The demand for cloud computing among small and medium-sized businesses is driving the growth of Australian data centres of all shapes and sizes. For many organisations, there are also regulatory and legislative requirements to store their data within Australia, such as the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act. In turn, the data centre market is growing accordingly.
The data centre market is estimated to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 4.02% during 2023-2028 in Australia, while the local cloud storage services industry is expected to grow by 9.3 % in 2023, reaching $A4.3 billion in revenue.
This growth comes as no surprise given the post-COVID data boom driven by remote work and online businesses – the data must be stored somewhere, and it's increasingly spread across multiple locations. However, without the right strategies, managing this data can be challenging and may create vulnerabilities.
Businesses need the help of a trusted IT partner to manage these solutions, reduce their complexity, place their workloads where they work best, and maintain a robust cybersecurity and resiliency strategy.
Why do organisations need the help of an expert partner? Nearly 70% of Australian IT jobs are in shortage, according to the first annual Jobs and Skills report 2023. Because of the skills shortage, you're probably finding it hard to recruit and retain the right IT talent. Partners can plug this gap while saving your organisation time and money.
Optimising end-to-end delivery with partners
IT decision-makers are increasingly looking to service provider and integrator partners to help them identify, recommend, implement, and support complex IT systems and infrastructure, and to achieve an optimised end-to-end delivery.
The growth in areas such as AI, multicloud and the edge also requires the help of service providers and partners to ensure your business is making the most of these exciting new technologies and helping to optimise your operations to take advantage of them. The AI market, for example, was estimated to be worth $A7.5 billion in Australia in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.35% between 2023 and 2030.
Greater cyber resiliency in the public cloud
Cyber threats are probably top of mind for you and your organisation following several high-profile hacks in late 2022. Despite this, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), which oversees the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme, actually found reported data breaches were 16% lower in the first half of 2023 compared to the six months prior. However, this finding comes with a caveat from the OAIC, which states that since the NDB scheme was introduced in 2018, it has seen a trend of more breaches being reported in the second half of the year. Figures for the second half of 2023 are due in the first quarter of 2024.
Because of the ongoing threat from cybercrime, resiliency should be a top concern for your organisation, regardless of the location of its IT environment.
With this in mind, there's a significant opportunity for partners to help you develop data protection and security strategies. Partners can find choices and flexibility to support your business with a consistent experience wherever you want to consume IT solutions: on-premises, off-premises, in the public cloud, in a private or hybrid cloud or, as is increasingly common, in a mixture of all of them.
Security innovations in the cloud environment seek to simplify the multicloud experience and leverage an open ecosystem to build best-of-breed solutions and innovate. However, as you're probably all too aware, it's not possible to go through this experience alone. You need trusted partners who are experts in cybersecurity, the cloud, edge and AI to provide solutions incorporating the necessary infrastructure, interconnection, services, and technical and market experience.
Delivering a unified experience through collaboration
As customers demand higher value outcomes, IT solution providers are changing their business models and routes to market to address these needs. Service providers will partner with you from the initial scoping of a project through to rollout, implementation and ongoing running and maintenance. A trusted partner will be there for every step of your journey and well into the future.
Technology is constantly evolving, and your tech needs change; this challenges service providers to take their service to another level and help your organisation leverage technology on its terms, delivering a unified experience wherever your applications and data lives, be it in on-premises, in a hybrid cloud or with a cloud service provider.
The opportunities are there; now it's up to organisations who, as we have noted, are facing an ongoing skills shortage to leverage collaboration with partners as a core strategy to adapt and succeed. It's a great time to be a partner in the IT industry, and it's a great time for you, the customer, to leverage their expertise.