Asian Pacific countries are adopting cloud computing services at a slower rate than their American counterparts, perhaps because APAC companies are guided by different market forces, a recent survey by developer-research group Evans Data found.
While American cloud computing adoption rates are seemingly
being hindered by security fears, APAC countries are seemingly focused on the
basics: cost savings, ease of use, and broad ability as their main motivation
for adoption.
"Interest in cloud computing and hosting is growing
rapidly amongst SMBs as the range of available services and trust in the model
increases. This represents a great opportunity for cloud service providers that
are able to execute and respond to market forces,” Antonio Piraino, a senior
analyst at Tier1 Research, told a group of attendees at the Parallels APAC
Summit 2009 back in May.
This is not to say that all APAC countries are jumping on
the cloud. More than a quarter of those surveyed, 28%, told Evans that they
have no plans for cloud computing.
"But when developers do consider it, the primary
motivators for using cloud computing services are ease of use (21%, or 29% of
those considering the cloud), cost savings (19%, or 27% of possible users), and
its availability for spikes in demand (16%, or 22% of possible users),"
the Evans' report said.
That's still a positive adoption rate compared to worldwide
views on software as a service, infrastructure as a service, and hosted
applications and storage. A staggering 38% of companies interviewed by
Information Technology Intelligence Corp. said they were undecided or unsure
about whether they will adopt cloud services. ITIC's survey of 300 corporations
worldwide that found an additional 47% admitting they are not considering
implementing cloud in the next year. Security was cited as the biggest
obstacle.
"An overwhelming 85% majority of corporate customers
will not implement a private or public cloud computing infrastructure in 2009
because of fears that cloud providers may not be able to adequately secure
sensitive corporate data," ITIC principal analyst Laura DiDio said in the
report.
In APAC companies, most of the push seems to be coming from
vendors like Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft -- sometimes to the chagrin of
developers, Evans' report points out. The promises are received well, however,
when IT teams are told how application services can are made available,
independent of user devices and network interfaces as long as the network is kept
intact.
"Users, developers, and IT departments don't need to
worry about storage capacity, compatibility, or whether they're running the
latest version of the software," Evans said in its assessment of primary
motivators for cloud computing adoption." Also because the pricing model
changes to pay-per-month (or other period) or pay-per-use, it can be marketed
as more affordable up-front (and possibly more profitable for the vendor in the
long run). "
IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and Yahoo have already made
great strides in securing APAC contracts. Willy Chiu, VP of IBM's Cloud Labs
and high performance on-demand solutions told John Foley recently that Big Blue
has build eight testing labs in China, Japan, Korea, Ireland, South Africa,
India, Brazil, and Vietnam, in addition to in the United States.
IBM has also secured contracts in APAC countries, such as a testing
and development cloud for China's Wang Fu Jing department store chain and a
training, consulting and support cloud for Vietnam Technology and
Telecommunications. Malaysia's MIMOS plans to develop a national cloud
computing platform to deploy services in that country, Foley reported.
Other broad based APAC clouds in operation include the
Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute in South Korea. The
research and development test bed for massive data sets is structured under the
Open Cirrus project, which is sponsored by HP, Intel, and Yahoo.
Evans is currently polling more than 400 software developers on issues in both developing on and deploying
to a cloud, including security, tools and interoperability in public and private
clouds, licensing, and virtualization. The results will be released on August
3.
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