S'pore tops cloud service adoption

Singapore firms beat those in the United States and United Kingdom when it comes to cloud adoption, according a new survey which noted that business leaders' confidence in cloud has grown compared with 2009.

Released Thursday by hosting provider Savvis, the "Rising to the challenge: 2010 global IT leadership report" found that 76 percent of Singapore firms are already using cloud computing, followed by United States at 66 percent and the United Kingdom at 57 percent.

The study, conducted by research company Vanson Bourne, included a survey done in April 2010, which polled 456 IT and business decision-makers of global midsize organizations across three markets--United States, United Kingdom and Singapore--as well as interviews of 202 senior business decision-makers in the U.S. and U.K.

The study, which is into its second year, found that 96 percent of IT decision-makers are as confident or more confident that cloud will be able to deliver enterprise-ready services compared with 2009.

"Flexibility and pay-as-you-go elasticity are driving many of our clients toward cloud computing," said Bryan Doerr, chief technology officer at Savvis, in the report.

For cloud users, scalability is cited as the top benefit of the platform (38 percent), followed by lower total cost of ownership (31 percent) and improved reliability (24 percent), according to the report.

Savvis noted that "interestingly", enhanced security was the fourth main benefit for users choosing cloud. This was in contrast to 52 percent of non-cloud users citing security as one of the top three issues preventing them from adopting cloud.

The study found that when it comes to security, 23 percent of IT leaders prefer to let their cloud vendor fully manage security so they do not have to worry about it. At the same time, 50 percent would like to be allowed to put in configuration change requests.

According to the study, businesses are still feeling the effects of the recession. In fact, IT departments from all three markets report the same key issue: the need to do more despite dwindling IT budgets.

Respondents noted reducing infrastructure costs, infrastructure consolidation and virtualization or cloud computing strategy as the top three areas where the cost savings will come from.

US IT leaders are most optimistic when it comes to cloud services savings, and expect an 18 percent savings on IT budgets. Singapore IT leaders foresee a 15 percent savings, while UK IT leaders anticipate 12 percent.