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Taiwanese hardware giant Asus has confirmed it’s eyeing expansion for its burgeoning enterprise cloud services business to China and Japan in 2013.

The firm has been offering cloud services since 2008 under its Asus Cloud business and it now has datacentres in the US, China and Taiwan – providing secure web storage and file sharing for individuals alongside services for developers.

The firm sent the following statement to The Register, attributed to Asus Cloud CEO Peter Wu:

The company is eyeing business opportunities in China, where efforts are being made to build more internet-connected infrastructure in big cities, and in in Japan as companies there are seeking productivity applications.

Gartner research director Tracy Tsai told The Reg that the firm has been most successful in Taiwan rolling out smallish private clouds for customers including hospitals, government agencies and universities, and it would likely repeat that strategy internationally.

“It’s really starting out from zero so whatever it gets is a bonus,” she added. “Its success in the longer term will depend on the quality of its support in terms of after-sales service.”

In this respect Asus' offering will have a particular advantage in China, which shares a common language with Taiwan, she added.

Tsai argued that Asus’ cloud play could position it well to take advantage of the BYOD trend whilst ensuring its revenues are not over-reliant on the consumer device side of the business.

It hasn't been doing too badly in that area of late, however, with tablet sales helping the firm grow an impressive 10 per cent year-on-year as of Q3 and catch up on fourth placed Acer in the PC market.

The tablet share of its revenues increased from 7 per cent in Q2 to 16 per cent, helping Asus to net profits of NT$6.71bn (£144m), a year-on-year jump of 43 per cent. ®

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