A survey, entitled Going Hybrid: Demand for Cloud and Managed Services Across Asia-Pacific, was commissioned by NTT Communications in partnership with Vmware and conducted in Thailand, Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore in the third quarter 2018. It analyses prevailing technology choices, service provider preferences, service priorities, and measures of hybrid cloud strategy and execution.

The research carried out an independent study of 464 IT decision-makers representing Asia- Pacific’s largest businesses in vertical markets. The businesses surveyed had as many as 100,000 employees or more, and more than three-quarters had annual revenue of more than US$1 billion. Based on the results of that study, the subsequent report provides insight about hybrid cloud planning and management, drivers and inhibitors, and factors that are influencing the choice of platforms, tools, technologies and managed services.

Multi-cloud has become the norm for most enterprises across Asia Pacific. Over 90 per cent of businesses surveyed have multiple cloud environments with varying degrees of interoperability, and more than half said they are already using a hybrid cloud. However, nearly 44 per cent have begun implementing hybrid cloud pilots without an overarching hybrid strategy in place.

 “Alarmingly a significant portion of large enterprises lack a formal hybrid-cloud strategy. While they recognise the potential benefits, they underestimate the technical complexity which may derail their business modernisation efforts if they do not have a future-proof hybrid cloud plan,” said Dave Scott, solutions director for NTT Communications Managed Services.

He said there are three paths to hybrid cloud migration: cloud-first, lift-and-shift, and refactor-and-shift

Enterprises are found to be actively considering an off-premises cloud as a critical component of their business modernisation strategy, while a hybrid cloud offers intermediary steps in their business transformation. The survey found that more than half of enterprises primarily emphasise migrating workloads from their internal environments when deploying into a public cloud. However, there is no predominate approach to their cloud migration – currently 28 per cent are focused on a ‘lift and shift’ approach and another 28 per cent are refactoring before moving. Another third are focused on the public cloud for net new applications.

In terms of hybrid workload deployment plans, there is little uniformity across all the businesses. In the next two years, CRM/sales and marketing (49 per cent), database and data warehousing (48 per cent) and file and content storage (47 per cent) will be the key focus for workloads to be shifted to hybrid cloud environments, up from 25, 28 and 28 per cent respectively. The strong traction indicates enterprises’ growing confidence in hybrid cloud to support their full spectrum of business requirements and application portfolios.

Scott said that for managed services, course-correction required for enterprises often lacks a well-thought-out hybrid cloud and security strategy

Another key consideration to drive hybrid cloud migration is security and compliance, which 95 per cent of enterprises rated as their top requirement.

In addition, nearly half of respondents pointed to improvements in the consistency of security policies across environments and better management of risk – challenges that can emerge as businesses begin to employ multiple cloud environments.

“End-to-end managed services and compliant-ready security management are increasingly becoming a strategy to future proof a company’s business growth paths,” Scott said.

All enterprises are at different stages in designing, implementing and operating their workloads or systems in a hybrid cloud environment. NTT Communications’ Managed Services is well positioned to offer smart, reliable and secure IT solutions through their full spectrum of managed services.

For instance, enterprises can immediately tap into NTT Communications’ global resources and capabilities such as high-speed networks, a global footprint of data centre and cloud services, with only a single contract and one service-level agreement (SLA).

The company is expected to post sales of Bt14 billion for the 2018 fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2019, the company’s managing director Yasushi Moriyama, said yesterday.

To achieve its business plan for 2019, the company appointed Pope-Thanavat Vatthanapooti as Mitsubishi Electric’s partner/presenter for the fifth consecutive year. This will drive its sale growth to achieve the target, Moriyama said.

He added that the company will continue to focus on growing its household electrical appliances and air-conditioner businesses.

“Thailand is considered as our Asian hub with continuous growth potential,” he said. “For the fiscal year 2019, we are ready to drive quality and sustainable growth of our organisation, society and environment under United Nations’ SDGs, or Sustainable Development Goals.

“This is regarded as an important move to make changes towards sustainable goals started from equality and sustainability within the company from our employees to Thai consumers.

Moriyama said the company would create value for the economy, society and environment together with the development of innovation and products with Mitsubishi Electric’s “unique identity, with offering products with quality, safety, energy saving” and environmental friendliness.

“Mitsubishi Electric Corporation Japan will celebrate its 100th anniversary of operation in 2020,” Moriyama said.

“We are always committed to operating our business with social responsibility to enhance the quality of life so as to achieve our sustainable development growth with aims to successfully grow our business to reach the sales over 5 trillion yen in the fiscal year 2020.

“For Thailand’s economy in 2018, GDP increased to 4.2 per cent from the government policy to support the investment in the mega-infrastructure projects and the public consumption factor which resulted in a positive growth in the overall economy.

“The competition in the home appliances market continues to be vigorous.

Therefore, we will broaden our reach to cover the wider group of target consumers with the launch of better quality “inverter” air-conditioner models so as to retain our market share and No.1 leadership in air-conditioner for home use segment and No. 1 trusted brand voted by the consumers in Thailand as well as cater to the consumers’ requirement and create sustainable happiness for the Thai society.

“We expect that in 2019, the economy will be better, so, we project our overall sales to grow over 10 per cent higher than the last fiscal year.”

In response to news about the 5G 700 MHz spectrum auction, True Corporation Plc reported to the Stock Exchange of Thailand yesterday that the company did not  plan to participate as the company was still waiting for more details on the 900 MHz payment extension.  Currently, the company’s main focus is to drive revenue and margin growth as well as cash flow improvement.

The company has sufficient low-band frequency at 850 MHz and 900 MHz to reallocate  in support  of the 5G services. The 5G investment,  utilising existing bandwidth,  will be in specific areas where the company expects good return due to significant demand and readiness of  enabled devices.

The latest announcement by the European Commission to delist Thailand from the “Yellow Card” has underpinned all concerned sectors to strictly stick to  traceability.

CP Foods is also  encouraging  its fishmeal suppliers to take up IFFO RS standard to ensure sustainable growth.

Dr Sujint Thammasart, Chief Operating Officer/ Aquaculture Business of CP Foods, said the company will double the number of fishmeal plants with IFFO RS certification by five suppliers this year.

This plan will help improve standard  at the  manufacturing lines and  ensure traceability practices of raw materials coming  from legal sources.

Good practices from Thailand will spread to all  CP Foods’ aquaculture operations across the world by expanding the scope of the Fishery Improvement Projct (FIP) from Thailand to  its overseas  aquaculture operations in Vietnam, the Philippines and India, he said.

The bank also reported a drop in non-performing loans to 2.15 per cent, lower than the average in the the banking system .