Asian companies looking for innovative technology from the region

The pandemic has underscored the role of cloud-based tools while driving a shift in the priorities of customers.

A newly released report from Alibaba Cloud revealed that 65 per cent of the businesses in Asia have already adopted at least one technology solution from an Asian provider. Respondents (72 per cent) said they believe Asian provider can provide better solutions because they have a better sense of understanding of the Asian mindset.

About 1,000 participants from Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines responded to the survey, which was conducted in late 2020 by an independent research organization to understand the role of cloud solutions and confidence in Asian innovation among the business community.

A vast majority (85 per cent) of businesses feel that cloud-native solutions have helped them cope with the impact of the pandemic and 69 per cent reported that a hybrid cloud approach supported them in disaster recovery and business continuity planning. This proved especially true in regions like Indonesia, where 85 per cent of businesses see hybrid cloud solutions as critical to their longevity.

The pandemic has underscored the role of cloud-based tools while driving a shift in the priorities of customers. Before the pandemic, the ability to integrate with existing IT infrastructure was the primary concern of businesses thinking about adopting a cloud solution. After it began, a vendor’s security credentials became the most important (58 per cent), particularly among businesses in markets like the Philippines (62 per cent).

The survey found that the perception of cloud-based service providers is very positive. A substantial majority (84 per cent) of the respondents agree that cloud-based service providers deliver on their promises. In addition, hyperscale cloud providers were discovered to be preferred over global enterprise tech consultants, local third-party partners, and in-house teams by 43 per cent of Asian businesses.

Reinforcing these findings, 73 per cent of businesses feel confident in Asia’s ability to innovate technologically and 65 per cent reported having already adopted a solution from a regional provider. Among the regions represented in the survey, 74 per cent of Hong Kong companies have adopted local solutions.

A diverse base of customers across the region leveraged cloud to foster their digital transformation progress and business efficiency in 2020, and these include:

PrestoMall, one of Malaysia’s largest homegrown e-commerce platform adopted Alibaba Cloud’s PolarDB, a cloud-native relational database to power its next phase of growth while maintaining cost efficiency, witnessing over 40 per cent cost reduction after the data migration according to the company. Following the database migration in the beginning of 2020, PrestoMall has since moved its entire IT system to Alibaba Cloud, said Erwin Foo, group CTO at PrestoMall.

“Due to the complexity of the e-commerce platforms, we need a reliable, robust and scalable database that can enable the growth of our dynamic business without worrying too much about the infrastructure and support needed,” he said.

In Japan, enish, a game company, leveraged Alibaba Cloud’s gaming solution starting from 2020 with products ranging from its Container Service for Kubernetes, cloud-native database PolarDB, log service, and Server Migration Centre to its corporate communications platform DingTalk for communications between offices. As a result, the average data processing time reduced 50 er cent while the server cost reduced 30 per cent, said Lin Tan, technology leader at enish.

“The ability to use the cloud infrastructure in Asian regions without any problems was key for us,” Tan said.