Firms are adopting more application services designed to accelerate deployment in public cloud and container-native environments, like service mesh and ingress control, according to F5 Networks.
The company’s 2020 State of Application Services: Asia Pacific Edition Report also suggests that this trend will accelerate as organisations become proficient in harnessing the data their application ecosystem delivers—creating advanced analytics capabilities and better business outcomes.
Yet, most organisations are still struggling to implement a robust security framework for its applications, focusing on speed to market over security.
The report reflects input from nearly 2,600 respondents globally — more than half of which are from Asia Pacific — across a range of industries, company sizes, and roles.
“This year’s report reveals one key trend that continues to plague businesses across Asia Pacific — security skills gap,” said Adam Judd, SVP of Asia Pacific, China and Japan, at F5.
“Harnessing growth opportunities and breaking through disruption cycles require businesses to invest in talent, technologies, and trusted partners in order to build and deploy apps with greater speed, availability, and security across all environments,” said Judd.
The survey shows that as companies manage legacy, multi-cloud, hybrid-cloud, and modern architectures to deliver applications, their requirements for app services are also evolving.
To address limited skill sets and integration challenges, organisations are choosing open ecosystems that offer standardisation. Respondents prize application services that are both secure and easy to use.
In Asia Pacific, 82% of organisations in Asia Pacific are executing on digital transformation, with increasing emphasis on accelerating speed to market.
Also, 86% of organisations in the region (global: 87 percent) are multi-cloud and most still struggle with security.
About seven in 10 (71%) are automating the network to boost efficiency and (68%) are using 10 or more application services.
Close to two-thirds (63%) still place primary responsibility for app services with IT operations, yet more than half of those surveyed are also moving to DevOps-inspired teams.
