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Indonesia - the world's fourth most populous country with 240 million people and one of the world's fastest growing economies with 6.5% GDP growth in 2011 - has seen a surge in foreign direct investments as well as increasing domestic investments in facilities and infrastructure recently.

Despite expected slower growth this year, IDC estimates that spending on infocomm technology in Indonesia could increase by nearly 20% this year. Last year, the research firm found that "more than 50% of end user organizations in Indonesia were either actively searching and/or planning to adopt public cloud services within the next 12 to 24 months".

This finding, coupled with growing demand for data services and connectivity, has motivated PT XL Axiata, a telecom and data services company, to explore opportunities in the cloud computing segment.

"Cloud computing has been on our radar since 18 months ago," said Ongki Kurniawan, chief service management office of PT XL Axiata, at the recently concluded CommunicAsia show in Singapore. "Internally, we have established a business group -- Technology, Content and New Business [headed by chief service and technology officer Dian Siswarini] -- dedicated to new businesses such as machine to machine (M2M) and cloud computing. [Our cloud strategy is] still at an early stage."

Nonetheless, this year alone, the company has appointed Huawei Technologies as its managed services partner to operate and maintain its network; tied up with six business partners to deliver cloud computing solutions; and launched its cloud computing services named XCloud.

Grappling with rapid technological changes and more demanding customer requirements, "telecom service providers are increasingly turning to managed services to outsource the maintenance and optimization of their networks so that they can focus on providing new and innovative ICT services that lead to increased revenues and subscribers, and reduced churn," said Luan Pi Jie, vice president of Global Technical Service at Huawei Technologies.