Over the past few years, cloud adoption has been increasing in the Middle East as more organizations move their data to the cloud. The region is going through an economic transition as many countries undertake smart city programs, modernize their national visions, and develop their digital economies. In nations like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait, national visions push governments to embrace cutting-edge technologies to accomplish their transformational goals. For instance, the digital transformation of government operations is a significant part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. A cloud-first approach helps businesses reduce the total cost of ownership and improve cybersecurity.
On the other hand, Bahrain’s cloud-first policy is committed to modernizing government ICT and raising the bar for using cloud computing services to save costs, increase security and efficiency, and produce top-notch citizen services.
Accelerating Cloud Adoption
In the region, both public and private sectors are making investments in cloud computing to upgrade their systems and offerings and use it to organize and streamline their operations.
According to Gartner, Chief Information Officers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) spent the most money in 2022 on cloud application services, such as supply chain management, email and authoring, business intelligence apps, and email and content services. This market will invest $2.3 billion, up 16% from 2021, making up 40% of all public cloud service investments.
The second-largest segment will be cloud application and infrastructure services, which were anticipated to reach $1.1 billion in 2022, a growth of 25.8% from 2021 to 2022. Cloud System Infrastructure Services proved to be the fastest-growing sector.
Over the past five years, we’ve observed how the convergence of more affordable network access, better mobile and wireless technologies and advancements in the underlying virtualization technologies have created a variety of options for businesses to boost their competitiveness. On the other hand, some firms are finding it difficult to prioritize IT investments based on their strategic objectives in light of all the options that are currently available. A decision to relocate there cannot be ignored because cloud computing is a component of any of those pertinent possibilities.
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Are some businesses reluctant to move to the cloud?
As the world grows more technically oriented, Cloud Computing has become a crucial component of daily life, particularly for local enterprises. Companies can organize their data in the cloud and maintain backups of all the data they use to build new products and improve client experiences. However, a lot of businesses continue to put off moving their infrastructure to the cloud.
While some might not have IT staff, others worry about losing accessibility. The decision-makers also pay close attention to the cost.
Meanwhile, experts identify security as one of the main issues of using cloud adoption by industry. As more businesses enable employees to work from anywhere, access to cloud-based software makes the seamless transition from home to office. Meanwhile, some businesses are reluctant to take this route because they are unsure how to migrate their current security, policies, and frameworks while still adhering to their compliance commitments. The rigidity of their legacy systems has prevented several organizations from making the transition to the cloud. In actuality, legacy systems tend to be in existence for a longer time in larger organizations. Another difficulty is the lack of cloud expertise, which can easily thwart cloud transformation initiatives.
The ‘risks’ of not moving to the cloud
Let’s have a look at the risk associated with organizations not implementing cloud computing.
With the cloud at the center of every digital transformation journey, businesses might not be able to take advantage of more extensive opportunities and they might encounter scalability limitations where the cost would be too high for them to grow due to traditional IT spending that uses funds that the business could instead use for growth initiatives or innovation.
In today’s corporate world, startups and SMEs need to have a smart data approach. Business intelligence and data analytics need a solid understanding of data collection and storage. As a result, not having a reliable cloud storage solution for your company could negatively affect how easy it is to access your data, which would reduce your company’s efficiency. However, before making a cloud investment, businesses should think about how it fits into their entire business plan and identify the workloads that are most suited for the cloud. In other words, cloud investment must be in line with creating strategic projects. Organizations should prioritize security, compliance, hidden costs, networking, complexity, and performance before investmenting in a cloud environment. The team’s readiness to manage not just the technical components of the migration and continuing operations but also the business considerations of cost optimization and compliance assurance are crucial elements. Finally, organizations must evaluate an application’s technical readiness before transferring it to the cloud.
Cloud Security – Tools and best practices
Despite the cloud’s ongoing evolution, some best practices for assuring the security of cloud systems have stood strong. Experts advise businesses looking to use cloud solutions or already using them to take into account the following recommendations to maintain data security.
The basic antivirus and anti-malware protection are insufficient to safeguard a cloud infrastructure. According to industry best practices, every operating system in the infrastructure must have robust, multi-layered security that protects a variety of workloads that are executed on diverse platforms. It’s crucial to comprehend the differences between the cybersecurity responsibility of a cloud host and a cloud tenant. In a private cloud arrangement, protecting the underlying virtualization and storage as well as network connectivity must be taken into account.
Also Read: Three business trends that will determine how cloud technology develops in the UAE
Overview
The cloud will propel technical advancement and act as the cornerstone for commercial innovation in the future. Thanks to increasing consumer demand, changing organizational needs, and enormous amounts of data, the future of cloud computing in the Middle East is on a steady path to spread in the coming years.
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