Amid the volatile global challenges, digital transformation is now more essential than ever for enterprises to survive, stay agile and pursue growth while responding to customer needs.
Cloud computing has become one of the potential digital enablers that will drive organisations towards digital transformation. Tencent Cloud, one of the world's fastest-growing cloud companies, is committed to becoming a cloud partner for businesses with innovative products and solutions along with a skilled professional workforce.
The Bangkok Post talked with Krittee Manoleehagul, vice-president of Tencent Cloud International for Southeast Asia and managing director of Tencent Thailand, about his ambition to power enterprises across Southeast Asia with cloud technology and the company's aspiration to assist organisations in unlocking their digital power.
How do you see the progression of today's digital transformation among businesses in Southeast Asia and Thailand?
Businesses are increasing their investment in technology towards digital transformation. Technology adoption is being fast-tracked to achieve business agility, evident from the rise of the 'digital-first' approach that sees companies setting up a new division dedicated to digital operations to ensure business resilience even in the most unexpected situations.
"Enterprises must implement technologies to answer unmet needs based on charges in behaviours and the needs of consumers." — Krittee Manoleehagul, Vice-president, Tencent Cloud International for Southeast Asia
Today, almost every organisation in Southeast Asia is hastening its digital transformation, striving to become more data-driven, higher-performing and better connected.
Many countries are even leading globally in certain areas of digitalisation. For instance, the Philippines and Malaysia have now become the top two countries in e-commerce retail growth, up by 25% and 23% per year, respectively, according to eMarketer.
Could you share positive drivers for cloud adoption in Thailand 2022 and challenges?
Thais are willing to try new technologies, digital services, as well as online platforms for their convenience. Today, business enterprises must implement technologies to answer unmet needs based on changes in behaviours and the needs of consumers.
The "e-Conomy SEA 2021" report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company revealed that Thailand's digital consumption penetration was the second-highest in the region, with 90% of internet users consuming digital services.
These users are here to stay, given that 96% of pandemic consumers are still using the services and 98% intend to continue going forward. Pre-pandemic users have consumed an average of 3.9 more services since the pandemic began.
Thailand has also seen growing digital economy with a number of established incubators and accelerators while Thailand 4.0 policy is being driven to promote new S-curve industries, such as digital, robotics and automation, aviation and logistics, biofuels and biochemical, and medical hub.
For challenges, a PwC report pointed out that the implementation by many has barely scratched the surface of cloud's vast potential.
What are Tencent Cloud's strengths amid competition in the cloud service segment?
Tencent Cloud is committed to being a digital enabler through our experience, expertise and innovative solutions to contribute healthy business growth for customers.
Tencent Cloud has a strong global data infrastructure network with 70 availability zones in 26 regions. In Southeast Asia, it has four data centres in Singapore, two in Indonesia and two in Thailand to address ever-growing customer demands. Currently, Tencent Cloud deploys more than 300 cloud solutions and products.
We also have highly skilled local professional teams to serve clients and partners. Tencent Cloud has a dedicated team in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.
Our key industry focuses for Tencent Cloud in Southeast Asia and Thailand are entertainment, banking and finance institutions, retail, e-commerce, games and education.
A number of businesses now capitalise on Tencent Cloud's services to boost their digital capacity. For example, eBook platform Ookbee leverages Tencent Cloud's innovative audio and video solutions to boost their engagement with more than 10 million customers in the region with interactive communication.
There is a surge in demand for cloud technologies around the world, particularly with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). How do you assist this segment in technology adoption amid the sluggish economy?
We are committed to empowering businesses of all sizes and in all fields to embrace digital transformation including SMEs. To help them embark on their cloudification journey efficiently and achieve business success, we recently launched Tencent Cloud Lighthouse, a simplified and easy-to-use cloud server product that can assist businesses as they embark on their cloudification journey.
Lighthouse is appliable in different scenarios, including support for web building, application cloudification, cloud migration, application, content acceleration as well as audio and video solutions.
We also recently launched SME Booster Program to offer various cost-effective products and trials for SMEs to help accelerate their digital transformation.
Do global economic woes affect enterprises' investment in digital transformation, including cloud spending?
The ongoing global recession has not significantly affected investments in tech as digital transformation has remained one of the core strategies prioritised by major corporations as it can enhance their capabilities and flexibility for changes in the future.
IDC's "Worldwide Digital Transformation Spending Guide" report highlighted that global spending on the digital transformation of business practices, products and organisations is forecast to reach US$1.8 trillion in 2022, an increase of 17.6% over 2021.
Businesses have to define the next best move to meet return on investment and better put the technology right to the core in order to map it directly with return or revenue.
We have a variety of solutions as a service which cover every business size and every budget.
Investments in internal operations are largely focused on improving efficiency and resilience while customer experience transformation has become a priority for many companies pursuing digital transformation.
Which innovative cloud solutions and usage models do you think are interesting and applicable for Thailand this year?
Amid the pandemic that has continued for over two years, many enterprises are seeking transformation for greater business agility and resilience even in the most unexpected scenarios.
Hybrid cloud is one of the most preferred technologies in enterprise digital transformation, being a strategic choice that enables the integration of cloud and AI solutions to support growing digital activities and ensuing increase in data transmission, storage, processing and transfer as companies build up their capability to respond to fast-changing situations quickly and effectively.
Solution as a service could be another choice as businesses are seeking flexibility and a quick response at that point.
It is also important that the public cloud services chosen have a reliable security standard and comply with local regulations. Tencent Cloud has two data centres in Thailand, which can potentially respond to digital transformation needs in the country.
I believe there has never been a better time for Tencent to help local economies to transform and continue to bring our mission of 'Value for users, Technology for Good' to help transform the Asean economies including Thailand's.
Are there any emerging technologies in cloud computing?
There are a number of fascinating technologies now, including Artificial Intelligence of Things, MicroService, Microservice+DevOps, blockchain as a service, automation, big data, anti-fraud solutions for games or even the financial service industry as well as streaming services that can support large scale and elastic demand with all AI capabilities to help process information automatically.
Amid the rising concerns on game security and growing demands for game experience, Tencent Cloud provides a mobile game security solution, called Anti-Cheat Expert, which helps mobile game providers quickly cope with game security issues such as cheating and tampering.
Currently, it provides the service to over 700 million players of hundreds of games.
What is your regional management style amid challenges?
I set lofty goals and have the foresights that are beyond the given company KPIs. My personal goal is to help local industries and economies to transform digitally.
I believe in achieving a healthy balance between the mind and the body to tackle whatever life and work may bring.