Pacnet’s latest Broadband Barometer survey finds that more than three quarters of connected Hong Kong businesses still have no plans to obtain a backup Internet connection in the next year
HONG KONG, 30 August 2010 – Pacnet, Asia’s leading business telecommunications service provider, today released its 2010 Pacnet Broadband Barometer survey findings for Hong Kong, which found that while Hong Kong businesses are increasingly adopting hosted computing applications and technologies, more than three quarters are overlooking the need for a backup internet connection for their offices.
The survey found that among the 96% of businesses in Hong Kong who had an Internet connection, just 19% of them had a backup Internet connection for their office, while an additional 4% said they were planning of getting one within the next 12 months. “Hence the remaining 77% of businesses have no plans to obtain a backup Internet connection, which is a worrying trend given the increased use of business applications requiring an Internet connection, in their daily business operations,” said Alice Ting, Managing Director of Pacnet Hong Kong.
Hong Kong businesses have also been taking to hosted applications – applications that are hosted and managed “in the cloud” by an external service provider. Topping the list of hosted applications that Hong Kong businesses have deployed are security solutions, with 81% of businesses already adopting at least one hosted security application such as hosted firewalls, content filtering or Unified Threat Management (UTM).
“SMEs here are also warming up to hosted ‘cloud computing’ applications, with 45% already deploying hosted business applications including sales force automation, customer relationship management and accounting applications,” said Ms Ting. The survey also revealed that among the top reasons businesses cited for adopting hosted applications were the ability to scale quickly, the ability to pay by usage, as well as cost savings.
“We think that more SMEs will realize the advantages of cloud computing services to their businesses, freeing up their limited resources from dealing with IT issues and instead, allowing them to focus on their core business”, added Ms Ting.
Among the five countries surveyed, Hong Kong businesses came out tops in their use of public instant messaging applications in the workplace, with 79% of businesses acknowledging their use of it. Other advanced Internet-based communication and collaboration applications deployed include Voice over IP (VoIP) services that was used by 28% of businesses, and video conferencing, that was used by 13% of businesses. “While the adoption of these advanced communication applications is not yet commonplace, more businesses are recognizing the benefits of solutions such as VoIP and video conferencing, and about 5% of businesses have said that they plan to implement these applications in the next 12 months,” noted Ms Ting.
The survey also reaffirmed the trend of SMEs expanding to China from Hong Kong, with some 30% of Hong Kong SMEs already having operations in China and set to grow to 38% next year. “This follows the growing trend of more cross-border connections that we are delivering to Hong Kong SMEs, who are connecting to their offices and partners in China,” said Ms Ting. The survey also found that the top destinations in China that businesses wanted to connect to are Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
The survey also found that more Hong Kong businesses were connecting to the Internet at the most popular speed category of 2 to 10 Mbps. Compared to a similar Pacnet study in 2007, this category grew from 43% to 65% this year. Among the top reasons cited by businesses for the need for higher speeds was to support communications and business applications, as well as a growing number of staff.
As part of the study, the Pacnet Broadband Barometer Index was compiled to reflect the state of Internet development among businesses in a country. The higher the score, the more savvy businesses in the country are to broadband and its applications. Among the five countries surveyed, Hong Kong came in third with a score of 72, behind Australia at 82 and Singapore at 77. “The gap between the smaller businesses – those with 5-99 employees – and the larger businesses was relatively bigger in Hong Kong,” explained Venu Reddy, Vice President, AMI Partners, Asia Pacific. ”Hence, there is the potential for more education targeting the smaller enterprises on the benefits of broadband.”
Pacnet commissioned Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc., a leading consulting firm specialising in IT and telecoms to conduct the Pacnet Broadband Barometer survey across Australia, China, Hong Kong, India and Singapore. In Hong Kong, the survey involved phone interviews with 355 IT decision makers across the country during the period of January to April 2010.
To download a full copy of the 2010 Pacnet Broadband Barometer report, visit hk.pacnet.com/broadband-barometer.
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About the 2010 Broadband Barometer
The Pacnet Broadband Barometer study aims to assess the adoption and usage of internet technologies by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs, companies with 5 to 999 employees) across the Asia-Pacific region. Since its launch in 2003, the ‘Broadband Barometer’ (previously also known as the Pacnet IP Index) has been widely used and referenced by a range of decision makers and analysts across businesses, government agencies and the media.
This latest Broadband Barometer study is jointly developed by Pacnet and AMI-Partners, a leading consulting firm specialising in IT and telecom sectors. More than 2,000 technology decision-makers across five countries (Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, and Singapore) were interviewed to provide a deep and comprehensive view of the Asia Pacific market.
About Pacnet
Named “Company of the Year for Excellence in Growth” by Frost & Sullivan in 2009 and “Best Wholesale Carrier” at the Telecom Asia Awards 2009, Pacnet is Asia’s leading independent telecommunications service provider, formed from the operational merger of Asia Netcom and Pacific Internet. Pacnet owns and operates EAC-C2C, the region’s largest privately-owned submarine cable network at 36,800 km, with a design capacity of 10.24 Tbps, as well as EAC Pacific, which spans 9,620 km across the Pacific Ocean and delivers up to 1.92 Tbps of capacity between Asia and North America. The company offers a comprehensive portfolio of industry leading IP-based solutions for carriers, large enterprises and SMEs. Pacnet is headquartered in Hong Kong and Singapore, with offices in all key markets in Asia and North America.
In Hong Kong, Pacnet’s core network and premium solutions are backed by a range of infrastructure options which provide services customised to the specific needs of individual customers. Pacnet specialises in multi-site connections and enables hosted solutions with a dedicated local team to connect manage and support business communication requirements. For more information, please visit: hk.pacnet.com.
About AMI-Partners
AMI-Partners specialises in IT, internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence – with a strong focus on global Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), and extending into large enterprises and home-based businesses. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business strategy perspectives and go-to-market solutions. Led by Andy Bose, the firm has built a world-class management team with deep experience cutting across IT, telecommunications and business services sectors in established and emerging markets.
AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SME strategies of more than 150 leading IT, internet, telecommunications and business services companies. The firm is well known for its IT and internet adoption-based segmentation of the SME markets; its annual retainership services based on global SME tracking surveys in more than 25 countries; and its proprietary database of SMEs and SME channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey based information from several thousand SMEs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SME trends and analysis.
For media interviews and further information, please contact:
Roland Lim
Pacnet
Phone: + 852 2121 2975
Email: roland.lim@pacnet.com
Genevieve Li
Pacnet
Phone: + 852 2121 2973
Email: genevieve.li@pacnet.com
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