Akamai Technologies has revealed that 95% of channel partners agree that cloud computing is a key priority for their customers 2023 strategy. However, not all businesses plan to or are able to invest heavily in the space.

Willingness to spend varies greatly,  with 27% planning to spend below 20% of their IT budget on cloud and 33% planning to spend above 40% of their budget.  

These insights are based on a survey of 386 respondents across Australia and New Zealand (ANZ),  Japan, China, India, Singapore, and South Korea. The survey was conducted to glean insights into partners perspectives on IT budget priorities, and their customers 2023 cloud strategy. 

Tatsuya Suzuki, Regional VP, APJ Carrier and Channel, Akamai, comments, "In our conversations with partners, we see that organisations are walking the fine line between investing in cloud as well as being frugal in light of the macroeconomic headwinds.

"We believe the solution lies in working with a developer-friendly cloud and compute ecosystem that can offer them both flexibility and cost-effectiveness, while avoiding bill shock."

Suzuki continues, "Even as the industry landscape continues to evolve and increase in complexity, Akamai seeks to accelerate the ambitions of our partners as they help their customers harness the potential of the cloud.

"We will offer expanded product roadmaps in the new year, across the areas of cloud,  security, and delivery to achieve the overarching goal of making life better for billions of people,  billions of times a day."

Upon analysis of country-specific data, Akamai's findings revealed significant differences in the willingness to spend on cloud despite an overarching agreement on the importance of cloud technology. 

Specifically, Vietnam (31%), Indonesia (27%), and India (23%) had the highest percentages in terms of respondents who said the proportion of IT budget spent on cloud would be 60% and up.

Conversely, Thailand (50%), Japan (49%) and Taiwan (40%) had the highest percentages for respondents who indicated that the proportion of IT budget spent on cloud would be below 20%.

In ANZ, 96% of partners agreed that cloud is important to their customers 2023 strategy, with most respondents (48%) estimating that 21-40% of IT budgets would be spent on cloud.

Suzuki says, "While most organisations acknowledge the importance of cloud, many are apprehensive about investing their IT budgets in this technology, given concerns of costs and how this will affect other overarching IT priorities.

"These sentiments are clear from the latest insights we have gathered from our partners, and this is why Akamai is investing heavily in scaling our cloud computing capabilities.

"We believe that organisations need more options for their cloud needs, particularly those that are easy to use and developer friendly with transparent, attractive pricing, and we are able to provision for these needs with Akamai Connected Cloud."  

In February, Akamai announced Akamai Connected Cloud, a massively distributed edge and cloud platform for computing, security, and content delivery. As part of the announcement, Akamai plans to launch four new enterprise-scale core cloud computing sites across APJ in Chennai,  Osaka, Jakarta, and Auckland by the end of 2023.

Additionally, Akamai has identified more than 50 cities globally in which it plans to begin rolling out distributed sites this year, bringing basic  cloud computing capabilities into difficult-to-reach locations currently underserved by traditional  cloud providers.  

Most partners, including Wangsu, a China-based company that provides content delivery network and Internet data center services, are seeking a user-friendly public cloud solution, coupled with a transparent pricing structure, Suzuki states.

Mingwei Zhang, Alliance Department Director, Wangsu, China, says, "With Akamai Connected Cloud, we really benefited from lower prices as a result of being able to reduce the cost of high outbound traffic. Equally important is that we have been able to save time while achieving our key objectives given the flexibility of the network pool and low traffic costs."

Meanwhile, security continues to be an overarching priority for partners, with the rise of data breaches in the past months.  

"In the coming months, we are likely to see an increase in the number and sophistication of cyber attacks and larger scale data breaches, causing more disruption. There is also a risk of complacency from breach fatigue. Many organizations will focus on improving the security of their supply chain as part of ensuring positive business outcomes," explained Mark Trumble, APAC Head of Portfolio - Cyber Security, Fujitsu Australia, and New Zealand.

To account for these challenges, partners are increasingly looking to provide a range of products and services for customers that embed different layers of security and in-depth defense. 

Dean Houari, Director of Security Technology  and Strategy, APJ, Akamai, says, "Akamai is supporting our customers and partners with our security solutions, including Edge DNS, a global, highly scalable domain name system (DNS) service offering security, resilience  from Distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) events, and high DNS responsiveness.

"As a result, we are able to observe trillions of DNS requests daily and have clear visibility on the latest  developments in the threat landscape."

"We remain committed to protecting our customers and partners and staying ahead of attackers by blocking requests leading to domains serving malware and phishing sites that could steal data," says Houari.