ALLIANCE AIMS FOR THE CLOUD

In a bid to push Thailand to the forefront of cloud computing, Software Park Thailand has joined hands with local cloud-service providers to establish “Cloud Thailand Alliance”, aimed at encouraging local software companies and developers to create software and applications for cloud platform.

The alliance officially kicked off last week. There are six founding members – True IDC, Datapro, Anise Asia, Cloud Creation, TOT 

GO and Software Park Thailand.

Software Park Thailand’s director, Thanachart Numnonda, said that the objective of setting up the alliance was to encourage Thai software companies, developers and freelancers to develop and provide software as a service (SaaS) on cloud. Currently, Thai software companies don’t seem to be aware of the importance of being on cloud platform, hence there are only a few Thai software available under SaaS model. 

The alliance will be the place for Thai software firms to use as a channel for hosting their software and applications. It is also to push the cloud movement in Thailand as it might help the country get a global cloud ranking. The move is also expected to be the first step to propose the concept and idea of cloud to the government and the education sectors.

“Currently, many educational institutes are interested in adopting cloud. The CTA is expected to be the connecting point for them,” said Thanachart.

He added that before forming the alliance, the participants had joined hands in many activities through last year. Last week this group officially launched the alliance with the aim of raising awareness and encourage cloud adoption as well as to encourage local software companies to go on cloud.

By the end of this year, the alliance aims to encourage 20 to 30 software companies to be on the cloud. It aims to have about 100 to 200 software applications available on the cloud.

“Software Park plays the role as facilitator to encourage software firms to meet and match cloud service providers. We will also support training – how to develop software to serve the cloud platform for software firms,” said Thanachart. 

Janewit Kraprayoon, general manager for True Internet Data Centre (True IDC), as one of the alliance founders, said that the SaaS market in Thailand is just in the beginning stage and needs to be encouraged. The alliance aims to help local software to go on cloud by offering SaaS. 

He said True IDC is partnering local software companies to provide SaaS for one year. 

“Currently, we have five software firms with us, and by the end of this year we hope that we will have at least 10 software firms to provide SaaS over our platform,” said Janewit.

He added that True IDC offers infrastructure as a service (IaaS) along with backup service and security service to 55 clients Some of them are also software companies. However, the number of software firms utilising IaaS to provide SaaS is still small. Therefore, the alliance aims to encourage more software firms to go on cloud. 

“We hope to encourage cloud adoption in Thailand, both in the government and private sectors. Cloud can help save the cost of IT infrastructure for those who have adopted it,” said Janewit.

Anise Asia (Thailand)’s managing director Suphol Tantisiriwat said that joining the alliance is aimed at helping the local software industry to go on cloud to provide SaaS as well as to encourage cloud adoption in Thailand across industries. 

Asine Asia (Thailand), set up last year, already has a footprint in Malaysia and Indonesia as public cloud service provider, selling Joyent Cloud software called SmartDataCenter for operators; StarAniseCloud for the public; StarAppliances for enterprises, and StarApps for end customers

“Anise Asia is a company headquartered in Kuala Lumpur. Our business focus is to sell cloud solutions in Southeast Asia. This year, we will start to market in Thailand,” said Suphol.

Its main business is providing IaaS and platform as a service (PaaS). The company is beginning to offer SaaS after joining the alliance, with the hope of assisting local software companies to offer software based on cloud platform. 

“Now, we have a couple of local software being trialled to offer SaaS. We plan to kick off SaaS service in Thailand in August. We expect to have at least five software firms join us. We have flexible business models such as offering only hosting service, being partners and sharing revenue, and joint venture with local software firms,” said Suphol.

The target market for Anise in Thailand is to offer IaaS and PaaS to the educational and government sectors, state enterprises, as well as small-and-medium businesses. By the end of this year, it aims to have five universities use its public cloud service. It also aims to have 20 local software companies join its infrastructure to offer SaaS. He added that the cloud market in Thailand this year is expected to see exponential growth of between 200 to 300 per cent from last year as the existing market is too small and the market is in the growth stage. 

“By the end of the year, we expect to have between Bt150 million and Bt200 million as revenue from the domestic market, while we also expect to have between 3-5 times this target as overseas revenue,” said Suphol.