Research from the International Data Corporation (IDC) suggests that adoption of cloud from retailers in the Asia Pacific region is currently slow but will progress substantially within five years.
According to the survey, only 19% of the 56 respondents were currently pushing through a cloud adoption strategy for their business, but 32% stated they were considering implementing cloud within the next two-to-five years.
IDC further noted in their research that the three main barriers to widespread Asia Pacific cloud adoption were data security, firewalls and integration to internal IT systems.
The report, entitled “Cloud Adoption in the Asia Pacific – Retail Industry”, was carried out between December 2011 and January 2012 among mid-to-large retail companies across the Asia Pacific region, covering Australia, China, Malaysia, New Zealand, India and Singapore.
Research manager Kumar Gs Das called the Asian retail industry “cautious” about cloud and added: “The majority of them recognises that the cloud would bring efficiency to their IT systems and improve operational backend issues.
“However, the plan to move into virtual platforms does not appear to be immediate and would take between two to five years”, he added.
This news may highlight the need for retailers to change from potentially outdated legacy systems, with the IDC report stating their belief that “the positive economic outlook in Asia will drive the future adoption of cloud among retailers”.
Earlier this month an IDC report inferred that Asia Pacific financiers were similarly hesitant about cloud adoption despite “typically [being] an early adopter of technology”, with research stating that no more than 45% of financial institutions surveyed had partially or fully adopted cloud services.
Even though it will potentially improve efficiency, are retailers going to regret putting off cloud adoption? Are legacy systems the real reason behind retailers not switching their IT services to cloud? As Japan is not part of the Asia Pacific region, how would their figures modify the results?
