The ASEAN Economic Forum’s roundtable on cloud computing revealed critical insights into the region’s digital transformation trajectory, highlighting both unprecedented opportunities and significant implementation challenges. Representing a USD $3.7 trillion economy that handles 8% of global trade—punching well above its economic weight—ASEAN’s discussions emphasised the strategic importance of cloud infrastructure in supporting the region’s ambitious goal of evolving toward aUSD $7 trillion economy by 2030.
Cloud computing offers substantial benefits, including improved operational efficiency, reduced infrastructure costs, enhanced connectivity and accessibility, and support for seamless digital trade and secure cross-border data exchanges.
This forum brought together industry leaders, policymakers, and technology experts to explore how cloud adoption can:
- Strengthen national and regional economies
- Empower MSMEs and local talent
- Advance digital integration towards the ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA) 2025
Hosted by the ASEAN Economic Forum, and featuring participation from the Tech for Good Institute, Singapore IT Standards Committee, TiE Singapore, GIZ, Asia Market Partners, Orbit Future Academy, Nanyang Technological University, and various industry practitioners, the dialogue addressed how cloud technology can serve as the backbone for ASEAN’s digital economic integration, particularly within the framework of the upcoming ASEAN DEFA.
Moderators and participants:
- Sachin V. Gopalan, Chairman, ASEAN Economic Forum
- Cyrus Daruwala, Chairman, ASEAN FinTech Forum
- Harish Pillay, Vice Chairman, Singapore IT Standards Committee
- Prantik Mazumdar, President, TiE Singapore
- Daniel Schroeder, Digital Transformation Strategist, GIZ
- Madanjit Singh, Founder, Asia Market Partners
- Nalin Singh, CEO, Orbit Future Academy
- Citra Handayani Nasruddin, Programme Director, Tech for Good Institute
The roundtable brought together voices from government, industry, think tanks, and academia to explore how cloud technologies can address ASEAN’s unique challenge of surprisingly low intra-regional trade, currently sitting at only 20-23% compared to other major trading blocs despite the region’s economic dynamism. The regional cloud computing market reached $208.8 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a robust 10.49% annually to reach $512.5 billion by 2033. However, significant digital infrastructure gaps persist, with 30% of the regional population still lacking access to basic internet.
Discussions emphasised the crucial understanding that cloud technology represents essential digital infrastructure—comparable to electricity or telecommunications—rather than an optional technological enhancement. This fundamental shift in perspective is vital for ASEAN’s digital transformation, especially given the region’s ambitious target of increasing intra-regional trade from 20-23% to potentially 40-50% through enhanced digital connectivity and radically simplified cross-border transactions.
However, issues of trust and security remain significant barriers to cloud adoption, necessitating careful attention to data protection, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance across jurisdictions. The world’s first region-wide digital economy governance framework provides the regulatory scaffolding for this transformation, positioning ASEAN as a pioneer in digital economic integration.
Key takeaways
1. Digital sovereignty through regional cloud infrastructure
There is a strong consensus around the imperative for ASEAN to develop its sovereign cloud capabilities, rather than remaining perpetually dependent on global hyperscalers. However, there is a different level of maturity across the region that needs to be taken into consideration when applying sovereign common standards in the region, so that modular implementation, which enables incremental yet impactful progress, can accommodate varying levels of readiness.
Participants emphasised that true digital sovereignty requires regional control over cloud infrastructure, with smaller ASEAN countries potentially benefiting from shared data centre resources operated by regional partners rather than pursuing economically unfeasible independent facilities.
The concept of sovereign cloud stacks has gained significant traction as a potential game-changer: standardised, interoperable infrastructure that enables countries to pool resources while maintaining digital sovereignty. This approach, already being implemented by European cloud providers through projects like Sovereign Cloud Stack, could allow ASEAN countries to achieve economies of scale in data centre development while ensuring genuine digital independence and breaking free from technological dependence on external providers.
Some examples shared by the participants include:
2. Critical skills gap impedes regional digital transformation
A stark digital skills crisis is unfolding across ASEAN, with regional skilled workforce percentages dramatically lagging behind those of developed economies, in what participants describe as a “digital talent chasm.” While advanced economies like South Korea achieve a 96% skilled population rate and Germany reaches 75%, ASEAN countries, excluding Singapore, average a concerning 6.5% of their working population is qualified for their current roles.
The roundtable highlighted how traditional educational institutions struggle with curriculum agility, creating dependency on vendor-specific training programmes that paradoxically create new challenges around career mobility and technology lock-in.
The rise of FinOps as a critical discipline, valued globally at $5.5 billion and growing annually at 34.8%, exemplifies the increasing complexity of cloud financial management. Companies expect new hires to have such expertise rather than investing in comprehensive reskilling, exacerbating the talent gap.
3. The ASEAN DEFA framework must address practical cross-border trade barriers
The ASEAN DEFA’s ultimate success hinges on building both robust technical infrastructure and institutional trust mechanisms to address concrete problems that currently hinder intra-ASEAN digital commerce. The framework must incorporate principle-based frameworks that maintain flexibility for regulatory coherence across cross-border e-commerce platforms, payments, digital ID, and cybersecurity.
Intra-regional trade represents only 20-23% of total ASEAN trade, significantly below the performance of other major economic blocs. Research indicates that the progressive implementation of DEFA could double ASEAN’s digital economy value to an unprecedented $2 trillion by 2030; yet, achieving this transformational growth requires systematically addressing fundamental infrastructure challenges, including the sobering reality that 30% of the regional population still lacks basic internet access.
The framework must prioritise building foundational digital capabilities, including unified payment systems, digital identity recognition, and cybersecurity standards, with DEFA’s comprehensive nine core elements providing extensive coverage that requires careful sequencing to ensure foundational elements effectively support advanced applications.
A critical element that emerged from discussions is the connection between cloud adoption and sustainability goals and ESG principles. Participants noted that data centres currently consume over 1% of global electricity, and this could reach 8% by 2030. However, ASEAN’s renewable energy resources, including Indonesia’s geothermal potential and Laos’s hydropower capacity, offer opportunities to power sustainable cloud infrastructure while meeting climate commitments.
Key enablers include strengthening competition policies, talent mobility, and cooperation on emerging topics such as AI governance and cybersecurity. Meanwhile, multi-stakeholder collaboration is emerging as mission-critical, as governments can create regulatory frameworks, but private sector organisations must ultimately deliver practical implementation and achieve meaningful scale.
