Amidst many paradigm shifts heavily influenced by the Covid-19 global pandemic, several of Thailand’s prominent public sector heads came together for a seminar held by multinational data processing software provider SAP, that tackled cloud adoption in the new normal as the digital way forward.
Entitled “Cloud Transformation for Public Sector in a New Normal”, leaders deliberated on how the pandemic fast-tracked years of prior assessment on public sector cloud adoption and spoke of how the private sector utilized cloud-based solutions to meet the needs of their customers, thus leading to the consensus of cloud adoption benefits outweighing the challenges involved in implementation.
Digital Transformation Advisor for Thailand’s Electronic Transaction Development Agency and Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Thailand Chapter President Dr. Sak Segkhoonthod stated that the country has been an integral contributor in promoting a cloud first policy among ASEAN nations for the past decade, facing digital transformation challenges attributed to the public sector’s difficulty in moving to cloud-based services.
However, certain strides in cloud adoption such as the CSA’s mandatory Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK) for cloud services engineers have been keeping the wheels turning up to the turning point brought upon by the necessity of digital interactions and work from home setups during the pandemic.
Thus, as the move to act on cloud adoption leaps forward with the highlighted benefits it would provide to the public sector, Thailand’s cloud expenditure is expected to increase by 28.2% this year, according to global research group Gartner.
“Cloud offers several benefits to public organizations – It helps organizations manage the budget more efficiently as they can opt for pay-per-use packages. Moreover, the cloud’s ability to scale quickly when the demand for digital services by citizens skyrocket will help organizations provide a better service to citizens,” Dr. Segkhoonthod explained.
Meanwhile, National Cyber Security Agency (NCSA) Deputy Secretary General Grp. Cpt. Amorn Chomchoey listed down key considerations for proceeding with full cloud adoption including citizen data sovereignty, security and privacy, migration strategy, organization readiness, cloud movement tools, governance and security, logistics, and deployment.
Grp. Cpt. Chomchoey stated that by partnering with cloud technology providers that offer privacy management and control options as well as comply with international and CSA privacy standards, security and privacy concerns would be handled.
Additionally, he advised the public sector to not rely solely on their chosen cloud service providers but instead form their own task force for close coordination in order to ensure proper security and for the organization to have a holistic understanding of the cloud system.
With the enhancements and benefits that come hand in hand with cloud adoption, public sector groups in Thailand have seen how this innovative technological approach to service providing has strengthened technology and e-commerce enterprises, and is proceeding with bringing these same advancements to fit the needs of their constituents.
Though challenging, the shift to cloud-based systems need not be as daunting with the service Rise with SAP, a subscription platform which offers all the support that organizations would need in cloud adoption, enabling subscribers to attain their transformation goals through up to 20% reduction in ownership cost of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, over five years.
SAP Indochina Managing Director Atul Tuli said that with the proper digital tools catered to client needs that Rise with SAP provides, public sector groups would be able to efficiently handle costs, resources, and constituent demands.
“All SAP solutions, including Rise with SAP, are meeting the requirements of the ISO 27001 standard. We have a specialist team who provides knowledge to our customers on the data privacy topic. We also offer options for data residency as many public organizations increasingly need cloud services that ensure their data is managed and stored in the country,” Tuli shared.
Streamlining public services via cloud digitization would drastically increase efficiency, leading to an uptick in staff capacity as well as enhance quality of services through cloud data-driven insights and improvements.
As public sector organizations take the necessary steps to realize cloud migration and adoption in their services for citizens, many more digital innovations will soon take root and flourish in Thailand.
