At a media roundtable today, HP announced findings from a recent survey focusing on cloud adoption in the Middle East. According to HP, the research surveyed financial services, utilities and public sector entities across the emerging markets of the Middle east such as UAE, KSA, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain among others.
“While cloud adoption in the public sector is driven by the demands for faster, instant services by the citizens, its adoption in the private sector is driven by the complex demands of the customer coupled with the incidence of strengthening competition in the Middle East. The private sector’s need to implement a cloud environment is also driven by its employees and the ensuing need to engage the use of independent smart devices to access critical work information,” said Eyad Shihabi, MD and enterprise business lead, HP Middle East.
According to representatives of HP at the roundtable, the survey found that 85% of the IT decision makers surveyed said that they are planning to leverage some form of cloud technology to restructure the way they do business and the way they interact with their multiple stakeholders in the next 12 months. In addition to which, respondents added that 50%-48% of IT delivery will be done leveraging cloud services.
The survey found that the most important driver for cloud adoption in the Middle East is the need to invest in automation and agile practices to react to dynamic business pressures in addition to the need to reduce costs. 50% of the respondents claimed that they had experienced between 21%- 40% IT opex savings as a result of adopting cloud technology, HP said.
Around 70% of respondents said that they had invested in the cloud to enhance the existing IT delivery and infrastructure, while 27% said that their investments were based on the need to manage mobility.
About 53% of the decision makers surveyed also said that the adoption of cloud services is driven by the finance department in their organisation. “ This is because the finance department not only witnesses the noticeable benefits from automation of business processes but also sees the value from savings associated with a shift from capex to opex,” said Eyad Shihabi.
Shihabi also pointed out that as cloud technology continues to mature and users gain a better understanding of how a cloud infrastructure can be implemented to suit their business case, 70% of the respondents of the survey would migrate their mission critical systems to a cloud environment in the next two to five years. “In an environment where IT is no longer considered a cost centre and IT investments are made to enhance business operations, CIOs need to make the fundamental shift to invest in agile technologies,” he added.
According to him, cloud computing technology is part of HP’s technology DNA and is therefore the focus of the company’s participation at GITEX 2011. “As diamond sponsors of GITEX Cloud confex, HP will exhibit its continuous support to the development of the future of cloud technology. We will host cloud workshops on the HP stand, to provide consultations and help enterprises take the next steps in their journey to the cloud,” concluded Shihabi.
HP did not reveal the number of decision makers surveyed.
