Accelerating and scaling cloud-native transformation in 2022

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Every organisation in Asia Pacific will be approaching 2022 with a renewed sense of optimism. With a more positive outlook, executives will likely be looking for new opportunities to future proof their business.

Cloud-native transformation certainly isn’t a new concept, but it has become more urgent over the past two years. With a raft of new applications and workloads to accommodate, accelerating a cloud-native strategy is essential for capitalising on the current wave of transformational technologies such as edge computing, containerisation, IoT, and automation.

Yet we know that many enterprises will still struggle in 2022 with application modernisation and data integration throughout cloud silos. According to IDC research, only around 20% will have adopted well-connected cloud strategies to overcome these concerns.

So, how should organisations throughout Asia Pacific be approaching their cloud-native transformation to appropriately scale and accelerate their strategy in 2022? This was the key topic of a recent SUSE and IDC roundtable I participated in, with an audience which included business and IT leaders from across a wide spectrum of industry verticals sharing their perspectives and priorities for the coming year.

Of particular note, the session concluded with observations on how open standards and technologies can play a key role in helping enterprises drive standardised, scalable, and cost-effective cloud-native initiatives.

Three key themes emerged during the discussion:

1. Interoperability across distributed estates has emerged as a key requirement.
2. Key challenges and mitigation strategies in leveraging cloud-native technologies.
3. The role of open-source software and open standards in bringing the vision of cloud-native transformation to life.

From my perspective, I believe that successful cloud-enabled enterprise transformation will largely hinge on two factors:

Effectively driving consistency across a diverse and distributed IT landscape – There is a fast growing requirement to effectively manage infrastructure across shifting operational boundaries throughout the enterprise. This will require further investment in automation and integration throughout burgeoning AIOps, DevOps, and DevSecOps teams.

The move towards a hybrid and multi cloud environment makes it challenging to ensure operational interoperability between different parts of the environment, as well as different regions. External technology partners are essential here for managing interconnectivity across hybrid and multi cloud estates.

Choosing interoperable open-source solutions to drive innovation – IDC research also reveals that 38% of all compute-related spending in the cloud is attributable to containers and serverless. With continuing acceleration towards the use of containers, Kubernetes-based container deployments offer consistency across all environments, which translates into improved scalability, agility, and security.

To capitalise on Kubernetes in any cloud-native strategy, enterprises are faced with a choice between proprietary or open-source stacks. We know that a key benefit of open-source technologies and open standards is the improved consistency of deployment, management and interoperability between environments.

To uncover more insights about the challenges and opportunities for cloud-native transformation in 2022, and to hear a detailed summary of our discussion, I encourage you to download a copy of the roundtable report: How Asia/Pacific Enterprises can Accelerate and Scale their Cloud-Native Transformation

About the author

Vishal Ghariwala is the Chief Technology Officer for SUSE for the APJ and Greater China regions. In this capacity, he engages with customer and partner executives across in the region, and is responsible for growing SUSE’s mindshare by being the executive technical voice to the market, press, and analysts. He also supports the global Office of the CTO to assess relevant industry, market and technology trends and identify opportunities aligned with the company’s strategy.

Prior to joining SUSE, Vishal was the Director for Cloud Native Applications at Red Hat where he led a team of senior technologists responsible for driving the growth and adoption of the Red Hat OpenShift, API Management, Integration and Business Automation portfolios across the Asia Pacific region.

Vishal has over 20 years of experience in the IT industry and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.