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Singapore is ranked third, after Australia and Japan, in terms of cloud adoption in the Asia-Pacific region, according to a Singapore Cloud Adoption Study commissioned by the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore in April 2012.

Already, 50% of businesses with Internet connection have adopted software-as-a-service (SaaS) and by 2015, one-third of all businesses in Singapore will have adopted SaaS, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20%.

With Singapore emerging as a regional data center hub for both public and private cloud solutions, boosted by initiatives such as the Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network, infrastructure-as-a-service adoption is expected to grow at a CAGR of about 21%, led mainly by medium and large businesses, the IDA study showed.

The Singapore government itself adopts a multi-prong approach to cloud computing by leveraging on commercially available public clouds as well as implementing a private government cloud or the G-Cloud, scheduled to be ready for deployment by end of this year.

SingTel has won the tender to provide cloud-computing resources to the Whole-of-Government to address the different levels of security and governance requirements for five years with an option to extend for another five years.

"Through G-Cloud, government agencies can procure cloud services easily to deliver government services securely and quickly on demand, scaling up and down rapidly to cater to changing workloads, resulting in increased agility," said Ronnie Tay, CEO of IDA. "It will be a platform for innovation where agencies can leverage on the G-cloud as a test-bed to pilot new and innovative applications for a small group of users without up-front cost and asset ownership."

Public cloud service providers are qualified for use by ministries and government agencies through cloud services bulk tenders. In December 2011, for instance, six public cloud service providers -- aZaaS (with Microsoft Azure), CrimsonLogic (with ClearManage), NewMedia Express, PTC System (S) Pte Ltd, SingTel and StarHub -- were awarded the bulk tender for a period of two years with the option to extend for another year.

"A second period bulk tender initiative, known as EnVision, was established for the supply of cloud-based video hosting and streaming services using the utility pricing model to ministries, statutory boards, organs of state and participating entities," said Tay. "Currently, there are a total of 20 government agencies using EnVision for their corporate events, public education and information."

Three schools -- Raffles Girls' School (Secondary), St. Joseph's Institution and St. Nicholas Girls' School -- are also using EnVision. "To encourage greater adoption by schools, IDA and the EnVision providers will [help] schools to develop their own video sites," Tay added. "Under this arrangement, each school can enjoy up to six-months' worth of cloud resources, capped at S$1,300, while they need to pay for only 50% of the network bandwidth consumed."

IDA has also launched a call for Cloud Computing Proposals, its fifth since 2010. "Revolution Analytics will provide both expertise and advanced analytics software to enable participants to work on and solve big data problems," said Tay. "Such support will be available for both Hadoop and high performance computing cloud platforms running on the Alatum cloud infrastructure. Creating MapReduce jobs in Hadoop can be challenging for non-Hadoop programmers.

"For users with little knowledge of Hadoop, HP Labs Singapore provides Bamboo, an advanced platform that allows a guided and visual approach to big data processing without a steep learning curve. More details and information will be featured on the IDA website and I invite interested industry members to apply."

IDA's four earlier calls have led to 57 projects being awarded cloud resources to undertake test-bedding, proofs-of-concept and research. Some of the awardees include the Building & Construction Authority (BCA), Institute for Infocomm Research, iTwin Inc. and m9 Tech Solutions.

Meanwhile, IDA will be calling for applications under the SaaS Enablement Programme (SEP) for Building Information Modeling (BIM) and related software for the architecture, engineering and construction community. The move is aligned to the BCA's mandate for e-submissions of all building plans by 2015. Subscription-based, SaaS-enabled BIM software will lower the barriers for adoption.

The SEP, established late last year, offers funding support for manpower, professional services and training expenses in efforts to convert existing software operating on the traditional upfront software licensing model to one that is cloud-based on a utility pricing model.

Further encouraging the adoption of cloud computing is the Productivity and Innovation Credit (PIC) scheme, where the first S$400,000 in costs incurred to acquire cloud computing resources would qualify for a 400% tax deduction.