Cloud market keeps rising amid floods

As flooding affects factories and workers across Thailand, the local cloud computing market is expected to grow by 50% to 1.5 billion baht next year. The country worst floods will lead to long term growth opportunities for the IT Industry, especially technologies associated with cloud computing. The On-Demand cloud applications play a critical role in protecting data assets while keeping business operational, empowering staff to work remotely with better collaboration and secure data centers and back-up services. The availability of 3G wireless broadband services and the country's increase in Internet penetration rate from 25% to 30% by the end of the year will support the growth of online services. Cloud computing growth in Asia is at 38% this year. The floods have driven demand for cloud-based data-centers, disaster recovery sites and business continuity plans into other sectors including small and medium sized companies, not only large enterprises. Remote working via monthly service charges has become an emerging trend. During the floods, data centers saw a demand rise of 200%, or even 300% from normal times, mainly from manufacturers that needed to move their data to a safe place. Cloud computing allows people to work from anywhere with an Internet connection. More and more industries are expected to become a key adopter of cloud services.
The floods could be a wake-up call for companies to pay attention to their network protection and improve IT efficiency.