Compelled to stay indoors due to the COVID-19 outbreak, consumers in Thailand are spending more time -- and money -- online. This has prompted local businesses to look towards VMC on AWS to help them move to the cloud more cost effectively and easily, so they can tap this "new norm" of consumption.
The global pandemic has triggered ripples of change across the region, with millions coming online for the first time this year.
In Thailand, 30% of digital services consumers are new to online platforms and 95% say they will continue to use at least one online service post-pandemic, according to the e-Conomy SEA 2020 report conducted by Temasek Holdings, Google, and Bain & Company.
Thai consumers also are spending more time online this year, from 3.7 hours a day before the pandemic to the current 4.3 hours daily. Video streaming services, in particular, have seen keen interest, with the volume of searches for video subscription services up 18-fold this year from 2016.
The e-Conomy SEA 2020 report also indicates that e-commerce services are clocking a robust 81% year-on-year growth, while food delivery services climbing 42%. Gross merchandise volume for Thailand's digital economy is expected to hit US$18 billion this year, before expanding further to reach US$53 billion in 2025.
Not surprisingly, businesses in the country are eager to tap increasing demands for online services and new opportunities created from the shifts in consumption and spending.
And with employees now working remotely, local organisations also need applications that can support mobile environments and ensure their workforce can remain productive anytime, anywhere.
These developments have pushed demand for hybrid cloud solutions, as Thai companies look for quick and cost-effective ways to accelerate their digital transformation, according to Somchai Kittichaikoonkit, Acting Managing Director, CS LoxInfo Public Company Limited.
"The pandemic, undeniably, has significantly affected most businesses and impacted their bottomline. At the same time, customers expect service efficiency as they consume products and services online," Kittichaikoonkit says. "These shifts are driving businesses to enhance the robustness of their IT infrastructure, which plays a key role in their ability to deliver quality online services that consumers demand."
And they will need to manage this effectively to optimise their IT investment, as they prepare their move to the cloud amid the challenging business environment.
Seeking agility with low-risk, cost-efficient cloud migration
Cloud migration projects can be complex, risky, and long-drawn. Preparing for the move is one of the main challenges Thai companies face in their digital transformation efforts.
Employees will need to be reskilled if the organisation moves to a cloud platform that is inherently different from their on-premise environment. Operating an unfamiliar infrastructure can severely affect the company's agility and ability to move quickly to respond to changing consumer demands.
In addition, the lack of knowledge and skillsets needed to manage public cloud platforms is a significant concern for Thai enterprises, notes Kittichaikoonkit. "They often are not familiar with using the functions on a public cloud and feel that they won't know how to migrate and manage their workloads in a public cloud platform."
Such risks, though, can be easily mitigated when organisations adopt VMC on AWS, he says. Since VMware technologies already are widely deployed across their on-prem architecture, Thai businesses will not need to spend additional time and money reengineering their applications.
VMware Cloud clusters also are quick to set up. Kittichaikoonkit explains: "All users have to do is to specify the configurations and the VMware Cloud portal will establish the cluster, on the spot, without any capital investment needed.
"This not only creates flexibility in business decisions, but also eliminates the divide between the Operations and Development teams. In addition, it provides a simple process to host applications on demand," he says.
Other key benefits of deploying VMC on AWS include:
- VMs running both on-prem and the cloud can be managed via a single dashboard
- VMs can be migrated between cloud and on-prem bi-directionally, with their IPs and vSphere policies intact
- VMC on AWS billing can be handled through VMware Cloud services, providing cost visibility of cloud services at any given time
According to Kittichaikoonkit, businesses that choose VMC on AWS can shave off 69% of their migration costs compared to native public clouds, and slash migration time from years to months or even weeks.
"Thai businesses, now more than ever, need to be able to move quickly and tap new opportunities from the growth of online services and consumption," he says. "VMC on AWS can arm them with agility to do so and enable them to more rapidly bring out new services and generate new revenue."
Contact a CS LoxInfo PLC. representative to find out how you can take your first step towards new business growth with VMC on AWS.
