Malaysia-Thailand Joint Authority

Customer Story

Malaysia-Thailand Joint Authority

1. Company Intro

The Malaysia-Thailand Joint Authority (MTJA) is a collaborative binational entity established to manage the exploitation of resources in the Joint Development Area (JDA) in the Gulf of Thailand, under agreements between both governments. Governed by equal representation from Malaysia and Thailand, MTJA oversees petroleum exploration and development initiatives while promoting trust and mutual respect between the two nations. Formally established in 1990, MTJA administers the JDA — an offshore overlapping area of approximately 7,250 square kilometres, and supports scientific research and technology development in the field of natural resources. As a binational authority, MTJA operates with the governance standards and security expectations of two sovereign governments.

2. Challenge

As a binational government authority managing sensitive energy assets and cross-border petroleum data, MTJA faced two compounding IT challenges. First, its core systems — including finance servers, application servers, and firewall infrastructure, remained on ageing on-premises hardware, creating operational risk and limiting scalability. Second, with no formal backup or disaster recovery strategy in place, critical data held in Azure VMs and SharePoint had no protection against system failure, accidental deletion, or regional outages. For an organisation answerable to two governments, the absence of a resilient, recoverable IT environment represented a significant governance and business continuity risk.

3. Solution

Cloocus partnered with MTJA across two successive projects, delivering a full cloud infrastructure and resilience stack on Microsoft Azure:
Phase 1 – Infrastructure Migration (June 2024): Migrated MTJA’s on-premises servers to Azure under an IaaS model, deploying 4 virtual machines (2 finance servers, 1 application server, 1 Sophos virtual firewall), a Virtual Network, site-to-site VPN, and firewall services. Microsoft 365 licenses were upgraded from Standard to Premium for 65 users, Microsoft Copilot was provisioned for 33 users, and SharePoint storage was expanded from 1.6 TB to 3.6 TB.
Phase 2 – Backup & Disaster Recovery (September 2024): Implemented a comprehensive BCDR solution covering Azure VM Backup with an enhanced policy, Azure Site Recovery (ASR) with cross-region replication from Southeast Asia to East Asia, Microsoft 365 Backup for SharePoint, and ongoing DR drills and technical consultation for 3 years.

4. Benefit / Results

MTJA now operates on a fully cloud-hosted, enterprise-grade infrastructure that meets the governance expectations of a binational government body. The migration eliminated dependency on ageing on-premises hardware, while the site-to-site VPN ensures secure connectivity across its operations. The BCDR layer adds a critical safety net, all Azure VMs and SharePoint data are protected with tested recovery capabilities, with DR drills scheduled annually through 2027 to validate readiness. The upgrade to Microsoft 365 Premium and deployment of Copilot positions MTJA’s 33 users to leverage AI-assisted productivity, supporting the organisation’s long-term digital transformation goals.