Digital Realty, one of the largest global providers of cloud and carrier-neutral data centre, colocation, and interconnection solutions, has released the APAC findings of its 2024 Global Data Insights Survey, highlighting a significant surge in Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption among enterprises in the region.
The report is aimed at gaining insights into how enterprises are creating business strategies and redesigning legacy IT infrastructures to support their AI ambitions and goals.
The survey of 2,000 IT leaders across 21 countries including Australia, India, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea found that although many enterprises in Singapore (46%), South Korea (66%) and Hong Kong (45%) rate themselves as mature in AI adoption, only a quarter of enterprises in the region consider their current AI use to be transformative. This suggests a strong need for greater investment in digital infrastructure to unlock AI’s full potential.
IT leaders across APAC acknowledge the essential role of strategic data management in effectively unlocking the full value of AI. The survey revealed that 65% of companies in the region are actively executing a formal data strategy for their current or planned IT locations, with 77% of companies adopting a distributed data approach to tackle data gravity challenges.
Almost three-quarters (72%) of enterprises are incorporating data location strategies into their AI plans, allowing them to place high-density storage and processing capacity in key locations to maximise AI’s performance.
Additionally, 56% plan to expand their infrastructure in one to five more locations within the next two years. This expansion will enable adherence to data sovereignty regulations and allow them to scale AI workloads crucial for their future digital infrastructure plans.
To achieve data and AI success, IT leaders in APAC emphasise the need for data centre providers to enable secure data exchange between users, networks, clouds and IT providers on a single data centre platform. Key requirements they shared include:
- Infrastructure capable of managing AI’s power and energy demands for data storage, processing, and hosting (51%)
- Proximity of high-performing AI workloads to data and users (46%)
- Compliance with AI and data privacy regulations (45%)
Sustainability is also a top priority with 59% of respondents stating that their sustainability goals are the most important factor impacting AI strategy.
