Spending on public cloud services in the Asia Pacific region – excluding Japan – will hit $15 billion in 2018, representing an increase of 35% over the year before, according to IDC.

The findings show that while annual spending growth in the APeJ region will slow between the 2016 and 2021 forecast period, 2021 will see a total of $32.27bn. Spending on public cloud services this year will be driven by banking, with a spend of $1.85bn, ahead of professional services ($1.75bn) and discrete manufacturing ($1.63bn).

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) will be the largest category of public cloud spending this year, IDC says, as global data centre providers gain more traction in the region. IaaS will contribute almost half (47.6%) to overall cloud spending in the region, just ahead of software as a service (SaaS) on 45.8% and well ahead of platform as a service (PaaS), although application platforms, which are part of the PaaS bucket, will see the quickest spending of all the areas.

Of the countries analysed in the APeJ region, China will be seen as the largest market for public cloud services in 2018 with $5.44bn, or around 36% of the overall spend. Australia, at $2.85bn, and India ($2.12bn), in second and third.

“China and India, the two largest markets in APeJ will account for about 60% of the region’s cloud market size,” said Ashutosh Bisht, IDC Asia Pacific research manager for customer insights and analysis. “The Chinese government has been actively promoting the development of the high-tech industry, and continues to implement its Internet+ strategy is a leading factor for China’s adoption to cloud technology.

“For India, accelerated demand by enterprises and government towards the implementation of new technology like blockchain, AI [and] IoT is making the cloud a bare necessity,” Bisht added.

According to the most recent report from the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA), Hong Kong was seen as the most ‘cloud-ready’ Asia Pacific nation, ahead of Singapore and New Zealand. Australia and Japan finished fourth and fifth respectively, with China down at #13.