 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 (Bangkok) Region will enable customers with data residency preferences or requirements 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, Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, mobile services, storage, and other cloud technologies.

Customers Welcome the News of the AWS Region in Thailand

Organizations in Thailand are among the millions of active customers using AWS in more than 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), Siam Cement Group (SCG), Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, The Stock Exchange of Thailand, and more.

CP All Plc. is the sole operator of more than 13,000 7-Eleven stores in Thailand and Cambodia. “Using AWS enabled us to be agile and support the needs of our customers during the pandemic since they were no longer able to visit us in store,” said Wiwat Pongritsakda, vice president, chief information officer, and cyber security officer at CP All Plc. “We built our 7-Eleven and 7-Delivery applications on AWS in less than six months, allowing customers to buy products from their closest convenience store, purchase online packages, collect and redeem points, and use an e-wallet to make payments online. We want to continue providing our customers with a seamless digital experience, and we have invested in data analytics and machine learning technology such as Amazon Personalize to help us recommend the right products for our customers. The new AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region will help us continue to accelerate our digitization journey and adapt quickly to changes in consumer buying habits, while delivering innovative and personalized experiences for our 7-Eleven customers.”

ENRES is a startup that uses IoT and artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize energy usage for buildings and factories across Asia. “As an early-stage startup, we had to be very conscientious about where to spend our resources and how to efficiently scale. The AWS Activate program provided technical support and credits that have been instrumental in helping ENRES develop our proof-of-concept platform in the cloud,” said Paisit Jarunnamsiri, chief technology officer at ENRES. “Given the growing threat of climate change and finite resources on our planet, we believe that IoT, AI, and other innovative technologies can drive better energy optimization for companies and reduce their energy spend while benefitting the planet. With the new AWS Region launching in Thailand, we are delighted to continue our successful collaboration with AWS and enable more customers to better optimize their energy.”

PTT Global Chemical Public Company Limited (PTTGC) is Thailand's largest integrated petrochemical business. “Our collaboration with AWS has enabled us to drive digital transformation across our business by leveraging consistent and reliable infrastructure that helps us scale,” said Nattapol Jongjaroonkiat, head of Digital Transformation at PTTGC. “PTTGC built a data lake on AWS that allows us to ingest data quicker and run machine learning and analytics use cases, such as a BPA Catalyst Life Prediction solution, to analyze the environmental conditions that impact the lifetime of the catalyst that we use in our business. Understanding the optimal conditions that will extend the life of the catalyst helps improve operational efficiency and save costs in petrochemical production. We look forward to deepening our collaboration with AWS to drive more innovation in the petrochemical sector with the AWS Region in Thailand.”

PTT Oil and Retail Business Public Company Limited (OR) is a leading retailer of petroleum products and retail businesses in Thailand with more than 1,900 service stations across the country and more than 3,700 Café Amazon locations in Thailand and overseas. “We collaborated with AWS to migrate our loyalty management system to the cloud, which forms the foundation for a new all-in-one app that strives to be a one-stop solution for all lifestyles," said Wison Suntharachan, senior executive vice president of Corporate Strategy and Sustainability at OR. "The energy industry is undergoing significant transformation, and we are excited for the new AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region to help us keep up with the pace of technological change as we diversify our business and drive sustainable growth.”

SCG is a leading business conglomerate in the ASEAN region that has committed to strong corporate governance and sustainable development principles for more than 100 years. Since its founding, SCG has continued to grow and diversify into three core businesses, which include cement building materials, chemicals, and packaging. “Technology is critical to our business as we seek to develop innovative products, services, and solutions that meet the diverse needs of customers, while operating under rapidly changing market conditions. As part of our collaboration with AWS, SCG and our subsidiaries migrated our entire SAP enterprise resource planning software from on-premises to the cloud, which helped us increase agility, lower costs, and accelerate innovation,” said Yuttana Jiamtragan, vice president of Corporate Administration at SCG. “To accelerate our digital-first ambitions, we plan to modernize our non-SAP applications, such as CPAC Green Solution and Vendor Managed Inventory System, on AWS. An AWS Region in Thailand will help us continue to deliver sustainable transformation.”

Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University provides lifelong learning under the distance education system. The university has an extensive network of regional distance education centers to serve its 200,000 students throughout the country. “We selected AWS as our strategic cloud provider to deliver on our vision of becoming a digital university,” said Dr. Sarun Nakthanom, Information Technology (IT) director at STOU. “STOU is the first Thai university to go all-in on AWS following the migration of our entire IT infrastructure, including 137 server instances. By fully operating in the cloud, we have been able to accelerate the launch of digital offerings to provide a more engaging experience for our students. The scalability of AWS enabled 60 university departments to deliver 700 online courses over three months, compared to the five years it would have taken if we had built and hosted our e-learning platform on premises. We welcome the news of an AWS Region in Thailand to help us continue to digitally transform our systems and improve the teaching and learning capabilities at STOU.”

The Stock Exchange of Thailand has been Thailand’s primary trading venue for all types of securities trading since 1975. Its premier online trading platform—settrade.com—supports over 3.1 million accounts and handles daily trading value of more than $850 million (32.3 billion baht). “AWS provides us with a robust, highly scalable, and low latency cloud infrastructure for our online trading platform that can meet stringent security and compliance requirements,” said Thirapun Sanpakit, senior executive vice president and head of the IT division at SET. “With the increase in digital investors, it is vital for SET to adapt quickly to new market demands and offer services that cater to the appetite of this growing generation. Using AWS for SET’s online trading platforms helps us easily scale to accommodate more than 400,000 concurrent users, while continuing to provide a smooth rollout of new trading services for digital assets and fractional shares. The launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region will further strengthen SET’s ability to offer low latency market data to ensure that investors are equipped to make the best trading decisions.”

AWS Partners Look Forward to New Opportunities in Thailand

Thailand-based partners are part of the AWS Partner Network (APN), which includes more than 100,000 independent software vendors (ISVs) and systems integrators (SIs) around the world. AWS Partners build innovative solutions and services on AWS, and the APN provides business, technical, marketing, and go-to-market support to customers. AWS 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 around the world and plan to serve their Thai customers from the AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region at launch. For the full list of APN members, visit aws.amazon.com/partners.

Consulting firm DailiTech is 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 startup 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 organizations, which means data security and governance is critical,” said 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 AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region will make it possible for us to confidently deliver financial solutions that help customers modernize their businesses while adhering to strict data residency preferences or requirements."

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.”

Systems integrator NTT (Thailand) Ltd. is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner. “Since 2020, we have been modernizing enterprises in Thailand using AWS for mission-critical applications, which enables companies to benefit from the accelerated innovation, increased agility, and additional cost savings of the cloud,” said Sutas Kongdumrongkiat, CEO at NTT Thailand and Communications Lifecycle Management (CLM) at NTT Ltd. “We are excited about the AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region because our customers increasingly demand low latency solutions such as IoT and data analytics applications to drive their next stage of growth. AWS’s 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 organizations in Thailand drive innovation and business growth with AWS.”

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 technologies. 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 worldwide with low latency and high transfer speeds. In 2020, AWS 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 large population, industry, and IT centers, enabling customers to deliver applications 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 begin or 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 organizations 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, AWS 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 complex regulatory and security requirements. Startups in their earliest stages working on finding product-market fit and meeting their first customers can apply to become Startup Ramp Innovators, and those with paying customers focused on growth and scale can apply to become Startup Ramp Members to access program benefits.

Since 2017, AWS EdStart, the AWS educational technology startup accelerator, has helped entrepreneurs build the next generation of online learning, analytics, and campus management solutions. AWS EdStart members in Thailand include Gantik, OpenDurian, and Vonder. By using AWS EdStart, these members have built innovative solutions that help students make informed decisions along their education journey, provide experiential learning opportunities for primary and secondary schools across the country, and enable virtual mentoring between students and entrepreneurs.

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 on a path to power its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of the original 2030 target. Amazon is the world’s 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 on its approach. Organizations that move compute workloads to the AWS Cloud can benefit from the net effect of Amazon’s sustainability efforts to reduce their carbon footprint.