Cloud Chaos is Slowing Asia Pacific’s Potential to Succeed

Research reveals an acute need to evolve multi-cloud strategies from Cloud First to Cloud Smart as the use of  Cloud by organizations across Asia Pacific matures 

 With more control over visibility, costs, security, and the skills needed to support multi-cloud architectures, a  strategic approach to cloud could fast-track business growth

A new study by Vanson Bourne and commissioned by VMware, found  that while many organizations in Asia Pacific are fully immersed in a multi-cloud environment today, a  large percentage lack a strategic approach to multi-cloud. The survey revealed that 70% of all  organizations responding to the study in Asia Pacific are already using multiple public clouds, only 38%  say their multi-cloud strategy is fully defined. What’s more challenging is that Asia Pacific organizations  surveyed appear to have a disconnect between their applications and cloud strategies. A whopping 90%  of respondents from multi-cloud organizations, report that that have apps built to run across multiple  clouds, allowing these organizations to increase app dev, DevOps and IT productivity according and get  products and services to market faster. 

Across the board, Cloud Smart organizations – defined as those with smart business environments to  innovate and scale securely, and across multiple environments – are performing better than their peers  in the three other groups identified in the report: Trailing, Cloud Beginner and Cloud Intermediate. The  research shows that Cloud Smart and Cloud Intermediate organizations are more likely to originate from  Asia Pacific than anywhere else in the world. 

“The findings are clear – organizations in our region are committed to being Cloud First, but many are fast  approaching a plateau in their multi-cloud usage. Instead of adopting a Cloud Smart approach, many  organizations are in risk of entering a state of Cloud Chaos, losing visibility and control as more and more  of their apps and data are spread across more and more clouds,” said Paul Simos, Vice President and  Managing Director, Southeast Asia and Korea, VMware. “Organizations need to make their investments  in multi-cloud work harder. It is time to shift gears and transition to a cloud-smart strategy not just to  weather what is to come, but to continue getting the scale of productivity and profitability they have been  enjoying when they first moved to the Cloud far into the future.” 

There are six key areas organizations across Asia Pacific need to consider in the next phase of the journey  towards becoming a Cloud Smart organization: 

Unlocking revenue and profitability potential: While Asia Pacific organizations surveyed say  having a multi-cloud environment is key for business growth, the benefits are a lot stronger and  clearer for Cloud Smart organizations. 97% of Cloud Smart organizations across the Asia Pacific region report that their multi-cloud approach has positively impacted their revenue and  profitability.  

Transforming data into money: Data monetization is growing as a significant source of revenue.  For APJ organizations surveyed 30% report data monetization as significant source of revenue  versus 22% two years ago. When looking at the segment of Cloud Smart organizations, , 41% report data monetization as a significant source of revenue currently, with 75% anticipating this  to be the case by 2027.

Demystifying visibility to control on cloud costs: The lack of visibility and control over multi-cloud  operations is directly impacting the bottom lines of businesses. Trailing organizations are more  than twice as likely to report a struggle with cloud costs than Cloud Smart organizations (32% to  70%). 

Tackling data sovereignty and management: Organizations are increasingly collecting data from  customers around the world. In tandem, governments are requiring enterprises to keep the data  that’s collected within sovereign borders. Multi-cloud clearly helps organizations address the  growing data sovereignty considerations, with 92% of Cloud Smart enterprises saying it’s easy to  manage data in whichever nation it resides as compared to 63% of Trailing organizations. Further  to this, 89% of Cloud Smart enterprises report it is easy to secure the data in whichever nation it  resides compared to 60% of their Trailing counterparts. 

Strengthening security and control: With more clouds, comes more potential entry points for bad  actors, prompting organizations to cite ‘increased cybersecurity risks’ as the most likely challenge  associated with multi-cloud at 42%,  

Given the lack of visibility and control over their multi-cloud environment, it is perhaps not  surprising that 61% of APJ organizations surveyed say they need to improve their cybersecurity  strategy in order to successfully secure apps and data across multiple clouds. In comparison, more  than nine in 10 Cloud Smart organizations say little or no improvement is needed in securing their  organization’s data (93%), their end-user employee data (93%) and customer data (92%). 

Bridging the talent gap: Another obstacle in succeeding with multi-cloud is the talent gap. 46% of  Asia Pacific respondents agree their organization does not have the skills inhouse to achieve a  multi-cloud approach, and even Cloud Smart organizations are struggling with this issue, with 42%  saying the same. Having a clear multi-cloud strategy is crucial, with 91% of Asia Pacific  respondents acknowledging it plays an important role when it comes to recruiting and retaining  the best talent. 

To help organizations in this next phase of the cloud journey, VMware recently unveiled offerings focused  on helping customers to better run, scale, and secure enterprise workloads across private and public  clouds and at the edge to adopt a Cloud Smart approach to their multi-clouds. 

VMware is also launching new assessment toolkits and support to help enterprises take meaningful and  tangible steps and progress towards becoming cloud-smart in a multi-cloud operating reality, and help  the region fulfil its full economic and innovation potential.

To demonstrate the value of a Cloud Smart approach for organizations across industries and markets,  VMware customers and partners have these to share: 

“International SOS is in the business of saving lives. We need an equally agile and available IT backbone  to support the millions of assistance calls we get each year from the more than 9,000 organizations we  support worldwide,’’ said Henk Van Rossum, General Manager, Group Cloud, Infrastructure and  Operations, International SOS. “Only a multi-cloud approach can provide that certainty, flexibility and  reliability, but we need to be able to manage multiple clouds efficiently and cost-effectively. To be smart  in how we deploy technology to support our 13,000 strong medical, security and logistics experts  worldwide for the millions more they support in turn, we need to adopt a Cloud Smart approach to have  that visibility, security and control over all our apps, data and processes on any cloud. We are glad to be  able to do so with VMware and show how to fully leverage multi-cloud to save lives.” 

“Data is the lifeblood of business, growth and innovation today. However, it has to be stewarded carefully  and responsibly. More than adopting any cloud solution, businesses should deploy the right data to the  right cloud to ensure data ownership, trust and control,” said Tanapong Ittisakulchai, Chief Enterprise  Business Officer, AIS Business. “Instead of being bogged down by even more complexity with regulations  and management needs, we are giving enterprises peace of mind with our soon-to-launch sovereign cloud  – one of the first anywhere in Southeast Asia – so they can focus on growing and innovating.” 

“Businesses need to innovate to stay competitive and relevant. Forward-thinking business leaders look to  adopt a cloud-native architecture, however, many get stuck with complexities of running a multi-cloud  business model, as is also reflected in this study,” said Komal Narula, Vice President IT Infrastructure  Engineering and Architecture, Genpact. “One of the critical areas the organizations should be considering  is strengthening their cloud security by deploying the landing zone, control tower, guardrails, common  tech stack across multiple environments to mitigate risk. It is essential for organizations to move away  from a traditional perimeter-based security model to a zero-trust model that relies on well architected  framework and security policies and a tagging-based approach.” 

“With a clear and coherent multi-cloud strategy, Asia can reach its full potential as a world class innovation hub,” said Andrew Cheng, Managing Director, AsiaPac. “Multi-cloud deployments allow  businesses to improve innovation through open-source technologies and scaleup seamlessly by reducing  infrastructure costs. We are excited about the opportunities ahead for businesses in the region; and will  continue to work with VMware to empower more companies turn ‘Cloud Smart’ by leveraging from the  best each cloud provider has to offer.” 

To maximize the potential of the gaming-leading Asia market, it is important that you build a cloud-native  infrastructure to improve user experiences and agile developing,” said Yoo Yeongsoo, IT system Team  leader of NCSOFT. “NCSOFT is focusing on building Kubernetes infrastructure for cloud-native applications  in partnership with VMware, a leading innovator in enterprise software and app modernization through  Cloud Smart approach.” 

“Moving to the cloud should not be difficult. Through our partnership with VMware, we are combining  our local on-the-ground expertise with best-in-class solutions and problem solving to help more  businesses of all sizes to do so,” said Na-pajra Umpudh, Chief Executive Officer, Cloud HM. “As the  technology providers and experts, it is only our duty to simplify adoption so businesses regardless of their 

IT background can also join the journey to the cloud and receive the benefits it provides from security,  reliability and cost effectiveness through scalability.”  

“Adopting a multi-cloud strategy is a central pillar to our bank’s digital transformation by enabling us to  build a flexible hybrid cloud platform that would easily integrate with multiple public clouds without  compromising on security and management policies,” said Tawan Jithavech, Chief Technology Officer,  KASIKORN Business-Technology Group, the technology arm of Thailand’s KBank. “This multi-cloud  approach is key to helping us deliver at least 200 digital transformation projects a year, freeing up 50% of  our IT resources to focus on innovation and reducing energy usage overall by 10%, allowing us to focus on  what matters – growing the business in a much more sustainable and scalable way.”