Asia Pacific businesses tap cloud at pace

The Asia Pacific (APAC) region now accounts for a third of the worldwide cloud infrastructure market and continues to grow much more rapidly than either the North American or the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regional markets.

This is according to new data from analyst firm Synergy Research, which claims that APAC revenues from cloud infrastructure services reached almost US$17 billion in the three months ending 31 December 2021 and are growing at over 40 per cent per year.

Public infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is by far the largest segment in the region, followed by public platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and managed private cloud services.  

According to Synergy, public PaaS had the highest growth rate in the quarter, thanks to particularly strong growth in database and internet of things (IoT)-oriented services.  

While all APAC sub-regions are growing strongly, South and Southeast Asia claimed the highest growth rate during the quarter, thanks in large part to India.  

China, meanwhile, was by far the largest country market in the region, followed by Japan, India, South Korea, Australia and Hong Kong.

Supplied Art (with Permission)

“China remains a unique market that is dominated by local companies, while in the rest of the APAC region there is strong competition between the global cloud providers, with some local companies also challenging for business in their home countries,” said John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research Group.  

“The challenge for local players is that in most respects cloud is a truly global market, requiring global presence, leading-edge technology, strong brand name and credibility, extremely deep pockets and a long-term focus.  

“While local cloud companies or smaller regional players can continue to grow revenues by maintaining a tight focus on their home markets or on well-defined user groups or use applications, the leading global cloud providers will continue to aggressively grow both their geographic footprint and their international revenues,” he added.

And the leading cloud players in the region during the three-month period were Amazon Web Services (AWS), Alibaba and Microsoft, which took the first, second and third spots respectively in the APAC cloud market, based on quarterly revenues.  

Indeed, AWS, long the global leader, is the frontrunner in four of the five APAC sub-regions, which puts it well ahead of its regional rivals, while Alibaba has a strong lead in China and is also well placed in the rest of East Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and Oceania.  

At the same time, Microsoft is now ranked second in four of the sub-regions and is placed third in the overall APAC region, according to Synergy’s data.  

The rest of the top-ranked cloud providers were either global players, such as Google Cloud, NTT and IBM, with a position in multiple markets, or companies with a strong position in their home markets.  

For example, beyond Alibaba, the next eight cloud providers in China are all local companies, with Tencent, Baidu, China Telecom, Huawei and China Unicom being the next biggest.

Other cloud providers in the APAC top 20 included JD Cloud, Kingsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, Sinnet and Singtel.