Australian enterprises still wary of cloud

For all the hype around cloud, most Australian enterprises are not yet ready to let go of on-premise technology deployments in most cases, according to market insights firm Kable.

A Kable survey of ICT leaders in 85 Australian organisations across 12 industry sectors found that, averaged across different technology categories, some 70 per cent preferred on-site deployments.

“One of the trends that does seem to emerge is that some of the hotter technologies have a greater propensity to be outsourced,” Kable research director Tim Gower said.

Thirty five per cent of the ICT leaders surveyed indicated a preference for receiving enterprise applications as a service, and an identical percentage indicated they preferred to receive communications and collaboration technologies in the same way.

“Enterprises in Australia prefer to deploy business intelligence and IT systems management on-site, while technologies such as communications and collaboration are more likely to be hosted,” a Kable report based on the survey states.

“Newly established companies want to leverage hosted services, as they can prove cost effective, whereas already established companies prefer on-site deployment due to the expense of implementing new platforms or moving large amounts of data to the Cloud.”

Upcoming government contracts and the regulatory compliance needs of the financial sector are set to drive increased ICT spend in Australia, according to the firm.

Kable believes that intense competition in expanding sectors such as retail is driving increased demand for applications such as ERP and CRM system that support operations, sales and marketing.

More than half the ICT leaders canvassed in the survey indicated they expected to increase their ICT spending in 2013. Fourteen per cent expected a significant increase in ICT spending.

Over the next 24 months, 89 per cent of the enterprises indicated they were expecting to invest in mobility and IT systems management technologies. Green IT and virtualization, enterprise applications and security also ranked highly for investment over the next two years.

Kable is forecasting a compound annual growth rate of 3.8 per cent for the Australian ICT market from 2013 through 2017.