In A Forrester Research study commissioned by VMware reveals that the usage of cloud technologies by Indian enterprises has increased significantly. According to Sanchit Vir Gogia, a senior analyst with Forrester, nearly 50 per cent of the respondents to the survey said that they have already adopted cloud solutions or approaches. This is a 25 per cent growth over last year. An additional 30 per cent of respondents say that they are planning to deploy cloud solutions within the next 18 months. The survey indicates the potential for cloud computing in the country, and reflects a double digit rate of adoption, remarks T Srinivasan, Managing Director of VMware India and SAARC.
The survey registers a marked improvement in the understanding of cloud computing amongst respondents with 72 per cent claiming a good understanding, compared to 59 per cent last year. Knowledge about cloud computing is higher at large organisations (10,000+ employees: 82 per cent) compared to small organisations (<500 employees: 63 per cent). The study covered more than 1200 organisations in India, and included MNCs, large and mid-sized private organisations and government users. A total of 4,954 organizations across the Asia-Pacific were covered in this year's study.
Virtualisation is the harbinger of the cloud, with 81 per cent of respondents agreeing that it is very critical for enabling cloud computing. 94 per cent of the respondents to this year's survey have leveraged or are planning to use virtualisation in their organisation. In fact, more than one-half respondents stated that they are running 50 per cent or more of their production applications on a virtualised environment. This is a significant growth over last year.
While 80 per cent of the respondents believe that cloud computing will help enable their organizations to reduce IT costs, 82 per cent feel that cloud computing technologies will help them optimize existing IT management and automation capabilities. The study also reveals that 54 percent of senior IT professionals consider cloud computing as a top business priority. With a growing mobile and flexible workforce in India, 80 per cent of respondents see cloud computing helping their organization supporting and enabling them. As optimism in the economy rises, businesses in India can once again focus on growth and expansion. This comes at a time when cloud computing is reaching a significant level of maturity and acceptance in India. adds Srinivasan.
However, 40 per cent of the respondents believe that internal resistance to change is hindering the adoption of cloud in the organization. This suggests that faster cloud adoption is possible if obstacles can be overcome. The main concerns about adoption of cloud technologies include data privacy or loss of control (64%), integration with existing on-premise or legacy systems (62%) and security (60%). More than half (57%) of the respondents are concerned about end-users accessing cloud-based apps and services from mobile devices used for work. With these concerns limiting the adoption of cloud in India, we aim to enable organizations with knowledge and resources to raise adoption rates. Srinivasan states. Reflecting the optimism for cloud computing, many organisations are increasing their budgets for training internal IT staff to support their cloud initiatives. More than 56 per cent of the organisations surveyed are actively seeking to hire new staff with cloud expertise.
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