Cloud computing adoption continues to gain momentum across the globe. The public cloud services (PCS) market in Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) will reach $165.2 billion in 2026, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).
IDC expects the Asia-Pacific market to grow at a higher year-over-year (YoY) rate in 2022 at 31.4 percent, in comparison to 30 percent in 2021, as cloud migration continues to accelerate.
However, IDC expects the YoY growth rates to slow down beginning from 2023 with a YoY growth of 28.3 percent to 22.4 percent in 2026.
Asia-Pacific Cloud Services Market Development
"Majority of organizations have pivoted rapidly toward a digital-centric modus operandi to adapt to new ways of operating, working, and selling products and services amid various disruptions," said Estelle Quek, senior research manager at IDC.
These organizations demand better business outcomes from their adoption of digital technologies to increase efficiency, accelerate time to market, provide a superior customer experience, make quicker decisions, and respond faster to customers.
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) will achieve a market value of $80.7 billion and contribute 48.8 percent of the Asia-Pacific market in 2026.
IDC predicts more organizations will continue to accelerate IaaS adoption to reduce risks associated with capital expenditure and to operate more efficiently and profitably.
Organizations are progressively pursuing consistency, security, performance, and compliance across all resources by deploying, operating, and scaling digital infrastructure in dedicated data centers, private clouds, public clouds, and edge locations.
Platform as a service (PaaS) will reach a market value of $27.4 billion, contributing to 16.6 percent of the Asia-Pacific market in 2026.
Growth is fueled by organizations that are gradually shifting application development in-house to have better control and those exploring ways to allocate development functions to non-IT staff using low-code or no-code platforms.
Software as a service (SaaS) will grow almost three times from $20.8 billion in 2021 to $57.1 billion in 2026, contributing to 34.6 percent of the entire Asia-Pacific market.
SaaS growth is attributed to the continued adoption of core enterprise applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource management (ERM).
These SaaS applications remain top priorities as organizations desire to obtain 360-degree visibility of their customers and better serve them, plus to improve internal planning and operations by streamlining business processes and activities.
Outlook for Public Cloud Growth in Asia-Pacific Market
According to the IDC assessment, the market growth is fueled by an organization's digital transformation acceleration and cloud-first approach with continuous adoption of hybrid work models.
And, by the desire to drive better business outcomes, improve efficiencies, advance customer retention rates, and enhance profitability.
That said, I believe the upside opportunities for SaaS applications are somewhat associated with the growing trend of distributed workforce adoption and flexible working options for employees in the Asia-Pacific marketplace.