Cloud Services Market Maturing Among APAC CIOs

According to IDC’s Asia/Pacific Cloud Computing end user survey 2010, CIOs have been inundated with a barrage of information about the cloud in the last 12 months. Today, they are better informed about this fast moving market and have become more ready to start making commitments in the cloud space. The APAC cloud services market has rapidly matured in the last year, with higher awareness of both the pros and cons of the public and private cloud delivery models.

But along with this better understanding, there remain concerns about the potential weaknesses of the cloud delivery models – security and availability. In this context, informed and pragmatic decisions are being made about which applications are best suited to a cloud delivery model, and whether that application should be sourced from the public cloud, or whether implementing the application in a private cloud is the best solution.

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“The recent uncertain economic conditions have accelerated interest in cloud delivery models because of their ability to deliver IT and business services at a much lower capital outlay. This is the key factor in which cloud services are now being evaluated,” said Chris Morris, IDC’s Asia/Pacific Research Director, Asia/Pacific IT Services Research.

IDC has seen a rapid maturation of users’ understanding of cloud services and cloud computing in 2010. Chris adds, “Rather than ‘The Cloud’ being viewed as a collection of new technologies, savvy CIOs now see ‘The Cloud’ as being an extension of their sourcing strategies.” Today, CIOs are adding both the public and private cloud delivery models to their services sourcing portfolio, just as they have added outsourced and managed services in the past.

Now that CIOs have the answers to some of their initial concerns surrounding the use of ‘The Cloud’, they want to be informed enough to be able to ask the smart questions about their potential cloud vendors to ensure that they are making the best strategic decisions. “This is a very important stage of the development of the cloud market,” said Chris.

Though the ability of cloud services to deliver IT cost savings continues to remain the top benefit identified by the respondents, other factors, especially in the mature markets, are also rated highly. Workload is one of the most apparent determinants when choosing a delivery model.

Enterprises remain most concerned about security, performance and control of data when considering cloud adoption. Results from IDC’s APEJ Cloud Computing end user survey 2010 show that users in Singapore are planning to place significant parts of their workload into private cloud environments instead of public cloud environments.

The adoption of private cloud is a less risky way to gain some of the benefits of cloud computing without exposure to the downsides. These private clouds may be implemented within the datacenters of enterprises. IDC also finds that many users, when faced with technologies which they have limited experience in, are considering external located private clouds, or ‘virtual private clouds’ as some telco service providers are calling them. These virtual private clouds provide a very attractive, fast-track option for many organisations and will figure prominently in the next three years.