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The spread of cloud in APAC: Fact or fiction?

Conventional wisdom says the move to cloud computing is inexorable. To what extent is this theory playing out, and which business leaders are the players?
Written by ZDNet Australia team , Contributor

IT leaders in APAC businesses reflected the conventional wisdom when ZDNet consulted them in January this year.

Respondents to ZDNet's IT Priorities research study in Asia, India, and Australia reported substantial planned increases in cloud budgets for the 2013 financial year compared to 2012. Indian businesses were especially gung-ho, indicating planned cloud budget increases of 27 percent, while Asian organisations predicted growth of 21 percent, and Australia chimed in at 18 percent.

Looking at the Asian economies individually, budget growth predictions were highest in developing economies and lowest in highly developed countries (16 percent in Singapore, 13 percent in Hong Kong).

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Expected cloud budget increase/decrease in APAC.
Image: ZDNet

While cloud budgets are changing fast, that was not yet the case with the roles that control budgets.

In 54 percent of Asian businesses, the CIO, CTO, or IT manager/IT infrastructure manager was ultimately responsible for private cloud. The picture was almost identical for public cloud, where the CIO, CTO, or IT manager had responsibility in 50 percent of businesses. Cases where non-IT executives cut out the CIO middleman and go direct to software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers were clearly less common than popularly imagined.

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Roles Responsible for Private Cloud: Asia.
Image: ZDNet

Overall, a technical role had ultimate responsibility for private cloud in over three quarters of Asian business (78 percent). For public cloud, the figure was 74 percent, and Australian and Indian businesses reported similar scenarios.

How does the APAC cloud landscape look now, nine months following the IT Priorities results?

Check back in late November for the results of ZDNet's new Cloud Priorities APAC research, an in-depth look at infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, SaaS, and private/hybrid cloud. Better still,  APAC-based readers can get involved by completing the survey, and earn a free copy of the full report together with a chance to win the new iPhone 5s.

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