Partnership enables Thailand's critical industries to leverage Google Cloud AI in a secure,
disconnected environment, in full compliance with data localization and protection requirements
Gulf Edge Company Limited (“Gulf Edge”), a fully-owned subsidiary of Gulf Energy Development Public
Company Limited (“Gulf”), and
Google Cloud today
announced a multi-year agreement to deliver
next-generation sovereign cloud services in Thailand that meet the country’s most stringent data
residency, security, and privacy requirements. This strategic partnership aims to empower organizations
in Thailand’s critical industries, particularly those involving sensitive data, such as healthcare,
public safety, energy, and utilities, to accelerate their digital transformations with best-in-class AI
and analytics capabilities, while offering
data, operational, and software sovereignty.
Through this agreement, Gulf Edge will be authorized by Google Cloud to operate
Google Distributed Cloud
(GDC) as a Managed GDC Provider (MGP), with a focus on air-gapped configurations for organizations in
Thailand. GDC is a
Google Sovereign
Cloud solution that operates entirely within a customer's chosen
environment, requiring no connectivity to a Google Cloud region or the public internet. MGPs are
strategic partners that collaborate with Google Cloud to drive the adoption of GDC air-gapped, by
providing expert deployment, operational, and managed services to end customers.
Gulf Edge will offer deployment options for GDC air-gapped on-premises or within a Gulf group data
center, with flexible hardware options—including general-purpose central processing units (CPUs) and
graphics processing units (GPUs)—to address organizations’ specific workload requirements. This ensures
that data, operations, and software remain entirely under the customer's control and within Thailand’s
borders, adhering to all legal and sovereignty frameworks, including the
Personal Data
Protection Act.
With the ability to leverage Google Cloud's AI and analytics capabilities in GDC, organizations across a
broad range of industries in Thailand can unlock new possibilities for transformative innovation, such
as:
- Advancing personalized treatments for chronic health conditions
- Enhancing economic modeling and developing adaptive, citizen-centric public services
- Speedier emergency and disaster response
- Maximizing energy production in offshore solar, wind, hydro, or biomass power plants
Sarath Ratanavadi, CEO, Gulf Energy Development Public Company Limited, said: “Our partnership
with
Google Cloud on Thailand's first sovereign cloud solution with built-in AI and analytics reinforces
Gulf's commitment to technological leadership and sustainable development. We chose GDC based on its
unique ability to isolate operations from the public internet while providing powerful AI capabilities.
This will allow our mission-critical energy and utility systems to handle data-intensive tasks with
enhanced security and resilience. The successful delivery of GDC in Thailand is a strategic imperative,
as its adoption across regulated industries will not only boost our country's digital competitiveness
but also create new revenue opportunities for our company. Looking ahead, we’re eager to expand our
partnership with Google Cloud, especially in areas where there are synergies between their technologies
and our core competencies, to advance the growth of our business in Thailand and abroad.”
Today’s announcement paves the way for Gulf Edge and Google Cloud to explore opportunities for deeper
collaboration across cloud computing, AI, and cybersecurity to advance digital transformation and
startup acceleration in Thailand, and further establish the country as a regional leader in digital
innovation. This strategic alliance will combine Google Cloud’s strengths in providing cutting-edge and
enterprise-grade AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools with Gulf’s
leadership in power generation and digital infrastructure for Thailand, particularly in green energy,
data centers, and telecommunications through its affiliates.
GDC is reinforced by multiple layers of security to deliver maximum control, remain compliant with Thai
regulations, and safeguard confidential data, including hardware security, host and node security,
application security, network security, cryptography, Identity and Access Management (IAM), security
operations, reliability operations, and compliance monitoring and testing.
Through GDC, organizations can access core features (e.g., Workbench, Pipelines, Predictions) of
Vertex
AI Google Cloud’s end-to-end AI development platform—enabling them to quickly develop and deploy
advanced machine learning (ML) and generative AI search applications in their chosen sovereign location.
Pre-trained ML models for
Speech-to-Text,
translation, and
optical
character recognition (OCR)—with
support for more than 100 languages including Thai, as well as
Gemma, Google’s state-of-the-art open AI
models, are likewise accessible out-of-the-box.
Organizations can also access the broader range of Google Cloud hardware and software resources that are
crucial for AI-driven innovation in an air-gapped environment. These include
Google Kubernetes
Engine
(GKE), NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs, the portable
AlloyDB Omni database engine, and Dataproc for running
open-source data analytics.
Karan Bajwa, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Google Cloud, said: "As part of our
commitment to the
Royal
Thai Government to provide resilient and innovation-driven digital infrastructure for the country, we’re
very pleased to bring on board Gulf Edge as our first MGP in Thailand to deliver GDC air-gapped for
local organizations. This next-generation, AI-enabled sovereign cloud solution will enable the public
sector and other regulated industries to accelerate digital transformation on their own terms, even when
faced with stringent digital sovereignty requirements. GDC empowers organizations to unlock new ways to
analyze data, uncover insights, boost productivity, and build modern applications while ensuring they
have complete control and protection of their sensitive data."
About Gulf Edge Company Limited
Gulf Edge Company Limited (“Gulf Edge”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gulf Energy Development Public
Company Limited (“Gulf”), serves as the digital arm of Gulf, focusing on digital infrastructure
investments and offering top-tier digital services and solutions to a broad range of customers. Gulf and
Gulf Edge’s current portfolio spans telecommunications and a range of advanced technology sectors,
including Advanced Info Service (AIS)—Thailand’s leading mobile and fixed broadband operator, GSA—a
world-class, AI-ready data center operator with initial capacity of up to 50 megawatts, Thaicom—a
leading Asian satellite operator with advanced space tech solutions, and Binance Thailand—a
cryptocurrency and digital asset exchange in Thailand.
About Google Cloud
Google Cloud is the new way to the cloud, providing AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and
collaboration tools built for today and tomorrow. Google Cloud offers a powerful, fully integrated, and
optimized AI stack with its own planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models,
and development platform, as well as AI-powered applications, to help organizations transform. Customers
in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner
