Businesses in Asia Pacific are rapidly embracing cloud infrastructure (IaaS) to boost performance and innovation levels, new research from Oracle has revealed.  While negative perceptions around security, complexity and loss of control still present barriers to adoption, they are shown to be outdated myths, with those that have moved to IaaS proving the reality is far more positive.

Two thirds (65%) of APAC businesses that are already using IaaS to some extent, say it makes it easier to innovate. The same proportion says moving to IaaS has significantly cut their time to deploy new applications or services. Furthermore, 61% say IaaS has significantly cut on-going maintenance costs and 61% of all respondents believe businesses not investing in IaaS will increasingly find themselves struggling to keep pace with businesses that are.

The research also found that experienced users are almost twice as likely to believe IaaS can provide world class operational performance in terms of availability, uptime and speed, compared to non-adopters. Although some fear the move to IaaS may be complicated, 64% of experienced IaaS users say the move was easier than they expected.

Most APAC respondents agree IaaS will have a role to play in their business within three years, with 43% saying they will run most – or all of their business IT infrastructure – on IaaS. Only 9% of respondents believe IaaS will still have little or no role in their business in three years.

Chris Chelliah, APAC Group Vice President & Chief Architect, Technology & Cloud, at Oracle said: “That perception lags reality is no great surprise when it comes to cloud adoption, as a number of outdated perceptions still persist. New services and increased experience in deployed cloud means that we are seeing high levels of success and satisfaction from businesses, as shown by this research.  This comes from the financial savings, reduced complexity and increased levels of innovation brought by use of cloud infrastructure.  For those that have not yet made a serious move, I would say to them that they need to identify and challenge what is holding them back because while they wait, plenty of others are taking full advantage of the opportunities cloud affords.”