As companies continue to spend and invest on technology, the global public cloud services market is one sector that is expected to see spending of over $200 billion according to Gartner. The Southeast Asian region, which is seeing accelerated growth in the digital economy, is at the forefront of this.
Manik Saha, CIO for Asia Pacific and Japan for SAP agrees with this. In fact, he says that growth in the global public cloud services may even go beyond the predicted amount. Gartner’s forecast shows that the market is projected to grow at around 17% to 18% in 2019.
According to Saha, there are a couple of factors to this. Firstly, more companies are looking to using infrastructure that is provided by hyperscalers around the world. They are moving most of their work from on-premise to hyperscale. This move, he said, is one of the reasons why this growth is achievable. Secondly, Saha said this move will allow businesses to be more agile, flexible and speedier in terms of how they position their IT. As a result, they plan to use hyperscale as their next infrastructure platform.
“We’re seeing predictions from analyst firm, Gartner, of about 17% to 18% year on year And that is a huge amount, considering the amount of existing infrastructure out there. In some sense, you can argue the $200 billion predicted is probably only on the low end of the scale.”
Looking at Southeast Asia, Saha says the region is driven by massive economic growth. “If you look at mobile users in this region, it’s the highest. A lot of consumer behaviour is driven by mobile apps and mobile usage. This growth in mobile apps and usage will lead to more services and products online. This will automatically drive the cloud growth.”
Saha also said that as most ASEAN economies are emerging economies, they can skip one or two generations of legacy infrastructure and directly move to cloud, which is much agile and flexible. In his opinion, this is one of the reasons for faster cloud growth in the Asia Pacific and Japan region compared to Europe.
Speaking of cloud, Saha said that he sees both public cloud and hybrid cloud as complementing each other instead of competing. For most companies that have legacy and background on an on-premise setup, the hybrid cloud serves an intermediate step to get onto the public cloud. He added that in SAP, they are using public clouds when they move from on-premise. But for their internal systems, the hybrid cloud is an intermediate approach because not all systems can move at once.
There are drivers to what will be the final state of the hybrid cloud. Firstly, would companies want to put all their information on public clouds, or would they still want to have some on-premise? This would be a reason why they would want a hybrid cloud setup. Secondly, companies may want to have an option to have some data or applications on-premise, which leads to hybrid cloud.
“There is a lot of debate going on in the industry among companies looking at what is the economics and the viability of moving 100% to cloud as part of their roadmap.”
As more companies use public clouds, the issue of security arises as well. Saha said that talk of security or ensuring that corporate data is safe in the cloud is going to become more relevant. “Regardless of whether a company is moving to cloud or staying on-premise or in a hybrid environment, there is going to be a very strong conversation on this. When companies move to the big cloud providers, they can choose to go hyperscale or pick SaaS solution providers like SAP. There are billions of dollars being invested on trying to safeguard, from a cybersecurity point of view, their assets and premises that are provided to their customers.”
Small and medium sized companies will not have the huge investment funds available to them to safeguard all the security related threats that are out there. Saha added that it would be better to safeguard data by working with partners that are scalable as oppose to managing cybersecurity on their own. This would give customers assurance when they move to cloud; that they are not just buying the service but also a certain degree of security with that. However, Saha said that there is always a discussion on what can be prevented in the world of cybersecurity because there are always elements of malicious intent.
Referring to data residency laws in Vietnam, Saha said this is more of controlling of who has access and processing the data instead of a cybersecurity issue. Similar to the GDPR in Europe, it’s more from an ownership and custodian point of view on what happens to the data. Having said that, Saha believes that hyperscalers are coming in with best practices across the world from a cybersecurity and services point of view.
With AI and Machine Learning being the trends in tech today, Saha said that it’s a question of how businesses use these to give customers what they want and to keep them connected. All these technologies are supporting enablers towards the customer experience. A lot of businesses are using this to give customers the complete experience in using the technology. He added that the most important thing for a company is to be able to capture that experience and use that as a way to monetise the services and products.
“We are going to get into more real-life scenarios that are going to use data in more meaningful ways. A lot of companies are going to monetise the data that they have within their own companies and start using them in a more meaningful way this year.” Saha believes that companies will accelerate the processing of their data to get more insights this year in order to get the best out of them.
Manik Saha will be speaking at the Cloud and Datacenter Convention 2019 in Hanoi, Vietnam, on the 21st of February 2019. Organised by W.Media, the event will be Vietnam’s first all-inclusive event where end-users, operators, system integrators, consultants & engineers are able to meet and connect.
The convention will highlight key progress, best practices, concerns and future of cloud and data centre innovations, featuring international speakers and industry experts from SAP, VNPT Northen Data Center, FPT Software, Viettel IDC and the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) Vietnam. It is one not to be missed. If you are interested, please register here.
Archive
- October 2024(44)
- September 2024(94)
- August 2024(100)
- July 2024(99)
- June 2024(126)
- May 2024(155)
- April 2024(123)
- March 2024(112)
- February 2024(109)
- January 2024(95)
- December 2023(56)
- November 2023(86)
- October 2023(97)
- September 2023(89)
- August 2023(101)
- July 2023(104)
- June 2023(113)
- May 2023(103)
- April 2023(93)
- March 2023(129)
- February 2023(77)
- January 2023(91)
- December 2022(90)
- November 2022(125)
- October 2022(117)
- September 2022(137)
- August 2022(119)
- July 2022(99)
- June 2022(128)
- May 2022(112)
- April 2022(108)
- March 2022(121)
- February 2022(93)
- January 2022(110)
- December 2021(92)
- November 2021(107)
- October 2021(101)
- September 2021(81)
- August 2021(74)
- July 2021(78)
- June 2021(92)
- May 2021(67)
- April 2021(79)
- March 2021(79)
- February 2021(58)
- January 2021(55)
- December 2020(56)
- November 2020(59)
- October 2020(78)
- September 2020(72)
- August 2020(64)
- July 2020(71)
- June 2020(74)
- May 2020(50)
- April 2020(71)
- March 2020(71)
- February 2020(58)
- January 2020(62)
- December 2019(57)
- November 2019(64)
- October 2019(25)
- September 2019(24)
- August 2019(14)
- July 2019(23)
- June 2019(54)
- May 2019(82)
- April 2019(76)
- March 2019(71)
- February 2019(67)
- January 2019(75)
- December 2018(44)
- November 2018(47)
- October 2018(74)
- September 2018(54)
- August 2018(61)
- July 2018(72)
- June 2018(62)
- May 2018(62)
- April 2018(73)
- March 2018(76)
- February 2018(8)
- January 2018(7)
- December 2017(6)
- November 2017(8)
- October 2017(3)
- September 2017(4)
- August 2017(4)
- July 2017(2)
- June 2017(5)
- May 2017(6)
- April 2017(11)
- March 2017(8)
- February 2017(16)
- January 2017(10)
- December 2016(12)
- November 2016(20)
- October 2016(7)
- September 2016(102)
- August 2016(168)
- July 2016(141)
- June 2016(149)
- May 2016(117)
- April 2016(59)
- March 2016(85)
- February 2016(153)
- December 2015(150)