SMBs in Asia-Pacific cautious in moving to the cloud

By eGov Innovation Editors | May 6, 2011

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SINGAPORE – A new study from Springboard Research, commissioned by Microsoft, revealed that while businesses in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region are moving to the cloud, many are adopting a cautious approach and consider other regions to be more advanced in their understanding and adoption of cloud computing.

While almost half of the respondents in the eight APAC markets surveyed are planning a cloud implementation within the next 18 months, 53 percent of small business respondents said that cloud is a priority but that they were concerned that limited funding may hinder implementation.

Larger APAC businesses are embracing cloud services but small and medium enterprises in the region are lagging behind their enterprise cousins. Sixty-two percent of organizations with more than 500 PCs either have adopted or were planning to adopt cloud,  while 68 percent of organizations with less than 50 PCs have no plans to adopt cloud computing.

The survey also revealed that today’s APAC cloud computing projects reflect a business climate intent on managing risk by placing non-sensitive workloads such as email, instant messaging and unified communication tools in a public cloud, while keeping business critical and sensitive workloads in a private cloud.

The survey’s lead analyst, Michael Barnes of Springboard Research said companies across the region are keen to adopt cloud computing but their understanding of the cloud is not complete and they are initially leaning towards approaches that most closely map to their existing skills, experience and investments, hence the strong preference for private clouds over public clouds. 

“Small and medium businesses form the backbone of the economy in APAC. They are the largest source of domestic employment across all economic sectors, in both rural and urban areas. Adopting a cloud approach can make them more competitive, enabling them to focus on growing their businesses rather than managing their IT,” said Andrew Pickup, chief operating officer Microsoft APAC.

Pickup explained that SMBs can be up and running with cloud services for as little as US$6 per employee for month with Office 365 for small business. 

“Many SMBs might be surprised to know that they are probably already using some cloud technologies without knowing it,” continued Pickup. “369 million people globally use Hotmail; 310 million globally use Windows Live Messenger so as an industry we need to help people understand the benefits of cloud better to help them maximize its potential."

The research also highlights the key drivers of, and barriers to, cloud adoption. One of the surprising findings is that managing cost, which has previously been identified as a key driver of cloud services, is no longer top of mind in APAC. Instead, most respondents cite the ability to support unpredictable workloads as most important in their considerations. The largest barriers to cloud adoption are data security and how to guard against unauthorized access in the cloud.
 
“Businesses are moving beyond the hype of cloud computing to adoption. We are working hard to move our entire range of solutions into the cloud - 75 percent of our engineers are working 100 percent on cloud solutions and we have invested US$2.3 billion already in cloud,” said Pickup. 

The Springboard survey was commissioned by Microsoft to test attitudes to Cloud computing among IT and business decision-makers in key APAC markets, including Australia, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. 833 CIOs and business leaders were surveyed from December 2010 to March 2011.