Cloud Computing: A Magic Wand to Enhance Efficiency of the IT department

Caught between shrinking resources and growing business needs, organizations in India and Asia Pacific have dwelt upon cloud computing to provide a more efficient, flexible, and cost effective model for computing, reveals a new study on cloud computing trends and challenges by Springboard Research. Cloud computing, if the study is to be believed, has been a focal point for enterprises in the last few months because of its capability to maximize RoI with limited IT resources. Organizations developed affinity to cloud computing during the recession when CIOs were under pressure to keep IT costs down and that too, without affecting the workflow.

The number of organizations viewing cloud computing relevant for their business have doubled (83%) over the last 18 months. Out of 6,953 respondents interviewed across the Asia Pacific region including India, 59% admitted to either using or planning to use cloud computing initiatives in their organizations. India had 693 respondents from various sectors, out of which 27% admitted to currently leveraging cloud computing for their business processes whereas 43% are actively planning cloud initiatives. If the survey findings are to be believed, it is a significant trend for the future.

Enhanced Understanding of Cloud

Adoption and understanding go hand-in-hand. If you dont understand a technology, you will not adopt it. So, was the case with cloud computing which was hardly understood and hardly adopted earlier. But, the study shows that there has been a significant rise in organizations that understand what cloud computing is. It underlines the fact that cloud computing is no more a confusing subject to organizations across the Asia Pacific. Many organizations have embarked on the cloud computing bandwagon in the last few months, given their indepth understanding of the technology and its benefits. With Japan and Australia heading, India features in the top 3 countries that have a good understanding about cloud computing. Thus, awareness about what cloud computing can do to their business has spurred the adoption. According to the survey, sectors that understand cloud better include insurance, telecom, and IT/ITeS. It is their understanding of the cloud that has led them to adopt it faster for their business. Confusion about what cloud computing is has significantly come down. CIOs understand what cloud computing means to their business and what it can do for their business. In the Asia Pacific, India ranks 2nd with about 91% respondents agreeing that they understand cloud computing and its relevance. Japan tops the list with a margin of 1% that is 92%, says Sanchit Vir Gogia, associate research manager, software, Springboard Research India. Overall 83% organizations in the Asia Pacific know what cloud computing is.

The study shows that different markets look at cloud for different requirements. The highest proportion of organizations in Japan (86%), Singapore (84%), and Thailand (74%) associate cloud computing primarily with IT-as-a-service; while in Australia, Malaysia, and India, most firms (80%, 78%, and 75%, respectively) associate cloud mainly with applications-on-demand. In China, 80% of respondents look towards cloud for on-demand provision of storage and network.

Primary Drivers for Cloud Computing

Keeping costs down is the main purpose for enterprises when it comes to adopting cloud computing in their organizations. The study surfaces the fact that saving cost is the immediate incentive for adopting cloud computing for 57% of Asia Pacific firms. Only 39%, many of which are large firms with more than 10,000 employees, adopted or plan to adopt cloud as a long term strategic investment.

The survey reveals that in India, dynamic provisioning/capacity on demand, automated management, pay-per-use model, and applications that can scale on demand are considered essential building blocks for cloud computing. Driving IT costs down is the top priority for CIOs in India. They mainly look at reduced hardware infrastructure costs and scalability to meet business needs while considering cloud computing in India, says Gogia.

Hybrid Clouds on the Centerstage

The survey underlines the emergence of a trend called hybrid cloud, where a company chooses to adopt a mix of private as well as public cloud. In the survey, 38% companies in the Asia Pacific expressed their wish to deploy both public and private clouds while a roughly equal amount, 37% preferred to consider only a private cloud. In India alone, 41% companies preferred to use a hybrid cloud and split workload between public and private clouds. Banking and government sectors prefer to use private cloud more. Even India is moving towards public cloud, but it would be a mix of both, says Gogia.

In terms of deployment plans for hybrid clouds, 93% of respondents say their upcoming cloud deployments would involve around areas such as web conferencing, instant messaging, collaboration, and emails.

Integration and Security Challenges

Security and integration issues still perturb organizations, according to the survey. While leveraging a cloud based offering, organizations want to see if the solution can be integrated with their existing IT setup. As many as 46% respondents still consider security and integration of cloud technologies with existing systems as the main obstruction. Integration with existing systems and traditional security concerns are still challenges that solution providers need to address while offering cloud, says Gogia.

Virtualization Steers Cloud Adoption

In what has contributed most to the growth of cloud computing is the widespread awareness about virtualization and its potential. Virtualization is an essential part of cloud offering that helps organizations to fully utilize their hardware. Virtualization lets organizations decouple critical business applications and information from underlying physical hardware, and in turn, provides a fast and cost effective way to the cloud. More and more Asia Pacific organizations are realizing this and are moving to unlock more value from their virtualization investments. Awareness about virtualization is widespread in India, with 94% of respondents either leveraging or planning to adopt virtualization technology.

According to the survey, most Asia Pacific firms use virtualization for servers and data centers, with many organizations focused on leveraging virtualization to drive business continuity/disaster recovery initiatives. The reports see the biggest growth opportunity for virtualization in Asia Pacific in the end user computing space, although most organizations rank desktop virtualization low in their list of priorities. It says that significant advantages can be gained from a new approach towards end user computing that virtualizes the desktop by de-coupling operating system, user persona and applications. Thereby, this will enable a greater flexibility in delivering applications and data to end users anytime and anywhere regardless of the access device. In India, there is more focus on desktop virtualization at 68% as compared to China and Japan.

Cloud computing is a change agent rather than just an enabler. It is expected to help organizations at large with limited IT capabilities; thereby, maximizing RoI of technology.

Onkar Sharma
onkars@cybermedia.co.in