Microsoft says NZ companies stuck on ‘outdated’ private and public clouds

Microsoft has used the results of a survey of 100 NZ IT professionals to make the case for greater use of hybrid clouds.

Forty two percent of respondents said they were already on the hybrid cloud journey and, based on their responses, Microsoft said it expected the percentage to increase to 47 percent in the next 12 to 18 months.

“A large portion are still using outdated cloud solutions, with 46 percent using private cloud and 12 percent using a public cloud solution alone, Microsoft said.

It said the survey results showed “New Zealand’s IT leaders need to step up with the use of hybrid cloud to enable digital transformation and to manage rapidly increasing complexity and security demands on their IT infrastructure,” and that “IT leaders in New Zealand are desperate for a solution to help them juggle existing legacy infrastructure and ever-tightening budgets.”

Microsoft New Zealand cloud and enterprise lead, Dirk Develter, said the survey results “show Kiwi organisations are not likely to increase their investments in public or private-only cloud solutions, therefore reinforcing the demand for a more integrated, hybrid approach.”

He described hybrid cloud as “a natural progression for all organisations in New Zealand, regardless of size and the budgets they have to reach their digital ambitions,” but said most IT leaders had yet to subscribe to this view.

“The study showed that most IT leaders in New Zealand have traditional views of the cloud. While 71 percent said they would be comfortable hosting all their business applications on the public cloud in the future, more than half of respondents are only using it for basic applications such as email and customer facing online assets (websites). Just 39 percent of respondents are using the cloud for application development and operations.”

This finding however is somewhat at odds with other results of the survey, quoted by Microsoft. “The innovation in cloud is causing the usage of cloud apps to explode. On average, it is estimated that there are 223 apps being used per organisation in New Zealand (compared to 340 in Asia Pacific).”