Expansion of business operations in South East Asia to support rapid customer adoption of AWS

Manila, Philippines — Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently announced that Amazon Web Services Philippines (AWS Philippines) has opened an office in Manila to further support the rapidly growing customer base across the Philippines. The office is now open and operational and is supporting businesses of all sizes, from startups and small-and-medium sized businesses to large enterprises and public sector customers, as they make the transition to the AWS Cloud.

“As AWS crosses the 10th year milestone of pioneering cloud computing, we continue to focus on driving rapid innovation of our services and inventing on behalf of our customers,” said Shane Owenby, Amazon Web Services Managing Director of Asia Pacific. “We are pleased to increase the investment and commitment in the Philippines with the AWS Philippines office in Manila and the hiring of local talent. We are excited to work with even more Philippines-based startups and enterprises to help them save cost, drive innovation and extend their global reach quickly, while maintaining high levels of reliability and security.”

Shane-Owenby,-Amazon-Web-Services-Managing-Director-of-Asia-Pacific
Shane Owenby, Amazon Web Services Managing Director of Asia Pacific

Organizations in the Philippines are already using AWS’s pay-as-you-go suite of cloud infrastructure services to speed time to market without upfront capital investment. Philippines-based customers are adopting AWS to run core enterprise applications, perform data analytics, backup and disaster recovery operations, build e-commerce platforms, launch new businesses, host websites, live streaming of video, deliver social and mobile applications, and extend on-premises environments. Some of the customers include Globe Telecom, Voyager Innovations, Jollibee Foods Corporation, Seaoil, McDonald’s, Pinoy Travel, Coins.ph, Lenddo, Lifetrack Medical, GMA New Media, Xurpas, Cogito of InnoVantage, mClinica, Splitmedia Labs, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), among many other businesses.

Globe Telecom is the leading mobile brand in the Philippines with 57 million subscribers. Since 2011, AWS has helped Globe reduce its total cost of ownership of IT infrastructure by up to 60 percent over a 5-year period. The most important benefit for Globe is the business agility on AWS to experiment and test new ideas in minutes, as compared to the 80-day buying cycle in the past. Additionally, Globe is using AWS for data analytics on customer’s usage experience which is instrumental in helping Globe to develop meaningful new features and product. “Globe Telecom has adopted Cloud-first strategy on AWS to drive innovation throughout the organization,” said Ernest Cu, CEO of Globe Telecom. “With the new AWS Philippines office in Manila, we look forward to working with the local team as we continue to expand our usage of AWS cloud services to speed innovation and drive even greater shareholder value.”

Voyager Innovations, Inc. (Voyager) is the digital innovations unit of leading Philippine telecommunication provider PLDT and its wireless subsidiary Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart). Voyager Innovations develops platforms and products enabling enterprises and consumers in emerging markets. Its current services span across next communications, digital advertising, e-commerce, and financial technology. “We adopted AWS from day one for its breadth and depth of innovative services and its flexibility. The ability to quickly provision AWS cloud infrastructure at a low cost, enabling us to experiment ideas and iterate fast, is a critical success factor to our internal innovation cycle. Additionally, the global footprint of AWS Regions helps expand our service offerings beyond the Philippines, knowing that our services on AWS can scale easily and reliably to millions of users worldwide,” said Alfred Lo, Head of Product Engineering. “We are excited that AWS Philippines now has a local office to provide even closer support as we deepen our usage of cloud services.”

Founded in 2014, Coins.ph is a Philippine-based fintech company that connects its customers to remittances, mobile payments, and other financial services directly from their mobile phone. As a start-up, Coins.ph needed to get its service to market quickly with a highly secure, scalable low cost technology infrastructure and chose AWS from the beginning. “AWS has freed us from worrying about infrastructure so that we can focus on innovating on our new ideas and continually enhancing our financial services for customers, which is critical to our business,” says Ron Hose, CEO of Coins.ph. “We look forward to an even closer engagement with the local team in the AWS Philippines office, as we expand the usage of AWS cloud services for our product development and provide an even better customer experience.”

Lifetrack Medical Systems is Philippines-based startup that provides professional radiology services as well as a cloud-based Radiology Information System, Picture Archiving and Communications System (RIS PACS) healthcare software solutions, patented in December 2015. With AWS, Lifetrack Medical Systems has avoided spending at least US$100,000 on the initial hardware costs and reduced the monthly operation cost by more than 300 percent. “Without AWS, Lifetrack Medical Systems’ business would not even exist today. Being able to access and manage our services anytime with the highest security standards, scale according to our needs, are some of the key benefits in using AWS,” said Dr. Eric Schulze, CEO of
Lifetrack Medical Systems. “We look forward to working closely with the local staff at the AWS Philippines office to help Lifetrack Medical team and the local startup community drive even more innovation.”

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