Cloud computing cuts investment costs by five to seven times. If a company, for example, sets up IT infrastructure on its own, it would save five to seven times over the cost of doing so without cloud computing.

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A survey conducted by VMWave from the US found that 80 percent of polled businesses considered cloud computing the top priority for IT applications, and 67 percent believed cloud computing had a major effect on their business activities.

The survey was conducted of 2,785 senior business executives working in many different fields in 10 countries in Asia-Pacific.

In Vietnam, 265 chief information officers of institutions and enterprises were surveyed by the firm.

According to Huynh Phuc Yem Quan, VMWare Vietnam’s CEO, Vietnamese businesses have become more interested in cloud computing because of the increasingly big volume of information they have to deal with every day.

There is a growing tendency in Vietnam to allow employees to work from a distance (not in the office) with their personal mobile devices. Cloud computing technology can support this working arrangement.

VMWare has predicted that the percentage of businesses using cloud computing would be higher than other Southeast Asian countries.

Meanwhile, Raymond Goh of Symantec, said Vietnam has been very quickly using the latest technologies of the world because it doesn’t have to continue to use old systems (of which they had little, anyway) to recover investment capital before deploying new technologies.

Nevertheless, some analysts say it is still too early to say that the number of businesses using cloud computing services would soar in the immediate future. It is true that many of them are considering cloud computing, but whether they will is another story.

Though acknowledging the great advantages of cloud computing, businesses are still hesitant to use the services due to concern about information security.

Regarding the problem, Raymond Goh of Symantec has tried to persuade businesspeople that information security risks in the traditional IT environment and the cloud computing environment are the same.

Meanwhile, Quan of VMWare said: “Information security should be a big concern of institutions and businesses when deploying cloud computing. But the concern should not be the barrier to prevent them to utilizing the technology”.

Advanced technology, according to the experts from the Academy of cryptographic techniques, still has some disadvantages to the traditional IT model. Cloud computing centers or network infrastructure may have troubles sometimes, which can make the cloud computing services “pending” and make it difficult for users to access their database.