Digital transformation is accelerating at breakneck speed around the world. Many countries have been investing in digital transformation and designing national strategies to establish digital infrastructure and develop a digital economy. They understand that powerful digital infrastructure and a robust digital economy are key to navigating the complexities of digital transformation and enhancing their competitive edge. ASEAN remains one of the world’s most vibrant and fastest-growing economic regions. The burgeoning digital economy in this region continues to grow.
Thailand, situated at the heart of ASEAN, has been leading the development of the digital economy in the region and boasts the second largest economy there. In 2016, the government of Thailand announced their Thailand 4.0 strategy, a 20-year plan for national economic and social development. The strategy aims at leveraging innovative technologies to promote high-value-added businesses, pull the country out of the middle-income trap, and enhance its overall competitiveness. The government is pushing forward digital transformation to promote industry transformation and transform Thailand into a high-income country.
Thailand’s Digital Transformation Goals
To accelerate the intelligent upgrade of all industries, build a digital government, enhance the digital economy, and propel Thailand towards a digital hub of ASEAN, the Thailand government invests around 10 billion baht annually in establishing government data centers through innovative technologies like big data and AI. However, they still found it was hard to achieve their digital transformation goals.
Shifting from Siloed to Centralized Deployments for Lower TCO
300 government data centers were deployed in Thailand, with a traditional siloed virtualization architecture. The scattered deployments resulted in data silos and low resource utilization. Maintaining and deploying so many data centers was also extremely expensive. The government sought to establish a unified government cloud to centralize these deployments and reuse existing resources.
Bidding Farewell to Virtualization and Embracing Cloud
The government was seeking innovative technologies to support evolution towards smart city, smart transportation, and Industry 4.0. Their legacy virtualization systems could not keep up with these needs. They wanted more than just moving their resources to cloud. They wanted more comprehensive, cutting-edge cloud services that could streamline resources, ensure data security, and help their digital ecosystem thrive.
Standardizing Digital Sovereignty Establishment and Seeking O&M Support
The government also wanted to establish digital sovereignty. To do this, they knew that strict standards, cloud infrastructure supporting large-scale computing and high performance, and long-term huge O&M investments were essential. But they lacked the experts and other resources needed to develop standards and regulations for a digital sovereign cloud. They needed a trusted cloud service provider with extensive experience and who could provide mature standards and meaningful O&M solutions to help them establish digital sovereignty.
Diving into Cloud to Driving Thailand Towards ASEAN’s Digital Hub
A national government cloud has strict requirements for security, compliance, and product and service quality. NT selected Huawei Cloud Stack as a secure foundation for their government cloud. Deployed on-premises, Huawei Cloud Stack helps government and enterprise customers to set up a secure, reliable, and efficient hybrid cloud with an improved security and compliance posture and continuous service innovation. It drives customers to dive into cloud and accelerate intelligent upgrade.
l An Innovation-Driven Future
Huawei is the only cloud service provider with a region in Thailand, and Huawei Cloud Stack is the industry’s first hybrid cloud solution that can be used to deploy large model capabilities. Huawei Cloud Stack uses the same architecture as the Huawei public cloud and continuously synchronizes the latest cloud services from the latter. It now provides more than 90 out-of-the-box cloud services and a wide array of solutions tailored to exact needs of customers. Also, Huawei Cloud Stack provides full-stack capabilities spanning big data, AI, Pangu models, and blockchain. This supports cloud service innovation and continuous evolution in the future.
l One Centralized Cloud with Multiple Pools
Huawei Cloud Stack was used to deploy a centralized government cloud running applications for all ministries in Thailand. ManageOne, a cloud management platform from Huawei Cloud Stack, was used to manage existing VMware resource pools, so the Thailand government could continue creating value from them. Each department could have a separate VDC and apply for resources on demand. This greatly improved IT resource provisioning efficiency.
l Lower Operations and Maintenance Costs
Huawei Cloud Stack’s professional service teams provide managed O&M services and 24/7 online support for Thailand. Any O&M data from a local data center is kept within Thailand, and problems can be addressed in real time. Faults can be pinpointed and handled in minutes. The O&M process is significantly optimized, greatly cutting down Operating Expenses (OpEx).
Using Huawei Cloud Stack, NT deployed the government cloud platform within 60 days. Now, they can provision VMs in minutes to support the rapid deployment of government services. The government cloud platform serves 20 ministries as well as their 219 branches and 3,065 systems. The centralized data center deployment has reduced their annual IT spend by THB850 million while also improving the quality and efficiency of public services for the Thailand government. It also provides more convenient, efficient digital services for citizens in Thailand.
More Citizen-Friendly Digital Public Services
Department of Land Transport, Ministry of Transport established Smart Bus Terminal, a smart bus platform that enables users nationwide to access real-time bus schedules online. It makes daily commutes easier. The provincial police bureaus have developed a multi-dimensional crime map, which replaces the tedious onsite visits with a QR code system that enables real-time crime reporting. This new system simplifies communications between the police and the public. Additionally, the Ministry of Public Health created a Digital Healthcare Platform that visualizes the management of health epidemics, using both internal systems and public networks. By collaborating with medical centers to optimize medical resources, the Ministry has significantly improved pandemic prevention and control.
Thailand is a prosperous economic and cultural center in Southeast Asia, playing a significant role in the trade route that links East and West Asia. Moving forward, driven by the Thailand 4.0 strategy, the government of Thailand will continue to push forward digital transformation and to spur innovation while also promoting industry upgrade, building smart cities, and enabling sustainable development. They aim to balance economic growth with environmental protection and to promote rapid development of their national economy and society.
Huawei will always be there to support a digital Thailand with their full-stack capabilities, such as big data, AI, and Pangu models, on a hybrid cloud. Huawei will continue to help Thailand enhance their local cloud ecosystem, to develop Huawei Cloud Stack into a digital foundation for Thailand, and to help the Thailand government and companies build AI-powered infrastructure and industry-specific applications.
