Enterprises continue to shift away from a single cloud approach toward more flexible hybrid cloud environments, with over 90% of firms in the Asia-Pacific region planning to make significant changes in their cloud strategy over the next two years.
Of those respondents, 46% said that a hybrid cloud for multi-environment deployment will be critical to their IT operations over the next 12-24 months.
Rackspace Technology commissioned a survey conducted by Coleman Parkes Research in October and November 2024. Findings are based on the responses of 1,420 IT decision-makers across the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Colombia, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Australia and Saudi Arabia.
Main reasons for Asia-Pacific respondents to utilise a hybrid cloud environment include improved reliability and availability (72%), followed by Enhancing data security and compliance (56%)
Despite the steady adoption of public clouds, IT teams are not preparing to abandon private clouds. Over 72% of APAC respondents stated that their organisations had considered repatriating at least a portion of their workloads from public clouds back to private clouds or on premises infrastructure. They cite data security and compliance requirements (49%), better integration with existing systems (42%), and skill gaps or staffing limitations in managing cloud environments (38%) as rationales.
For those that had recently repatriated workloads, nearly 80% of respondents reported that it had resolved those concerns.
Although the importance of cloud deployments is widely recognised, the survey reveals a significant gap in its full adoption among enterprises. Only 11% of APAC respondents reported that cloud adoption is fully integrated into their business strategy and aligned with their business objectives with advanced practice areas in place.
“As AI continues to drive rapid advancements, IT leaders are reevaluating their approach to workload management. Instead of updating existing infrastructure, they are designing entirely new cloud strategies to meet evolving demands,” said Srini Koushik, president of AI, technology and sustainability at Rackspace Technology.
“To future-proof their organisations, many are transitioning from a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model in favour of a more flexible and resilient multi-strategy approach,” he said. “This pivotal moment for hybrid and multi-cloud solutions empowers organisations to choose services tailored to their unique technical requirements and workloads.”
Adhil Badat, COO for Asia-Pacific Japan at Rackspace Technology, said that as organisations shift away from a single-cloud approach, they are embracing flexible, multi-environment solutions to meet evolving business needs.
A driving force behind the desire for multi-solution approaches is the ease with which organisations can move data between different cloud environments, with 83% of APAC respondents stating that they can transfer workloads seamlessly between the public and private cloud, and 79% reporting that they can do so between multiple public cloud hyperscalers.
Development of AI initiatives remains a key focus for IT teams, with 84% of APAC respondents reporting that they have taken steps to integrate their AI and cloud strategies.
When asked about the business outcomes that were driving the integration of AI and cloud, 44% reported that their goal is to enhance operational efficiency while 44% are leveraging AI to improve the insights generated by data analytics.
Although IT leaders are bullish on the prospect of cloud and AI integrations, talent and resource shortages remain major pitfalls that could limit their ability to fulfil these goals.
Ensuring data and compliance was cited by 48% of APAC respondents as a constraint, followed by insufficient budgets limiting their ability to meet business demands (45%).