Adoption of cloud computing to grow within the life sciences industries in India

According to a new report from href="http://www.dqweek.com/Indian-IT-services-market-to-grow-23-in-2010">Ovum,
adoption
of cloud
computing is set to grow within the life sciences
industries of Japan, China, and India. Based on 50 interviews across
the three countries, the report titled 'Cloud computing adoption in
the Asia-Pacific (APAC) life sciences industry' presents a break down
of the key characteristics of those companies planning to invest in
cloud computing.

The report provides a propensity
analysis that identifies and discuses the key attributes such as
company size, IT budget size, and IT strategy priorities that
influence the decision to invest in cloud computing.

One of the interesting results from
this piece of analysis was that life sciences companies within Japan,
China, and India had on average more intent to invest in cloud
computing than those companies spoken to in the rest of the world.
“Out of the companies surveyed, 66 percent had plans to invest,
style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">eight
percent said that
they were already leveraging cloud computing, while 26 percent had no
current plans. This surpasses the result from speaking to 100
companies outside of APAC who responded with 63 percent, style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">four
percent and 33 percent respectively. Ovum sees Asia-Pacific as
a hot spot for cloud computing,” said Adam Jura, Senior Analyst
based in Sydney.

Clearly, the financial aspects of cloud
computing are a great driver for adoption. Those organizations which
had final IT project sign-off in the hands of the CEO or CFO were
more likely to adopt cloud computing. “The financial focus of the
CEO and CFO is investing on cloud computing which can often provide
considerable benefits for organizations but we are also seeing some
reticence amongst CIOs that are perhaps concerned about a loss of
control within their IT departments,” Jura continued.

The life science companies with more
positive IT budget situations were also more receptive to the idea of
cloud computing. The report surmises that having some additional
'room to move' allowed life sciences companies to explore
alternative delivery models such as cloud computing. Conversely,
those businesses focused on 'keeping the lights on' were less
likely to have plans to adopt cloud computing. Similarly, smaller
life sciences companies (biotechs and the likes) are keen to leverage
cloud computing as a way to effectively manage IT costs and gain
access to functionality such as industry collaboration.

style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;">The
IT
budgetary pressure is easing within life sciences companies across
the region, Ovum expects the issue of cloud computing to come up more
frequently as companies look to investigate non-traditional delivery
models. “Providing industry specific functionality is one
aspect that we expect to be a key differentiator for those vendors
offering cloud computing solutions, particularly in the SaaS space.
Oracle's recent acquisition of Phase Forward is a clear sign that
there will be significant activity in this market in the near
future,” concluded Jura.