There has been a drastic shift in business’ needs for using cloud in the UAE, with C-suite executive choosing hybrid cloud as their organisations’ IT architecture, according to the latest study by IBM.
The report, which was conducted by IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) in cooperation with Oxford Economics, revealed that none of respondents in the UAE reported using a single private or public cloud in 2021, down from 43 percent in 2019.
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It also showed that the cloud market has entered the hybrid, multi-cloud era and concerns around vendor lock-in, security, compliance and interoperability remain paramount.
“The rapid acceleration in the adoption of new technologies have led the UAE’s strong response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Hossam Seif El-Din, General Manager of IBM in the Middle East, and Pakistan. “It is evident now that cloud is at the core of the UAE’s organisations’ journeys to unlock digital reinvention, and today’s findings prove that hybrid cloud is the IT architecture of choice for businesses in the UAE.”
The IBM study found that infrastructure complexity is creating cracked doors that cybercriminals are exploiting, with 80 percent of respondents in the UAE said data security being embedded throughout the cloud architecture is important or extremely important, in most cases, to successful digital initiatives. While 54 percent of respondents in the UAE indicated improving cybersecurity and reducing security risks are among their largest business and IT investments.
Additionally, the study also found that 71 percent of respondents in the UAE said workloads being completely portable with no vendor lock-in is important or extremely important to the success of their digital initiatives. While nearly 64 percent of respondents in the UAE said vendor lock-in is a significant obstacle to improving business performance in most or all parts of their cloud estate.
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The report highlighted that public cloud adoption is evolving towards specialised clouds capable of increased levels of compliance and data protection – with nearly 56 percent of respondents in the UAE citing industry-related regulatory compliance as an obstacle to the business performance of their cloud estate.
The study revealed that enterprises need to assess how they use the cloud in terms of adoption, velocity, migration, speed, and cost-savings opportunity.
