AI and the hybrid cloud: How Logicalis is enabling businesses in APAC

“There’s an increased shift from cloud to on-premises again, especially with businesses wanting to ensure their data meets all regulatory requirements when developing AI use cases,” says Chong Win Lee, CEO of Logicalis APAC.

There is no denying that the core to successful AI development and deployment is data and the infrastructure supporting it. While the cloud has been a catalyst for AI, on-premises infrastructure, be it for storage or application development and modernization is becoming imperative for organizations as well, especially with increased regulatory requirements and such.

While the hybrid cloud is likely the ideal way in developing and deploying AI applications, on-premises infrastructure like the private cloud have been seeing increased demand, signifying a shift in cloud adoption.

According to Chong Win Lee, CEO of Logicalis APAC, in a conversation with CRN Asia, they’re witnessing an increased shift from cloud to on-premises again, especially with businesses wanting to ensure their data meets all regulatory requirements when developing AI use cases.

“We are starting to see that demand increase again because as customers start to embrace GenAI workloads with their own data, all these need to be hosted on premise. But many customers have already shifted to the cloud over the last few years, and with that, they've given up their data center space,” said Lee (pictured below).

In APAC, Logicalis remains focused on delivering businesses the best outcome from their AI investments. The global IT solutions and managed services provider has had a strong presence in the region, with Australia being a key focus market as it looks to enable more Australian businesses in their AI journey by providing the right infrastructure and support needed, be it on the cloud or on-premises.

“GenAI is going to be pervasive across everything we do. We have started to see certain customers, be it government related industries or large enterprises with deeper pockets, trying to build their own large language models leveraging on some of the existing open-source language models and they try to train and build their own language models. But for many other customers, I think they will leverage on the existing language models that are out in the market and open it with their own data.” commented Lee in a conversation with CRN Asia.

Lee also highlighted that in Australia, over the last five years, Logicalis’ Australian team have built a very healthy private cloud business. Simply because Australia was the first market in APAC that really jumped into the cloud 12 years ago. Lee added that Australian customers also started to look at hybrid cloud or private cloud five years ago.

“With what we're seeing now, I think the shift back to the need for on-premises is greatly accelerated at a pace much higher than what we've seen happen in Australia. GenAI has become a catalyst for this and with the capabilities and the private cloud offers that our Australia business has, it is allowing us to very quick in extending our private cloud capabilities to our other customers in APAC region,” added Lee.

Supporting AI development

Enabling this is iZeno, a subsidiary of Logicalis. iZeno, which focuses on digital transformation, application modernization, DevOps, customer experience and hybrid cloud solutions, became part of Logicalis Asia in 2020. In July 2024, Logicalis opened its new office in Malaysia to consolidate its regional teams as well as solidify the global IT solutions and managed services provider’s presence in the region. The new office includes the integration of both Logicalis and iZeno.

According to Lee, as more businesses embrace GenAI applications, which are written using modern programming paradigms and languages, there is also a need for businesses to modernize their overall application frameworks and application development practices.

“This allows us to truly leverage the capabilities and expertise of iZeno, a subsidiary of Logicalis. We can leverage the skill sets and capabilities of iZeno to help customers accelerate the pace at which they can start to embrace GenAI application programming APIs, paradigms and such. We are seeing the synergies unlock by bringing our Asia and Australia teams together in unique capabilities in each business right now,” said Lee.

While the Malaysian facility in Cyberjaya is dedicated to servicing the Australia business, Lee pointed out that Logicalis is in the midst of transforming that facility to be a APAC wide delivery center as well as they can leverage that footprint and truly be able to accelerate the pace to scale the business across the region.

The right strategy

Looking at the industry, Lee acknowledges that while there are many opportunities in the region, the reality is that they need to be focused in areas where customers realize that digital transformation is still on the top of the mind for them.

“Core to having a successful digital transformation strategy is the need to recognize that we now live in an applications driven world. We come in by providing customers with the ability to help them think about how they can go down this path of modernizing their applications,” explained Lee.

For example, customers no longer go to banks for financial services, with a majority using mobile applications today. Another example is how customers are focused on e-commerce today or how airlines are selling air tickets on their apps. For Lee, all of this is made possible through a successful digital transmission strategy that is built around a truly compelling differentiated application.

“So, where do we come in? We come in by providing customers with the ability to help them think about how they can go down this path of modernizing their applications. Modernizing the applications means that you need to be able to develop new capabilities and adapt to industry requirements, roll out new features and apps not just quickly, but at high quality and in a very secure way, and to roll out such updates in days as opposed to months or even years using the traditional software development life cycle,” said Lee.

Lee pointed out that iZeno is where they provide the ability to help customers be able to accelerate and get their feet off the ground very quickly in terms of embracing the first few steps in application modernization.

“We teach them how to do it right now. We help them build the initial frameworks. We help them build the initial templates for containerization and then most customers take it on themselves. Then we provide the managed services with it. That’s just the first step because you can't really take advantage of a modern app without also modernizing your infrastructure, right? And what are some of the key benefits of a modern app? Basically, the ability to deploy very quickly and skilling elastically,” added Lee.

Interestingly, Lee also mentioned that by leveraging the cloud footprint of the various hyperscalers, customers are able to place the applications as close as they want to their target customers. This is because many of these customers have points of presence all across the world.

“Apart from helping customers modernize their applications, we also help customers modernize their infrastructure by implementing hybrid cloud architectures on-premises as well as leveraging all hyperscalers from Microsoft to AWS and even the Chinese providers,” said Lee.

At the same time, Lee highlighted that when none of this is possible the business does not transform their network.

“You can’t execute cloud technology or strategy without transforming the network and that's our DNA. We're very strong in software defined networking, cloud networking and high-performance networking. Also, once you go down that path of digital transformation, cybersecurity becomes paramount as well, because your attack surface now it's exponentially increased. So that's why cybersecurity is a very key focus area for us. We realize that cybersecurity is very complex to implement and that's why over the last four years we've implemented a secured managed security services business as well and we've seen that take off very successfully,” explained Lee.

He added that most of their cybersecurity analysts are based in Malaysia for their Security Operations Center. Lee also pointed out that Logicalis helps customers modernize their workspace so they can interact and collaborate more effectively.

“These are the areas that we are focusing on and have wrapped around our managed services. I wouldn't say their challenges, but recognizing that the industry is so huge, we can’t do everything. However, by focusing on these key areas, it helps us grow quite well over the last few years and we’re still seeing very good traction and demand in this space,” he said.

Taking on 2025

Given the success in 2024, Lee stated that Logicalis is focused on their vision to be the preferred digital transformation enabler to their customers in the APAC region. Specifically, they will be looking to achieve this through application modernization, skill sets and then to help customers modernize their infrastructure through hybrid cloud implementations and private cloud architectures.

The focus will also be on helping customers transform their networks, implementing cybersecurity and managed security services for them, modernizing their workplace and providing them with the ability to focus on their business outcomes.

“Our managed services and as a service offers will help them achieve this. At the same time, we're very excited for 2025, judging by the demand and excitement that’s being generated in the market with GenAI. It is an excellent opportunity that we believe we can help customers with, not just in embracing, but also adopt and implement GenAI in a more optimized way,” concluded Lee.