Australia the biggest adopter of cloud computing in Asia-Pacific

Australia is the lead adopter of cloud computing in the Asia-Pacific region, with almost half using cloud computing, according to a new research paper from Frost & Sullivan.

The paper, entitled State of Cloud Computing in Australia: 2011, reports that 43% of Australian enterprises use cloud computing in some form, while 41% indicate that the cloud will be a top priority in the current fiscal year.

“There has been a significant increase in the use of cloud services in Australia in the past 12 months and all the indications are that this will continue,” said Arun Chandrasekaran, Research Director - ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan.

“While a formal ‘cloud first’ policy does not exist yet in most enterprises, the idea of a ‘cloud alternative’ evaluation is increasingly common. We expect to see a number of trial deployments this year as companies dip their toes in the water and test non-mission-critical applications and infrastructure,” Chandrasekaran said.

Companies identified several reasons for this adoption, primarily: reductions to capital and operational expenditure, increased business agility and the ability to deliver IT as an on-demand service.

Frost & Sullivan predicts that cloud-related spending will only increase, albeit in a measured manner.

“All IT decision makers will either maintain or increase their spending on cloud computing in the current fiscal year. Nevertheless, customers will continue to be cautious about the upfront cost savings from cloud computing due to concerns over hidden costs and downtime,” the company said.