Singaporean businesses facing challenges in multi-cloud approach

Singaporean companies expect to use an average of four or five cloud services providers by 2018 according to research from Rackspace.

The figures are an increase on the current average of around three, with survey respondents citing risk reduction, support for hybrid cloud environments and value for money as important benefits of using multiple cloud services.

Bob Johnson, principal analyst at IDC Connect which carried out the survey of 250 IT professionals in Singapore, Hong Kong and India, says it is clear that there are considerable business benefits associated with using multiple clouds.

However, he notes that managing multiple service providers and complex workloads is a challenge for many companies.

"The vast majority of IT teams in the organisations we surveyed already spend up to 60% of their time on cloud-related activities," Johnson says.

Among the top cloud challenges for respondents were managing users across multiple platforms and the monitoring and management of complex workloads.

"We found that the deployment of a cloud management service can hugely lower the costs and management overhead associated with the use of multiple cloud providers," Johnson says.

"It can also free up IT resources and allow IT teams to concentrate on strategic projects, systems optimisation and innovations that improve the customer experience and cost-efficiency.

The Singaporean respondents said automated processes fro the ongoing maintenance of their multiple cloud platforms and consistent visibility into their infrastructure and applications would be of most benefit for them.

A managed cloud service that provided this could help them reduce complexity and save time while lowering costs.