August Chan is Head of IT at Delta Asia, and is participating in a cross-industry panel session at Cloud Asia entitled What Challenges Does X Industry Face When Adopting the Cloud, alongside Senior Representatives from Swiss Re and City University of Hong Kong. The session promises to offer a diverse approach to Cloud implementation, adding value for enterprises from all industry verticals.

Looking at August's specific vertical, the financial sector, we looked at how Delta Asia has implemented Cloud computing so far, what models they have chosen to deploy at this stage, and why. He details that, as Delta Asia's businesses are highly regulated (including banking, brokerage, insurance), they are vigilant in adopting Cloud, in view of possible (often time-consuming) regulator challenges, questions over compliance, and other non-technical considerations. In terms of rollout, they are ‘cloudifying' peripheral systems first (that is, non-core systems such as their information portal and marketing-related applications). Cost effectiveness is one of the main objectives of their cloud strategy, with other main reasons being fast provision and easy scalability. August concludes that "all things considered, at this stage, IaaS is what we are working at".

Looking more closely at those main objectives, we ask what cost and organisational benefits August expects to see from implementation. With IaaS being a relatively simple cloud adoption, he states that they can maintain lot of controls on the platform running on the ‘rented' infrastructure, while the ‘landlord' will handle the hardware availability, maintenance, aged equipment replacement. He goes on to say that "other than the cost saving by avoiding up-front capex investment, we are expected to be able to cope with some short-notice changes in business requirements, such as time-to-market and scalability".

Many enterprises have concerns before adopting Cloud, and it was no different for Delta Asia. The reasons being that, in August's words, for a highly regulated industry, those current and possible future regulatory requirements, internal due care and compliance considerations drove them to think about the security and control of data, the location and accessibility of it, and exit planning. But they always remind themselves to "get a good control on what you have and on what makes your business run. We are thus still at the IaaS stage".

To conclude, we consider the enterprise landscape in Asia as a whole; are enterprises in the region taking full advantage and seeing benefits from technologies such as Cloud? August's response is straightforward: "Obviously not.  I see many companies not utilizing cloud when it may be more cost effective than all in-sourcing". So what advice would he offer for enterprises looking to develop their IT infrastructure? "I would suggest when you need to procure a new server or commission a new system, try thinking about cloud; don't necessarily go for cloud, but think if cloud can help or not before spending on your capex".

You can discuss this with August Chan and all of our industry experts at Cloud Asia, taking place in Hong Kong on 24-26 November. Enterprises can claim a complimentary full conference pass, with exhibition passes complimentary for all company types.