New Zealand, Australia and Thailand showed the most improvements in the Asia Cloud Computing Association’s Cloud Readiness Index 2014, jumping up by four ranks from the prior year.
New Zealand ranked second – after Japan which stayed on top – Australia third and Thailand ninth.
Common to all of of the improved markets seems to be the presence of an overarching ICT and cloud policy plan, according to the ACCA.
“Government has generally been tentative in its adoption of cloud computing, sending conflicting signals to the market,” said Lim May-Ann, executive director of the ACCA.
“A proactive government-led cloud first policy will have profound and productive implications right across the economy – as we are now seeing from the policies adopted by the successful economies,” said Lim.
The Index assesses countries against ten indicators: privacy, data sovereignty, international connectivity, broadband quality, government regulatory environment and usage, power grid and green policy, intellectual property protection, business sophistication, data centre risk, and freedom of information access. Ranked against these criteria, Asia Pacific economies separate out into three distinct groups.
The Philippines gained another two places again from the previous index to land at No. 10, proving to be a steady improver in cloud readiness. The ACCA Said that a core strategy for success seems to be its focus on developing strong cloud-friendly industries such business process outsourcing.
In China (ranked 11th), recent government programs have been pro-cloud, although infrastructure build-out remains behind the curve. Cloud adoption is expected to accelerate dramatically in the next few years as mobile devices enable wireless access.