C-Suite executives in Singapore declare the one-vendor approach to cloud as dead, with only 1% of respondents in a survey by IBM reported using a single private or public cloud in 2021.
This is a big drop from 21% in 2019, and establishes hybrid cloud as the dominant IT architecture in Singapore.
Conducted by IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) in cooperation with Oxford Economics, the global study surveyed almost 7,200 C-suite executives across 28 industries and 47 countries including Singapore.
Findings indicate that the cloud market has entered the hybrid, multicloud era and concerns around vendor lock-in, security, compliance and interoperability remain paramount.
The study found that cyber threats are at an all-time high as infrastructure complexity is creating cracked doors that cybercriminals are exploiting.
In Singapore, 78% respondents did indicate improving cybersecurity and reducing security risks are among their largest business and IT investments.
At the same time, 71% of respondents in Singapore said data security being embedded throughout the cloud architecture is “important” or “extremely important,” in most cases, to successful digital initiatives.
Also, companies are denouncing vendor lock-in, with nearly 80% of respondents in Singapore saying workloads being completely portable with no vendor lock-in is important or extremely important to the success of their digital initiatives.
About 78% of respondents in Singapore said vendor lock-in is a significant obstacle to improving business performance in most or all parts of their cloud estate.
Public cloud adoption is evolving towards industry clouds, as nearly 70% of global respondents in the government and financial services sectors cited industry-related regulatory compliance as an obstacle to the business performance of their cloud estate.
Howard Boville, head of IBM Cloud Platform, said the findings reiterate that security, governance and compliance tools must run across multiple clouds and be embedded throughout hybrid cloud architectures from the onset for digital transformations to be successful.
“Enterprise cloud adoption has moved on from reducing the cost of data centre operations to putting cloud native capabilities at the core of innovating how their business works,” said Martin Chee, general manager of IBM ASEAN.
The study revealed that enterprises need to assess how they use the cloud in terms of adoption, velocity, migration, speed, and cost savings opportunity.
Other recommendations include focusing on security and privacy; asking which workloads should move to the cloud; setting a tactical approach and; determining the right team.
