Cloud Adoption Accelerating, Will Bring Business Alignment Into Focus

According to IDC, the adoption of cloud services is continuing to mature in the Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) region. The region has emerged from the economic uncertainties of 2009 and 2010 with increased enthusiasm for cloud computing as a way of delivering existing and new business services. Use of cloud technologies for IT infrastructure will accelerate rapidly in 2011 as new cloud services are brought to market, and users will look beyond the basics of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to source business services that will enable their organisation to take advantage of recovering markets more quickly.

In its report “Asia/Pacific (Excluding Japan) Cloud Services and Technologies 2011 Top 10 Predictions: Dealing with Mainstream Cloud”, IDC examines the top trends expected to impact cloud computing and enterprise IT in the region in 2011. APEJ remains different in many ways from the rest of the world, and the course of future cloud development will differ in a manner defined by the limits of budget, bandwidth, and local legislation. But as one key trend, driven in part by the economic recovery and in part by the availability of cloud computing offerings, is a renewed focus on enterprise IT as business enabler and competitive differentiator.

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Cloud computing is the key accelerator of this trend. Most of the enterprise IT “stack” is now available via cloud models in the form of infrastructure, platforms and Applications-as-a-Service. But as the cloud delivery model is maturing, IDC is now seeing the next layers being delivered via cloud models as well: business processes, consulting, design and management.

“The end-game of this trend is an IT framework where business managers can fully manage, procure and consume all the services, processes and systems they require in order to run their business in the best and most agile way possible. And in this framework, none of these will be seen as or consumed as ‘IT’ but merely seen as necessary services”, said Chris Morris, Research Director, Asia/Pacific Cloud Technologies and Services, IDC.

“This means that the key CIO responsibilities will move beyond the traditional ones of validating suppliers in terms of availability, performance and compliance. The future role of the CIO will be much more business focused and will become more about managing contracts and relationships. So even for the CIO, technology itself is becoming less and less of a focal point”, said Morris.

However, while technology may not be the focal point of this framework, technology is clearly needed to make it work. Whether it runs on a private cloud, hybrid or public clouds or even on more traditional IT platforms, technology is at the core of this transition towards IT being seen as any number of services.

“All CIOs today should be focusing on how their choice of IT can help the enterprise to get to this point. Any IT deployment, any IT plan and every IT strategy today should be seen in the light of how enterprise IT can be changed from being technology centric to being business centric. The CIO should focus on IT that enables this transition towards “IT without technology”, added Claus Mortensen, IDC’s Principal of Asia/Pacific Emerging Technology Research.