Malaysia’s demand for storage declines amid uncertainty

Last updated on January 12th, 2021 at 08:49 am

In a new survey, the technology analyst firm said that by the end of 2020, Malaysia’s enterprise storage market size had reached $641 million, down by around 20 percent from what was expected before the pandemic.

The technology analyst firm said in a recent survey that Malaysia’s enterprise storage market size had reached $641 million by the end of 2020, down by around 20 percent from what was expected before the pandemic.

An earlier survey of ICT decision-makers covering companies in Malaysia already reported that 71 percent of respondents assumed that after the Covid-19 outbreak, their enterprise ICT spending on storage will either stay flat or decrease in 2020.

The slowdown or postponement of new office set-ups due to the pandemic also had a negative effect for most of the year on the market for enterprise storage in Malaysia.

But storage spending is expected to rebound in 2021, with most businesses in the country starting to adapt to the new standard, exuding enhanced business trust and re-prioritizing their investments in digital transformation.

Malaysia’s storage investment is tipped to cross $907.2m by the end of 2024, according to GlobalData, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.2 percent between 2019 and 2024.

Enterprises that invest in disruptive technology, such as big data, artificial intelligence, automation and blockchain, as part of their digital transformation initiatives, would accelerate development. This, in turn, drives the demand for storage technologies from the vast datasets created by those technologies to drive value.

In the overall enterprise storage market, storage hardware comprising all-flash hybrid arrays, hard disk drives, network mounted storage and other storage devices will remain the largest market segment.

In recent times, although currently a smaller segment, software-defined storage platforms and apps have had significant demand and will see their market value rise over the forecast period at a CAGR of 7.5 percent.

Gupta said: “Benefits such as hardware vendor lock-in freedom, remote accessibility, high level of storage power flexibility and scalability, and interoperability with legacy storage infrastructure will increase the country’s software-defined storage market popularity.”