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July 28, 2026
AI has become the defining technology conversation in almost every boardroom across Australia.
Organisations are racing to identify practical use cases. Executive teams are under pressure to develop AI strategies. CIOs are exploring copilots, autonomous agents and large language models in the hope of unlocking new levels of productivity and competitive advantage.
But amid such heightened AI activity, businesses are also rediscovering something else.
Cloud.
Not because cloud has suddenly become fashionable again but because AI has exposed how much foundational work many organisations still have ahead of them. This technology is quietly forcing organisations to finish the transformation that they thought was already complete.
“AI has fundamentally changed the conversation,” observed Bernard Chua, Regional Director at eCloudvalley Digital Technology.
“There was a period where every business wanted to move workloads into the cloud. Then organisations began questioning whether hybrid environments made more sense and started rationalising which applications genuinely belonged in public cloud. Then AI arrived.”
According to Chua, the rapid adoption of AI has effectively pushed organisations back towards the IT infrastructure drawing board because – from both an economic and practical standpoint – cloud remains the “best place” to run AI workloads.
“AI is very good news for the cloud industry because infrastructure naturally becomes the first discussion,” Chua added. “Where will AI run? How will it be deployed? The biggest driver of cloud adoption today is no longer cloud itself, it’s AI.”
That single observation highlights one of the most significant shifts taking place across the market in Australia.
While AI adoption has created an entirely new investment cycle – from a technology standpoint – the starting line remains a few strategic steps back. Instead, AI is forcing many companies to revisit programs of work that remain unfinished or outdated – infrastructure, applications, data, governance, security and cloud.
“Our biggest opportunity remains infrastructure,” Chua emphasised.
“AI may be leading customer conversations but infrastructure is still what enables everything else. We’re using AI as the entry point into discussions, and that naturally leads into large migration opportunities.”
Founded in Taiwan, eCloudvalley goes to market as an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner, focusing on providing end-to-end cloud services – including cloud migrations, managed services, cloud security, containerisation, data and AI consulting.
Recognised as the first Premier Partner in Asia Pacific, the business of 600 employees houses more than 1000 AWS certifications and has served over 5000 customers since launching in 2013.
The specialist provider has expanded beyond Greater China to build strong market presence across ASEAN – Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam – Australia and the US.
“AWS remains at the centre of our strategy,” Chua said.
“eCloudvalley was one of AWS’ pioneer partners globally. We began in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China before expanding into ASEAN around seven or eight years ago, with the Philippines being our first investment outside of Greater China.
“AWS continues to be the largest hyperscale cloud provider, and our experience with that ecosystem remains one of our biggest strengths.”
Chua speaks with authority on this subject – having helped establish a strong cloud operating presence in Southeast Asia as employee number four at AWS in the Philippines.
Chua has since built the Philippine business of eCloudvalley into its strongest iteration outside of Greater China, now tasked with advancing the company’s footprint in Australia and ASEAN as part of a strategic regional growth plan.
Such vast experience has led Chua to one conclusion – AI isn’t replacing enterprise cloud strategies, it’s forcing organisations to complete it.
The Australian market is the product of more than a decade of increased hyperscale cloud investment, since AWS and Microsoft starting building data centres on local shores in 2013 and 2014 respectively.
Because of this, public cloud became mainstream, hybrid environments have matured and cloud-first policies are now common across both government and enterprise.
Therefore assumption is understandable. Surely the biggest migration programs have already happened?
“Surprisingly, cloud migration remains extremely active,” Chua noted.
“We originally assumed markets like Australia – and even parts of ASEAN – might already be largely migrated. But that isn’t the case because there are still substantial amounts of on-premises infrastructure waiting to move.”
Based on Gartner numbers, Australian organisations are expected to spend more than A$33.6 billion on public cloud services in 2026, an increase of 17.9% from 2025.
According to Chua, the conversation has evolved significantly in Australia. In the past, strategies were largely focused on lift-and-shift migrations but today that’s no longer enough.
“Businesses want to modernise before they migrate which ultimately produces better outcomes because when workloads arrive in the cloud they’re already optimised,” Chua suggested.
“The difference now is that organisations themselves are asking for that modernisation. Again, AI is driving the conversation.”
For Chua, the common question surfacing is anchored on the process of becoming AI-ready while migrating applications to the cloud in parallel. In those instances, the savings achieved by retiring traditional infrastructure are increasingly being redirected towards AI initiatives.
The discussion is no longer simply about migration, rather modernising first so organisations have the right foundation for AI.
“In Australia particularly, VMware has also become a major catalyst,” Chua added.
“The changes around VMware licensing have created significant migration opportunities. We’re also seeing organisations move away from legacy Oracle environments.”
While AI may be creating the strategic imperative, VMware has become one of the market’s strongest operational catalysts.
Broadcom’s acquisition has fundamentally changed conversations around infrastructure – licensing became the headline and transformation became the consequence.
As a result, organisations that were previously comfortable maintaining existing virtualisation environments are now asking much bigger questions.
“There’s no question that moving away from VMware requires investment,” Chua explained.
“Organisations often have to maintain existing environments while simultaneously funding transformation projects, which means they’re carrying costs on both sides during the transition.
“That’s where AWS has been very supportive. They’ve invested heavily in programs that help enterprises navigate those migrations – subsidising parts of the migration journey and helping reduce the commercial risk for customers.”
Such programs are also enabling consulting partners within the AWS Partner Network – such as eCloudvalley – to deliver migration projects with significantly less risk for the customer.
“That’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing VMware migrations accelerate,” Chua highlighted.
“We’re seeing a strong pipeline and already have several opportunities, each valued at more than a million dollars, in Australia. We’re very encouraged by what we’re seeing but there are still many organisations that need help with these migrations.”
While many Australian organisations have already migrated applications to the cloud, a sizeable portion of businesses paused.
Some questioned cloud economics after early migrations delivered mixed financial outcomes, others delayed moving complex workloads that continued meeting business requirements and many settled into hybrid operating models while waiting for a compelling reason to modernise further.
“Cloud cost management remains one of the biggest challenges organisations face today,” Chua acknowledged.
“AI may be driving investment but every major initiative – whether it’s cloud, AI or cyber security – ultimately comes back to governance, visibility and cost optimisation. That’s why FinOps has become so important.
“One of the biggest lessons is that cloud economics isn’t as simple as using a pricing calculator. True optimisation is an ongoing process. It’s about continually understanding new services, finding better architectures and helping customers reduce costs while improving performance.”
According to Chua, AI is exposing technical debt organisations have quietly carried for years – legacy infrastructure, fragmented data or applications designed for another era.
Perhaps they didn’t prevent businesses from operating successfully yesterday – evident by many CIOs sweating assets and delaying refresh cycles – but they become significant constraints the moment AI enters the discussion.
That reality has changed the nature of migration itself.
“Again, AI is accelerating much of that activity,” Chua continued. “Before AI became mainstream, many organisations believed they could continue operating data platforms on-premises.
“Today, with generative AI, modern data pipelines and increasingly compute-intensive workloads, cloud has become the most practical and economical environment. So conversations often begin around AI but quickly become migration discussions.”
Migrating existing environments into cloud without redesigning applications simply relocates yesterday’s limitations, however.
In those scenarios, applications remain difficult to integrate, data remains fragmented and AI remains difficult to operationalise.
“Businesses realise they first need modern infrastructure and modern data platforms before AI initiatives can succeed,” Chua added.
“Alongside AI, cyber security remains the other major driver. As organisations introduce more non-human identities through automation and AI agents, identity security becomes increasingly important.
“Those are now the two biggest catalysts we see: AI and cyber security.”
If AI is restarting cloud transformation, it’s doing so against one of the most economically constrained environments that businesses have experienced in many years.
Budgets remain under pressure, technology teams continue operating with skills shortages and boards expect stronger commercial justification for every investment than they did only a few years ago.
On paper, those conditions should slow transformation.
“Economic pressure has certainly slowed technology investment, particularly around cloud and AI,” Chua stated.
“Rising costs, tighter margins and ongoing skills shortages continue to affect organisations across every industry. What’s interesting, though, is that AI is increasingly being viewed as part of the solution rather than simply another investment.”
The obvious conclusion to economic strife is that organisations simply spend less. Or perhaps, spend differently?
That subtle change in thinking has become one of the defining characteristics of today’s market.
A few years ago, digital transformation was largely justified around innovation, customer experience and future competitiveness. Today’s conversations are considerably more pragmatic.
Those questions naturally lead towards AI.
“Many organisations are asking themselves, ‘how do we continue growing without proportionally increasing our workforce?’ – AI provides one possible answer,” Chua outlined.
“So while economic conditions remain difficult, technology adoption is becoming a way to offset those pressures rather than adding to them. That’s ultimately positive for the industry because organisations are now actively exploring AI as a means of improving productivity and operating more efficiently.”
In response to increased AI adoption – counterbalanced with ongoing economic challenges – eCloudvalley has launched Atlas 2.0, a cloud governance platform.
“We’ve invested heavily in building our own platform,” Chua said.
“Beyond simplifying managed services, Atlas 2.0 gives customers a single platform for managing their cloud environments. It provides cost optimisation recommendations, infrastructure insights and practical guidance around cloud spending.”
The latest version also includes its own marketplace. Customers can enrol directly into managed services – whether that’s business-hours support or 24×7 operations – and those services flow directly into monthly billing cycles.
This is in addition to integration via the AWS Marketplace allowing businesses to procure software licences and other services from one place, supported any the embedding of more agentic AI capabilities to enhance platform intelligence.
“We’re evolving beyond being recognised purely as an infrastructure partner,” Chua added.
“Through platforms like Atlas 2.0 and our growing governance capabilities, we want to help customers not only migrate and build cloud environments but manage them sustainably over the long term. That’s an important part of who we’ve become as a business, and something many people still don’t know about us.”
Chua initially joined to run the Philippines business as Country Manager in March 2022, before assuming additional responsibility for Australia in July 2025. The mandate is clear, turbo-charge the local market following a slow start having launched four years ago.
“Our thinking is straightforward – use the same talent, capabilities and delivery model that has worked so well in the Philippines while maintaining a local presence in Australia,” Chua explained.
“Our model today involves bringing two people into Australia every month to work alongside our local team who focus on business development and lead generation, supported by our delivery capabilities offshore.
“That approach is beginning to deliver results. Compared to the previous three years, we’re seeing significantly stronger momentum and expect this year’s business to exceed what we’ve achieved over the past two years combined.”
That’s still relatively small compared to the size of the Philippines operation – which remains the strongest country contributor in ASEAN – but achieving market momentum in Australia remains critical.
“We’ve quickly realised that Australia is a completely different market,” Chua accepted.
“In my view, Australia is difficult to win but easier to retain customers once you’ve earned their trust and deliver value. Whereas the Philippines is almost the opposite – it’s comparatively easier to win customers but it’s also easier to lose them.
“Fortunately, our culture has always been built around customer ownership and customer obsession. We invest heavily in relationships, so even though progress in Australia has been slower, we’re now beginning to see genuine momentum.”
As relatively new entrants to the Australian market, eCloudvalley is primarily swimming in the large SMB and mid-enterprise lanes.
In the Philippines, Taiwan and Hong Kong, however, strong government and enterprise presence is already established.
For example, the business authored the first Cloud Computing Competency Standards together with TESDA in the Philippines, the government agency responsible for technical education and skills development.
“The Philippines has become one of our largest delivery centres,” Chua shared. “The country has exceptional technical talent together with strong English-language capability, making it an ideal location for managed services delivery.
“Our managed services are primarily delivered from the Philippines but not every capability sits there. For specialist capabilities such as data and certain AI projects, we also leverage expertise from Taiwan and Hong Kong.”
The business operates as a holding company with several specialised entities that focus on different technology ecosystems, including Microsoft and Google Cloud.
For Australia, however, the strategy is very clear.
“We’re leading with AWS – our experience is certainly one of our biggest strengths,” Chua confirmed.
“Across the region we’ve supported more than 5000 customers, ranging from some of the largest enterprises through to start-ups. That experience gives us deep understanding of how to guide organisations through cloud transformation.”
The other important differentiator is size. Compared with the large global systems integrators (GSIs), eCloudvalley is naturally much smaller.
“That actually works in our favour,” Chua continued.
“We’re small enough to remain flexible and move quickly when customers need us to pivot. At the same time, we’re large enough to deliver at enterprise scale, including multinational engagements.
“That combination gives us a unique position in the market. We have the experience, the talent and the scale, while still being flexible in how we engage customers.”
Despite being locally and regionally focused, the business is formally categorised as a GSI by AWS due to such a depth of expertise within the vendor’s technology stack – among the top global partners for AWS-certified engineers.
From an AWS perspective, the size and complexity of the projects delivered puts eCloudvalley that into exclusive category.
“That gave us confidence,” Chua added.
“It reinforced that we really can compete head-to-head with the major GSIs. For example, in the Philippines we’ve successfully displaced one of the largest GSIs at one of the country’s biggest retail organisations. We’ve now been managing that customer’s global cloud operations for around six years.”
Historically, eCloudvalley’s strongest capability has been managed services – helping customers optimise cloud environments, reduce operating costs and manage infrastructure effectively.
Initially, services and projects were very infrastructure focused.
Over time, however, the business has expanded significantly into specialist capabilities including data, analytics and now AI.
“In Australia, we still need to prove ourselves – with the market and with AWS,” Chua accepted.
“That’s understandable because every market has its own dynamics but we’re beginning to receive more attention because we’re now demonstrating results. I see it as my responsibility to continue building that recognition.
“We need to prove that the same quality and experience that we’ve delivered across other markets can be replicated successfully in Australia. Globally we’re recognised but locally we’re still earning that recognition.”
Because of this, eCloudvalley’s approach in Australia can best be categorised as both “collaborative as well as competitive”.
“While we’re happy competing directly, we’re equally open to partnering with other organisations,” Chua clarified. “If another partner has customer relationships or specialist capabilities that complement ours, we’re very comfortable working together.
“Likewise, where we bring strengths in cloud, data or AI, we’re happy to collaborate rather than insist on doing everything ourselves. Our focus is helping customers achieve successful outcomes. It’s not a zero-sum game.”
In looking ahead, Chua is preparing the business to capitalise on “strong demand” around VMware migrations and organisations looking to retire ageing data centres rather than investing in another refresh cycle.
Those are the opportunities dictating priorities during the next six months.
“We believe we have significant value to bring into the Australian market,” Chua concluded.
“But to be completely transparent, we’ve now been investing in Australia for around four years and at some point, that investment has to translate into commercial returns. If we weren’t seeing progress, we’d have to rethink our strategy.
“Fortunately, we’re now seeing genuine momentum, which gives us confidence that we’re moving in the right direction.”
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