A new study from consulting firm Frost &Sullivan predicts that the Asia-Pacific region’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) industry revenues are likely to reach an estimated US$1.4099bn by 2017, a near 16x increase over last year’s regional revenues of US$88.9m. 

 

While growth to date has been limited by overloaded networks and lack of marketplace education, Frost &Sullivan research analyst Mayank Kapoor said he expects this to change rapidly.

 

"The ability to instantaneously provision infrastructure and scale it in an on-demand manner is a highly attractive model for enterprises in the region," Kapoor said. 

 

"The value proposition is even more compelling considering the operational expenditures (OpEx) nature of the services, eliminating the need for capital expenditure (CapEx) required for setting up and/or ramping up dedicated infrastructure."

 

Frost &Sullivan said in its report that a number of factors could, however, limit adoption of cloud-based infrastructure in the near term.

 

Worries regarding security, privacy, and data sovereignty, as well as the choice of adopting a public or private cloud, present potential difficulties for enterprises, as well as general hesitation about giving control of infrastructure to third-party service providers. 

 

Ongoing latency and access reliability issues also continue to dog the Asian internet industry, making many cloud service providers wary of the market.

 

Frost &Sullivan, however, said it believes that these concerns can be overcome in a number of ways, including third-party auditing, best-practice frameworks (including SAS 70 and ISO 27001) and increasing awareness of security.

 

Kapoor said he believes that overall, the issues potentially holding back the IaaS industry in Asia are not stopping global firms from entering the business. 

 

"The upsurge in demand from enterprises in the Asia Pacific [region] has already led global players such as Amazon, Microsoft, Rackspace, and Verizon to establish local presence," Kapoor said, indicating the key companies advancing the industry in the market. 

 

"Furthermore, local presence gives more confidence to enterprises that their data will stay geographically closer and curb latency issues."