Generative AI in Indonesia : AWS's Approach to Empowering Innovation

In this episode, Pak Anthony Amni, Country Manager, AWS Indonesia, discusses the evolving landscape of Generative AI in the Indonesian market. Pak Anthony delves into AWS's role in driving digital transformation across diverse industries, from large enterprises to dynamic startups and how they are laying the foundations for AI and Gen AI adoption, enabling businesses to unlock new use cases and drive value.

Transcript

Voice Over: 0:02

The aibp asean b2b growth podcast is a series of fireside chats with business leaders in Southeast Asia focused on growth in the region. topics discussed include business strategy, sales and marketing, enterprise technology and innovation. Greetings and welcome to the awesome b2b growth podcast. In today's episode, we shine a spotlight on generative AI in Indonesia. This series of conversations of Indonesian business leaders took place during the IBM consulting forum on the 29th of November 2023.

Irza, AIBP: 0:52

Today, I'm joined this morning at the IBM consulting forum by Mr. Anthony Omni, who runs AWS business here in Indonesia. As you're probably aware, Anthony would be able to introduce himself much better than I ever can. So Anthony, just a quick introduction about yourself as well as AWS in Indonesia,

Anthony, AWS: 1:10

there's nothing much to be introduced by myself, but my name is Anthony, I run AWS business here in Indonesia. And we always say that we are first and foremost Indonesian and but also Amazonian, right? What it means is that we believe that we occupy a unique time in history in which we're giving we're given the trust and the vehicle to try to drive digital transformation in this country. Right. So we're proud to support companies across different sizes in indonesia, from large enterprise like the likes of telkomsel, XL, Garuda food, to startups like Traveloka, haloDoc and even 1000s of small medium enterprises. So that's who we are.

Irza, AIBP: 1:47

Yeah. So that's a very, very interesting point, especially this year, because this year when you talk about, you know, technology, new technology, both for the consumer side as well as for organizations, I think a lot of the focus has been around journey. As you are probably aware, AI is not new for most organizations. But we've, you know, it coming to the fore again, at the top of the mind of every business leader, every IT guy, every consumer as well. What have you seen in Indonesia? And what is AWS doing around that? Sure.

Anthony, AWS: 2:15

So when we talk about Gen AI is basically a subset of AI, right? It's it drives new use cases, it drives new ability. And it's simply been amazing, right. But what we've been seeing as well. And given where we are as a country in terms of our digital adoption, we must not forget that in order for any organizations to be able to derive meaningful value out of Gen ai, the foundation needs to be right first, right? And the foundation of all that is basically two things, right? The modern applications that can actually be powered by Gen AI, and foundation of data, right? Because identity data is the differentiator. That's so the focus work for us and for our partners, such as IBM consulting, has been helping our customers transforming in that direction, setting the right foundations while starting to experiment with some analytics use case that is powered by AI. And also Gen AI. I believe, if I can give you an example, right, you know, we have a customer called optic melawai. It's one of the largest eye product manufacturer and retailer as well. I've been around since the 60s, right, so quite a traditional company, right. But then the foundation that they set up is that they implemented a new SAP, everything, all the backend system runs on cloud, and then they set up a foundation of their data lake, right. And the use case derived out of that, which is powered by AI is two things, quite simple, but powerful. One is on forecasting, to make sure that they know which SKU needs to be in which store and therefore linear supply chain and personalization, right? Meaning that they want to be able to offer the relevant product to the relevant segment. The underlying technology behind is all AI and machine learning. Right. But without a proper foundation, none of that would happen. Yeah. So that's the story we're trying to drive in Indonesia?

Irza, AIBP: 3:58

Are these the kind of conversations that you're having with business leaders, because business leaders are not necessarily it or technology leaders as well. So when, when they, when they hear so much around Gen AI that's happening? What kind of questions What kind of challenges do you help them with, you know, in this covering much less?

Anthony, AWS: 4:14

Sure. So I think one thing that we encountered a lot is to make sure that all the business leaders understand the concept of Gen AI. And there's no misconception that, Gen AI can give you magic, it's not magic, right. And number two, is that while there, there's a lot of business value that can be derived, we need to be specific with the use case, right? Because, again, specific use case to derive specific business value, and therefore we often tell them and guide them and together with our partner, like I've been consulting that you need to set up your foundation, right? Simple. And it's not just the technology, right? The technology, the people were enabling people to be able to harness the power of the technology, right and the processes, right and I think this is one of the beauties of working with IBM consulting, right that brings all these elements the understanding of the technology, the understanding of the Business Process and also the ability to enable internal resources in an organization to step up.

Irza, AIBP: 5:06

Understand. Okay, so for for AWS itself, when you've obviously been around in Asia for quite some time, what are AWS plans to build capabilities to deliver to your clients, to your customers in this part of the world? Sure.

Anthony, AWS: 5:18

So one of the biggest pillar of our mission

Irza, AIBP: 5:18

So it's providing access to different technology. Indonesia, actually, digital enablement for skills building right for nation building. And I think the statistic is that as per this year, we've trained about 500,000, Indonesians, right? Students, developers, and a lot of this is actually pro bono, right? And, and this year alone, we have a dedicated training and certification team. And we launch a lot of pro bono programs to enable Indonesians, developers, everyone to be able to harness the power of AI and also Gen AI, right? Obviously, we've been relentlessly launching a lot of new innovations in the era of Gen AI. Even this week alone, we are hosting our reinvent in Las Vegas, when I'm trying to keep up with all the new innovations, right. But the idea is that the technology is now available, right? But we want to make sure that the Indonesians who will be driving the technology are capable of, you know, maximizing the potential. And more importantly, I think also with regards to talent management, discovering and developing talent here in Indonesia. So final question Pak Anthony, if I may, where do you see, you know, the Indonesian organizations in terms of adopting technology or being fast to adopt all these new technologies? How has that changed across the last maybe five to six years? Do you think they're up there? They're always fight up there. When it comes to change management, are they still taking their time to slowly understand?

Anthony, AWS: 6:45

So? So I've been in enablers the for five years, right. And I think I would agree with you that there has been a drastic pace of adoption, and willingness to adopt new technology. And five years ago, right, forget about AI five years ago, company would still ask, Why should I go to cloud? Now the question is like, what do I do? How do I leverage cloud and AI and gen ai and all that so we are definitely moving in that direction. So the role for us and enablers and also I think I've been consulting is to make sure that we can match. You know, the eagerness with proper enablement, with proper and holding as well to make sure that we collectively as a nation, we move into the right direction.

Irza, AIBP: 7:24

Thank you. Thank you so much pak Anthony for joining us today, and I look forward to what AWS does in the near future.

Voice Over: 7:30

Stay tuned for more insights on generative AI in Indonesia in the upcoming episodes. We hope you've enjoyed the episode. For more information about business growth in the ASEAN region, please visit our website www dot IoT business hyphen platform.com