Amazon's cloud service unit draws Thai clients

Markku Lepisto, the firm’s principal technology evangelist for Asia-Pacific, said cloud computing was now the “new normal” in the information-technology world with AWS, a unit of e-commerce giant Amazon, among the leading service providers with about a million customers worldwide.
The global list of clients includes Samsung, The New York Times, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, SingPost, the AirBNB hotel service, the Spotify music service, and the Dropbox IT storage service.
“In the old days, start-ups and enterprises needed huge up-front capital expenditure to the tune of millions of dollars for a high-quality global network for their services, but today’s cloud technology allows them to avoid such a risk as they can pay as they use. It’s just like [buying] electricity from a utility,” he said.
In Thailand, AWS’s customers include start-ups and small and medium businesses, such as Sinoze, a musical mobile game; Stamp, a consumer loyalty app; Computerlogy, a social-media monitoring and analytic service; Sellsuki, a digital cashier app for FaceBook online sellers; Playbasis, a gamification platform; and eUnite, a human-resources app.
Among big enterprises, the list includes True IDC, which is part of True Corp. As a partner of the AWS network, True currently provides a dedicated network connection that allows clients’ IT workloads from on-premises data centres, offices or co-location environments into the AWS cloud, bypassing the Internet.
In some cases, this reduces the end-user organisation’s network costs, while increasing bandwidth throughput to provide a better and more consistent network experience.
Richard Harshman, AWS head of Asean business, said cloud technology offered agility, flexibility, scalability, elasticity, and lower costs to allow businesses to go global within a short time. This allows innovators to focus on their core competencies.
The cloud allows firms to experiment with new ideas and business models, and if they don’t work, they can try other ideas and models again. “If they’re successful, you pay for the service as used,” he said, adding that the traditional capital-expenditure model is replaced by the operating-expense model when using cloud technology.
E-commerce, telecommunications, financial services, logistics, and manufacturing are among the sectors that have turned to cloud technology to tap new business opportunities or expand existing businesses without the risk of large up-front capital expenditure.
Harshman also suggested that the Thai government take advantage of cloud technology to leverage its “digital economy” policy, while member countries of Asean Economic Community should boost their digital connectivity via this technology.
Lepisto said AWS currently provided cloud and related services from 11 regional bases is such places as Singapore, Japan, Australia, China, the United States, Brazil and Europe where customers can build and run applications, store content, and go global with their apps or services.
In addition to no up-front capital risk and lower viable expenses, customers get the benefit of having the required capacity reserve to meet their actual demand, he said.
“They also enjoy higher speed and agility that allows new services to start within a short time while the cost of failure is low. In other words, cloud solves the problem so that being risk-averse doesn’t kill innovation.”
AWS has launched a programme called “AWS Educate” for educators and students around the world to gain easy access to and knowledge on cloud technology by offering free credits.