The 3rd Annual Vmware Cloud Index Shows a 25% yoy Growth in Cloud Usage in India
Organizational resistance to change is hindering even faster adoption in India;
cloud-related skills and experience are strong in demand
Mumbai, India – October 30, 2012: VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced the findings of its 3rd annual VMware Cloud Index, a commissioned study conducted in 11 Asia Pacific countries by Forrester Consulting and ITR (in Japan.) A summary of the VMware Cloud Index has been published today and is available for download at www.vmware.com/ap/cloudindex
The findings of the survey reveal a surge in cloud usage inIndiawhere half (50%) the respondents in the country state that they have already adopted cloud solutions or approaches – a 25% growth over last year. An additional 30% of respondents declared that they are currently planning to deploy cloud solutions within the next 18 months, highlighting the growing cloud opportunity inIndia. However, 40% of respondents state that there is internal resistance to change that is hindering the adoption of cloud, suggesting that faster cloud adoption is possible for Indian organizations if these hindrances can be overcome.
“The survey demonstrates the potential for cloud computing in the country and reflects a double digit rate of adoption,” said T Srinivasan, Managing Director, VMwareIndiaand SAARC. “With concerns around data privacy, integration and security limiting the adoption of cloud inIndia, we continue to work towards enabling organizations with knowledge and resources to raise adoption rates,” Srinivasan added. The study also reveals that 54% of senior IT professionals surveyed inIndiaconsider cloud computing as a top business priority. There has also been an improvement in the understanding of cloud computing with 72% of respondents claiming a good understanding, compared to 59% last year. The knowledge about cloud computing is higher at large organizations (10,000+ employees: 82%) compared to small organizations (<500 employees: 63%).
InIndia, while 80% of respondents believe that cloud computing will help enable their organizations to reduce IT costs, 82% believe that cloud computing will help them optimize their existing IT management and automation capabilities. Data privacy, legacy or “loss of control” (64%), integration with existing on-premise systems (62%) and security (60%) are the top barriers to cloud adoption inIndia. “As optimism in the economy rises, businesses inIndiacan once again focus on growth and expansion. This comes at a time when cloud computing is reaching a significant level of maturity and acceptance inIndia,” added Srinivasan. “VMware will continue to support the industry on the cloud journey as the marketplace evolves to the software defined datacenter approach to cloud computing that we are driving.”
VMware has recently made announcements to support the software-defined data center atVMworld 2012® in San Francisco and Barcelona, and announced products such as the VMware vCloud® Suite 5.1 (now generally available) and new management solutions.
The market for virtualization matures in India
The VMware Cloud Index 2012 also highlights that virtualization rates have reached critical mass in APJ, signaling that the next wave in cloud adoption is right ahead of us. InIndia, 81% agree that virtualization is highly critical to enable cloud computing and 94% of respondents have leveraged or are planning to leverage virtualization in their organization. Further, 50% of the respondents inIndiastate that they are running 50% or more of their production applications on a virtualized environment - a growth of 51% over last year.
Cloud-related skills and experience demonstrate strong demand in India
Reflecting the optimism for cloud computing, 62% of Indian organizations are increasing their budgets for training internal IT staff to support their cloud initiatives, above a regional average of 55%. Beyond internal trainings, 56% of organizations inIndiaare actively seeking to hire new staff with cloud expertise. This is critical, as nearly 73% of Indian IT professionals believe that failure to improve their cloud-related skills and gain cloud experience will increase their risk of falling behind peers professionally. “VMware has been at the forefront of assisting companies to realize the business benefits of virtualization and the cloud in India and we are committed to enabling our technology to be managed by skilled staff by expanding the reach of our training programs,” added Srinivasan.
The role of cloud service providers to increase in India
With the ease of use, faster deployment and ‘pay as you go’ services offered by cloud service providers, 50% of Indian organizations expect that their impact will increase. In India, 58% of organizations state that cloud services, such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), are being increasingly adopted by IT. Trust and SLAs are key factors for organizations in choosing a service provider to complement their journey to the cloud. VMware recently signed on 40 Service Provider Partners to help them deliver public cloud solutions to address the increasing demand for on-demand computing inIndia.
Cloud and mobility are converging to drive productivity
With a growing mobile and flexible workforce inIndia, 80% of respondents see cloud computing helping their organization supporting and enabling them. More than half (57%) of the respondents are concerned about end-users accessing cloud-based apps and services from mobile devices used for work.
