90% of APAC organizations will increase their public cloud storage budgets in 2024, driven by business transformation initiatives and growing data security requirements

BOSTON & TOKYO -- Asia-Pacific organizations are increasing their investments in public cloud storage to drive infrastructure migration, cloud modernization, and new data security and recovery requirements. According to the 2024 Wasabi Global Cloud Storage Index, 93% of APAC organizations expect to increase the amount of data they store in the public cloud in 2024, up 8% from last year. Commissioned by Wasabi Technologies, the hot cloud storage company, and conducted by Vanson Bourne, the Wasabi Global Cloud Storage Index uncovers the changing attitudes toward public cloud storage adoption, the factors that influence storage buying decisions, and the top priorities when it comes to budget, capacity, vendor selection, billing, features and satisfaction.

The 2024 Cloud Storage Index shows 47% of respondent’s cloud storage bills are allocated to various data operations and retrieval fees. APAC enterprises are no exception, with a similar proportion of billing allocated to fees. Japan and Australia indicated an even higher proportional mix of fees, at 50%. Nevertheless, countries across the APAC region continue to increase their budgets and the amount of data they store in the cloud to support new IT initiatives like cloud infrastructure migration and modernization, and to enhance backup, recovery, and other data security requirements.

Japan is planning for continued investments in cloud storage, despite an unfavorable mix of spending on storage-related data fees

· 94% of Japan respondents say they will increase the amount of data they store in the public cloud in 2024, a slightly higher rate than the global average of 93%
· However, a large proportion of storage spending in Japan goes to storage fees, not storage capacity. Japan organizations say half their cloud storage bill (50%) is consumed by storage fees like data operations, retrieval, transfer, and egress
· These fees are part of the reason why 55% of Japan organizations say they exceeded their budgeted spend on cloud storage
· When asked about AI/ML initiatives, generative AI ranked #1 among Japan as the leading workload planned for deployment, or currently deployed
· When asked about the top priorities driving AI/ML adoption in 2024, Japan respondents ranked accelerating innovation and development cycles for existing products/services and improving customer facing product/services as their top drivers
· Thinking specifically about storage-related AI/ML challenges, Japan ranked unpredictable storage cost patterns (e.g., egress fees, data access fees), as a leading concern

“Despite many organizations struggling to control cloud costs due to complex and ubiquitous fee structures, we’re still seeing continued growth and adoption across the APAC region, particularly in Japan,” said Andrew Smith, senior manager of strategy and market intelligence at Wasabi Technologies, and a former IDC analyst. “44% of APAC respondents we surveyed consider their organization’s IT services adoption strategy to be ‘cloud-first,’ indicating they will continue to prioritize cloud services adoption over any alternative requiring owned or on-premises infrastructure.”

100% of Australia respondents say their organization will adopt, or will plan to adopt AI/ML applications or services within the next 12 months

· 89% of Australia respondents say they expect to increase the amount of data their organization stores in the public cloud in 2024. This is slightly below the APAC average of 93%, but still an impressively high result
· 83% of Australian respondents say they expect their organization’s public cloud storage budget to increase in 2024
· Similar to Japan, Australia also has a slightly higher proportional mix of spending on fees, with respondents saying 50% of their cloud storage budget is allocated to fees. This unfavorable mix is likely part of the reason why 50% of Australian respondents say their organization exceeded budgeted spend on cloud storage last year
· All of our Australia respondents (100%) say their organization is adopting or planning to adopt some form of AI/ML application or service within the next 12 months. Certainly, this indicates an eager willingness to expand AI/ML solutions and strategies in Australia, but this endeavor won’t come without infrastructure-related challenges. Specifically, Australia respondents indicated a high rate of concern with addressing new data backup, protection and recovery requirements associated with AI/ML adoption

Singapore prioritizes IT cloud services sustainability, and looks to drive operational improvements through AI/ML solution adoption

· For the second year in a row, Singapore ranked sustainability (in terms of infrastructure architecture, service provider initiatives/commitments, or built-in tools for things like carbon footprint calculation) as the #1 most important consideration when it comes to choosing a cloud storage provider/service
· Singapore indicates a lower proportional mix of cloud storage fees (with only 44% of billing allocated to fees, on average). However, counterintuitively, Singapore indicated the highest rate of budget excess among all countries surveyed; with 66% of Singapore respondents saying their organization exceeded budgeted spend on cloud storage in 2023
· Singapore ranked operational improvements as the #1 driver for AI/ML implementation, and chose AI/ML solutions for security and compliance (e.g., advanced anomaly detection) as the top workload their organization has implemented or is planning to implement solutions for

“It comes as no surprise that APAC followed suit with the global trend that ranked AI/ML incorporation as a top priority,” said Michael King, VP & GM, Asia Pacific and Japan, Wasabi Technologies. “Enterprises are realizing that to maintain a competitive edge, they must find new and innovative ways to deploy AI capabilities, both for internal processes and as offerings to customers. That is why many are looking to increase their storage amount to host the mountain of data that is necessary to run AI/ML applications that have become so critical.”

Additional APAC markets (India & South Korea) indicate even higher rates of cloud storage capacity and budget growth, and are prioritizing unique use cases when it comes to AI/ML adoption

· This year the Cloud Storage Index included respondents from India and South Korea in order to gain perspective and understanding on high-growth markets within the larger APAC region
· 96% of respondents across both India and South Korea indicate their organization will increase the amount of data stored in the public cloud in 2024
· Similarly, 96% of South Korea respondents say their organization will increase public cloud storage budgets in 2024 (compared to 90% in India)
· India and South Korea both ranked “accelerating innovation and development cycles for existing products/services” as the leading driver of AI/ML solution adoption. In terms of planned and implemented AI/ML workloads, India ranked computer vision (inclusive of a range of image and video processing or recognition) as a leading use case, and South Korea identified gaming applications (including 3D rendering) as one of its top 3 workloads driving AI/ML adoption, higher than any other country surveyed