Abstract
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.
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