The 3rd annual VMware Cloud Index, a commissioned study conducted across Asia Pacific byForrester Consulting and ITR (in Japan only), has signaled a new level of cloud maturity in the Asia Pacific region.
Despite global economic concerns, nearly 80% of businesses in Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) are forecasting some growth or expansion for 2012 and 2013. They see cloud computing as an integral part of their strategy, with 67% of APJ organizations believing that they currently have the skills and infrastructure necessary to manage a private cloud, and 68% stating that without pursuing cloud initiatives, they could fall behind the competition.
The VMware Cloud Index 2012 surveyed approximately 6,500 senior IT practitioners in Australia, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Korea, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Taiwan in September and October 2012. Indonesia, Hong Kong and Taiwan were added to this year's study.
It's about business
With 83% of organizations stating that cloud can empower their businesses by simplifying access to IT resources, cloud computing is increasingly seen as a business enabler.
"I don't really hear any CIOs or senior IT or business decision makers saying they need to do cloud," said Michael Barnes, vice president and research director at Forrester. "The starting is almost always the strategic priorities in the organization."
These priorities, Barnes said, are reducing costs, increasing utilization rates or some combination of that -making IT more efficient essentially; enabling more agility and empowering the business; and particularly in Asia, disaster recovery and business continuity.
For the latter, organizations "need a virtual data centre somewhere else," he said. "At this point in time, given the [economic concerns], it probably doesn't make sense to build that themselves."
The study also highlighteda shift in decision making with a lower percentage of respondents (52%) than last year (58%) citing the CEO as the main decision maker for cloud purchase decisions in the company. In contrast, 44% of respondents cite the CIO as the final decision maker in such decisions, up from 39% in 2011 and 35% in 2010. This could be spurred by an increasing need for CIOs to bridge the gap between business and IT functions.