Cloud Asia
The adoption of the cloud in Asia is happening with the flow of economic sense, where IT is adding value to business objectives of the organization. This is more so with the revenue objectives. Surprisingly and amazingly at the same breadth, the adoption or the rejection of cloud is being considered whether it is adding value to the top-line of the business, sometimes and less frequently to the bottom-line value of the business. I intend to show some real examples I have come across in the later part of this article.
With its unique USPs, Cloud has been trying to woo enterprises to shift from traditional uses of IT. Some of the reasons & areas where it has definitely gained access are:
Let’s become users of the super stuff: Smaller enterprises, garage startups included, have embraced the cloud with open arms – a direct impact of the “no upfront payment “model. SaaS enabled enterprise level applications lets these smaller players use high-end software like CRMs or Project management. Product development companies around Singapore, Thailand and India have started to use these SaaS services in a big way. Not to mention the obvious moves to adopt cloud based email and data backup solutions. Notwithstanding the basic uses, I am seeing tech and financial analyst startups making smart moves to use high-scale compute engines on the public cloud to make their products or platforms world-class and enterprise scale. Never mind having to tweak the end products delivery model changing to a web & internet based one, adoption of IaaS or PaaS at its best. Scores of smaller and medium sized businesses in Asia are now using bundled services with public cloud to mostly deliver almost “zero-time” ready solutions to their customers (both business and retail).
If it helps me in my sale, I buy it: Imagine an eCommerce company trying to reach out to prospective buyers over the internet’s spread. Spending on the normal SEO and SEM techniques would be a no-brainer, right? How about content delivery ( read: caching, delivery, rendering, encoding etc. ) or Social media analytics ? Invariably, some important elements that can add to the top-line of the business, a trend in cloud adoption method across eCommerce to media companies in Asia (across India and ASEAN). Traditionally a cost-sensitive market, Asian IT consumers are now opening up to the idea of adopting cloud solutions or services to reach out to customers better. The results might not be there to show upfront but surely these industries are doing well in the region, an indirect testament to the adoption of cloud certainly.
It’s a private affair! Nay, not all of it: FMCGs to Banks, across the board IT teams within organizations are adopting the private cloud or raking in the hybrid model. And their reason for doing it, get the bang for the buck!
IT hardware in Asia does not just come at a market premium but ordering new hardware or replacement components takes long cycles of process and logistics. Things have improved but these problems still lurk. Hence the CIO builds on the strategy to juice out the hardware to the max. Creating or implementing virtual machines (VMs ) is a very common strategy in IT departments in traditional business organizations, be it the manufacturers in South East or the big telcos of the broader region. Peer based reviews or case studies have been big boosts to encourage CIOs take the cloud route, especially on private cloud. However beyond the private cloud, now larger enterprises have started taking cues from the smaller ones. There is a slow but sure adoption for larger companies to look at public cloud solutions ( SaaS or IaaS ) – the ones that you see being projected as THE use-cases in the region.
Is all of the IT from large enterprises going that way? Well, certainly not. Careful selections of the optimum workloads, best adapted for public cloud are making their way to public clouds. All the way from corporate websites, dealership management, digital marketing to CRMs.
All and all, looks like a thumps up to the cloud from professional leaders in Asian IT.
By Supratik Ghatak,
Supratik is a tech-entrepreneur and founder of BlazeClan Technologies, a cloud focused consulting company with operations in India, ASEAN, US and Europe. He is an Electronics Engineer & Telecommunications management professional by qualification. Supratik is a passionate evangelist for technologies which contribute to business or lives, including cloud computing, and regularly delivers lectures on the topic at both Industry and Academic forums. He also has a passion towards teaching and takes time out to teach MBA students both in India and Singapore, as a guest faculty.
