Thailand could become the cloud-based data centre hub for Indochina by way of its geographic advantages and the imminent Asean Economic Community (AEC), says a US-based maker of backup and recovery software.
"Thailand should be gearing up to promote itself as the regional data centre hub in order to capitalise on the regional explosion of the cloud computing market," said Samuth Thanadsarng, country manager of CommVault Thailand and Vietnam.
Cloud computing is one of the 10 strategic technology trends for 2015, according to global IT research firms.
Cloud computing adoption in Asean countries is surging strongly, sending signals that Thailand should prepare itself to play a major role in serving growth in inter-data traffic.
Mr Samuth said local data centre service providers could provide cost-effective international internet bandwidth rates — lower than those of Singapore and Malaysia — as the path from Indochina's sites to Thailand's internet destinations is shorter.
He urged the government to increase the capacity of internet bandwidth for both international and domestic use as well as reduce international internet connection fees.
"Cloud data centres will be one of the most important components in transforming the country towards a digital economy, as cloud computing has played a major role in almost all industries and services," Mr Samuth said.
With the growing use of public cloud resources within enterprises, digital data has become a key aspect of corporate assets. Data management has therefore become important for organisations of all sizes.
Some statistics say companies use only 25% of stored information, while 25% is duplicate data and 10% is irrelevant to the business.
The remaining 40% is dark data, which refers to operational information that goes unused by other applications or is stored for regulatory compliance purposes only.
Mr Samuth said organisations should set up information management policies to serve their business strategies.
Such policies determine how to control and track things, such as how long content is retained or what actions users can take with said content.
They also help companies comply with regulations.
CommVault expects double-digit growth next year, aided by a sharp increase in the amount of digital information and cloud computing services.
Thailand's market for backup and recovery software is worth an estimated US$20 million a year.
Manufacturing, finance, insurance and the public sector are top customers, and the healthcare market shows potential as well.