Thai Red Hat office to tap into digital drive

Red Hat Inc, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, has cemented its presence in Thailand by opening a local office in a drive to capitalise on opportunities in the digital transformation era.

Digital transformation, the use of technology to radically improve organisations, is pressing both public and private organisations to invest in enterprise technology to enhance their competitiveness and efficiency.

“Open source solutions are foundational in supporting a company’s drive toward digital transformation and adapting to digital disruption,” Jim Whitehurst, president and chief executive of Red Hat Inc.

Damien Wong, vice-president of Red Hat Asean, said the region is important for its business growth, thanks to its solid economy and rapid pace of technological development.

Thailand is the fourth country in Asean to have a local office, after Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

IDC Thailand, the local operating unit of global IT research firm IDC, forecasts that 50% of 100 leading organisations surveyed in Thailand will thrive on digital transformation. Gartner Inc, another global IT research firm, predicts private sector spending on IT in Southeast Asia will reach US$62 billion by 2018.

Mr Wong said Red Hat has expanded its portfolio to emerging products, including cloud management software, infrastructure management, virtualisation, storage and middleware, to widen market opportunity to $67 billion in 2018, up from $8 billion in 2005.

Mr Whitehurst said several governments such as India’s have embraced an open source-first policy to boost innovation for state mega-projects and cut costs.

Richard Koh, Red Hat’s country manager for Singapore and Thailand, said the company is boosting awareness of open source benefits among enterprise customers in the region, particularly in the telecom, financial and government sectors.

The company also plans to invest more in its development centre and open source laboratory facility.

“We expect our global revenue to reach $5 billion in five years, up from $2 billion as of February,” said Mr Whitehurst.