Future potential in the Thai security market:Convergint Asia Pacific

Convergint is one of the world’s largest systems integrators. After its acquisition of ICD Security Solutions in 2013 it significantly increased its foot print in Asia. Today, Convergint in APAC serves clients across Greater China, India, Japan, Oceania, and Southeast Asia. Convergint officially opened its subsidiary in the Thai market in 2021, the same year it acquired Diebold Nixdorf ‘s Asia Pacific electronic security business.
 
asmag.com had a chance to speak with Wenbin Sim, Assistant General Manager Singapore and Sales Manager - SEA and Korea, and Adisak Ployangoonsri, Head Security Business, Thailand at Convergint Asia Pacific to hear about the Thai market dynamics and potential.
  
 

Being a multinational integrator, Convergint focuses mostly on global enterprise accounts. “We work with a lot of pharmaceutical and FMCG manufacturers. In the last year we have seen growth in projects from global cloud service providers and social media firms due to their continued growth and investment " said Wenbin. “Domestic accounts include banking, oil and gas, critical infrastructure and multinational retailers”.

 
Coming out of COVID, the Thai security market is also recovering. Businesses are re-opening and there is opportunity in remodeling workspaces and providing solutions that can help manage both office occupancy and staff flexibly.
 
The year 2023 sees factories going back to full scale operations and with it a growing demand for security and safety systems. The growth in manufacturing is especially strong in technology manufacturing in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) , due to increased investment in the region. The EEC is a special economic zone of three provinces in eastern Thailand and the focus of the Thai government’s industrial development initiatives.  
 
Wenbin is optimistic that there is also an opportunity for solutions beyond security for these verticals:

We see more demand for unified solutions – combining access control and video surveillance into one system. Increasingly, more clients are also seeking greater value in their investments and look to maximize the potential applications of their security systems.

He continued: "For example, using the cameras not just for tracking intruders but also to detect PPE violations etc. We focus on building a system not just for security purposes, but also to deliver a lot of benefits beyond security. Specifically, the Thai market is very labor intensive, so there should be focus on utilizing technology to provide better efficiency and accuracy, not just to save costs."

Besides business potential in specific verticals in Thailand, the two also see potential in cloud technology. Currently the use of cloud technology for physical security in Thailand is still at a nascent stage. Bandwidth availability is still limited and adoption of cloud is not as common as in other markets.
 
Convergint already provides various cloud-based solutions and services and Wenbin sees a growing interest in it: “Security services going Cloud are correlated with IT services going to the cloud. IT departments are pushing towards managed services that reduce the on-site maintenance load, less servers on site, less demand for energy and equipment etc. and they expect the same from their security systems. Our cloud-based managed services enable us to provide more value-added security operations support to our customers at a competitive price.”

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