Thailand Data Centre Council appoints first Chairman

The Thailand Data Centre Council (TDCC) has announced the appointment of its inaugural Chairman, Mr Thosaphol Pengsom. This move signifies a strategic effort to establish Thailand as a leading data centre hub in Southeast Asia over the next three years.

Currently, the Asia-Pacific (APAC) data centre colocation market holds a massive 10,233 MW of IT capacity, accounting for approximately 40% of the worldwide market. However, this vast amount is anticipated to grow to 19,069 MW by 2028, according to Structure Research. Malaysia and Indonesia, two ASEAN countries, have experienced substantial growth in this sector.

Despite having the second-largest GDP in the region, Thailand faces challenges due to policy and regulatory issues, which may hinder its partaking in the growing AI Economy. AI has the potential to propel economic growth by influencing both demand and supply, as evidenced by industry giants like Nvidia, which has a significant market worth of $1.83 trillion USD.

The Thailand Data Centre Council aims to collaborate with the government, cloud service providers, and content platforms for policy reforms that will encourage increased confidence among international investors. The council will initiate changes to drive an environment that favours expansion.

Newly appointed Chairman Mr Thosaphol Pengsom, the Former Vice Minister for the Office of the Prime Ministers (Ministry of Digital Economy and Society), Former Vice President of the Ministry of Energy, and Former Chairman of the National Big Data Institute said: "While major cloud service providers like Alibaba Cloud, Huawei Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform have entered Thailand, fostering and supporting an environment that accelerates the expansion of their data center capacity is imperative."

Thailand Data Centre Council's strategic areas of focus comprise Policy Refinement, Sustainability & Renewable Energy, Workforce Development, and Mediation and Advocacy. By spearheading policy refinement, TDCC aims to instil confidence in the data centre industry, amending obstructive provisions and establishing clear, collaborative guidelines. This initiative aims to provide robust support for cloud providers and data centre operators, capturing the AI growth opportunity.

The council also plans to collaborate with the energy sector to develop renewable energy solutions for the ever-growing data centre industry. The final strategies involve incubating and training personnel at all levels by expanding education of data centres and acting as mediator to address issues and challenges to bolster investor confidence.

As the Bank of Thailand projects an economic growth of 3.8% by 2024, the government is making active efforts to attract investments, with a significant focus on the data centre sector. Keeping in line with this, TDCC, established in January 2024 through a Memorandum of Understanding between five founding members, aims to elevate the data centre industry, positioning it as a critical component of Thailand's digital infrastructure.