Businesses have become reliant on the Internet for virtually everything, from email communications and customer self-service to executing sales orders and supply chain management (SCM). With the rise in the number of Web applications as well as in cloud adoption, we are fast approaching a major inflection point, which will put greater pressure on IT departments to rethink their Web delivery strategy. According to IDC's Asia/Pacific Web Application Delivery Survey 2010, the proportion of Web applications delivered over the cloud will surge by 40% over the next 12 months and will drive IT managers to further improve the performance of their Web infrastructures. The Akamai-sponsored survey found that 26% of the organizations polled have experienced productivity issues due to poor access to Web applications. This IDC White Paper draws on the findings of this survey and highlights the key trends impacting Web application delivery as well as the challenges that lie ahead for organizations in the Asia/Pacific region.

The economic recession and financial crisis that has gripped the region is having a profound impact on IT spending. IDC estimates that total APEJ IT spending is expected to grow by a meager 0.6% in 2009. Enterprises are now constantly under pressure to extract greater savings and better utilization of their existing IT infrastructure. Additional IT investments are heavily scrutinized with CIOs only sanctioning projects which deliver near-term return of investment that can either improve IT productivity or business processes at a dramatically lower cost. Overall, there has also been a shift in sentiments from a capex to an opex model, and obtaining an optimal balance will be one of the key performance indicators (KPIs) for many CIOs. Faced with one of the toughest economic conditions for almost a generation, IDC believes that technologies like datacenter virtualization that can meet some of these near-term goals will be more resilient in this economic slowdown and will continue to receive a lot of traction amongst CIOs.

Private clouds have generated considerable buzz in the Asia/Pacific region. The question is whether a private cloud will indeed help Asian enterprises save money and gain business efficiency. This IDC Executive Insights highlights the results of a recent survey which examines the level of cloud computing adoption in ASEAN and highlights the benefits that early adopters have gained. This paper also offers a checklist for CIOs who are considering or planning to implement a private cloud in the next 12 months.

Cloud computing is made up of a number of new and existing technologies, combined in a way that is capable of delivering broad benefits to the enterprise. Because of its 'newness', the capabilities of cloud computing must be fully understood ? especially critical aspects such as security and interoperability ? before business value can be gained from their implementation. CIOs within APEJ have begun to recognize that public cloud services have a set of capabilities which make them suitable for certain applications, but not others. A mixed adoption of both public and private cloud technologies is evolving as businesses try to derive as much benefits as possible from cloud computing.