APAC cloud services ring up $2B over four quarters
Businesses in Asia-Pacific, excluding Japan, have signed up for more cloud services to support their adoption of mobility and data analytics, as well as to better manage overall costs.
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The value of cloud-related services deals inked between third-quarter 2014 and second-quarter 2015 hit US$2 billion, clocking a five-year compound annual growth rate of 43 percent. Demand for such services had been fuelled by increasing deployment of third-platform tools and pressures from top management to push up profits while reducing costs, according to an IDC report.
Sherrel Roche, the research firm's Asia-Pacific IT services senior market analyst, said:
"Enterprises in the region have ramped up the transformation of their products, services, and business processes to interact more efficiently with their customers, suppliers, and other important stakeholders through digital transformation.
"These enterprises are embracing third-platform technologies, especially mobility and analytics, with cloud the underlying services delivery platform,"said Roche.
IDC further noted that the need to better manage their costs as well as cope with the proliferation of digital technologies brought about significant challenges for players in the region's IT services market.
It added that the "turbulent" economic climate, emergence of local and pure-play cloud services providers, and ongoing pressure on traditional services providers to beef up their consulting and industry-specific offerings were changing the way IT services were delivered.
"Enterprises are transitioning their workloads from traditional IT outsourcing services to cloud models, leading to continued price pressure within existing contracts as customers opt for hybrid IT services consumption model," IDC said.
Amid this changing landscape, more businesses now looked for advice in strategic and management consulting, so IT services providers would need to beef up their business consulting skillsets to tap this demand.
IDC added that they must boost their cloud professional services capabilities as well as better tap cloud to deliver their services and integrate legacy IT environments with cloud capabilities to manage hybrid environments.