BASKING RIDGE:  Adoption of cloud services in the Asia-Pacific region continues to grow dramatically, and Verizon Business is meeting that demand by extending its flagship cloud-computing solution into the company’s recently opened Hong Kong data center.

The company’s latest in-region expansion of its Verizon Computing as a Service (CaaS) solution enables Pacific Rim enterprise clients to better meet region-specific performance, security and compliance requirements.  These localized capabilities are increasingly important, given the region’s projected economic growth.  For example, recent International Monetary Fund forecasts show that Asia’s developing economies will expand 9.2 percent in 2010, outpacing growth of 2.6 percent in advanced countries.

“Driven in large part by its overall economic prosperity, the Asia-Pacific region is leading the world in embracing cloud computing,” said Andrew Dobbins, regional vice president – Asia-Pacific, Verizon Business.  “Cloud computing offers enterprises significant advantages over traditional IT models, and helps accelerate time to market and enhance productivity.”

A recent global Gartner, Inc. study[1]  of 1,587 IT professionals in 40 countries found that 39 percent indicated that they allocated IT budget to cloud computing as a key initiative for their organization.  “As more companies in Asia-Pacific continue to move their resource-intensive applications to the cloud, the increasing need for in-region advanced data centers is becoming more inherent,” said Bon Igou, research director, Gartner Inc.