An overwhelming 95% of Hong Kong enterprises are either using cloud services or at the planning or implementation stage of cloud deployments, new research shows.
A study into how APAC enterprises are using cloud services, conducted by F5 Networks and Frost & Sullivan, also shows that 58.6% of business decision makers in the region have made cloud computing their top priority in the next 12 months.
Respondents overwhelmingly agreed that cloud services can help improve speed to market and competitiveness, and is a critical component to any business transformation strategy.
The study outlines four key factors shaping today's enterprise cloud service decisions. These include companies increasingly outsourcing strategic and core workloads to the cloud, including mission-critical applications such as enterprise research planning.
The role of non-IT business leaders in cloud services planning and procurement is meanwhile expanding, while discussions on cloud adoption are increasingly shifting from business-centric to customer centric.
Security and privacy also remain key areas of focus, with 68% of business decision makers identifying security as the biggest impediment to adopting cloud services.
“With virtually all enterprises now currently using or in the process of adopting cloud computing – and seeing real business benefits – understanding and decision-making around cloud is rapidly maturing and evolving,” F5 senior vice president for APAC Emmanuel Bonnassie said.
“To fully benefit from a hybrid infrastructure, IT silos must be broken down, applications and supporting services must be abstracted from infrastructure so they can be seamlessly and automatically provisioned across multiple parts of a hybrid environment.”