- Low barriers to entry, local data centre presence and cost benefits key drivers of IaaS adoption

SYDNEY, September 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The adoption of cloud computing in Australia is experiencing robust momentum with increasing awareness of cloud computing driving an influx of market participants as telecommunications providers, traditional IT companies and pure-play cloud vendors offer various cloud solutions.

Frost & Sullivan's latest report, Australian Infrastructure as a Service Market (IaaS), published in September 2012, indicates that many organisations, ranging from large organisations to SMBs, are moving beyond considering just the initial cost savings that are on offer by adopting cloud-based solutions, to also recognising the increased agility and scalability that adoption offers.

"Most of the large organisations in Australia have now deployed a private cloud environment and many are considering or have begun implementing an increasing number of mission critical workloads in the cloud," says Mayank Kapoor, Industry Analyst, Datacenter and Cloud Computing, APAC ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan.

Despite the benefits of cloud, many IT departments are still reluctant to move to the cloud. Common barriers include perceived loss of control, data sovereignty and security concerns when they move their workload and infrastructure to cloud. This concern is more common for public cloud solutions and is one of the key reasons why many of the public cloud deployments in Australia are predominantly non-mission critical in nature.

The pure play IaaS vendors primarily global players and first movers such as AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Rackspace and recent entrants in the local IaaS market such as OrionVM, Cloud Central, Zetta Grid and UltraServe are witnessing good success in the Australia IaaS Market.

"Telecommunications providers are actively moving into the cloud space and have a strategic advantage as they may leverage their strong network capabilities through their underlying network, and can offer private and public cloud offerings bundled with carriage. Telstra, Optus, Macquarie Telecom and AAPT have already embarked on cloud offerings as part of their strategic direction," said Phil Harpur, Senior Research Manager, Australia & New Zealand, Frost & Sullivan.

"A fast growing category is the Managed Service Providers (MSPs) in the IaaS space. Dimension Data, IBM, Fujitsu, HP, and local providers such as Brennan IT, Harbour IT and Melbourne IT are all expanding offerings in the cloud computing," Harpur stated.

Vendors in the IaaS market with a local data centre presence will have an edge over other players. Hence we are witnessing many of the local IaaS players starting to establish, or expand their local data presence in Australia

One of the key benefits of using cloud-based IaaS solutions is the significant upfront savings that can be achieved, in terms of hardware and also associated maintenance costs. The cloud model eliminates much upfront capital outlay. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is rapidly becoming the delivery model of choice for companies looking at greenfield, test and development type of deployments or hosting applications in the cloud. With such low barriers to entry, the commercial case for any business of any size to adopt IaaS solutions is strong.

If you are interested in more information on this study, please send an e-mail with your contact details to Donna Jeremiah, Corporate Communications, at djeremiah@frost.com.

Frost & Sullivan's Australian Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Report 2012 report forms a part of the Frost & Sullivan Australian Cloud Computing Research program. All research services included in this subscription provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants.

For media queries and more information on this study, please send an e-mail with your contact details to Donna Jeremiah, Corporate Communications, at djeremiah@frost.com.

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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan