AIS targets sovereign cloud leadership with Oracle deal

• Sovereign cloud is all the rage
• Now, AIS wants to be a leader in providing locally owned and managed hyperscale cloud services in Thailand
• It has tapped Oracle for a new cloud offering

AIS (Advanced Info Service) plans to use Oracle cloud technology for the launch of a locally owned hyperscale cloud solution that, the telco hopes, will help to position it as the leading sovereign cloud player in the South-east Asian country.

The Thai operator announced it will deploy Oracle Alloy, a complete cloud infrastructure platform, to launch AIS Cloud, a service that the telco claims will be “the country’s first locally owned and operated hyperscale cloud”. 

The new solution will provide “AIS customers and all enterprises in Thailand, including the public sector”, with access to more than 100 Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) services, as well as its latest AI capabilities.

The company noted that AIS Cloud will be deployed in two of its datacentres located in its home market, so that customer information is kept locally to ensure data sovereignty. The offering will be operated by AIS, which will deliver a range of services, including local support, providing customers with “a local cloud solution” that meets data residency and sovereignty requirements, such as Thailand’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) and the Cybersecurity Act.

“AIS Cloud will be the only hyperscale cloud in Thailand, providing business resilience with in-country disaster recovery capabilities,” the telco added.

According to AIS, this will allow customers to “repatriate their existing cloud environments from overseas back to Thailand or move and modernise from on-premises to AIS Cloud deployed in AIS datacentres in Thailand”.

Somchai Lertsutiwong, CEO of AIS, highlighted the “pivotal role” of cloud technology in supporting the IT infrastructure modernisation for Thai businesses, and pointed out that “Oracle Alloy has made it possible for AIS to become a locally owned and operated hyperscale cloud provider in the country”.

He added that the operator’s collaboration with Oracle will “not only accelerate AIS’ transformation from a ‘telco to a techco’ but also unlock the immense potential for digital transformation and AI innovation for all organisations”.

The new cloud solution by AIS will be “key” to transforming core operations of businesses, he explained, and will help them capitalise on market opportunities and create differentiation to take on their competitors. This “will significantly contribute to increasing the competitive advantage of Thai organisations, attracting investments, and supporting Thailand’s economic engine for sustainable growth,” Lertsutiwong added.

AIS, which provides mobile services to more than 45 million subscribers in Thailand, is looking to move towards a techco future, and claims that by choosing Oracle Alloy, it will be able to capitalise on the business opportunities, scale and performance brought about by the cloud, while “innovating at the speed of hyperscale cloud providers”.

Oracle’s EVP and general manager for Japan and Asia Pacific, Garrett Ilg, described the partnership as “an industry gamechanger for the country” because it “empowers AIS to become a hyperscale cloud provider, enabling them to build new services faster while delivering sovereign cloud and AI capabilities for its Thai customers”.

AIS’s efforts to develop sovereign cloud services for its domestic market is in line with an ongoing trend amongst telcos around the world, many of which have been partnering with cloud infrastructure giants to ensure that customer information is kept locally for security and compliance reasons. 

For example, in June, Telenor chose its existing hyperscaler partner Amazon Web Services (AWS) for the development and the implementation of its sovereign cloud strategy, and unveiled plans to invest an initial NOK100m ($9.2m) in “sovereign-by-design” cloud technology for Norwegian enterprise customers.

Later that month, Belgium-based telco Proximus took the wraps off a sovereign cloud solution that integrates technology from Microsoft, Thales and Intel to provide businesses with more control over their most critical data.

- Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, Deputy Editor, TelecomTV