Why Asia Is Leaping to the Cloud

by Siki Giunta

There’s a cloud over Asia — cloud computing, that is. And it’s a favorable cloud, representing fast-growing markets for Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

How fast is the growth? In China alone, we believe, the cloud-computing market will this year top $100 million for the first time. That’s an important milestone. From the perspective of cloud service and product suppliers, when a geographical market passes the $100 million mark, it’s large enough to merit substantial investment and segmentation.

Behind this growth is a very Asian phenomenon of skipping technologies. For example, Southeast Asian consumers leapt from essentially no telephones in their households to millions of mobile phones, skipping landline service along the way. Asian companies leapt from the mainframe directly to the mobile Web, skipping minicomputers and even PCs. Now many Asian companies are again skipping technologies — this time, leapfrogging over virtualization and going straight to the cloud and SaaS.

Some China growth will likely come from multinational corporations that already use cloud technology elsewhere. Large automakers, with cloud computing in Europe and United States, will want the same cloud services for operations in China, and multinational chemical companies are doing the same thing. Similarly, other companies expanding into China view the cloud as an easy-to-consume alternative to building or sourcing data center services.

Other Asian countries are poised for big cloud computing growth as well. Malaysia and Indonesia, to name two, both represent fast-growing markets. So for cloud suppliers, establishing a presence in Southeast Asia will become increasingly important.

Yes, Asia is still an emerging market. But right now, emerging markets are where you’ll find cloud computing’s most interesting and dynamic action.