RMI Global Ventures is joining hands with Thai WPS and Internet Thailand (Inet), aiming to beat Microsoft Office suite and take a 50% market share by 2020.
"We see an opportunity for cloud-based office suite software programmes in Thailand as an alternative option for customers," said Pongprom Yamarat, founder and chief executive of RMI Global Ventures, distributor of the local cloud-based application (Thai WPS), which is the joint intellectual property of Kingsoft Corp.
The company localised the WPS Office suite from Kingsoft, a leading Chinese software and internet service company. The software can run on Microsoft operating systems, but is 40% cheaper than Microsoft.
The company has also teamed up with Inet to bundle its 500GB cloud storage. Using local data centres helps reduce network latency, giving the firm an edge over rivals who use Singaporean data centres, said Mr Pongporm.
"We need to help Thais nationwide attain better access to legal software at affordable prices," he said, adding that illegal software users account for 70-75% of total internet users in Thailand.
WPS offers Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) software, a virtualisation technology that hosts a desktop operating system on a centralised server in a data centre.
With the low-cost of cloud based applications, VDI will increase business productivity, in alignment with Thailand 4.0, said Mr Pongporm.
The company will collaborate with Inet on smart city applications this year, paving the way to build "data analytic and machine learning capability" services, he said.
Wanchai Vach-shewadumrong, deputy managing director of Inet, said the software will initially be made available to Inet's 1,400 customers, after which it will be offered to other customers, including organisations, state enterprises, private organisations and SMEs.
Inet cloud services can help organisations reduce expenditure by 20-40%.
