Global technology giant has recently announced a partnership with Edarat Group, a Data Center and ICT Infrastructure firm in the Middle East, to empower its customers in Saudi Arabia to harness IBM Cloud services.
Under the partnership, Edarat Group has chosen IBM Cloud Satellite to enable its customers to run workloads in hybrid cloud environments while keeping their data locally. This factor is especially important for organisations in regulated industries such as financial services, telco and healthcare. With the collaboration, Edarat Group can now harness the power of IBM’s hybrid cloud, allowing clients to deploy secure and open IBM Cloud services anywhere they choose –on-premises, any public cloud, or at the edge.
In an exclusive interview with ITP.net, Mohamed Emad El-Din Saleh, Business Unit Executive – IBM Public Cloud, Middle East, Africa and Turkey, discusses the new collaboration and why local and global cloud providers need to work together to facilitate the success of digital transformation in the region.
In 2016, Saudi Arabia announced its ambitious Vision 2030, a blueprint aimed to reduce the Kingdom’s dependence on oil and diversify its economy. This ambitious endeavour has prompted the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to issue regulations and initiatives that will help facilitate the digital transformation of the country. Today, Saudi Arabia is among the leading nations in the region when it comes to investing in advanced technologies.
A key aspect of the Kingdom’s strategy to embrace digital transformation is the adoption of cloud computing, which has driven the demand for solutions and innovations focused on this technology. In fact, the cloud computing market in Saudi Arabia is now poised to exceed $10 billion by 2030.
“The Saudi Arabia market was known for being conservative when it came to the cloud,” said El-Din Saleh. “Many organisations were sceptical due to concerns over data sovereignty. However, in the last 18 months when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we saw a lot of acceleration in the shift to the cloud within the Kingdom.”
A recent IBM study conducted by International Data Corporation (IDC) has revealed that 85% of C-Suite executives surveyed in Saudi Arabia are pursuing or planning to implement hybrid cloud strategies in their organisations. The report highlighted that this is primarily fuelled by business leaders’ objectives of helping their organisations benefit from flexibility, cost savings, development as well as disaster recovery.
“We have seen a significant rise in cloud use cases in Saudi Arabia and a momentous change in mindset towards the cloud. We saw some traditional industries that had previously refused discussions about cloud now starting to be more open and accepting of cloud-focused technologies for certain projects. This is only the start, and we believe that in the coming months, we’ll see more and more organisations from sectors such as financial services, telecoms and government increase their cloud adoption,” explained El-Din Saleh.
By leveraging IBM Cloud Satellite, Edarat Group will enable its customers to run workloads in hybrid cloud environments while keeping their data in Saudi Arabia. This also allows them to comply with the comprehensive local data regulations while providing the flexibility that hybrid cloud services offer to their customers.
“Local cloud providers such as Edarat Group are vital to the Kingdom’s digital transformation journey,” said El-Din Saleh. “They have their own data centre, local resources and expertise, and they have deeper ties with government and other entities in that market. So, when we entered the Saudi market we knew that working with these local partners is key to successfully delivering our offerings to customers. Now, through the collaboration, Edarat can provide a wide array of hyperscaler services that IBM has but with a local flavour.”
IBM is working with Edarat and other local cloud partners to build skills and capabilities to support the Saudi Vision 2030. In addition, the company has also rolled out several initiatives including the launch of IBM Security’s first-ever Security Operations Centre (SOC) in Saudi Arabia as well as several partnerships with various government entities to accelerate cloud adoption.
“The cloud industry will continue to grow and there will be huge opportunities in the hybrid cloud space for local partners. We believe that the countries that enable and empower local partners to harness the value of this technology will be ahead of the game. As for IBM, we will continue to support them and ensure their success in their cloud journey,” said El-Din Saleh.
