Microsoft Corporation just released a survey of 1,200 IT leaders across 12 Asia Pacific markets to understand how they are evolving their IT infrastructure strategies to meet the needs of a digital business.

Some key findings in the survey are that IT leaders in the region are making firm steps towards transforming their approaches to complement their organisation’s digital transformation requirements despite having to also manage legacy IT infrastructure.

Accordingly, 48 per cent of IT leaders in the region are prioritising hybrid cloud over public only or private only cloud solutions for their organisations in the near future.

The next few years will be critical to all IT leaders as they execute on plans for a transition to a modern cloud-based IT infrastructure needed to serve their digital business needs. According to IDC, 60 per cent of top 1,000 Asia Pacific organizations will have a digital transformation at the centre of their corporate strategy by the end of 2017.

Digital Now or Digital Mess

IT leaders are constantly struggling to balance legacy IT needs, budget demands and the need to modernise to meet the demands for a digital future. The survey found that currently, 39 per cent of respondents in Vietnam are already on the hybrid cloud journey which is expected to increase to 43 per cent in the next 12 – 18 months.

Thirty-seven per cent are still only using private cloud and 24 per cent are using purely public cloud solutions. The study showed that respondents are not likely to increase their investments in public only cloud solutions, reinforcing the demand for a more integrated, hybrid approach.

IT leaders are facing increasingly complex IT environments to manage and crave simplicity:

-IT leaders are still having to manage traditional IT assets to support legacy applications and compliance needs;

-The innovation in cloud is causing the usage of cloud apps to explode. On average, it is estimated that there are 351 apps being used per organisation in Vietnam (compared to 340 in Asia Pacific) and they need robust tools to manage them;

-IT leaders are being pulled in many directions. They spend about 48 per cent of their time on maintenance, compliance and operational issues, 24 per cent on developing next generation digital capabilities and 27 per cent of their time working with business leadership on digital transformation initiatives;

-In terms of addressing digital transformation, Vietnam’s respondents are spending more time on optimising operations, than on engaging customers, empowering employees or innovating with new products, services or business models;

-They are concerned about the skills gap in their organisations, citing the top 3 skills most needed in their organisations are in the areas of security (67 per cent), cloud app management (64 per cent) and data analytics (58 per cent);

-Security continues to be a concern in a world facing increasing cyber threats every day. The top three reasons driving their concerns are malware and data theft by cyber criminals, employee data theft, and employees connecting their own devices into the organization's network;

-Organisations in Asia Pacific already use an average of 40 security products, and an average of 39 security products are used in Vietnam’s organisations In Vietnam, 71 per cent of respondents in agree that there is a need to invest more in IT security solutions and services and 63 per cent agree on the need to reduce complexity of managing the increasing portfolio of IT security solutions and services.

Transforming IT with the Hybrid Cloud

Adopting a hybrid cloud strategy is the next step in the journey for organisations looking to take advantage of modern cloud computing capabilities while continuing to manage their traditional assets.

Of the 43  per cent of IT leaders prioritising the hybrid cloud, 8 out of 10 said they would prioritise an integrated hybrid cloud, with common management tools across both public and private cloud.

“Hybrid cloud is a natural progression for all organisations in Asia Pacific, regardless of size, budgets to reach their digital ambitions. It’s a tough balancing act for IT to manage both current and future digital needs of the business,” said Sonia Blouin, Data Center Director, Microsoft APAC.

“The cloud holds rich new applications which will enable better management tools, intelligent applications and advanced analytics to not just reduce cost and increase efficiency but to also innovate and enable faster time to market. As such, it can’t be ignored but it needs to be managed,” Blouin added.

However, the study also showed that most IT leaders in Vietnam have traditional views of the cloud. While 87 per cent said they would be comfortable hosting all their business applications on the public cloud in the future, more than half of respondents are only using it for basic applications such as email and customer facing online assets (websites). Only 34 per cent of respondents are using the cloud for application development and operations.

According to Hoang Song Nga, C&E Lead, Microsoft Vietnam, there are four areas in which IT leaders need to step up to enable digital transformation.

Firstly, they need to get up to speed with the modern tools of managing increasing security and complexity. Secondly, it is gaining control of your infrastructure with software management tools spanning across public, private, and multiple branded clouds.

Thirdly, they must move quickly to an integrated hybrid cloud which will allow them to benefit from the best of both worlds. Lastly, they need to drive more sophisticated workloads in the cloud to innovate, shorten time to market and maximize the potential which new digital technologies have to offer.

IT leaders need to start the planning of their organizations’ digital transformation journey today, and it starts with a clear hybrid cloud strategy. By bringing a cloud model to the business, IT leaders can add scalability and flexibility to their current model, without sacrificing control or security.

“The transition to a digital business can be a jarring one for most businesses due to legacy systems and processes. IT leaders need to have the urgency to kick start this digital journey, or risk being disrupted. Microsoft is committed to helping enterprise customers in their digital journey, regardless of size and budgets,” Nga said.