Dean Samuels, chief technologist for ASEAN at AWS.

At a recent briefing with Vietnamese media on March 3, chief technologist for ASEAN at AWS, Dean Samuels, said that the local zone will bring opportunities for AWS to grow the cloud market in Vietnam across startups, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB), and the government.

“We see an opportunity for new and existing customers who now can use an AWS local zone in Vietnam for their infrastructure services. So, they can really focus on the value that is going to drive innovation and disruption and competitiveness in their own business.”

Samuels added that one of the opportunities for the company is that the government is now very open to cloud adoption, and working closely with the company in deploying and providing cloud services, whether it's through actual infrastructure, or through a partner.

Another advantage would come from the SMB segment. In Vietnam, SMBs account for over 90 per cent of all companies and they are transforming themselves with digital applications. AWS has been investing much in working with those companies.

Furthermore, AWS is working with the government on smart cities. In Southeast Asia, governments and organisations are interested in building smart cities with the help of cloud infrastructures and technologies that improve everyday life.

AWS local zones are a type of infrastructure deployment that places AWS computing, storage, databases, and other services at the edge of the cloud near a large population, industry, and IT centres – facilitating customers who want to deploy applications that require millisecond latency.

AWS local zones allow customers to use core services locally while seamlessly connecting to the rest of their workloads running in AWS regions with the same elasticity, pay-as-you-go model, APIs, and toolsets.

Customers in Vietnam do not need to spend a fortune on procuring, operating, and maintaining such infrastructure to support low-latency applications. AWS local zones also allow customers to run parts of their applications in on-premise data centres and seamlessly connect to AWS while ensuring ultra-low latency for these types of hybrid deployments – all while using familiar AWS APIs and tools.

The new AWS local zone in Hanoi will join 16 existing ones across the US and an additional 31 in 25 countries around the world.

AWS Infrastructure in ASEAN

It is expected that almost every organisation across every single industry and sector will benefit from the new AWS local zone in Hanoi as they are accelerating digital transformation.

For instance, in the banking and technology sectors, OCB is a top digital transformation bank in Vietnam and is focused on making breakthrough improvements in utilities and services. AWS is the top strategic cloud provider in OCB's digital transformation journey because of its scalability, high availability, and rapid innovation.

Anirban Roy, deputy general manager in charge of Technology and Digital Banking at OCB said, “The new AWS local zone will be a crucial component of OCB's infrastructure as it will help us accelerate cloud migration and deploy real-time event-driven systems while helping us to reduce our operational cost with the pay-as-you-go pricing. The low latency provided by AWS will also enable us to deliver new features and services to our customers faster.”

Similarly, Techcombank, one of Vietnam’s largest joint-stock banks and a leading Asian bank, has been moving all of its operations, including the core banking system, to the AWS cloud platform.

Tuan Nguyen, CIO at Techcombank said “The local zones service will empower Techcombank to accelerate its cloud migration and deployment efforts, while further optimising our computing resources and operation, increasing efficiencies across the bank’s network.”

Elsewhere in the telecom industry, CMC Telecom is a leading converged services provider in Vietnam and an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner.

Dang Tung Son, Deputy CEO and CMO of CMC Telecom said, “We foresee that local cloud adoption and the development of cloud skills will accelerate with AWS local zones in Vietnam. CMC Telecom is well-positioned to help businesses confidently move to AWS by combining our expertise with the security and compliance of AWS. This new infrastructure will also enable ultra-low latency capabilities for our customers who are using artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT, and content delivery services to provide innovative world-class experiences to end-users.”

Ngo Manh Ha, CTO of TechX, a technology startup focusing on cloud computing services added, “AWS Local Zones will help our financial sector customers ramp up their digital capabilities to provide improved customer offerings and grow their customer base in Vietnam.”

Since its inception in 2020, AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, TechX has helped to digitally transform finance institutions in Vietnam leveraging AWS.

The AWS local zone is a continuation of the company’s investment to support customers of all kinds and a commitment to accelerate innovation by bringing cloud infrastructure to Vietnam. As the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering, the US giant considers Vietnam and the Asia Pacific is an important market for future expansions.