Despite the cloud computing hype in America and Europe, a study by Bangkok-based Geoprise Technologies shows that the Asia Pacific region hasn't reached the peak of the technology hype curve quite yet.
"Mainstream cloud computing adoption is likely to occur within the next 5 to 10 years, and not within the next 2 to 5 years as many industry observers generally predict," said Nelson Nones, chairman and CEO of Geoprise, which offers IT services, project management and consulting.
In its recently released study, 'Forecast for Asia: Partly Cloudy Computing, Chance of Mainstream Adoption', Geoprise analyzed fundamental conditions and the availability of public cloud computing services in 34 Asia Pacific countries, drawing upon the firm's first-hand experience helping its clients in the region to chart their cloud computing strategies over the next 3 to 5 years.
Money can't buy
One of the study's most startling findings is that software-as-a-service offerings for businesses cannot be purchased today in over half the Asia Pacific countries studied, even though they are almost universally available in the US and Europe. Moreover, none of these offerings are currently available in mainland China, the region's largest business software market.
Geoprise also determined that only 4 of the 34 Asia Pacific countries it evaluated have personal data protection laws that conceivably meet European Union (EU) rules allowing data to be transferred out of the EU, a situation which constrains global cloud computing service providers from expanding further within the region as they set up local data centers to reduce latency, and connect them to geo-redundant networks to maximize uptime.
In addition, Geoprise found that almost two-thirds of Asia Pacific countries have no personal data protection rules at all. "Geo-redundancy shouldn't expose a public cloud's entire community to noncompliance risks in the EU," said Nones, "but many Asian customers don't have to comply, and will avoid services that put them within the EU's reach."