US tech giant Cisco Systems has vowed to focus on user-centric applications, digital infrastructure transformation, enterprise cybersecurity and hybrid work support as strategies to drive growth of business customers and support Thailand's digital transformation.
"Thailand is on the right trajectory to become a digital economy heavyweight in the region. As it continues to chart its next phase of growth, businesses need to transform themselves to stay relevant in the burgeoning digital economy," said Taveewat Chantaraseno, managing director for Cisco Thailand and Myanmar.
Mr Taveewat said he was aware of economic headwinds that might hamper enterprises' investment in technology. The company has a financing arm -- Cisco Capital -- that can assist customers in such an investment, he noted.
"In the past two years, the number of customers participating in the firm's financing programme has surged 30-50%," Mr Taveewat said.
He said hybrid work, Industry 4.0 and hybrid cloud are the prevailing digital trends that could shape businesses.
According to Mr Taveewat, digital transformation can help enhance Thailand's competitiveness, unlocking 2.5 trillion baht in economic value a year by 2030.
Cisco set out four strategic targets for the Thai market in fiscal 2023.
The first lies in efforts to make applications that cater for good customer experiences, Mr Taveewat said.
Cisco's full-stack observability innovation serves as a tool that can show the whole functioning process of the apps, deliver in-depth information and recommend actions to optimise all end-user experiences.
The second involves digital infrastructure transformation. He said there are 20 billion connected devices worldwide now and the number is expected to surge to 29 billion by 2023.
"Organisations need to transform their infrastructure with the network at its core to create and deploy their policies in an automated way to deliver a seamless experience," said Mr Taveewat.
Cisco's Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture combines networking and security functions in the cloud to connect users to apps and data in any environment and from anywhere and control access by enforcing a consistent set of security enterprise policies.
The third involves efforts to ensure enterprise security, including through applications and hardware.
Last year, 65% of small and medium-sized enterprises suffered cyber-incidents, Mr Taveewat said.
The fourth is to support hybrid work by providing a platform that can help enterprises enhance visibility, secure collaboration and secure access to support all types of interactions in the hybrid world, he said.
The firm's study shows hybrid work makes 85% of Thai employees happier.
"Cisco is a platform company where it has an end-to-end support from hardware and software to services. Globally, from 2015 to 2021, its subscription software revenue grew 23%," Mr Taveewat said.
"We see refreshment of technology back in hospitality, education and manufacturing in the post-pandemic period," he said.
Cisco is committed to moving ahead with its Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) programme, in which the company works with governments globally to unlock digital power.
In Thailand, the CDA scheme began in November last year with projects including supporting smart factories through 5G power and creating healthcare connection between 10 hospitals.
