In A survey of more than 100 global multinational corporations (MNCs) across Asia-Pacific, North America and Europe by Ovum for Cable&Wireless Worldwide reveals that adoption of cloud services is picking up pace among large organisations, with Asia Pacific expressing the greatest interest.
Ovums findings show 63% of MNCs in Asia-Pacific reporting the uptake of at least one of the cloud services categories; networking, communications, applications, corporate IT systems, as well as data management, security and backup. The research also points to telecoms providers being well positioned to take advantage of cloud services adoption, which is up by 61% worldwide from April 2010, with 45%of MNCs already using cloud sourcing for at least some elements of key IT services.
Across the globe, enterprises have already moved significant resources to the cloud and are ready to move more application services. The dominant areas of cloud services uptake are in data backup and storage, at 51% of respondents, with an additional 33% reporting their intention to procure cloud data backup and storage services in the next 24 months.
Cloud uptake is permeating all sectors. Finance and insurance multinationals have adopted cloud services for some elements of corporate IT systems (56%), whereas manufacturing is embracing cloud components for networking and data management (63% and 59%, respectively). Sectors are also placing different applications in cloud environments. Professional services single out Customer Relationship Management (CRM) (50%) while finance and insurance places strong emphasis on document management (50%). Manufacturing places most value on messaging (41%) and CRM (41%).
Evan Kirchheimer, Practice Leader, Enterprise Services, at Ovum comments: Its interesting to see Asia-Pacific MNCs reporting such interest in cloud services. This may be because many companies in the region are relatively new and take up the latest technology more readily. We believe, however, that the majority of MNCs are currently between early and 'adolescent' adoption phases of cloud-based services, with broader and deeper adoption being contemplated. Greater adoption is dependent on the resolution of security, governance and reliability and once these concerns are addressed through standardised, tested offers from service providers, more large enterprises will feel comfortable positioning cloud as a preferred procurement option.
According to survey, 75% of MNCs rate scalability of capacity and matching capacity to fluctuating demand as the main benefits from the use of cloud services, with increased speed of provisioning coming in a close third (72%). Cost transparency is regarded as least important with only (24%) citing this as a major benefit. Retail respondents topped the poll in viewing scalability and matching capacity to demand as major benefits (50%), while finance and insurance came out top in seeing improved employee productivity as a major attraction (50%). Manufacturing views cost transparency as far more important than other verticals (38% vs average of 24%).
Commenting, Charles Kennaway, Vice President of Enterprise Sales, Asia Pacific at C&W Worldwide said: This research confirms our confidence in the market potential of cloud computing. We are encouraged to see that most enterprises in Asia Pacific have shown such great interest in adopting cloud services. One of the key elements of the research indicates that telecommunication providers are emerging as trusted partners and credible suppliers for cloud services, increasing from 37% in 2010 to 49% in 2011, which is a good indicator for us.
Evan Kirchheimer, Practice Leader, Enterprise Services, at Ovum comments: Telecommunications providers control of the network over which cloud services are delivered is becoming a compelling advantage, as it allows them to offer end-to-end service level agreements (SLAs). This allays many of the security concerns enterprises have expressed over use of the public internet to access cloud services and general security, data governance and loss of control.
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