Assessing the Impact of Cloud Storage in Asia/Pacific (Excluding Japan)

This IDC study will examine the cloud storage market in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan), or APEJ. The evolution of cloud storage within APEJ is a challenged one. Local legislation, economies of scale, and the attitudes of internal IT staff will each contribute detractors that will make the reality of a pan-APEJ (or APAC) service provider (SP), or that of any existing international cloud storage providers having a successful regional business model, very challenging.

With a number of countries placing restrictions on the mobility of certain kinds of data beyond national boundaries, regional and global players will be severely challenged in delivering a cost-effective model based on their existing infrastructure. The requirement to restrict the movement of data beyond physical boundaries is counter-intuitive to the methods used by cloud storage providers to maximize storage efficiencies.

These restrictions are further compounded by concerns among IT management regarding the security of data, the availability of data, and most significantly, the security of their jobs. Since the concept of cloud computing (including cloud storage) is to outsource information offsite, this is naturally leading to some resistance within the datacenter staff with regard to recommending cloud.

"The real opportunity will most likely lie with the local telco and online SPs that have both national datacenters facilities and the internal network bandwidth capabilities that can best serve the local small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) markets. In these markets, while the concerns of data security are not particularly reduced, the lack of internal IT resources does make the concept of outsourcing IT services a far more attractive proposition. Combined with the fact that, for many APEJ countries, the telco is closely tied to the government, issues of data security and integrity are somewhat lessened for the SME market, which has no choice but to place a greater reliance on external support," says Simon Piff, program director, Storage Research, IDC Asia/Pacific.