70% of Singaporean companies plan to adopt cloud computing

The other 30 % presumably still use a rock and chisel.

Also, 84% of CEO’s are mainly concerned with its reliability, according to Symantec’s survey.

The 2011 Virtualisation and Evolution to the Cloud Survey examined how organisations plan to move business-critical initiatives to virtual and hybrid cloud computing environments. The survey highlighted topics including server, client, and storage virtualisation, storage-as-a-service, and hybrid/private cloud technologies; and the results uncover disparities between expectations and reality as enterprises deploy these solutions. CEOs and CFOs are concerned with moving business-critical applications into virtual or cloud environments due to challenges including reliability, security, availability and performance. The survey is based on more than 3,700 respondents from 35 countries worldwide. 100 respondents from Singapore were involved in this survey.

“With more than 70 percent of Singaporean organisations contemplating cloud adoption, it’s clear that cloud computing is evoking a major shift within IT – changing from a traditional IT delivery to a service-provider model. Moving to the cloud is a complex evolution for many companies and it is essential that IT and executives are aligned on initiatives,” said Tan Yuh Woei, country manager, Singapore, Symantec. “Virtualisation is an enabler for private and hybrid clouds. Our survey shows that planning a seamless move is critical to achieving all the simplicity, affordability and efficiency that these environments have to offer.”

Gaps Between Expectations and Reality Reveal Market Evolution
Adoption of server virtualisation is widespread, and more than 70 percent of organisations are discussing cloud deployments. Of the technologies evaluated in the survey, storage virtualisation is the most mature with 53 percent of enterprises implementing. Private Storage-as-a-Service is the least mature with 30 percent adopting.

Early investments have revealed gaps between expectations and reality which indicate that organisations are still learning what these technologies are capable of and how to overcome the new challenges they bring with them. We asked respondents about initial goals in server, storage, and endpoint virtualisation; private Storage-as-a-Service; and hybrid/private cloud. We then asked those who have already implemented which goals they actually achieved. The difference between the two answers revealed an expectation gap.

· Server virtualisation projects were most successful, with only a two percent average gap between expected and realised goals. The biggest gaps occurred in disaster recovery readiness, server utilisation ratios and scalability.

· The average shortfall in storage virtualisation was 41 percent, with disappointments coming in areas like operating expense, agility and scalability.

· Respondents reported an average gap between expected and realised goals of 29 percent with endpoint/desktop virtualisation. They cited disappointments in application delivery, application compatibility and virtual desktop support.

· Seventy-two percent of organisations are considering private Storage-as-a-Service, but these projects are challenging to implement and fall short of expectations by 46 percent. For example, improving disaster recovery readiness was a goal for 100 percent of respondents, but reached by only 29 percent.

These gaps are a hallmark of early stage markets where expectations are out of step with reality. As the virtualisation and cloud markets continue to mature, we expect to see those gaps close.

IT and Business Executives Out of Synch on the Potential
According to the survey findings, 33 percent of CFOs are less than “somewhat open” to moving mission-critical applications to hybrid/private cloud environments. 17 percent of CEOs are cautious about moving these applications. Main concerns about placing business-critical applications in virtualised and hybrid cloud deployments are reliability (84 percent), performance (81 percent), and security (78 percent).

In practice, many C-level concerns are unfounded based on responses from IT. For example, concerns about performance are a top reason cited for caution, yet more than two-thirds of those who deployed server virtualisation achieved their goals related to performance.