Events

AppDirect Looks to the Future in Hong Kong

By James O'Connor / December 9, 2014

Late last month, members of the AppDirect team were on hand in Hong Kong for the annual Cloud World Forum Asia, the region’s leading cloud technology conference. For the second year in a row, AppDirect hosted a pre-conference workshop on cloud service monetization and our co-CEO Daniel Saks gave a keynote on how AppDirect enables companies to succeed in cloud service commerce.

Our presentations were a hit, and everyone we met seemed engaged and excited by the cloud service opportunities that are quickly emerging across the region. While cloud services adoption in APAC has lagged behind North America and Europe, the race to deliver cloud services in the area is heating up. In fact, according to a recent report from Hitachi Data Systems, “competition between different countries and regions to become the digital hub of Asia will enter a critical stage in 2014.”

Clearly, the struggle to come out on top includes significant investments in data centers and other infrastructure, but cloud services are also a key element. One APAC country, Australia, has already made big strides to move to the head of the pack. As Forrester analyst James Staten points out, “on key technology trends, Australia has been very quick to move from experimentation to full-market adoption. And that pattern is playing out today with cloud services.”

That’s one reason why our recent partnership with Telstra, announced in October, is so exciting for us at AppDirect. It not only gives us the chance to work with a company that is leading the cloud market in APAC (and beyond), but it also gives us a front row seat to further expansion and growth of the cloud service commerce sector across the region as a whole.

Aside from a quick break to pick up the Cloud Asia Award for Best Cloud Platform, our time in Hong Kong was jampacked with meetings, presentations, and networking, all of which helps us understand where the market is going and how we can provide even more value to our partners and their customers. We look forward to working with even more providers in the region to grow cloud service commerce in Asia.

James O’Connor is part of the Business Development team at AppDirect.