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RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS
Study reveals the drivers, priorities, and
barriers behind data center investment
Enterprises are experiencing rapid growth in the data More importantly, these stakeholders expect applica-
they can access and store, which is having a profound tions to perform consistently within a secured compu-
impact on how they invest in data centers. Therefore, in ting environment, regardless of their geographical loca-
January 2014 Digital Realty commissioned Forrester tion when accessing the service.
Consulting to survey enterprises in the Asia-Pacific re-
gion about the drivers, priorities, and barriers behind Forrester’s study found that:
their data center investment.
Demand continues to grow: 59% of firms expect
The study surveyed 267 IT decision-makers from multi- their data center spending to grow in the next 12
national corporations (MNCs) with presence in the Asia- months, and this trend will continue in 2015. Com-
Pacific region. panies expect their data center spending to stabi-
lize in 2016–17 as they fully outsource their data
Forrester’s study yielded three key findings: center services and use hybrid environments to
support demands associated with business growth.
Optimization and consolidation are key drivers Growth will be the fastest in Australia and Singa-
for acquiring new data center capacity: 47% of pore.
respondents cited virtualization as the biggest driv-
er for seeking more data center capacity, as it re- Firms are optimizing and consolidating their
quires significantly higher power densities and low- technology infrastructure to support new tech-
latency, as well as high-capacity network infrastruc- nology initiatives: Business growth, big data, the
ture. Big data was the second most popular reason Internet of Things (IoT), as well as the need for bet-
for expanding data center capacity, followed by ter business continuity and disaster recovery, are
consolidation and business growth. driving a strong growth in storage and computing
environments. 47% of respondents rated virtualiza-
Customers prioritize the data center’s risk pro- tion as the top reason for growth in data center ca-
file, resilience, and level of control when evalu- pacity. In Japan, 62% respondents said data center
ating future capacity: In the Asia-Pacific region, budgets will remain flat in 2014, so it’s not surpris-
firms rated the risk profile of the data center loca- ing that among the Asia-Pacific firms surveyed,
tion, followed by the data center’s resilience and Japanese businesses also rated highest in deploy-
availability, as the most important factors when ing consolidation and virtualization initiatives.
making decisions about acquiring new data center
capacity. However, in the mature Australian market, Asia-Pacific firms will source their IT infrastruc-
firms cited network connectivity as the main priority ture within hybrid environments: Firms will use a
guiding their decision. mix of private and public cloud services to meet
business demands, including the need for IT infra-
Singapore and Japan will lead data center out- structure that is always on and can be instantly pro-
sourcing in the Asia-Pacific region: Firms in the visioned, as well as secure computing environ-
Asia-Pacific region increasingly want to outsource ments and consistent application performance.
or co-locate their data centers. In Singapore, 78% 78% of respondents in Singapore and 69% of those
of respondents have plans to outsource their data in Japan want to outsource their IT in some capaci-
centers, compared with 51% in Australia, where ty, by co-locating, fully outsourcing, or using infra-
customers have already made significant invest- structure-as-a - service (IaaS) or managed ser-
ments in building their own data centers. vices.
Companies increasingly use digital platforms to win, Security concerns and the need for control may keep
serve, and retain customers, Forrester claims. Custom- many facilities on-premises, but that isn’t necessarily
ers, employees, business units, and partners already the best solution.
expect their IT environments to be seamlessly available
24 hours a day, seven days a week.
12 Asian eMarketing January 2015 - Digital Marketing Trends & Predictions
