Hybrid cloud adoption is on the rise in Thailand

An integrated (hybrid) mix of public cloud and private cloud/datacenters is the best IT operating model for Thai organizations, according to Nutanix’s recent supplemental report to the global Third Annual Enterprise Cloud Index master report.

The survey also shows  that Thailand will adopt hybrid cloud services rapidly over the next five years with 67% of respondents in Thailand have agreed upon the said adoption plan.   Current hybrid penetration levels of 4% is expected to rise to 67% within the next five years.

Thailand is ranked ahead of hybrid cloud deployments with 70% of Thai respondents are reported either deployed or are in processing of deploying, compared to other global respondents’s 50% on average.

While top three considerations to modernize IT infrastructure by those organizations are to increase speed to meet business needs (79%), gain better control of IT resource usage (67%), and to better support customers (67%).   Cost savings, by contrast, is not primary driver for infrastructure change in Thailand.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has raised IT’s focus and accelerated cloud adoption. More than 82% of respondents in Thailand said that COVID-19 has caused IT to be viewed more strategically in their organizations.  As a result, 68% reported an increase in public cloud investment (compared to 47% global averages) while 56% increased their investment in private cloud (compared to 37%, globally).  

Mr Thawipong Anothai, Thailand Country Manager of Nutanix added that the COVID-19 pandemic  has automatically forced IT in Thailand and elsewhere to quickly dial up their cloud computing deployments in support of sudden masses of remote and work-from-home employees.  Work from home is a trend for Future of Work with agility working style.  Hence, this favourable development in cloud usage has been accelerating both hybrid cloud and digital transformation initiatives in Thailand and around the world that rely largely on public cloud services at their foundation.

The adoption of cloud decisions by many Thai enterprises are mostly largely based on their data gravity and legacy applications which they are encountering with, regulatory concerns and cybersecurity purposes, loss of control in case of public cloud, and concerns over unpredictable cost in connection with public cloud.

The abovementioned report is conducted by U.K. researcher Vanson Bourne surveyed 3,400 IT decision-makers around the world and in APJ in mid-2020 asked about where they're running their business applications today, where they plan to run them in the future, what their cloud challenges are, how their cloud initiatives stack up against other IT projects and priorities and  the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their current and future IT infrastructure decisions and how IT strategy and priorities are gearing towards overall business needs in the fast changing world.

Like most respondents elsewhere, respondents in Thailand currently run a mix of IT infrastructures, including traditional datacenters, private clouds, and public clouds, which currently are not integrated.  On their journey to a dominant hybrid cloud environment, respondents in Thailand are dramatically expanding their use of multiple public cloud infrastructure services  and are moving to a predominantly mixed but nonintegrated model by the years ahead.