Major technical advances, economic growth

Industry braces to guide Thailand towards ever-higher-tech

With a year of widespread recovery in the information-technology market almost behind them, the leaders of Thailand's IT industry are forecasting a year of solid growth ahead in 2011.

However, even soaring growth may fall short of matching the likely advances in technology. With cloud computing, virtualisation, mobility and convergence high on the list, the pressure on government agencies, businesses and ordinary consumers to understand it all, much less implement it, will be heavier than ever.

There appear to be two aspects to 2011: The struggle to come to terms with technologies that will see Thailand wired for efficiency and global competition, and the palpable excitement of an industry eager to press on with the future.

Microsoft (Thailand)'s managing director Patama Chantaruck said that after a period of widespread cutbacks in IT spending, 2010 saw users once again seek out new technologies, with many businesses embracing new social-media tools.

The intensifying convergence of technologies and moves towards mobile connectivity are now driving demand for greater choice and innovation, and the recent launch of Windows Phone 7 and its ground-breaking interface have made Microsoft a serious contender in this field.

Patama said Microsoft was aware that people were still rebuilding their confidence following the recent economic challenges, but the firm was confident that in 2011 its latest innovations, solutions and services could make a positive impact on long-term performance for local customers, partners and the country's software industry. These innovations are making the concept of technology access "anywhere, any time and on any device" a reality, she said.

Despite unfavourable economic and political circumstances, Patama said 2010 had pointed towards a promising success story for Microsoft Thailand, with local adoption of Microsoft technology achieving total growth of 13 per cent, compared with the software-market growth rate of 5 per cent.

"Thailand is becoming one of the fastest-growing markets for adoption of Windows 7, which is providing a new engine to power the modern generation of PCs. As this adoption continues to grow, our goal now is to maintain momentum for Windows 7, Office 2010 and IE9, and we are optimistic as we drive new products such as Windows Phone 7 and the Slate tablet device.

"We are excited to be making a move towards 'the cloud', which we expect to pick up pace next year," she said.

In terms of IT-market growth in 2010, Microsoft sees 22-per-cent growth in the global PC market, while Thailand's software market grew by only 5 per cent. As new technologies and the fruits of greater collaboration come into play, the company is confident that Thailand's IT market and PC-shipment growth will continue to grow next year.

To support this, Microsoft Thailand is committed to developing the next generation of IT professionals, through activities such as its software-design contest for students called the Imagine Cup. This year saw Thailand become the first country in the world to win the Imagine Cup twice.

Recently, Microsoft picked up a CSR Award from the American Chamber of Commerce in Thailand for its contribution to developing and promoting Thailand's potential on the global IT stage.

Cisco Thailand's managing director Tatchapol Poshyanonoda said his company foresaw a positive overall business climate in Thailand in 2011, with 4-per-cent GDP growth, mostly dependant on exports, and ICT-market growth of about 10 per cent.

"I see the current political and economic situation as favoring ICT-market growth, especially in the government, banking and manufacturing sectors. But we foresee a hiccup if there's an election near the beginning of the year.

"However, if the roll out of National BB is quick - such as TOT's nationwide IP-NGN [Internet Protocol - Next Generation Network] and CAT's FTTx [Fibre-to-the-X], along with broadband expansion of private operators - there will be a positive pull-through effect in ICT-market growth. It is estimated that the market could double its growth, to 20 per cent," Tatchapol said.

Cisco is aiming to be one of the major players in the data centre and cloud market next year. It is gaining market share in every segment due to its strategy of focusing on customers' recognition of Cisco's differentiated values over competitors, he said.

Referring to technology trends, Tatchapol said Cisco believed that cloud computing, mobility and collaboration of social-media solutions, as well as "broadband everywhere", would affect the ICT industry in 2011.

VMware Thailand's country manager Smuth Thanadsarng said 2010 was the year in which businesses across Asia adopted virtualisation. This was not only to reduce data centre costs by up to 80 per cent, but also because they recognised virtualisation as the foundation of cloud-enabled architectures.

He said that in Thailand, virtualisation complemented disaster-recovery solutions, and these were a vital priority for many businesses that wanted their data protected and always available on demand.

Smuth said that in 2011, his company expected a majority of medium- and large-sized companies to begin using a combination of private and public clouds, or what is called a "hybrid cloud".

Customers will expect seamless integration of infrastructure, management and security tools with a unified view across these environments. As companies adopt these hybrid-cloud architectures, they will demand the freedom to choose public-cloud providers and change between them if they wish. This demand for freedom of choice will lead to the development of IT applications that can be "dragged and dropped" between clouds, while ensuring that those applications can be delivered securely to any device, anywhere, and on demand.

"As organisations step out of the global economic recession, we also expect enterprise-IT spending to increase next year as a result of pent-up demand to upgrade and leapfrog older technologies. Enterprises, including small- and medium-sized businesses, are expected to invest in Web or mobile-based technologies as end-user computing takes prominence because of the increasingly commonplace trend to iPads and Android-based devices," Smuth said.

Video surveillance firm Axis Communications is also expecting new technology to bring major changes to its industry.

The company's sales manager for Southeast Asia and the Pacific Nafis Jasmani said that most organisations were now equipped with network infrastructure in their working environment. This platform opens up the opportunity for implementation of network video solutions.

Moreover, continuous IT development in achieving better network performance and management means that migration from analog to digital systems becomes inevitable.

"This company was the first to introduce network cameras on the market 14 years ago. Since then, Axis has built up customer confidence by delivering innovative high quality products; by building partner loyalty and by being a strong brand on the security market," he said.

In 2011, technology trends in the video surveillance market will include video surveillance-as-a-service (VSaaS) and HDTV cameras, and open standards will accelerate the transition from analog to Internet protocol.

The country manager of Hitachi Data Systems Thailand, Watcharasit Santisuknirun, said that market-research firm IDC had forecast growth of 6 per cent in the information-technology market in 2010, for a total value of US$1.51 trillion (Bt45.59 trillion). Data storage and security are key growth areas for IT, he said.

"Technology is becoming crucial, and nowhere is this more important than in Asia. According to IDC, the surge in IT spending [in 2010] was lead by double-digit growth in emerging markets such as China (21 per cent), India (13 per cent), Brazil (14 per cent) and Russia (17 per cent)," Watcharasit said.

He said that according to Business Monitor International (BMI), the IT market in Thailand was the largest in Southeast Asia, and despite ongoing political uncertainty it was projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 12 per cent from now until 2014. Total domestic spending on IT products and services in Thailand should exceed $5.5 billion in 2010 and reach $8.8 billion by 2014.

BMI also points out that a national PC-penetration rate of around 15 per cent indicates plenty of untapped market potential in Thailand.

Watcharasit said IDC had also forecast that the compound terabyte growth rate of Thailand's external-storage market would grow by 33.5 per cent between 2010 and 2014. However, in terms of revenue, the growth will be only 2.5 per cent due to a highly competitive market that drives down product prices with higher capacity.

The total value of the external-storage market should be $44 million in 2010 and $46 million in 2011

As for technology trends in 2011, Hitachi believes organisations will attach increasing importance to managing a wide range of data types and making use of this data to serve their applications. Of particular importance in this regard is the continuing growth of unstructured data and content such as photos, videos, medical images and satellite images.

New technologies such as storage virtualisation and dynamic provisioning will gain increasing acceptance as they become the foundation for cloud computing and for dynamic, high-availability data centres.

As cloud computing is accepted as a valid infrastructure model, convergence in the data centre will begin to take off, with convergence of server, storage and network infrastructure making it simpler and faster to deploy applications. The use of servers, hypervisors, storage and network virtualisation will become vital to provide an open platform on which investment protection and customer choice can be assured.

Microsoft's Patama said that with a long-term approach to innovation, Microsoft had committed US$9.5 billion to research and development in 2011, including a focus on the company's "three screens" vision of PC, browser and mobile-technology access.

IT-enabled changes will be a key element in companies' post-recession strategies, with cloud computing, in particular, positioned as a "top three" IT focus, because of its potential to reduce the cost of computing resources, Patama said.

"With the launch of Windows Phone 7 and a mix of both in-house and cloud solutions - including the free Windows Live Essentials 2011 download, which brings the benefits of the cloud directly to consumers - we are ready to drive the latest technology trends of mobility, natural user interfaces, social computing, green IT and cloud computing," she said.

Patama said market research firm Gartner had recently noticed a shift from technology use to "value consumption" - meaning that consumers are wanting to pay for what they use, as opposed to buying individual pieces of technology.

Therefore, there is now a definite move towards cloud computing, for example with the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce becoming the first university in the country to adopt Microsoft's cloud-based solutions in order to transform education standards in line with the digital lifestyle of 21st-century students, Patama said.