IT leaders in Asia Pacific are making firm steps towards transforming their approaches to complement their organization’s digital transformation requirements despite having to also manage legacy IT infrastructure. Almost half (48%) said they are prioritizing hybrid cloud over public only or private only cloud solutions for their organizations in the near future.
These are some of the key findings in the Microsoft Asia Pacific survey of 1,200 IT leaders across 12 markets to understand how they are evolving their IT infrastructure strategies to meet the needs of a digital business.
The next few years will be critical to all IT leaders as they execute on plans for a transition to a modern cloud-based IT infrastructure needed to serve their digital business needs. According to IDC, 60% of top 1,000 Asia Pacific organizations will have a digital transformation at the center of their corporate strategy by the end of 2017.
Digital now or digital mess
IT leaders are constantly struggling to balance legacy IT needs, budget demands and the need to modernize to meet the demands for a digital future.
The survey found that currently, about 42% of respondents are already on the hybrid cloud journey, which is expected to increase to 48% in the next 12 – 18 months. Today, 36% are still only using private cloud and 22% are using purely public cloud solutions.
The study showed that respondents are not likely to increase their investments in private or public only cloud solutions, reinforcing the demand for a more integrated, hybrid approach.
IT leaders are facing increasingly complex IT environments to manage and crave simplicity. They still have to manage traditional IT assets to support legacy applications and compliance needs.
The study also found that the innovation in cloud is causing the usage of cloud apps to explode. On average, it is estimated that there are 340 apps being used per organisation and they need robust tools to manage them.
IT leaders are being pulled in many directions. They spend about 52% of their time on maintenance, compliance and operational issues, 25% on developing next generation digital capabilities and 23% of their time working with business leadership on digital transformation initiatives.
In terms of digital transformation, they are spending more time on optimising operations, than on engaging customers, empowering employees or innovating with new products, services or business models.
IT leaders are also concerned about the skills gap in their organisations, citing the top 3 skills most needed in their organisations are in the areas of security (62%), cloud app management (56%) and data analytics (52%).
Drivers of security concerns
Security continues to be a concern in a world facing increasing cyber threats every day. The top three reasons driving their concerns:
1. Malware and data theft by cyber criminals
2. Employees connecting their personal devices into the organizations’ networks
3. Employee data theft
The study also showed that organisations in Asia Pacific already use an average of 40 security products.
A majority or 74% of respondents agree that there is a need to invest more in IT security solutions and services and 67% agree on the need to reduce complexity of managing the increasing portfolio of IT security solutions and services.
Transforming IT with the Hybrid Cloud
Adopting a hybrid cloud strategy is the next step in the journey for organizations looking to take advantage of modern cloud computing capabilities while continuing to manage their traditional assets.
Of the 48% of IT leaders prioritising the hybrid cloud, 9 out of 10 said they would prioritize an integrated hybrid cloud, with common management tools across both public and private cloud.
Andreas Hartl, General Manager, Cloud and Enterprise Division, Microsoft Asia Pacific said: “Hybrid cloud is a natural progression for all organisations in Asia Pacific, regardless of size, budgets to reach their digital ambitions. It’s a tough balancing act for IT to manage both current and future digital needs of the business. The cloud holds rich new applications which will enable better management tools, intelligent applications and advanced analytics to not just reduce cost and increase efficiency but to also innovate and enable faster time to market. As such, it can’t be ignored but it needs to be managed.”
However, the study also showed that most IT leaders have traditional views of the cloud. While 80% said they would be comfortable hosting all their business applications on the public cloud in the future, more than half of respondents are only using it for basic applications such as email & customer facing online assets (websites). Only 35% of respondents are using the cloud for application development and operations.
Hartl also said that there are four areas in which IT Leaders need to step up to enable digital transformation.:
Firstly, they need to get up to speed with the modern tools of managing increasing security and complexity.
Secondly gain control of your infrastructure with software management tools spanning across public, private, and multiple branded clouds.
Thirdly, move quickly to an integrated hybrid cloud which will allow them to benefit from the best of both worlds.
Lastly, they need to drive more sophisticated workloads in the cloud to innovate, shorten time to market and maximize the potential which new digital technologies have to offer.