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Cloud tech a must in public, private sectors: Analysts
The United Nations’ 2020 E-Government Development Index places Indonesia in the early stages of cloud adoption, ranking it 88th out of 193 countries, and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has found that only 30 percent of 169 public institutions surveyed used cloud computing.
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loud technology has been around for some time and is used by established enterprises and large government agencies in Indonesia, but its adoption by smaller public institutions and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) has been slow.
The United Nations’ 2020 E-Government Development Index places Indonesia in the early stages of cloud adoption, ranking it 88th out of 193 countries, and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has found that only 30 percent of 169 public institutions surveyed used cloud computing.
“Cost efficiency, speed, agility, flexibility and scalability are among the benefits cloud computing offers,” CSIS researcher Deni Friawan said on Aug. 23 at an event for the survey’s publication.
IBM Asia-Pacific general manager Paul Burton, whose company offers cloud tech in Indonesia, said one of the advantages of cloud computing was that users could scale up capacity instantly with a few keystrokes instead of beefing up their local infrastructure in a process that might take weeks.
“With hybrid cloud, you can have burst capacity when you need it, so you don't have to buy and install a bunch of capacity to sit idle most of the time. That level of automation is what ultimately reduces costs yet maintains service levels,” Burton said, emphasizing the benefits of the hybrid cloud model that combines the use of on-premise data centers with cloud computing.
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Nonetheless, the rate of cloud adoption in Indonesia remains low, and Deni said concerns about security and privacy were the main reasons for public institutions’ reluctance to embrace the technology, hence most were rushing to build on-premise infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the CSIS researchers found that shifting from local to cloud infrastructure had cut the monthly average number of security incidents by half among the surveyed institutions.
The think tank also found that cloud adoption could cut institutions’ IT budgets by as much as 40 percent and reduce server maintenance time by 21 percent, which impacts overall performance and productivity.
“[I believe] cloud providers are going to provide better, more up-to-date security and more robust security than your typical enterprise’s [data center], because for them it's life and death. They're facing embarrassment and probably some type of financial penalty for having a breach,” Burton said.
Adoption by MSMEs
MSMEs account for more than 60 percent of GDP and more than 90 percent of national employment, yet they have not begun using cloud technology in large numbers.
Read also: Cloud computing could add $10 billion to GDP: PwC
“As of now, there are not so many [MSMEs that use cloud technology]. They need to be pushed so that they can compete better in this modern era. […] Cloud tech is something new that needs to be introduced and disseminated, because in terms of priority, [its adoption] is currently nowhere near the top,” said Association of Indonesian MSMEs (Akumindo) secretary-general Edy Misero.
Edy singled out education as one factor behind the low adoption of cloud computing, arguing that it was a relatively alien technology to most small businesses. However, he said that despite that impediment, the incorporation of cloud-based IT solutions in the country’s MSME ecosystem was inevitable.
Similarly, Amazon Web Services ASEAN managing director Conor McNamara predicted that, sooner or later, MSMEs would integrate cloud tech into their business processes.
“It’s not a question of whether or not [the adoption of cloud for MSMEs] is doable, it will happen. It’s a question of how quickly it will happen,” McNamara, whose company counts several of the biggest Indonesian companies as its clients, told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
“[Indonesia has] a bunch of small and medium businesses, and those businesses may not have a lot of computing capacity or even computing infrastructure today. Why would they ever go out and buy it when they can just get it from the cloud? I say skip the whole part about putting up infrastructure, skip the whole data center stage of your life, and just go straight to the cloud,” Burton told the Post on Aug. 25.
