MHESI collaborates with Amazon Web Services to enhance Thai higher education and research with cloud technology
BANGKOK, February 1, 2023 – The Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research, and Innovation (MHESI) today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering, to develop the Ministry’s cloud technology infrastructure and personnel to lead the country’s digital transformation.
Prof. Dr. Sirirurg Songsivilai, Permanent Secretary, MHESI said “MHESI’s mission is to develop manpower, build knowledge, and innovate. To educate and develop future leaders, the Ministry established an infrastructure strategy to prepare Thais for the rapid changes in technology. This transformation aligns with the Thailand 4.0 digital initiative, which requires government and state-owned enterprises to establish a digital foundation to provide more efficient citizen services, drive local economic growth, and solve some of society’s biggest challenges.”
Through this collaboration, AWS will support MHESI by experimenting with proof of concepts and migrate pilot workloads to AWS cloud. MHESI will also use AWS training to upskill employees on AWS Cloud skills across over 200 education institutions and over 20 MHESI-managed research and education agencies across Thailand by early 2026.
“The transformation of MHESI is an important step in developing Thailand’s higher education industry’s information technology infrastructure in order to encourage researchers and students to use their talents and creativity to propel the country toward becoming a Smart Nation,” said Prof. Dr. Sirirurg Songsivilai, Permanent Secretary, MHESI. “As our preferred cloud provider, AWS will provide cloud technology as the driving force to advance education and research, initiate new ideas and innovations, and promote education equity through lifelong learning.”
Cloud technology will play an important role in helping MHESI and its related agencies to achieve cost savings and greater agility in government administration, as well as enable research and innovation breakthroughs by simplifying access to information technology infrastructure. It will also facilitate the transformation of Thai higher education institutions into Smart Universities through advanced technologies such as data analytics, high performance computing, artificial intelligence (AI,) and machine learning.
Thai higher education institutions are already leveraging cloud to digitally transform. King Mongkut’s Institute for Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL) needed to bridge the skills gap and build cloud skills for students and the adult workforce to supply talent to Thailand’s industries. KMITL worked with AWS to adopt AWS Educate and AWS Academy cloud content into the university’s curriculum, enabling students to pursue industry-recognized certifications and transition smoothly into in-demand jobs.
Another example is the Sukothai Thammathirat Open University (STOU,) which has gone all-in on AWS to realize its vision of becoming a digital university to drive learning worldwide. STOU’s on-premises IT infrastructure lacked the capability to manage more than 7,000 concurrent users at once, limiting the university’s ability to effectively and efficiently scale and hold multiple online courses and examinations. By moving to AWS cloud, STOU was able to support 100 percent online learning and e-exams during the pandemic. Not only that, moving to AWS cloud laid the right foundation for STOU to continually innovate and introduce new learning software and applications to 200,000 learners in 64 countries, over two years, globally.
“We are honored to support MHESI in its digital transformation journey, to deploy innovative new services in a cost-effective and secure way, and upskill their employees to advance education and research innovation in Thailand,” said Julian Lau, Head of ASEAN, Worldwide Public Sector, AWS. “MHESI’s bold vision to harness the power of the cloud and incorporate its use in every classroom, office, and agency, will help drive innovation and grow Thailand’s digital economy.”
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About Amazon Web Services
Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any cloud workload, and it now has more than 200 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 99 Availability Zones within 31 geographic regions, with announced plans for 12 more Availability Zones and four more AWS Regions in Canada, Israel, New Zealand, and Thailand. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.
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