The internet giant Google has announced its plan to create its first cloud region in Thailand to capture the growing demand for cloud computing services in Thailand and internationally.
The Thailand cloud region will join 11 existing Google Cloud regions across Asia Pacific and Japan, including two in Southeast Asia — in Singapore and Jakarta.
Google Cloud now has 34 regions and 103 zones for cloud services worldwide.
“Google Cloud aims to complement the government’s steadfast pursuit of infrastructure projects like the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) and deliver the cloud foundation that more businesses need to transform and grow,” said Ruma Balasubramanian, managing director for Southeast Asia of Google Cloud.
“We’re excited by this expanded opportunity to contribute to Thailand becoming one of the world’s most competitive countries and the innovation engine of a digital economy in Southeast Asia that is set to be worth 36.25 trillion baht by 2030.”
According to Google, a cloud region allows customers to build, test and deploy applications on a highly scalable and reliable infrastructure, offering storage, networking, data analytics, application development, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools.
The Thailand cloud region will have three zones for customers to distribute their workloads.
A cloud service with high reliability and disaster recovery support is important for customers in highly regulated industries, such as financial services, healthcare, telecoms and the public sector, Google said.
Chaiwut Thanakamanusorn, the Digital Economy and Society (DES) Minister, highlighted the importance of cloud services to help organisations respond nimbly to digital disruption.
“We expect cloud services to become the backbone for driving the 20-year national master plan for digital development and achieving Thailand 4.0 vision in the future,” he said.
Ajarin Pattanapanchai, the ministry's permanent secretary, said Google Cloud’s scalable and secure computing resources could be a boon for the private sector to seize new growth opportunities while assisting the public sector in enhancing citizen-focussed services.
