AWS is committed to supporting the government’s Thailand 4.0 ambition, which aims to build a thriving economy driven by innovation, creativity, and technology. With the launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region, AWS plans an estimated investment of more than 190 billion baht (US$5 billion) in Thailand over 15 years, which includes capital expenditures on the construction of data centers, operational expenses related to ongoing utilities and facility costs, and purchases of goods and services from regional businesses.
While Thai customers have been leveraging AWS since our inception in 2006, our local presence in Thailand accelerated in 2015 when AWS opened our first office in Bangkok. Today, the AWS office supports our growing workforce of data scientists, cloud engineers, solutions architects, and sales and account managers. These staff members are on the ground and working hard to innovate on behalf of our local customers.
The AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region will add to our existing infrastructure investments in Thailand as AWS continues to address the growing needs of our customers. 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 Outposts launched in Thailand. AWS Outposts is a fully managed service that offers the same AWS infrastructure, AWS services, APIs, and tools to virtually any data center, co-location space, or on-premises facility for a truly consistent hybrid experience. AWS will continue to deepen its investment in Thailand with the upcoming launch of an AWS Local Zone in Bangkok, which will enable customers to deliver applications that require single-digit millisecond latency to end users in Thailand.
Today’s announcement of our new infrastructure Region represents AWS’s largest investment in Thailand to date, which is set to deliver further innovation, drive greater productivity, increase Thailand’s skilled workforce, and position the nation at the forefront of digital commerce for generations to come.
Building world-class cloud infrastructure to spur innovation across industries
Customers in Thailand are among millions of active customers using AWS every month in over 190 countries around the world to innovate quickly, increase operational efficiencies, and take their ideas to the world.
At AWS, we are already witnessing the incredible transformation cloud computing is driving among customers from industries such as financial services, telecommunications, energy and resources, media and entertainment, healthcare, education, and retail. For example, fashion e-commerce service Pomelo leverages AWS ML technology to personalize the shopping experience for customers all over the world. GPSC, a flagship provider of sustainable energy in Thailand, migrated the company’s Windows workloads to AWS to optimize performance, reduce infrastructure costs by 20-25%, and deliver more innovative services to customers faster. Enterprise collaboration solution, Amity leverages AWS’s global infrastructure to deploy Amity Social Cloud to communities worldwide and power three billion monthly social messages across hundreds of digital platforms.
Spurring government innovation to improve citizen services for Thailand
Maintaining national resilience to keep critical data and infrastructure safe is a top priority for government agencies and public sector organizations across Thailand as they look for opportunities to transform the way citizen services are delivered. AWS’s continued investment in local infrastructure in Thailand will provide public sector customers with high availability and the latest cloud technology, while meeting their data residency preferences.
In February 2022, AWS signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Ministry of Digital Economy and Society of Thailand (MDES) to help with the digital transformation of the Thailand Government Cloud. Under the MOU, MDES and the Thai government can consider using AWS as part of the Government Data Center and Cloud service (GDCC), the central cloud infrastructure for government agencies. MDES will also work with other Thai government agencies and AWS to identify strategic pilot workloads to run on AWS through the GDCC over the next year to showcase the speed that government agencies can experiment with cloud technology to innovate and deliver their missions.
In addition to supporting the nation’s Thailand 4.0 ambitions, the launch of the new AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region will help unlock more opportunities for Thailand’s public sector and government customers to digitize citizen services, modernize aging infrastructure, enhance security, and improve operational productivity.
Supporting local businesses to take their ideas global
AWS is committed to providing customers of all sizes across Thailand access to the same cloud services, security, reliability, scale, and speed as the largest organizations in the world.
Startups like Energy Response Co. Ltd (ENRES) leverage Internet of Things (IoT) and AI to optimize energy usage for buildings across Asia to help companies reduce operational costs while using energy more efficiently and sustainably. Many of these companies started through the AWS Activate program, which provides training, technical support, and AWS credits to support startup growth. Since 2013, AWS Activate has provided hundreds of thousands of startups globally with support, and last year, AWS provided more than USD $1 billion in AWS credits to help startups accelerate and grow their business.
AWS also expanded its Startup Ramp program to Thailand in 2021. This program supports 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.
Many local businesses that are a part of our AWS Partner Network in Thailand work closely with customers to solve some of the biggest community challenges and improve the delivery of citizen services. AWS has an extensive network of AWS Partners to support customer innovation in Thailand, which includes over 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. APN SIs, consulting partners, and ISVs help customers migrate to AWS, deploy mission-critical applications, and provide a full range of monitoring, automation, and management services for customers’ environments. AWS Partners in Thailand include National Telecom (NT), True IDC, G-Able, and DailiTech. AWS ISVs in Thailand including 2C2P, Omise, 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.
Working together to help address Thailand’s skills gap
The move to the cloud is the biggest technology shift in our lifetime, and the pace of this shift is directly correlated with our ability to upskill builders everywhere. Thailand is riding a wave of innovation, which relies heavily on a digital workforce equipped to meet the rising demand for cloud computing. AWS-commissioned research from AlphaBeta in 2022 shows that in Asia Pacific, by 2025, three of the five most in-demand digital skillsets will be cloud-related.
Making investments to address Thailand’s digital skills shortage is something AWS is incredibly passionate about – it accelerates innovation, drives economic growth, and creates high-value jobs. In fact, AWS has trained over 700,000 individuals across ASEAN with cloud skills since 2017 and plans to continue collaborating with industry and government organizations in Thailand to improve the nation’s digital skillsets.
AWS invests in upskilling local developers, students, and the next generation of IT leaders in Thailand through programs like AWS Skills Builder, AWS Academy, and AWS Educate. AWS Academy is currently available to students at eight institutions in Bangkok, Chiang Rai, and Pathum Thani. Students interested in free self-paced content can take advantage of Cloud Career Pathways through AWS Educate. From college courses through full-time training programs and self-paced learning content, these AWS programs help learners of all backgrounds and experiences prepare for careers in the cloud.
AWS also helps customers in Thailand build digital skills across their organizations. AWS will collaborate with MDES on a skilling plan and provide support to train more than 1,200 employees with cloud skills to help accelerate innovation with the government of Thailand. AWS will provide 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.
Building a sustainable future for all
Building a sustainable future is important for our planet, our customers, and our communities. AWS believes it is vital that growth of the cloud is delivered in the most sustainable way. Amazon is on a path to power its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of the original 2030 target. (See Amazon's public methodology for more on this approach.)
AWS is also committed to helping our customers reduce their carbon footprint by moving workloads to the cloud. A report by 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, found that computing in the cloud is five times more energy efficient than on-premises data centers in the Asia Pacific Region (APAC) and that moving computing workloads from on-premises data centers to the cloud can reduce organizations’ carbon footprint by more than 78%.
In 2019, AWS co-founded the Climate Pledge, a commitment by organizations to be net-zero carbon by 2040 – a decade ahead of the goals set in the Paris Agreement. As of March 2022, more than 300 companies have signed The Climate Pledge, marking close to a 600% growth in signatories over the past year.
AWS’s commitment to Thailand
Today’s announcement is part of AWS’s ongoing and deep commitment to supporting Thailand’s growth and our vision for the nation to become a leader in the digital economy. AWS looks forward to seeing more customers and partners leverage the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud to drive innovation and digital transformation across Thailand, while contributing to the country’s economic development.
