F5 reports rising multi-cloud adoption in PH

F5 Networks’s recent report, The State of Application Delivery 2018, reveals the growing trend among local organizations in the Philippines of shifting to the multi-cloud to deploy or access services.

More than 50 percent of IT professionals from all over the global surveyed for the F5 report say they utilize two to six cloud environments. The continuous increase in multi-cloud deploymentsis enabling organizations to select the cloud platform that best meets the requirements of a specific application.This scenario, however, increases the challenges many companies face in managing operations and security across multiple clouds as they transform their application portfolio to compete in the digital economy.

Now on its fourth year, the F5 Networks report evaluates the state of application services and looks into motivations underlying the deployment of application services. It covered more than 300 organizations across a broad spectrum of vertical markets such as banking and finance, telecommunications, public sector and consumer products.

Although many businesses in the Philippines continue to operate intraditional ways, with most big companies being family-owned, some organizations are slowly transitioning to the multi-cloud. Small communities of IT professionals are emerging, where participants share ideas and best practices that can help Filipino businessmen, entrepreneurs and ICT enthusiasts understand better the benefits of a multi-cloud environment. Meanwhile, more than 80 percent of small and medium enterprise (SME) employees are spending over 20 percent of their working time outside the office on mobile devices and online cloud-based tools for communication and productivity.

F5 Networks Regional Vice-President Michael Quek, however, pointed to technological capability as a potential issue. “The Philippines’ readiness for an exodus to multi-cloud environments remains to be a question as IT infrastructure is still a major concern. The next few years will be critical to public and private enterprises and decisionmakers in the country as they attempt to provide a smooth transition from legacy systems to modern cloud-based IT infrastructure.”

But the national government, through the Department of Information and Communication Technology, has been bullish the past year in adopting a ‘cloud-first’ approach in line with efforts to encourage public departments and agencies to consider cloud computing solutions -- in fulfillment of the National Cybersecurity Plan 2022 that aims to strengthen resilience against cyberattacks and to foster a cybersecurityeducated society.

The digital economy is reshaping every industry, from the small business now accepting mobile payments to the Global 2000 firm incorporating transformative technologies such as robotics and virtual reality. With one of the thrusts of the Philippine government being globalization, businesses and organizations may look to a proactive hand in enforcing a centralized cyber network gradually.

The findings in this year’s SOADconfirm that businesses recognize the need to adopt a multi-cloud environment. The report saw that 9 out of 10 respondents are now using multiple clouds as a result of their ‘best-ofbreed’ strategy for each application deployment. This same trend can be seen in the Philippine setting as cloud migration continues to gain traction. Forty-nine (49%) percent of overall survey respondents are moving to deliver apps from the public cloud. The majority (7%) work with two or more cloud providers.

“Multi-cloud is already a reality. That reality, in turn, is exposing a lack of confidence in protecting apps, particularly when they’re deployed in the public cloud. This reality is the trend that can be seen happening in the Philippines,” said Quek.

Optimizing IT infrastructure and processes remains the primary driver for digital transformation projects, according to 69 percent of Asia Pacific respondents while more than half said digital transformation is encouraging the delivery of applications from the cloud.