State telecom enterprise CAT Telecom has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to launch AWS Outposts for hybrid cloud services, the first such destination in Asean.
CAT Telecom president Col Sanphachai Huvanandana said AWS Outposts, located at CAT's data centre, would boost the capacity as well as cloud services under the CAT Cloud brand powered by AWS.
The move also enhances CAT's data handling capacity in the Government Data Centre and Cloud Services (GDCC) project it operates for state agencies, he said.
Data centre business generated 450 million baht for CAT Telecom last year and this revenue should grow to 1 billion baht by the end of this year, said Col Sanphachai.
AWS Outposts is a fully managed service that offers the same AWS infrastructure, AWS services, applications program interface, and tools to virtually any data centre, co-location space, or on-premises facility. This enables enterprises to process their workloads with low latency as well as keep and use data in Thailand, he said.
Col Sanphachai said many organisations today are modernising their workloads by migrating to the cloud so that they can take advantage of the agility, expenditure, and scalability advantages this offers.
"We are delighted to work with AWS to bring in cloud technology, which should support customers in Thailand to create innovation that would be a boon for economic, social and public sectors as a whole," he said.
AWS Outposts allows customers to run AWS compute, storage, database and other services on-premises, while seamlessly connecting to AWS's broad array of services in the cloud.
Through the partnership, Col Sanphachai said CAT can provide customers with a variety of data centre and cloud services, including AWS consulting service by both CAT and AWS teams.
AWS billing services include invoices, receipts and tax invoices that can be issued by CAT upon request. This enables customers to make payments for global AWS services through any AWS regions using baht.
Other services include AWS implementation, AWS private training and high-speed and secure data connection through CAT infrastructure between customers and AWS in the regions.
AWS Managed Services (AMS) would also be provided for enterprises to manage their basic IT system with monthly-subscription fees applied. Any unusual events or necessary patch updates will be notified to enterprise customers.
CAT Telecom is now working on the GDCC project, which forms part of the government's plan to provide a centralised data-sharing government platform by 2023. It is the central cloud system to be used by government agencies, ensuring security and serving as a big data facility for state agencies. It facilitates data exchange between the government and public sectors through a central cloud equipped with artificial intelligence and big data analytics.