Low cloud readiness in Thai firms
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Only 28 per cent use private cloud, while greater proportion of SMEs plan to do so than large companies, imc institute finds
Results of a recent “Cloud Computing Readiness in Thailand 2014” survey show that enterprises in Thailand have a “lower level of readiness” when it comes to the cloud.
The IMC Institute conducted the research between May 5 and September 18 among 177 small and medium-sized enterprises and large businesses, as well as public-sector organisations.
Thanachart Numnonda, executive director of the institute, said that the survey used online questionnaires and interviewed executives, directors, managers and employees in IT and other fields in both the public and private sectors.
Sixty-one large enterprises, which employ more than 1,000 people, accounted for 34 per cent of the business sample, with 116 SMEs making up the remainder.
Those involved in IT business made up 26 per cent of the overall sample, other businesses such as department stores, energy, construction and printing accounted for 15 per cent, finance and banking for 12 per cent, manufacturing for 9 per cent, and government agencies also for 9 per cent.
The survey found that 39 per cent of the sample have less than 20 IT staff, 33 per cent have between 21 and 100 IT staff, while only 28 per cent have more than 100.
The survey on private-cloud access found that 167 of the business sample (94 per cent) already have their own servers in their organisations, and that among them, only 47 organisations (28 per cent) already use the private cloud.
Meanwhile, 48 of the sample (29 per cent) plan to install it in the future, while the majority (43 per cent) have no plans whatsoever for private-cloud usage.
An interesting trend discovered by the survey is that even now, large enterprises already use the private cloud in a higher proportion than that of SMEs, due to the fact that they have more complex data in their operations and seek to keep their trade secrets confidential.
A higher proportion of SMEs, on the contrary, plan to use the private cloud in the future than that of the large enterprises surveyed – an important trend that the cloud industry in Thailand should not overlook, said Thanachart.
In regard to the use of public-cloud service among organisations in Thailand, the survey found that its popularity is increasing, and especially for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS), due partly to the increasing number of service providers in the Kingdom.
There is no information on any provider of Platform as a Service (PaaS) in Thailand.
Among the whole sample, 81 organisations (45.76 per cent) planning to use public-cloud service want to use IaaS the most, representing 66.67 per cent, followed SaaS (60.49 per cent) and PaaS (39.51 per cent).
It is no surprise that the survey found that a higher proportion of SMEs plan to use the public cloud than among large businesses, as a specific study into SMEs indicated that more 50 per cent of SMEs plan to do so in the form of IaaS, which accounted for 72.88 per cent of the three types of service, said the institute’s executive director.
There were 22 large companies that plan to use the public cloud, mostly in a form of SaaS (68.18 per cent).
Among the providers of IaaS public cloud in Thailand – such as True IDC, DataPro, EGA (G-Cloud), and iNet – and providers from other countries, the survey found that Microsoft Azure has the highest number of users, followed by True IDC in second place and Amazon Web Services and G-Cloud joint third.
Other providers include Fujitsu, NTI and Digital Ocean.
Although Microsoft Azure dominates the market right now, the survey found an increasing number of Thai organisations focusing on cloud computing that comes in a form of open source.
IaaS providers that the organisations plan to use in the future are Red Hat’s Openshift, Google App Engine and Amazon Web Services.
For SaaS cloud-computing services, the survey found that most organisations choose providers from other countries, with Google App the most popular, followed by Office 365 and Dropbox Enterprise.
Besides these three service providers, Thai enterprises plan to use the services of Salesforce, OpenERP, Smartsheet and Amazon in the future.
Moreover, the survey found that the types of software that Thai businesses want to use for SaaS public cloud the most are e-mail (63.39 per cent), followed by Office 365 document-management software (56.06 per cent), Dropbox cloud-storage software (46.94 per cent), customer-relationship management software (30.61 per cent) and enterprise-resource-planning software (24.49 per cent).
“Cloud computing is able to change the information and communications technology industry, and it will be one of the factors in creating the digital economy, since it will enable business to reduce operational investment costs.
“Moreover, the digital economy will encourage small and medium-sized enterprises to use the public cloud, which also help them reduce costs for investment. Meanwhile, large enterprises will invest much more in the private cloud.
“Local software companies have the opportunity to provide cloud-computing software in terms of Software as a Service to the international market,” said Thanachart.
