Multi-cloud takes deep roots in APAC 

The is a growing prevalence of multi-cloud in the Asia-Pacific region, with five in every six firms choosing it and 14 in every 15 saying it works, according to a new report from HashiCorp.

Forrester Consulting was commissioned for the second annual State of Cloud Strategy Survey, the respondent universe for which was expanded beyond the HashiCorp contact database.

Forrester conducted an online survey with 1,039 practitioners and technical decision makers across North America; Europe, Middle East, and Africa; and Asia-Pacific. Those surveyed work at companies of 1,000 or more employees in a variety of industries. 

Findings also show that cloud security, skills gaps, siloed teams, and inconsistent workflows are among the most common challenges hindering multi-cloud operations. 

In APAC, 84% of respondents choose multi-cloud, with 46% of already using multi-cloud infrastructures and an additional 38% saying they will be within the next 12 months.

Also, 93% say the multi-cloud approach is already helping their organisation advance or achieve their business goals.

According to the survey results, multi-cloud is now the de facto standard for infrastructure among enterprises, with the leading drivers for this cloud adoption strategy being reliability, digital transformation, scalability, and security and governance.

Among respondents, 87% rely on cloud platform teams. Organisations have identified the need for a centralised group such as a cloud platform team or Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) to operationalise their cloud efforts with common practices across their organisation.

Further, 96% say they are overspending in the cloud. Top reasons for this avoidable overspending included idle or underused resources, over-provisioned resources, and a lack of needed skills.

In addition, respondents noted skills shortages are exacerbating security risks, driving avoidable cloud spend, and hindering the organisation’s ability to operationalise multi-cloud. 

“Organisations benefiting from multi-cloud nearly doubled from last year, and the majority of organisations now have a centralised cloud team,” said Grant Orchard, HashiCorp field CTO in APAC and Japan. 

“This centralised expertise enables them to operationalise at scale and benefit from their cloud strategies,” said Orchard. “Not surprisingly, we saw skills shortages move to the top of the list of cloud blockers, reinforcing the need for cloud platform teams and infrastructure and security automation tools.”