Asian biotechs love cloud computing

Cloud computing - where IT assets and raw computing power are outsourced over the internet - is rapidly growing in popularity, particularly amongst biotechnology companies in Japan, India and China, according to analysts, Ovum.

According to a new report, “Cloud Computing Adoption In The Asia-Pacific (APAC) Life Sciences Industry”, the intent to invest in cloud computing by business in these three companies is stronger than companies in the rest of the world.

“66 per cent of the companies surveyed had plans to invest, 8 per cent said that they were already leveraging cloud computing, while 26 per cent had no current plans," said Adam Jura, Senior Analyst based in Sydney.

"This surpasses the result from speaking to 100 companies outside of APAC who responded with 63 per cent, 4 per cent, and 33 per cent respectively. Ovum sees Asia-Pacific as a hot spot for cloud computing.”

Interestingly, the lure of cloud computing appears to be coming more from management than from IT departments. According to the report, businesses where the CIO had final sign off were less likely to declare an intention to invest in cloud computing than businesses where the CEO or CFO had final IT budget sign-off.

“The financial focus of the CEO and CFO is an obvious driver for investing in cloud computing which can often provide considerable benefits for organisations, but we’re also seeing some reticence amongst CIOs that are perhaps concerned about a loss of control within their IT departments,” Jura continued.

Cloud computing can be used to outsource business applications, such as email, productivity applications and CRM, but it can also be used as a vast, scalable computing resource for bioinformatics as well.