US$2.7bil SMB cloud services industry in Indonesia by 2018

The small and medium business (SMB) cloud services market in Indonesia is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30% in the next three years from Rp15 trillion (US$1.2 billion) in 2015 to Rp33 trillion (US$2.7 billion) by 2018.

This growth will primarily be driven by SMBs moving business functions into the cloud as more tools and solutions are developed specifically for the SMB market, cloud computing specialist Odin said in a statement, citing its annual SMB Cloud Insights research report.

The 2015 SMB Cloud Insights research for Indonesia reveals that infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is the largest market opportunity for cloud services in 2015, accounting for 40% of the market at Rp 6.1 billion (US$$496 million).

This segment – which includes virtual private servers, dedicated servers, and elastic computing – is projected to grow at a 24% CAGR and reach Rp11.7 billion (US$956 million) by 2018, driven largely by firms without any type of server moving into the cloud market for the first time, Odin said in a statement.

The research also shows that business applications, or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), will soon become the fastest growing cloud category in Indonesia, growing at a CAGR of 43%.

Business applications such as file sharing and online backup are currently the most commonly used applications in Indonesia, and adoption is expected to increase, Odin said.

Less commonly used business applications such as payroll and HR (human resource) applications, as well as customer relationship management (CRM) apps, are expected to see rapid growth in adoption over the next three years, it added.

“As evidenced by this study, the Indonesian cloud market remains poised for rapid growth over the next few years – especially in the IaaS segment – underscoring a greater awareness and appreciation for cloud computing even in its early stages today,” said Pavel Ershov, Odin vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific and Japan.

“Increasingly, more SMBs in Indonesia are using the cloud for their core business functions in order to compete with larger corporations.

“This is a scenario we expect to see play out across today’s dynamic Asia Pacific business environment,” he added.

Odin was formerly the service provider business of cloud and virtualisation specialist Parallels Inc, spun off in March this year. With offices in 15 countries, it supports more than 10,000 service providers in delivering applications and cloud services to more than 10 million SMBs, it claimed.

Other highlights of the SMB Cloud Insights report for Indonesia include:

• The market represents more than four million SMBs using cloud services. Security and control panels are two key areas for cloud services.

• Unified communications – which includes hosted business voice services, email, and collaboration applications – is the second-largest category of the Indonesian cloud market (Rp4 trillion or US$324 million) and is poised for expansion.
  • Nearly 80% of Indonesian SMBs do not use email services. Of those which do, only 1% use in-house servers for email, another 7% use a service provider, and the remaining 12% use free email services.
  • Premium email security is a large concern – of the 20% of SMBs using email, an overwhelming 89% said that the increased need for email security was a purchase trigger for obtaining premium hosted email.

• The Indonesian web presence market is valued at Rp1.6 trillion (US$128 million). Today, only 11% of Indonesia’s SMBs have websites. The market is set to double in the next three years to Rp4 billion (US$322 million).
  • Interestingly, 55% of Indonesian SMBs with websites have mobile-optimised sites. This compares to just 30% of SMBs in the United States and 25% of SMBs in Germany.
  • ‘Optimising mobile sites’ was ranked by respondents as the top feature, more than double the second priority of ‘displays on mobile without optimisation’ (22%), and ‘only displays properly on a computer’ (23%).

• Almost three-quarters of all Indonesian SMBs purchase their services from just one or two service providers. One of the key reasons for this behaviour is that SMBs want to maximise the efficiency of their spending. This demonstrates the need for service providers to offer high-value, best-in-breed bundles and transparent pricing structures, Odin said.

Odin said its SMB Cloud Insights report focuses on the cloud services that have the most current and future appeal for SMBs across four key categories: IaaS, web presence and web applications, unified communications, and business applications or SaaS.

Research reports are available for 15 countries including Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Regional reports are also available for Europe and Asia Pacific.

All SMB Cloud Insights reports are available for download here.