Orange Business Services (OBS) has joined NTT Ltd as the co-leaders in the Asia-Pacific telecom cloud market according to GlobalData.
According to GlobalData’s recent report, Telco Cloud Services (Asia) Competitive Landscape Assessment, OBS and NTT were rated as the leaders based on their respective overall points.
They are closely followed by BT and Telstra.
The study rates six global carriers based on four main categories: cloud portfolio; data centre footprint; software-defined infrastructure; and supplemental services in the region.
The cloud market in the region is expected to grow from $133bn in 2019 to $288bn in 2024 at a compound annual growth rate of 16.8% (source: GlobalData Cloud Computing Market Opportunity Forecast, 2019 – 2024).
While basic services such as infrastructure, platform and software as services (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS) are still the biggest market drivers, there is a growing demand for multi-cloud management, cloud-interconnect and convergence with the network domain. The report said this hits carriers’ sweet spots, driving them to strengthen their cloud portfolio and grab the growth opportunities.
Edge computing
There is also demand for cloud computing at the edge driven by ultra-low latency applications such as autonomous vehicles. Although the ecosystem is fragmented, progress is driven by the collaboration between carriers and other players such as AWS Wavelength, Azure Edge Zones, and Google Anthos for Telecom.
There is also a GSMA-supported initiative by several European and Asian telcos to co-develop interoperable edge-computing platform.
Alfie Amir, Senior Analyst at GlobalData, commented, “While OBS and NTT Ltd have strong cloud portfolios, they have different strengths that set them apart from not only other carriers but cloud providers including the hyperscalers.
“OBS differentiates with its professional services to help enterprises with their cloud journey. This is important in solution selling to address the growing consulting-led engagements today.
“NTT Ltd has an unmatched data centre footprints across the region which are crucial assets to support the increasing edge computing demand.”
Competition hots up
He warns, “However, other providers are catching up fast to close the gap. For example: BT’s recent launch [of] Cloud Security as part of its new Security Advisory Services; Telstra’s partnership with Equinix to offer its customers on-demand multi-cloud connectivity to over 170 cloud providers in 38 markets globally; CenturyLink’s strengthened professional services through partnerships with IBM and Microsoft; and Singtel’s Network Intelligence-as-a-Service that offers deeper visibility across cloud and network domains.”