NTT Communications Corporation, the leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) solutions, announced the results of a survey titled ‘Asia Firms Partner to Capitalize on Innovative Services for Future Growth’. The survey conducted by IDG Connect, was done to understand the trends in rapidly growing managed services market in Asia Pacific.
It explored the reasons why managed services providers (MSPs) are sought by the enterprises in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines for resolving IT issues in-house and key considerations for CIOs to plan outsourcing of their technology projects in coming 18 months.
About nine in ten companies were either using or considering managed services providers (MSPs) to overcome the IT challenges, revealed the survey report.
- Security is the biggest challenge to manage IT in-house
59% of the business executives cited security (59%) as the biggest challenge for managing IT in-house. The other major challenges included finding and retaining right people (51%), lack of key IT skills (50%), infrastructure complexity (49%), and limited budget (45%).
When asked how managed services can help in overcoming the IT challenges, the respondents said they were currently using MSPs to reduce security risks (56%), to help with IT skills (54%), to update internal processes (50.5%), and to reduce capital expenditure on IT.
- 60% companies using more than six IT vendors
40% of the companies manage one to five IT vendors, 40% between six and ten, while 20% manage more than ten IT vendors.
56% of the businesses who manage multiple IT vendors, cited that this led to complexity issues which impact their performance. While 54% said that it led to difficulty in making vendors work together, and the excessive cost (53%).
- Outsourcing technologies to MSPs
The report shows that outsourcing was booming in the APAC region. Companies were putting more of their workloads in the hands of third-parties.
The most outsourced technologies were security (58%), cloud infrastructure (55%), and systems management (50%).
By 2021, the outsourcing of security and cloud infrastructure will grow to 66% and 74%, respectively, while outsourcing of systems management is expected to grow to 10%.
The biggest reasons of outsourcing were to reduce security risk (25%), optimize operations and improve workflows (19%), and keep up to date with latest technologies (14%).
- Hybrid cloud to surpass public and private cloud
Only 18% of the companies were currently using hybrid cloud. 50% and 25% of the companies were using private cloud and public cloud, respectively. Whereas, 7% of the companies were not even using the cloud.
However, almost half of the respondents said that they will deploy hybrid cloud in the next three years, while 34% and 14% of the companies will continue to use private cloud and public cloud, respectively.
- Deployment of Azure Stack and SD-WAN to grow
According to the survey report, only 13.5% and 18% of companies were currently engaged in Azure Stack deployments and SD-WAN projects, respectively. The deployment of these projects will cross 50% over the next three years.
Virtualization too is expected to see significant growth (48%) in the next three years.
Also read: NTT and Dimension Data integrate their IaaS expertise to create “cloud powerhouse”
“While businesses are migrating to public cloud for cost benefits, most are required to retain key user data in the private cloud for compliance reasons. Although hybrid cloud is an irreversible trend, building and managing a hybrid cloud environment in-house has become increasingly complex and challenging,” said Dave Scott, Solutions Director, NTT Com Managed Services.
Images source: NTT Communications
