Originally published at the IBM Center for Applied Insights blog.

Susanne Hupfer, IBM Center for Applied Insights, June 10, 2014

 
As the saying goes, talk is cheap. To determine a company’s real priorities, take a look at its investments.

With that in mind, the IBM Center for Applied Insights dug a little deeper into the data behind the IBM Global Cloud Study, Under Cloud Cover, to examine regional differences in investment. We found that 80% of South Africa respondents and 78% of India respondents plan to increase investment in cloud computing over the next two years, outstripping spenders across North America (56%), AP (55%), Brazil (52%) and Europe (46%).

You might be thinking Indian and South African businesses are just playing catch up — investing more to reach the prevailing rate of adoption in other parts of the world. Not so.

Turns out, they’re already there. Two-thirds of South Africa respondents have deployed cloud computing — on par with adoption levels in Europe (71%). And India sits at the top of the adoption list at 78%, just edging out Asia Pacific at 77%.

So what’s motivating South Africa and India to keep pumping money into cloud?

It seems they’re prepping their organizations for growth. The top reasons for adopting cloud in other geographies are: cost reduction, collaboration or workflow optimization. But in South Africa and India, cloud decision makers are motivated most by scalability. They want flexibility to expand — fast.

The scalability and agility that cloud provides could explain why they feel so strongly that cloud is helping them gain competitive advantage.

 

In a recent article, Varun Sood, CIO of Fortis Healthcare India, explains how moving his company’s core systems to the cloud has helped them “scale on demand.” He adds, “Our ability to respond to the business is now in minutes, compared to … weeks or months.”

Cloud also helps solve one very specific, and increasingly critical, scalability issue — the data deluge. Data volumes are mounting every day. And companies like Bharat Light and Power, one of India’s largest clean energy generators, are tapping into cloud to improve data management and take advantage of cloud’s analytic number-crunching power.

Motivations and investment may vary worldwide, but one thing is clear: cloud is enabling important business outcomes. Read the global study to learn more about what’s happening under cloud cover.