Cloud infrastructure in Southeast Asia has developed rapidly as the digital economy takes hold, with Singapore leading the way. It enables businesses to collaborate from anywhere, access essential business tools online, scale quickly, maintain data security, and remain agile in an ever-changing environment. Statista projects that the Public Cloud market revenues will reach USD 16.39 billion in 2024, a sign of the industry’s rapid growth.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Report published in 2022, cloud spending was strong among Southeast Asian startups despite the uncertainty caused by the post-pandemic landscape. This spending was necessary for companies to remain competitive as the world began digitalising in multiple industries. Other cloud adoption drivers included the availability of many regional data centres, infrastructure modernisation, and the emergence of low-code/no-code platforms.

We look at how unicorns and startups in Southeast Asia are harnessing cloud technology for growth

Here are the cloud infrastructure startups that are currently gaining traction in Southeast Asia:

Cloud Kinetics

Managed services partner Cloud Kinetics aims to show its customers the power of the cloud to solve their business problems. It enables them to reimagine the technology and applications they build, scale the solutions, and win in the marketplace. It offers services like cloud migration, end-to-end automation, hybrid and multi-cloud options, data analytics, and application development modernisation.

Cloud Kinetics is a portfolio company of I Squared Capital, a global infrastructure investment fund, and operates in Asia, the United States, and Australia. It has strategic partnerships with all cloud and digital ecosystem leaders, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Oracle. It has a capital investment target of USD 100 million.

IDCloudHost

Indonesia’s IDCloudHost offers affordable and flexible cloud server services to suit customers’ needs. It enables easy self-setup to upgrade or downgrade the capabilities, provides free anti-DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) protection, and a one-click apps catalogue. Moreover, its subscription allows free web migration services, unlimited bandwidth, fast and stable website performance, and 24/7 customer support.

According to its website, IDCloudhost has served more than 200,000 users. Its last funding was in 2021, a USD 5 million injection from Bukalapak co-founder Achmad Zaky through his investment firm Init 6. It earmarked the investment to hire more experts for its team and expand its service offerings.

Umbrel

Self-hosting platform Umbrel offers a personalised cloud and OS to enable customers to store files, run a virtual private network (VPN), stream media, and run a Bitcoin Node from home. It has one-click OS updates, home assistant integration, an ad blocker, and an app store with self-hosted applications and one-click installation.

Umbrel’s funding came from 12 investors, and it received a Seed Round in 2021 worth USD 3 million. Its benefactors are Village Global, OSS Capital LP, Slow Ventures, Huat Ventures, Fulgur Ventures, and other individual donors. The company wants everyone who wishes to decentralise from Big Tech to have a solution available, taking greater control over their digital footprint by managing their home servers.

Moskitos 

Finally, Vietnam-based Moskitos provides a cloud-based API (Application Programming Interface) management platform for customers, specifically in the B2B (Business-to-Business) and SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) space. Its product is an API governance platform, a framework for ensuring that the developed apps are high quality, comply with regulations, and help companies meet their specific goals.

Moskitos raised USD 2.89 million in a Series A Round from CapHorn Invest in 2018; however, in 2019. Nuageo, a Consulting-as-a-Service (CaaS) firm, acquired it. It has a product called Crosscut iPaaS, an open integration platform for apps and data to modernise information systems.

Broader impact of cloud infrastructure in Southeast Asia on the tech industry

Cloud infrastructure benefits will push the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to invest in, support, regulate, and manage the ecosystem so businesses can see its value. They must also be able to integrate emerging systems with legacy ones or replace them entirely.

With the digital economy in full swing, startups in Southeast Asia are adopting remote working solutions, meaning they need to embrace cloud technologies to thrive. The distributed teams can use virtual private networks (VPNs), online storage services like Dropbox, and Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDIs) to access shared workspaces and data stored on the server. Furthermore, employees can use Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions from cloud infrastructure startups, which provide hardware and software tools for developing apps to run businesses.

Overall, cloud infrastructure in Southeast Asia will continue to develop fast, and companies must harness the technology to scale their businesses. About 60% of corporate data is already stored online as of last year, so it will be vital for startups to acknowledge the shift to the cloud and align their business operations toward compliance. These changes will save them from lengthy installation and onsite setup times, costly hardware, the need for experts to manage data centres, and using too much of the limited productive land area in the region.