ANZ enterprises underutilising cloud capacity

More than three in five (63%) enterprises in Australia and New Zealand are using less than half of the cloud capacity they have committed to, new research from Infosys suggests.

A global survey conducted by the company found that despite the underutilisation, 68% of companies in the region increased their cloud spend last year, with 71% planning to increase spending next year.

Globally, the report identified a US$321.4 billion ($497.13 billion) gap among enterprises from unused cloud commitments across the major providers Google Cloud, AWS and Azure, as well as other providers.

A/NZ enterprises meanwhile report significant gaps in cloud governance, with 42% allowing anyone to add a new cloud and only 18% requiring a business case for new cloud investments. As a result, 78% of enterprises in the region have three or more cloud providers.

The report also found that the biggest barriers to A/NZ companies moving to the cloud involve replacing or updating systems (19%), enabling new revenue streams (18%), integrating business subsidiaries (17%) and accessing new technologies or software development capabilities.

Infosys VP for A/NZ Ashok Mysore said the company’s research shows that Australian and New Zealand businesses have embraced the idea of becoming cloud-first enterprises, but they are facing challenges in implementing such a strategy.

“Enterprise leaders in Australia and New Zealand are facing the same cloud maturity challenges as the rest of the world, with a significant gap between commitments and cloud utilisation,” he said.

“While this is a short-term benefit to the balance sheet in a time of economic uncertainty, the cloud build-up on the horizon should serve as a warning, with forecast cost pressures and tougher contract negotiations coming. We’ve seen this local drive to fast-track cloud projects across our enterprise customers in Australia and New Zealand with greater demand for cloud squads to build and accelerate cloud solutions.”

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