Thailand needs to develop digital talent to ensure competitiveness
Several experts have urged the government to accelerate the acquisition of digital literacy by Thais to boost the country's digital competitiveness.
Thanachart Numnonda, director of ICT market researcher IMC Institute, said that US-based technology giant Microsoft's announcement to set up a data centre in Thailand on Wednesday would help support the country's high-technology usage traffic.
He said Microsoft's move offers Thailand an opportunity to promote cloud data-storage service to organisations in the country, and boosts confidence in the safety and efficiency of data storage.
"More importantly, the data centre would support the use of technologies, such as big data, artificial intelligence and internet of things," he said.
"Public cloud will facilitate organisations on the development of aforementioned technologies in terms of costs, liquidity and technology update."
Data centre will not create jobs
Thanachart noted that the technology giant's move to set up a data centre would not create many jobs for Thais because the infrastructure could be controlled remotely.
Only a few security guards and employees would be hired to take care of the data centre, he explained.
He affirmed that digital literacy among Thais was important to promote the country as a digital hub, including having skills to use cloud storage and other deep technologies.
"Apart from infrastructure, tax incentives and political stability, digital talent is necessary to attract technology companies to Thailand," he pointed out.
He added that Thai data-centre providers have to boost their service potential to match with international providers.
Digital competitiveness
Echoing Thanachart, the CEO of ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (Thailand), Supparat Sivapetchranat Singhara na Ayutthaya, said Microsoft's move to set up a data centre in Thailand would encourage financial institutions to use cloud service.
Cloud service providers, meanwhile, would expand and boost their potential in data-centre services, he said. He added that the data centre would benefit the energy sector amid increasing demand for electricity and renewable energy.
"Hence, the government should offer incentives to attract data-centre providers," he said.
Supparat, who is also co-founder of Thailand Data Centre Council, added that the council was collecting comments and use cases that benefit cloud and data-centre industries to propose to the government, which would help boost Thailand's digital competitiveness.
