Helping the business reduce costs and increase revenues is still the primary focus of Chief Information Officers in Hong Kong.
According to the study “Cloud Computing Is Helping CIOs Deliver The Agility Business Demands,” released by Workday, Forrester and ServiceNow, Hong Kong CIOs are still primarily focused on operational priorities, even more so than their counterparts in Singapore. For example, 79% of HK CIOs prioritize reducing costs and/or improving operational efficiency versus 72% in Singapore.
The Hong Kong CIO’s struggle to transform IT operations is reflected in business leader perception of IT. While business leaders (73%) view IT as a source of innovation for the organization, business units often go around IT in order to source technology or business applications directly (64%).
To meet their priorities, the majority of Hong Kong respondents are adopting cloud computing, but not as quickly as their Singapore counterparts. For example, 6% of HK respondents have fully adopted cloud computing and made it part of their core IT philosophy versus 16% in Singapore. Forty-two percent of HK respondents are aware of cloud computing but have no plans to adopt it versus 34% in Singapore.
Cloud adoption set to increase
The report also says that cloud adoption is expected to increase as a result of ongoing IT challenges. For example, 76% of HK respondents are struggling to adapt to the accelerating rate of technology change. HK CIOs are also faced with insufficient IT budget (61%), staffing problems (58%), and reconciling the differing priorities between IT and the business (55%).
The top CIO cloud concerns in Hong Kong center on Service Level Agreements, Security, And Performance. A majority or 85% of HK respondents have concerns over their confidence in service levels of cloud providers – versus only 69% in Singapore. Other concerns aired include performance of the cloud service (76%); integrating cloud services with on-premises applications (76%); and data sovereignty / residency / security (73%).
While evaluating the new technology or applications - Hong Kong CIOs prefer solutions that are secure (91%), quick, easy to implement (85%), systematically updated (79%) , and available with lower upfront cost to business (79%).
Chano Fernandez, President of Workday APAC and EMEA, comments, ““Cloud solutions and services enable employees to work anytime, anywhere from a multitude of different devices. Streamlined interfaces and always-available data has resulted in a new way of working that is driving a more innovative work culture and more agile business models among many companies in Hong Kong and the region.”