Study: Cloud is 'Business as Usual' for Australian Enterprises

Cloud computing has become business as usual in Australia, where a whopping 86 percent of enterprises are currently using cloud computing, up from 71 percent in 2012, according to a new study.

Line-of-business (LOB) managers in leading-edge enterprises have begun to add to CIO’s cloud spending by direct acquisition of cloud services as a delivery mechanism for new competitive offerings within their own industries and marketplaces, based on IDC’s (News - Alert) 2013 Australia End-User Cloud Survey.

Until 2012, cloud was primarily an IT label for IT infrastructure services delivered as a service. Now, cloud is no longer just an IT infrastructure play, according to Raj Mudaliar, senior analyst at IDC Australia.

“Cloud-based business services being acquired by LOB managers will now drive growth in the use of externally sourced services. Cloud in 2013 is now business as usual for CIOs, IT managers, and LOB managers,” Mudaliar said in a statement. “By 2015, cloud will be just another delivery model for a range of ‘as-a-service’ offerings that are based on infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS (News - Alert)).”

According to IDC, there was a shift away from on-premise private cloud to virtual private cloud (VPC) as the number of these offerings increased and their price points came closer to those of public cloud, from 2011 to 2012. VPC has been a safe choice for medium-risk applications, however the truly mission-critical applications like ERP will most often be deployed on dedicated private cloud (DPC) (single tenant hosted from service provider’s data center).

In addition, SaaS selection now focuses on industry-specific applications and process functionality to improve business performance, the study revealed. In 2013, hosted private cloud intentions are on the rise, with standardized services as part of the package-reducing demand for pure private cloud deployments.

“It is expected that services component will increase as larger and more complex projects get underway,” IDC said.

The total Australia public cloud services (which includes SaaS, PaaS and IaaS) is expected to grow at a CAGR of 24.7 percent for the five-year forecast period of 2013-2017.

In related news, Australia recently released a policy for the government’s use of cloud computing that would also help decide when to allow work to be done overseas or outsourced on a case-by-case basis, InfoTech recently reported. The new policy builds on Australia’s National Cloud Computing Strategy, which was introduced in May.

The new policy, known as “The Australian Government Policy and Risk Management Guidelines for the Processing and Storage of Australian Government Information in Outsourced or Offshore ICT Arrangements,” aims to provide a structured approach to undergoing a risk assessment for outsourcing IT that pertains to Australian government information.