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.”