Boosting a cloud-first ecosystem: Announcements at the Huawei Cloud Summit in Thailand

As a country rapidly transforming into a digital economy hub, Thailand is taking the lead in cloud technology and the development of its digital infrastructure in the region. The Ministry of Digital Economy and Society (MDES) released seven key digital policies as its priorities for the year, including a cloud-first policy in the public sector. This is the first of its kind to encourage the use of digital technologies in public services to drive the country’s digital future.

In tandem with this shift, the recent Huawei Cloud Summit Thailand 2024 saw Huawei Cloud and MDES releasing an AI Acceleration plan to accelerate the digital transformation of local enterprises in the country.

This is not the first collaboration with the Thai government; since 2018, Huawei has built three cloud data centers, and is the first and only cloud vendor to do so. The data centers currently serve pan-government entities, large enterprises, and some of Thailand’s regional customers. At the summit, new innovations were announced to further strengthen Huawei’s presence as a core component of Thailand’s digital ecosystem. The Thailand cloud region, which has three availability zones, ensures both high elasticity and high reliability, allowing Huawei Cloud to cater to a variety of customer demands.

“Together with Thailand, we are working to advance technology innovation, industry development, and ecosystem construction. [The] Summit is not only an event for technological innovation, but also a platform to showcase the industry’s deep cultivation and ecosystem collaboration. We hope to contribute to Thailand’s innovation and technology development, and are committed to helping Thailand realize its Cloud-First digital vision.” said Jacqueline Shi, President of Huawei Cloud Global Marketing and Sales Service during the summit.

Supporting Thailand’s Cloud First Initiative

Security and reliability have always been a priority at Huawei Cloud. As more data centers and cloud regions are launched globally, Huawei Cloud’s multi-dimensional, full-stack cloud security system ensures access control and monitoring and takes service continuity assurance measures to consistently improve the security and reliability of the Huawei Cloud infrastructure.

Being the first and only cloud vendor with three data centers in Thailand, Huawei Cloud provides the technical platform to help Thailand realize its digital vision with MDES, implementing Cloud First security compliance measures. The next five years will be dedicated to Huawei’s investments in local digital infrastructure construction, ensuring a more robust environment for local data processing and enterprise data security to bolster Thailand’s position as a digital leader in Southeast Asia.

Delivering cutting-edge solutions and the latest in digital innovation practices

From big data to AI and machine learning, Huawei Cloud is set to boost its efforts in Thailand over the next five years, focusing on local digital infrastructure to ensure data security and processing efficiency. This includes products like GaussDB, which supports full software encryption and end-to-end intelligence for mission-critical workloads, and  Pangu Large Language Models (LLMs), developed specifically for the industry with three-layer architecture. The Pangu models are now used in more than 30 industries and 400 task scenarios, including government services, finance, manufacturing, drug discovery, coal mines, steel manufacturing, railways, autonomous driving, industrial design, architectural design, and meteorology, driving real value creation everywhere.

In addition, Huawei Cloud offers MetaStudio, a cloud-based service that can produce virtual human videos and live streams. MetaStudio is pushing the boundaries of digital content production with its digital person modelling capability that can be completed in just three hours, with a 95% lip synchronization rate.

Huawei also displayed Kuafu robots at the summit, an advanced humanoid robot developed by Leju Robotics and powered by Huawei’s Pangu AI model. With the ability to understand natural language commands, these robots can plan and execute tasks swiftly. They can also learn new tasks quickly with its machine learning capabilities.

From governments to enterprises: transforming the digital landscape across industries

According to Frost & Sullivan’s report in December 2023, Huawei Thailand ranked No. 1 in the Thai hybrid cloud market. Thailand’s top 10 enterprises, more than 70% government ministries, and 25 financial institutions (covering 80% of the top ones) have chosen Huawei as their digital transformation partner. A report by Gartner reveals that Huawei Cloud ranks third in Thailand’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service market share, leading the cloud market in the region. This includes the e-Government cloud with MDES to improve the efficiency of digital collaboration and support the construction of the first smart city in Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor.

With a strong partner ecosystem of over 300 cloud local partners and more than 700 enterprise partners in Thailand, Huawei continues to build a community of startups by launching the Spark Ignite startup competition with governments and partners. Huawei also partnered with Chulalongkorn University to develop courses in cloud and AI that aim to create a robust ecosystem that nurtures talent, stimulates technological advancements, and ultimately contributes to developing a more intelligent and digitally empowered society. Having won the Prime Minister’s Award for Best Human Capital Contribution, Huawei continues to support the country’s talent-building efforts to fill the gap of 500,000 digital talents and train 100,000 people by 2025 in digital leadership, advanced skills, practical knowledge, and digital inclusion.

With events such as Huawei Cloud Summit Thailand, Huawei furthers its commitment to collaborating with the Thai government and supporting its digital development efforts. Whether through its advanced technology that fosters growth, efficiency, and competitiveness or education and support in human resources, the efforts are ongoing as the nation strives to become the digital hub of ASEAN.