A landmark IDC study commissioned by Dell Technologies reveals a sweeping and far-reaching infrastructure transformation currently underway across eleven distinct Asia-Pacific markets, signaling a profound shift in the way organizations across the region are building, managing, and modernizing their technology foundations.
Key takeaways
- 46% of Asia Pacific organizations rank cloud migration as their top infrastructure modernization priority, yet most have not fully built out strong hybrid environments.
- 94% of surveyed enterprises are considering or planning cloud repatriation, signaling a decisive shift toward multi-hybrid models driven by data sovereignty, cost, and security concerns.
- AI workloads and rising technical debt are accelerating the move to private and hybrid cloud, with enterprises demanding open, scalable architectures that avoid vendor lock-in.
Across the Asia Pacific, the era of all-in public cloud adoption is giving way to something more nuanced. Pressured by tightening IT budgets, mounting technical debt, and the voracious compute demands of artificial intelligence, enterprises throughout the region are engineering a quiet but decisive infrastructure reset, one built on the flexibility of multi-hybrid cloud.
That is the central finding of a comprehensive new study commissioned by Dell Technologies and conducted by IDC, published in the InfoBrief titled Unlocking Business Agility Through Private Cloud Modernization in Asia/Pacific. Drawing on multiple IDC data sources and surveys conducted in 2025 across eleven markets, including Australia, Greater China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, the research paints a vivid picture of a region in the midst of fundamental change.
Cloud Migration as a Top Imperative
The numbers are striking. Nearly half of all organizations in the Asia Pacific, 46%, have named cloud migration as their top strategy for infrastructure modernization, citing the need for resilient, adaptable IT environments that can evolve alongside rapidly shifting business demands.
Yet ambition is outpacing execution. While 46 percent of organizations see cloud migration as their top modernization priority, fewer have fully built strong hybrid environments, a gap that signals both a significant challenge and a substantial opportunity for technology vendors and enterprise IT leaders alike.
The Great Cloud Rethink
If the first wave of digital transformation was defined by a rush to the public cloud, the second wave appears to be more considered. Organizations today are shifting away from single-provider or rigid cloud-first strategies, with leading enterprises embracing multi-hybrid cloud models that require infrastructures that are sufficiently dynamic, reliable, and agile to support new business models. These architectures allow enterprises to build purpose-fit digital ecosystems and deploy or migrate applications seamlessly across private, public, or hybrid environments.
Nowhere is this recalibration more apparent than in the trend toward cloud repatriation, the practice of moving workloads back from public cloud environments to on-premises or private infrastructure. 94% of surveyed organizations in the Asia Pacific indicated they are considering or planning some degree of cloud repatriation, a figure that underscores how profoundly priorities around data control, security, and cost management have shifted.
Data sovereignty in cloud computing is emerging as a key factor influencing how organizations design their cloud environments. In India, this is especially visible as companies rethink where workloads should reside, often choosing to move some of them back from public cloud environments to maintain better control over security and performance.
AI: The Infrastructure Accelerant
Artificial intelligence is no longer a peripheral consideration in cloud strategy; it is increasingly its primary driver. AI is rapidly becoming a major priority for organizations seeking to unlock greater value from their data, with modern AI initiatives requiring high-performance compute, scalable storage, and robust networking that carefully planned hybrid and private cloud environments can deliver.
The maturation of enterprise IT is closely linked to hybrid and multi-cloud approaches, with organizations seeing hybrid cloud as the most efficient, practical path to leverage AI’s capabilities while managing the challenges of scale, security, and compliance required by modern data workloads.
Technical Debt: A Ticking Clock
One of the study’s more sobering findings concerns the accumulation of technical debt across the region. The Asia Pacific region is beginning to experience the impact of technical debt that is expected to grow significantly, making future-proofing all the more critical to ensure organizational sustainability.
Organizations are responding by seeking open, scalable architectures that grow with their needs while avoiding vendor lock-in. The integration of modern private clouds leverages disaggregated infrastructure, giving organizations the power to scale compute, storage, and networking independently while avoiding the risks and costs of being locked into restrictive cycles, supporting faster innovation, less complexity, and greater business value.
The path is not without obstacles. The top three challenges in cloud journeys cited by respondents were the integration of existing infrastructure, maintaining cybersecurity and compliance, and managing complex hybrid or multi-cloud environments.
Industry Voices
Dell Technologies executives were unambiguous about what the findings signal for enterprise strategy. “Organizations are telling us that continuous modernization isn’t just an IT directive, it’s a business necessity,” said Sumash Singh, Managing Director, South Asia and Emerging Markets at Dell Technologies. “With the rise of multi-hybrid cloud and new demands from AI, companies want the freedom to choose, evolve, and innovate, backed by flexible, open architectures.”
The Road Ahead
The IDC findings arrive at an inflection point for technology investment across Asia Pacific. The move toward multi-hybrid models is helping businesses align workloads with cost and performance needs more effectively. By distributing workloads across different environments, enterprises can optimize spending while ensuring that critical applications receive the resources they need, a balance between cost and performance that is becoming a key part of modern cloud strategy.
For technology leaders, the message is clear: the question is no longer whether to modernize, but how quickly infrastructure can be transformed to meet the twin demands of AI readiness and operational resilience. In the Asia Pacific, that transformation is already well underway.
