More than a third 35% of IT decision-makers in Singapore lack a basic understanding of what cloud cost governance and cloud cost optimisation are, and how they are different, and businesses in this category are at risk of cloud sprawl, according to Rackspace Technology.
Commissioned by Rackspace, Censuswide surveyed 1,516 directors in the IT department in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Colombia, Mexico, Germany, Netherlands, Hong Kong, Singapore and Middle East.
Results show that IT budgets are spread across many groups within organisations, making it increasingly difficult for IT decision makers to maintain visibility into where and how their IT budgets are being spent. Also, many organisations are not properly governing and optimising costs.
Almost all (99%) of IT decision-makers surveyed reported having a documented IT budget and dedicated resources to manage IT spend, and yet 40% those surveyed do not feel these resources are skilled enough to be effective.
Additionally, 80% of decision-makers report new concerns around budget or costs in the last three months, with 53% reporting concern over being unable to fund planned projects.
Further, businesses report a 52% increase in spend on technologies to support remote working (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), productivity, video conferencing/collaboration, etc.), which required shifting budget away from planned initiatives and toward obtaining the technology necessary to keep the business running. As different business units seek to quickly adopt tools to maintain business continuity, the investment in other IT priorities can get lost in the shuffle and go untraced.
“Many businesses have found out the hard way in 2020 that their IT systems, resources and spend tracking weren’t ready for COVID,” said Jeff DeVerter, CTO–Solutions at Rackspace.
Sandeep Bhargava, managing director of APJ at Rackspace, said the largest challenges organisations are facing during the COVID-19 situation and in implementing work-from-home initiatives are associated with how prepared they are in adopting a cloud-first strategy.
“A cloud-first strategy has become the foundation that enables businesses to transform, differentiate and gain competitive advantage,” said Bhargava.
