Organisations in Asia-Pacific believe technology providers from the region can provide better products and services due to their intimate knowledge of “the Asian mindset”. In fact, 65% already have adopted at least one technology product from an Asian provider.
Another 73% expressed confidence in the region’s ability to innovate in the technology space, according to a study released Wednesday by Alibaba Cloud, which polled 1,000 respondents in Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
The survey revealed that 72% perceived Asian technology providers to deliver better products because they had a better grasp of the Asian mindset. Amongst those that had implemented Asian-made technology products, 74% in Hong Kong had picked up local service offerings.
Respondents also were probed about their thoughts on cloud products, and 85% believed cloud-native offerings had helped them deal with the impact of the global pandemic. This included 85% in Indonesia, where these businesses perceived hybrid cloud applications to be critical to their survival. Across the region, 69% said a hybrid cloud strategy facilitated their disaster recovery and business continuity initiatives.
The COVID-19 pandemic also fuelled worries about security, with 58% prioritising a cloud vendor’s security credentials as the most important criteria. Before the virus spread, Asian businesses saw the need to integrate existing IT infrastructures as their primary concern when adopting cloud applications.
Alibaba Cloud Intelligence’s president for international business Selina Yuan said: “It is very encouraging to see the high level of confidence in Asian innovation among businesses in the region. With digitalisation so strong a trend, especially on the back of the pandemic, we believe there will be many new opportunities to build on the strong perception of the region’s cloud capabilities.”
In touting its own service offerings, Alibaba Cloud had played up its Asian heritage and investment in the region as a key competitive advantage over its US competitors. It also had underscored the fact that its international headquarters was based in Singapore.
The Hangzhou-based vendor currently operates 67 availability zones across 22 cloud regions, of which the majority are located in China and across Asia-Pacific, including Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, India, and Australia.
Alibaba last December tweaked its hybrid cloud strategy to focus on “compatibility, security, compliance, scalability, and reliability“, introducing a hybrid cloud partner programme as well as a suite of updated product offerings.
In its latest quarterly earnings, ended September 30 last year, its cloud revenues climbed year-on-year 60% to hit $2.19 billion. In August, it launched three hyperscale data centers across China as part of a three-year $28 billion cloud investment, with the new facilities running on Alibaba’s own technologies including its Apsara Distributed OS, Hanguang 800 AI chip, and X-dragon architecture.
