The big shift in how businesses are run today has many innovators scrambling to peddle a host of solutions that offer varying degrees of efficacy, depending on the need of business owners and the scope of their business as the new age created a huge demand for advanced technological applications.
A recent study by IBM Institute for Business Value found that business executives in the Philippines are planning to increasingly invest in hybrid multi-cloud platform strategies and capabilities to drive business transformation and unlock potential value.
IBM Philippines president and country general manager Aileen Jiao said the results of the survey showed that by 2023, Philippine organizations expect to be using an average of 10 clouds per organization. However, only 28 percent of businesses have holistic multi-cloud management strategy in place.
“The prioritization and acceleration of digital transformation really just happened. It almost felt like overnight. And in the Philippines, as we all felt there was a significant digitization effort in acceleration towards the adoption of e-commerce and many things now are done online. Things we are unfamiliar with have started to make sense. We also saw, many months ago, how people get to use Webex, Microsoft Teams, Zoom. All of these collaboration platforms to meet each other online, communication and collaboration platform have really gone a long way in such a short span of time,” she said in a recent webinar.
The IBV surveyed over 6,000 technology executives and 3,000 business executives in over 20 countries including 100 from the Philippines. The survey cut across 22 industries and sectors to gain a better understanding of the respondents’ use of hybrid cloud, multi-cloud and their approach to multi-cloud management for the report titled, “The hybrid cloud platform advantage: A guiding star to enterprise transformation in the Philippines”.
According to survey respondents from the Philippines, 17 percent of their IT spend is allocated to cloud, and they plan to increase the share of spend on hybrid cloud from present 39 percent today to 48 percent by 2023.
Most of their cloud budgets are being allocated to hybrid-cloud platforms even as their public cloud spend is set to reduce from 53 percent today to 43 percent by 2023.
Most industries globally will exhibit growth in the number of clouds they will deploy, which can go up to 11 clouds per organization, particularly in insurance, telecommunications, retail, banking, and consumer products as these industries will continue to expand multiple cloud deployments in the next three years.
Further, the study confirmed the return on investment of a platform approach as respondents said that the value derived from a full hybrid, multi-cloud platform technology and operating model at scale is 2.5 times the value derived from a single platform, single cloud vendor approach. In fact, the platform approach is cited as accelerating value with scale.
“Another insight that came out also from the IBV was that people will continue to apply artificial intelligence, automation and exponential technologies to make all their workflows happen in a very intelligent process. This is again is part of the acceleration. Some of the technologies that are underneath would be things like AI or robotics process automation. And, of course, cyber security is going to be very, very important, right underneath this shift. The Filipino executives have also said that prioritizing AI is going to happen between now and also the next two years,” she said.
Operational scalability, she added, is similarly important for companies to achieve their goals, which is only possible upon achieving gains in digital transformation.
The study revealed that the majority of organizations are making permanent changes to their organizational strategy. For instance, 94 percent of executives surveyed plan to participate in platform-based business models by 2022, and many reported they will increase participation in ecosystems and partner networks.
She said that at this point, the changes happening will be permanent changes. “Whatever it is, it’s very unlikely that we will go back to exactly where we left off before,” she said.
The study also found out that the ongoing disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic has shown how important it can be for businesses to be built for change. Many executives are facing demand fluctuations, new challenges to support employees working remotely, and requirements to cut costs.
IBM Philippines chief technology officer Lope Doromal said that in today’s digital-first economy, cloud adoption plays a key role.
“It is interesting to note that most organizations surveyed in the Philippines find hybrid multi-cloud as the critical enabler that will help them embark on their journey to become a Cognitive Enterprise. Moreover, they are realizing that Hybrid Cloud enables improved business performance and greater return on investment. Proof of this are the leading businesses that have demonstrated their competitive advantage through a robust hybrid cloud management and governance platform,” he said.
In the Philippines, there will more businesses leveraging a secure, interoperable, open and free from vendor lock-in hybrid multi-cloud platform technology that embeds AI to achieve successful business transformation, he said.
On a global scale, the study found out that 64 percent of advanced cloud companies recognized the need for enterprise transformation, compared to 31 percent in the Philippines.
While 55 percent of Philippine respondents have ventured into the advanced cloud journey, it is quite close to the global rate of 68 percent, which means that the Philippines is not a laggard in this aspect.