IT and business services will account for roughly 60 per cent of all blockchain spending in 2018, driven by a doubling of market investment across the region.
Offering a boost for local partners exploring blockchain capabilities, the shift towards external providers comes as spending skyrockets towards $281.69 million across Asia Pacific, almost twice the amount investment during 2017 ($148.76 million).
According to IDC findings, regional blockchain spending will grow at a “robust pace” until 2021, with the analyst firm forecasting 90.70 per cent growth during the period, up from projected worldwide growth of 81.21 per cent.
“Blockchain technologies are being adopted by a wide range of industries across the Asia Pacific region,” IDC vice president of Asia Pacific, Simon Piff, said.
“While many of the use cases are coming from the financial services industry; in markets as diverse as Australia, Thailand, and Singapore, we are also seeing strong acceptance across the entire supply chain, from food provenance, to logistics.”
As explained by Piff, government regulators are taking “advanced steps” in adopting this technology from financial regulators looking to improve settlements, to port and customs authorities looking to drive efficiency and improve integrity and velocity of many traditionally paper-based transactions.
“Much of the work is in its early stages, as evidenced by the proof-of-concept projects amongst organisations and governments across the region,” Piff added.
From a customer perspective, blockchain spending will be led by the financial sector driven largely by rapid adoption in the banking industry, far followed by the manufacturing and resources sector.
Within the financial sector, blockchain lends itself to several common use cases including regulatory compliance, cross-border payments and settlements, custody and asset tracking, and trade finance and post-trade/transaction settlements.
Cross-border payments and settlements will be the use case that sees the largest spending in 2018, followed by trade finance and post-trade/transaction settlements and regulatory compliance.
“Financial services is the overwhelming forerunner in deploying a collaborative approach to blockchain adoption,” IDC senior market analyst, Swati Chaturvedi, added.
“However, discrete manufacturing and retail industries will not be far behind; given the fact that manufacturers and retailers will be given enhanced visibility, accountability and transparency on the global supply chain level and industrial processes.
“This level of enhanced verification will lead to blockchain's quick adoption.”
