APAC Manufacturers Not Keen To Move To Cloud

Results of a recent IDC Manufacturing Insights survey show that ease and speed of deployment, and reduction in IT staff are the top drivers for cloud adoption among manufacturers in Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ). However, only 16 percent of the survey respondents acknowledge these top drivers as forces for cloud computing adoption (Refer to Figure 1), indicating at best lukewarm interest in cloud at present. Detailed findings are documented in a report entitled, “Manufacturing and Cloud Computing: A View from Asia Pacific excluding Japan”.

The survey findings further revealed that half of the respondents are holding back on adopting cloud-based solutions due to concerns on encountering last mile connection speed problems. However, most companies interviewed also acknowledged that their worries about connection speeds are short-lived since developments in the telecommunications network infrastructure are growing at a fast pace in most parts of Asia.

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Dr William Lee, Senior Research Manager for IDC Manufacturing Insights Asia/Pacific said, “Keeping costs down continues to be the primary focus of Asia/Pacific manufacturers. As most benefits of cloud computing do not directly translate to lower total cost of ownership when compared to traditional on-site IT deployments, take-up has been slow till date with fewer than 10 percent of manufacturing firms across APEJ currently adopting the technology. Having said this, we see light at the end of the tunnel. The current volatile market conditions in the manufacturing sector have ignited new interest in cloud as more companies are now looking for shorter term return on investments (ROI), which is one of the chief benefits of cloud.”

Security, not surprisingly, continues to be the biggest cloud adoption barrier for APEJ manufacturers. However, their security concern is not just about data breaches of sensitive information. APEJ manufacturers are anxious about the consequent loss of time and expenditure of resources to reproduce the data.

“The cloud is often perceived as less secure compared to retaining data in-house. In reality, most security breaches are internal, as shown in a recent IDC security survey. Therefore, having data residing in the cloud does not necessary make it more vulnerable to security risks,” Dr Lee pointed out.