Alibaba Cloud Furthers Its Commitment in Thailand by Launching Partner and Talent Initiatives

The company also plans to set up its first hyperscale data center next year

Bangkok, Thailand, October 26, 2021 – Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, continues to deepen its commitment in Thailand to supporting the country’s digitalization strategy by providing ecosystem support, talent training and infrastructure investment.

As Asia Pacific’s top cloud services provider ranked by Gartner, Alibaba Cloud has launched Thailand Partner Alliance 100, an ecosystem initiative designed to provide marketing, sales and technical support to local partners and to promote collaboration. Businesses can access key digital enablement tools within the ecosystem and solution partners will receive highly competitive margins for key products including ECS, Database, Content Delivery Networks and Short Message Services. The company will also offer dedicated technical support and technology integration funds for solution partners to innovate on Alibaba Cloud, and service partners can receive to migration support and free cloud credits.

“Gartner forecasted that global end-user spending on public cloud services is to grow 23.1% in 2021 as compared to in 2020 [1]. Given the rapid rate of cloud adoption worldwide and the opportunities it presents to local businesses, one of our priorities is to work closely with Thai partners to empower customers’ digital transformation journeys,” said Selina Yuan, General Manager of International Business, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “Our valuable business insights into the APAC region supporting various verticals, coupled with our leading technology solutions serving global clients, form a solid base for partners to grow their innovation capabilities and expand their business outreach with us.”

For example, Thai retailers will benefit from the Alibaba Cloud solutions that support Lazada – one of the largest e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia, owned by Alibaba Group – and will have access to a suite of solutions ranging from online-to-offline integrations and customer journey support tools to inventory management services and personalized marketing. For Thai financial firms, meanwhile, services such as eKYC technology support, the mobile onboarding of new customers and AI-enabled digital credit lending solutions.

In order to build up Thailand’s future digital taskforce, Alibaba Cloud has also launched an Academic Empowerment Program for students, educators and researchers. Through the program, participants will receive free cloud-computing resources, training opportunities and financial support to bolster their knowledge in line with Thailand 4.0, the Thai government’s 20-year strategy to promote digital innovation and the development of sustainable technologies. The program hopes to train 20,000 participants in digital literacy skills by 2023. One local pioneer embarking on the talent empowerment journey with Alibaba Cloud is Mahidol University.

Prof. Banchong Mahaisavariya, President of Mahidol University, stated, “The cooperation between Mahidol University and Alibaba Cloud forms a strong foundation for students to innovate and acquire the latest digital skills, so that together, we can contribute to the growth of our national economy.”

To support Thailand’s growing cloud spending [2] and its demand for data centers propelled by the outbreak of COVID-19, Alibaba Cloud also plans to launch its first data center in Thailand, with current target launch date in 2022.

“Our current plan is to set up a data center in Thailand where we see a lot of growing demand to support the local business community with its digital transformation efforts. As a leading global cloud services provider, we understand how critical digitalization is for the country and the benefits it can bring over the long term. We are dedicated to making our solutions available to all and working with Thai partners to create an ecosystem of support for a digital future,” said Tyler Qiu, General Manager for Thailand, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

To support Thai enterprises’ local and international demands, the new data center in Thailand will carry a range of products and solutions including those used to support Alibaba Group’s international operation around retail, logistics, FinTech, media and entertainment and digital marketing.

According to BOI’s Data Center and Cloud Service in Thailand [3], Thailand’s digital economy is expected contribute 25 percent of the country’s GDP by 2027, driven by the growth of e-commerce, and enabled by high internet and mobile penetration, as well as choices of e-payment systems. Data center and cloud services are one the most essential driver of the global digital economy. It is expected that Data Center Market of ASEAN in 2024 will be worth up to 5.4 billion dollars. Thai and ASEAN consumers are inducing more and more service digitization. At the same time, businesses and industries are also massively digitally transforming themselves, and so will increase the demand for data storage and cloud-based digital services. Alibaba Cloud also hopes that the launch of its first data center will complement the priorities of Thailand 4.0.

About Alibaba Cloud

Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud (www.alibabacloud.com) is the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group. It offers a complete suite of cloud services to customers worldwide, including elastic computing, database, storage, network virtualization services, large-scale computing, security, management and application services, big data analytics, a machine learning platform and IoT services. Alibaba Cloud is China’s leading provider of public cloud services by revenue in 2019, including PaaS and IaaS services, according to IDC. Alibaba Group is the world’s third leading and Asia Pacific’s leading IaaS provider by revenue in 2020 in U.S. dollars, according to Gartner’s April 2021 report.

References:
[1] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-04-21-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-public-cloud-end-user-spending-to-grow-23-percent-in-2021
[2] https://techwireasia.com/2021/05/public-cloud-spending-set-to-spike-in-thailand/
[3] https://www.boi.go.th/upload/content/DataCenterANdCloudService.pdf