Mobility, streaming to push more apps into cloud

BANGALORE, INDIA: Web applications delivered over the cloud will surge by 40 percent over the next 12 months and drive IT managers to further improve the performance of their web infrastructures, says Akamai Technologies Inc.

Akamai, along with IDC, released the findings of the IDC Asia-Pacific Web Application Survey 2010, titled, "Prepare to Scale Your Web Infrastructure to Meet Imminent Growth in Cloud and Mobility."

Also Read: Cloud storage trends for 2010: ParaScale

The survey finds that 26 percent of the 423 organizations polled have experienced productivity issues due to poor access to web applications.

David Kenny, president, Akamai, said, “Organizations in the Asia Pacific region are increasingly turning to the web to support their employees, customers and entire ecosystem of partners and suppliers. Indian businesses are rapidly migrating more applications to the web, and we can expect dramatic growth in web application adoption over the coming year."

He also added that with this expected surge in web-based application traffic, Indian organizations will have to levearage cloud-based solutions for ensuring the performance and scale of this mission-critical content.

Organizations were queried about their business expansion plans as well as the utilization of Internet and cloud-based computing for business functions. Initial findings show incredible growth in the Asia-Pacific region — about 32 percent of the organizations polled across Asia-Pacific plan to set up branch offices over the next 12 months, with India leading with aggressive business expansion plans. 

Such expansion will change the nature and complexion of the workforce. With increased mobility and business agility, companies are able to expand their operations quickly and cost-effectively.

According to Adrian Dominic Ho, principal for IDC's Asia-Pacific Practice Group covering Communications and Service research, and author of the IDC white paper, growth in extended enterprises will also contribute to the rise of the borderless world, resulting in a surge in web application adoption.

One of the most challenging tasks IT managers will face is ensuring they deliver acceptable levels of web application performance, and thus a superior user experience.

With more than 50 percent of organizations currently conducting online transactions, the big growth areas over the next 12 months will be mobile access and streaming video. For mobile access, organizations in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia are leading the region, with up to 86 percent of those in Malaysia expected to have mobile access to web applications over the next 12 months. 

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In view of this, 20 percent of organizations across the region plan to give employees mobile access and support bandwidth-heavy streaming video applications over the same period.

One of the key reasons organizations invest heavily in Web applications is to empower their employees and build an extended enterprise.  Increased mobility means organizations have to think about providing employees easy access to corporate applications, regardless of their location. 

Greater workforce mobility, growing adoption of mobile technology for business use; and recent improvements in centralized visibility, management, and control of mobile costs, have rendered mobility an inexpensive and important strategic asset for many organizations.

One of the key factors driving the growth in enterprise mobility is the proliferation of smart devices, which give employees ubiquitous access to business applications.

In the region, IDC expects smart phone penetration to reach 100% by 2015 in the mature markets, while emerging markets will require a further two to three years.

Cloud services have been one of the most-discussed technologies over the last 12 to 24 months. The number of applications that will be delivered via the cloud is expected to increase by 40 percent over the next 12 months, albeit from a low base. ANZ and Singapore are leading with having corporate applications delivered over the cloud today. 

India is expected to experience a doubling in cloud adoption, with the proportion of applications being delivered over the cloud expected to surge by 100 percent over the next 12 months.

Top Issues Faced by Organizations

Across India, security concerns continue to dominate with more than 15 percent of respondents citing this as their top concern, as more data-sensitive applications are made available online.

More importantly, security teams often find it challenging to keep up with the increase in security vulnerability, as more applications are added onto the Web.

Other top concerns across the region were poor performance of Web applications, an inability to access rich media applications, delays in rolling out rich content applications, and the inability to efficiently share files. 

Future Outlook

According to IDC, the application delivery market will experience another year of innovation and market expansion.  To meet the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities, organizations must be prepared with a strategy and commitment to deliver higher levels of application performance to the expanding branch offices and growing pool of mobile or remote workers.