The pandemic has driven the digital transformation of enterprises and accelerated the market demand for moving to the cloud. The AI technology company iKala has recently been actively expanding its cloud business; in addition to its original scope of business, it has also expanded AWS consultation and implementation services to help improve clients’ IT infrastructure and operational performance on the basis of their needs. Kyle Wu, head of iKala’s cloud business group, stated that the company will be using three strategies to assist in the digital transformation of enterprises and to establish long-term competitive advantages: multi-cloud services, the company’s own products, and overseas markets. Next, the company will focus on the Japan and Hong Kong markets, hoping that through its cloud business, iKala’s overseas revenue can reach 30% of its total revenue within the next three years.
Driven by the wave of digital transformation, the “migration to the cloud” of enterprises has become the trend of the future. The latest public cloud service market report by IDC indicated that the public cloud market in Taiwan for 2021 is expected to continually grow to US$1.057 billion, with an annual growth rate of 21.4%. In order to make good use of digital technologies to help businesses grow rapidly, enterprises have one by one started to actively optimize their cloud deployment strategies.
The main businesses of iKala are mainly cloud business and commercial business (including KOL and Shoplus). In terms of revenue distribution, the cloud business makes up about 70% of its total revenue while the commercial business makes up about 30%. Of this, the cloud services provided by iKala in the past were mainly based on Google GCP; however, Amazon AWS was also added recently to expand the scope of its cloud business. The industries of its main clients include gaming, media, retailing and e-commerce, etc.
Sega Cheng, cofounder and CEO of iKala, observed that iKala is on the frontlines, seeing that the challenges faced by enterprises during digital transformation are “long-term and increasing daily”. For example, due to the impact of the pandemic in the last two years, the markets for remote office and teaching have increased significantly, which has brought a 70% growth in business opportunities for iKala from cloud demand.
As for iKala’s next cloud layout, Kyle Wu indicated that the company will focus on three major strategies: multi-cloud, its own products, and overseas markets. In terms of multi-cloud, in response to issues of enterprises such as backup, solving regional issues and accelerating the development speed of new products and services, multi-cloud service has become a necessity for many enterprises.
Wu stated that the iKala team currently has over 50 data scientists and cloud service experts, and has already assisted in the digital transformation of over 400 enterprises. Moreover, with the rich experience that iKala has accumulated in the e-commerce and retailing industries, it can satisfy the needs of enterprises for multi-cloud.
In addition, in terms of its own products, iKala has CDP customer data platforms and AIOps automatic cloud hosting services that can help enterprises grasp the operation status of the cloud to further reduce IT operation and maintenance costs.
Kyle Wu also indicated that iKala will continue to focus on overseas markets, starting with the Japan and Hong Kong markets. The company wishes to bring the experience from Taiwan overseas, hoping that through the powerful growth of its cloud businesses, the overseas revenue of iKala will reach 30% of its total revenue within the next three years.
(This article was reproduced from the Commercial Times.)