Aside from India, a country in which cloud technologies are embraced – partly thanks to the outsourcing – there are significant movement in cloud computing adoption by countries in Asian region. Indeed, Asian countries are catching up real fast.
Cloud computing for business is still at its infancy – there will be growing pains; there will be rapid changes in the cloud’s fundamental; there will be hiccups. Yet, businesses enjoy significant improvement – thanks to the cloud: They are becoming more agile and cost competitive.
New cloud business solutions are being introduced on daily basis by either the leading cloud vendors or cloud startups. Cloud business is booming.
In Asia, 2011 will also be the year of cloud computing. There will be cloud businesses offering services to both businesses and individuals. There are some reasons to this prediction, but one thing for sure: Cloud computing is far from mature.
Adding to the fact above, some business owners and IT experts are being cynical and skeptical toward cloud computing. I see them as an opportunity even for developing countries like Indonesia to catch up.
Cloud computing outlook in Asia
To give you something to ponder on, here are some cloud computing and cloud business development in some of Asian countries.
To kick off, let’s start with India. India enjoys a long-time trust when it comes to outsourcing. The direct result to this is that India’s IT tech is up to date and highly competitive with Western countries. Google, one of the leading in cloud sector, doubles its engineering workforce in India to tap the growing cloud computing market.
In China, there is an emerging trend of cloud computing adoption – small companies are winning big cloud business because they are smart to ride the cloud business trends. As an example, China Intelligence Information Systems, Inc. (CIISI,) a relatively small virtualization company with $6 million in annual revenue, has won new virtualization business, despite its size. CIISI is part of a trend, indeed, as China’s governing bodies, manufacturers, media, research institutions and personal users are starting to pay close attention to what cloud computing can do for them.
Japan is still one of the most technologically advanced countries in Asia – no wonder that cloud computing will keep growing significantly there. Japan’s cloud computing services market is expected to be worth 2.37 trillion yen (approx. USD 28.5 billion) in 2015 – a six-fold increase from 2009.
Malaysia is also going cloud. SKALI, a local e-Business solution specialist company, has launched cloud computing services, a move that crowns it as Malaysia’s first commercial cloud hosting provider that offers a true public cloud-based infrastructure service.
In Korea, cloud technologies will become mainstream pretty soon, driven by the public sectors and big corporations. Fostered by the Government’s “smart work” initiative, aiming to encourage location independent working (and cloudworking – doing work on the cloud,) pursuing increased productivity and reduced carbon emissions. This initiative targets 30 percent of public employees to work from home or nearby the “smart work” centers by 2015.
Indonesia, with a strong 30 million online users and a potential to generate $75 million annually from cloud services within a few years, has attracted the cloud big boys to make Indonesia goes cloud. For example, Microsoft, one of the big players in cloud computing, is planning to invest $2.5 billion in Indonesia to develop cloud computing systems. The cloud trends also transform local IT solutions companies, such as Technosoft, to change its business model, now offering cloud business solutions.
Singapore is probably a small country, but it is huge in cloud computing adoption. This article reports that, despite Singapore’s CIOs are being cynical toward the cloud, Singapore Government plans to pursue cloud-related initiatives in 2011, including a great project, planned to be launched in 2012, that will enable citizens to access a centralized inbox called OneInbox; this inbox will be linked to government service portals. The government’s website also calls for cloud-based projects – a proof that Singapore is more than ready to take on the cloud.
There are more countries in Asian region that are intrigued in the cloud, but the above are sufficient to show you that today, the money is in the cloud. Both private and public sectors in Asian region will eventually adopt the cloud as part of their plans.
The question is, are YOU ready to go cloud?
