By Cyber Era NG Special Correspondent

September 26, 2023, an Amazon.com company, Amazon Web Services (AWS), announced that PT Telekomunikasi Selular (Telkomsel), Southeast Asia’s largest telecommunications provider, has selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider to increase its IT agility, drive operational efficiencies, and accelerate the launch of innovative new customer services.

As part of Telkomsel’s digital transformation, the telecommunications provider will migrate a wide range of IT applications to AWS, including front-end customer channels, Telkomsel’s Gaming Store Front, middleware, and machine learning. The migration will help Telkomsel improve the user experience by offering new services to more than 153 million subscribers, considering Indonesia has the fastest-growing population of smartphone users in the world. Telkomsel runs 15 of its applications, including MyTelkomsel, DigiPos Aja!, Telkomsel’s Gaming Store Front, Enterprise Service Bus, and some data platforms on AWS. Running on AWS, Telkomsel can deploy new infrastructure in under one hour, down from seven days, and launch new digital applications and services up to 40 per cent faster.

Telkomsel is using the breadth and depth of AWS services while benefiting from the high availability and low latency of the AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region. Telkomsel is Indonesia’s first digital telecommunications provider to use AWS Outposts, a family of fully-managed solutions delivering AWS infrastructure and services to on-premises and edge locations for a truly hybrid experience. This allows Telkomsel to run its applications and store data on premises while still using AWS services. This reduces the time it takes to transfer data between Telkomsel’s applications and the cloud, helping the company innovate faster for customers. Telkomsel is also using advanced cloud capabilities including AWS Lambda for serverless code execution, Amazon GuardDuty for container protection, Amazon ElastiCache for in-memory caching, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service and Amazon Elastic Container Service for container deployment. Telkomsel plans to continue innovating to enhance its customer experience by exploring AWS’s machine learning (ML) and generative AI.

Telkomsel is also the Indonesia’s first telecommunications provider to use AWS Skills Guild, a comprehensive skills enablement program that builds cloud fluency across an organization. AWS and Telkomsel have also developed a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE) for Telkomsel employees, which includes a comprehensive digital training skills program. Training for the company’s cloud transformation is run as part of the Telkomsel Cloud Academy, which covers a variety of cloud subjects, including ML and AI. Since 2021, more than 1,000 participants have attended AWS Training and Certification upskilling and reskilling initiatives, helping teams collaborate from the start of digitization projects and immediately focus on driving innovation rather than managing infrastructure.

“By leveraging AWS’s leading cloud technology, we are unlocking future possibilities for our company,” said CEO of Telkomsel Hendri Mulya Syam,. “Using the AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region ensures that our data is protected with robust security measures and helps us with regulatory compliance.”

“By harnessing the power of AWS cloud computing, we are modernizing our applications, forging a new operating model towards DevSecOps, and driving transformation through our people as part of the Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE). We’re not just embracing digital transformation but accelerating it, propelling Telkomsel into the future of connectivity, innovation and best customer experience”, said CIO at Telkomsel Bharat Alva. ” We look forward to furthering our deep collaboration and proven strategic partnership.”

“Forward-thinking telcos like Telkomsel are embracing the cloud to innovate faster and deliver differentiated digital experiences to customers at scale, while saving costs,” said managing director at AWS in ASEAN Conor McNamara. “We are thrilled to bring Amazon’s culture of innovation and the AWS Skills Guild to Telkomsel to ensure they have the digital infrastructure and the skills to innovate and prepare for a digital future. We believe in Indonesia’s potential to be a leader in the digital economy and look forward to working with innovative organizations like Telkomsel to bring this ambition to life.”