A new study has highlighted a shift in cloud uptake behaviour among enterprise decision makers within the Asia-Pacific market, with almost half of the region’s IT leaders prioritising hybrid cloud over other forms of cloud infrastructure.
Findings from a Microsoft Asia-Pacific survey of 1200 IT leaders across 12 markets have revealed that 49 per cent of IT leaders in the local region are prioritising hybrid cloud over public-only or private-only cloud solutions for their organisations in the near future.
Microsoft undertook the study to understand how organisations in the region are evolving their IT infrastructure strategies to meet the needs of a digital business.
The survey found that currently, of the 49 per cent of IT leaders prioritising the hybrid cloud, nine out of 10 said they would prioritise an integrated hybrid cloud, with common management tools across both public and private cloud.
Meanwhile, about 40 per cent of respondents in Australia are already on the hybrid cloud journey, which is expected to increase to 49 per cent in the next 12 to 18 months.
Additionally, the study found that 49 per cent of respondents are still only using private cloud and 17 per cent are using purely public cloud solutions.
The survey results suggested that respondents were not likely to increase their investments in private or public-only cloud solutions, reinforcing the demand for a more integrated, hybrid approach, according to Microsoft.
The findings come as two local Microsoft partners, Dilignet and Cubesys, undertake two separate projects deploying Azure-based cloud solutions for the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) and the Port Authority of New South Wales, respectively.
Systems integration and cloud computing specialist, Dilignet, has handled the first phase of the VIT’s migration to the cloud, deploying Microsoft Operations Management Suite,along with the vendor’s Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) solutions.
Responsible for regulating 120,000 registered teachers in Victoria, the VIT is in the midst of migrating its business applications to Microsoft Azure.
Dilignet’s work with the VIT is part of the Institute’s move to take on a suite of cloud-based services from Microsoft to create a “business and people-centred platform” with the aim of delivering operational efficiencies.
“We have worked closely with VIT helping to solve specific workload and organisational technology challenges,” Dilignet director, Peter Lillywhite, said.
Meanwhile, Cubesys, was chosen by the Port Authority of NSW to work with it on a disaster recovery migration, which saw the Authority leverage Microsoft Operations Management Suite, Azure Site Recovery, and Azure Backup services.
The authority’s on-premise production data centre now connects to the cloud disaster recovery through Azure ExpressRoute, with Cubesys delivering the disaster recovery process as a managed service.
As part of the deal, Cubesys also helped the authority set up a development and test environment on Azure and created a self-service portal for developers to manage Azure Virtual Machines.
“It provides the developers and testers with a one-stop shop where they don’t have to deal with the complexity of setting up servers manually,” the Port Authority’s solutions development and services senior manager, Ian Chilton, said.
“And again, that comes back to the goal of bringing up services only when we need them and closing them down when we don’t so that we get a much better, cost-effective usage of resources,” he said.
