AWS doubles down on ASEAN with cloud and AI investments

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is making significant inroads in the ASEAN region, driven by the growth in demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI), along with its investments in local infrastructure and skills development.

Speaking to regional media on the sidelines of AWS re:Invent 2024, Jeff Johnson, managing director of ASEAN at AWS, underscored the company’s commitment to the region, with investments totalling billions of dollars in cloud regions across Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The company recently launched its Malaysia cloud region, with its Bangkok region slated to be ready early next year. It has also announced a Local Zone in Hanoi, which will be connected to its parent region in Singapore.

These investments are aimed at unlocking the region’s vast potential driven by its young, diverse and digitally savvy population. “It’s a super interesting time,” said Johnson. “I’m pinching myself most days as I meet customers and hear their stories.”

These customers include Botnoi, a Thai startup that has developed a multilingual text-to-voice and voice-to-text platform that supports more than 20 regional languages with 95% accuracy. The platform has been adopted by more than 70 enterprises in Thailand, including Bangkok Hospital, and has interacted with over 10 million users.

Botnoi leverages AWS to accelerate time-to-market for new AI assistants, improve customer productivity and reduce operational costs. The company’s founder, Winn Voravuthikunchai, noted the importance of cloud technology in empowering organisations and the role of Amazon Bedrock, a platform for building generative AI (GenAI) applications, in enabling seamless switching between foundation models to meet evolving customer needs.

In Malaysia, Mesolitica, a startup specialising in training large language models, has built MaLLaM on AWS. MaLLaM understands local nuances like slang, colloquialisms that merge different dialects, Bahasa Melayu, and 16 other regional languages for use in AI assistants across industries. The model has achieved significant cost savings and performance improvements using AWS’s custom machine learning chips.

The Malaysian government is now exploring integrating MaLLaM into its operations, aligning with its goal of AI sovereignty. Mesolitica’s co-founder and CEO, Khalil Nooh, lauded AWS’s cost-effectiveness and the speed at which it enables proof-of-concept deployments.

Khalil also highlighted the alignment of MaLLaM with Malaysia’s focus on citizen-centric applications. Mesolitica is part of the AWS Asia-Pacific and Japan Generative AI Spotlight programme and has received AWS credits from the AWS Activate programme.

To close the growing digital skills gap in the region, AWS has also equipped more than 1.3 million individuals with cloud skills, through initiatives such as scholarships for back-end developers in Indonesia, cloud and financial services skills training in Malaysia, and partnerships with government agencies in the Philippines and Thailand to upskill workforces. In Vietnam, AWS has also translated hundreds of technical blogs into Vietnamese and launched a hands-on cloud skills training programme.

Johnson also discussed AWS’s strategy for supporting small and medium-sized enterprises, focusing on providing cost-effective cloud services and a robust partner ecosystem. He reiterated AWS’s commitment to lowering prices and making cloud and AI capabilities accessible to businesses of all sizes.

When it comes to large enterprises, Johnson said AWS is focused on helping customers to not just migrate, but also modernise their applications using serverless architectures and purpose-built databases. He acknowledged the trend of enterprises adopting hybrid cloud strategies, noting that AWS will continue to support customers’ diverse needs.

Sustainability is another core pillar of AWS’s strategy in ASEAN. Johnson underscored the company’s remit to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, noting that it has achieved its goal of powering its global operations with renewable energy, seven years ahead of schedule.

He also highlighted AWS’s custom-built silicon, Trainium and Inferentia, which offer up to 40% reductions in cost and power usage, adding that running applications on AWS is up to 4.1 times more energy-efficient than traditional on-premise environments. This commitment to sustainability resonates with a growing number of businesses and governments in ASEAN that are prioritising environmentally responsible practices, he added.