APAC firms keenest on public cloud storage, hit hardest by fees 

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Firms in the Asia-Pacific region are embracing the public cloud to store fast-growing volumes of data, specifically for backup, archive and disaster recovery initiatives, but are hit the hardest by public cloud storage fees compared to their global counterparts, according to Wasabi’s 2023 Global Cloud Storage Index. 

The series, commissioned by Wasabi Technologies and conducted by Vanson Bourne in November and December 2022, covers 1,000 IT decision-makers including 200 across Australia, Japan and Singapore.

“The Asia-Pacific market is unique in its ambitions to adopt new technology and implement cloud services to support digital transformation projects,” said Andrew Smith, senior manager of strategy and market intelligence at Wasabi Technologies. 

“Even with storage fees from API operations, egress, and data retrievals accounting for over half of APAC organisations’ cloud storage bills, the region still indicated some of the highest forecast growth rates for cloud storage volumes and budgets over the next year.”

In the region, 85% of respondents expect the amount of data they store in the public cloud to grow over the next year compared to global average of 84%, and 87% expect their cloud storage budget to grow in 2023 compared to 84% globally.

Also, 93% migrated storage from on-premises to the cloud in 2022, higher than the global average of 89%, while 61% use more than one public cloud storage provider, which is higher than global the average of 57%.

In Singapore, 96% of firms migrated storage from on-premises to cloud storage last year, higher than the global average of 89%.

Only 28% of organisations in Singapore exceeded their cloud storage budget last year, much lower than the APAC average of 51% and a global average of 52%.

New regulatory and compliance requirements are an important factor driving cloud storage budget growth in Singapore in 2023 (49%), compared to Japan and Australia (both at 35%).

Smith said the APAC segment of the cloud storage market is typically the fastest-growing part of the market, and it has some of the most diversity when it comes to cloud maturity and vendor adoption.