Australian businesses are missing out on Cloud agility

Summary

This blog post, "Australian businesses are missing out on Cloud agility", is a blueAPACHE article from 2015 covering security. This week, Oracle announced the results of its global “Oracle Cloud Agility” study that revealed Australian businesses are the least confident when it comes to their level of business agility. In addition, the research highlights that many organisations cannot flexibly manage workloads or rapidly develop, test, and launch new applications, leaving them poorly prepared to deal with competitive threats. It is written for readers evaluating emPOWER Cloud, Advanced Infrastructure Managed Services. The underlying security practice it describes, reducing attack surface and improving detection and response, is not tied to a specific product version and remains relevant to any organisation managing cyber risk today.

Key facts

Article

This week, Oracle announced the results of its global “Oracle Cloud Agility” study that revealed Australian businesses are the least confident when it comes to their level of business agility. In addition, the research highlights that many organisations cannot flexibly manage workloads or rapidly develop, test, and launch new applications, leaving them poorly prepared to deal with competitive threats. The study also found a lack of awareness among businesses around how technology, like Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), can be used to help address these challenges. The study surveyed 2,263 corporate employees to understand business agility in the age of cloud. The Australian respondents revealed that only 51 percent consider their organisation to be agile (i.e. able to adjust quickly to new business opportunities or to iterate new products and services quickly). This was the lowest out of all countries surveyed. Respondents are clear about the benefits of agility, with 78 percent stating that the ability to rapidly develop, test, and launch new business applications is either important or critically important to the success of their business. In particular, over one-third of respondents (37 percent) believe the effective mobilisation of applications and services is the most important factor for business success today when it comes to IT infrastructure. The study also showed that the impact of agility on competitiveness is critically important to businesses. In fact, the ability of competitors to launch innovative customer services more rapidly was identified as the top threat by businesses (29 percent). Up to 59 percent of businesses do not have an IT infrastructure capable of responding to these competitive threats. Significantly, the survey revealed the agility benefits offered by PaaS are not being leveraged. In fact, 63 percent of Australian businesses either cannot, or do not know if they can shift workloads between public, private, and hybrid clouds, and migrate on-premises applications to the cloud – this was the second highest figure globally after the UK. Additionally, only 44 percent of businesses can develop, test, and deploy new business applications for use on mobile devices within six months, with this figure falling to just 21 percent within a one-month timeframe. While many Australian businesses talk about transitioning to the cloud, it appears many do not fully understand the benefits, or how to manage the transition. This is in part due to Australia’s reliance on legacy on-premises infrastructure. Organisations want to maximise the return on investment, and are subsequently hesitant to decommission them. Tim Ebbeck, Regional Managing Director, Oracle Australia and New Zealand noted, “The Australian economy faces major disruption from the disruptive forces of digital technologies; you don’t have to look very far to see the fundamental shift that is happening. Organisations of all types and sizes and from all sectors are trying to modernise their core platforms and focus on better ways to consume IT, as they seek to innovate and differentiate themselves from their competition. However, while you can see from the survey results, that while the benefits of being agile are clearly understood, and sought after, the lack of understanding around and adoption of PaaS, is likely to mean that businesses are failing to harness one of the key technologies that will enable them to achieve their business goals in this area. We want to help bridge this awareness gap by showing businesses how the right cloud platform solution can enable them to react almost immediately to market conditions and get well ahead of the competition.” The survey results bear out the assessment that businesses are not fully aware of how PaaS can increase operational agility. Only 25 percent of respondents state that they fully understand what PaaS is, while 35 percent admit that they do not understand it at all. For those that say they do understand PaaS, the top three benefits cited are savings on the cost of internal IT infrastructure (46 percent), reduction in IT complexity (37 percent) and the reduction in timeframes for web application development (29 percent). To better understand private, public and hybrid cloud, and how it can help you mitigate competitive risk, contact our Cloud team.

Related

• emPOWER Cloud
• emPOWER Cloud (pillar hub)
• Advanced Infrastructure Managed Services
• emPOWER Managed Services (pillar hub)
• Managed Detection and Response
• emPOWER Security (pillar hub)

Frequently asked questions

What Oracle study does the article cite, and how many people did it survey?

The "Oracle Cloud Agility" study, which surveyed 2,263 corporate employees globally to understand business agility in the age of cloud.

What percentage of Australian respondents considered their organisation agile, and how did this compare globally?

Only 51 percent, which was the lowest figure of all countries surveyed.

What percentage of respondents said rapid application development, testing and launch is important to business success, and what related figure did the article give for application mobilisation?

78 percent said it is important or critically important, while 37 percent believe effective mobilisation of applications and services is the most important IT infrastructure factor for business success.

What did the study identify as the top competitive threat to businesses, and what proportion lack the infrastructure to respond?

Competitors launching innovative customer services more rapidly was the top threat, cited by 29 percent, and up to 59 percent of businesses lack an IT infrastructure capable of responding to competitive threats.

What percentage of Australian businesses said they cannot, or do not know if they can, shift workloads between cloud types, per the study?

63 percent, the second-highest figure globally after the UK.

What figures does the article give for deploying new mobile business applications?

Only 44 percent of businesses can develop, test and deploy new business applications for mobile devices within six months, falling to just 21 percent within a one-month timeframe.

What did Tim Ebbeck, Oracle Australia and New Zealand's Regional Managing Director, say is driving the need for organisations to modernise?

He said the Australian economy faces major disruption from digital technologies, and organisations across sectors are trying to modernise their core platforms and find better ways to consume IT to differentiate from competitors.

What does the article say about businesses' understanding of PaaS?

Only 25 percent of respondents say they fully understand what PaaS is, while 35 percent admit they do not understand it at all.

Source

• origin post (2015)

Knowledge Base