Microsoft partner survey turns up slew of misconceptions among Singapore cloud users

Microsoft Singapore has revealed the Singapore results of a survey of Microsoft partners in Asia Pacific* who shared that their customers, similar to those in the Asia Pacific region in general, typically think that cloud services:

1.      Lack privacy

2.      Are not secure

3.      Are immature

4.      Mean giving up ownership

5.      Lead to being less productive if the service is offline

Other misconceptions were around cost and reliability, the lack of value-add compared to on premise versions, that it is too complicated and the lack of a clear return on investment. 

 

“These myths prevent organisations from becoming more agile and from having a cost-effective way to improve productivity in a new world of work, where employees are demanding more flexibility, more mobility and who collaborate better with social tools,” said Gerald Leo, Business Group Lead, Microsoft Office Division, Microsoft Singapore. 

Source: Microsoft

In the online survey, Microsoft’s partners ranked the misconceptions most commonly brought up by their customers and prospects about the cloud and shared their outlook on the growth of their cloud business. 125 respondents were from Singapore.

Drew Graham, Director and Chief Technology Officer, eVantage Technology, a cloud partner based in Singapore, Hong Kong, Myanmar and Australia, shared that cloud computing often generates polarised viewpoints among customers. He said that those against the idea of the technology are usually concerned about data security and privacy. 
 

“We try to get our clients to assess the situation objectively, by comparing cloud computing options to the on-premise solutions they use today, and try to highlight how public cloud solutions may, in many circumstances be more secure, and less likely to experience data breaches than their current system,” said Graham. 

“Sometimes, shifting the conversation to the potential cost savings the customer can achieve with cloud computing can be effective as it provides a more objective basis to evaluate the potential benefits of moving to the cloud.”

Additional insights from Singapore respondents include:

·        40% (versus 46% in Asia Pacific) frequently (daily or at least once a week) encounter decision makers who have relatively little understanding of cloud services

·        57% already have more than 10% of their business focused on cloud services

·        The majority agreed that Gen-Y decision makers are more knowledgeable of the benefits of cloud than other business decision makers in general.

·        The top three benefits of adopting Office 365 by customers in Singapore are

1.      Cost savings on IT infrastructure

2.      Enabling workforce mobility

3.      Agility and flexibility in business operations

In response to these insights, Microsoft is working to debunk each of these myths through education and providing access to resources such as the Office 365 Trust Center website. In addition, more details of the 11 myths and the facts can be found via this interactive infographic here. 

According to IDC, public cloud services are to grow from US$411 million in 2013 to US$919 million in 2017. 
 

*Conducted in October 2013, the online survey received 2,017 responses from Microsoft IT channel partners from 11 Asia Pacific countries including Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. More details of the 11 cloud myths and facts for each country can be found here.