Private cloud enables enterprises in Middle East to innovate faster

Muscat: Nearly 89 per cent of enterprises in the Middle East believe the private cloud enables them to innovate faster, according to new research by Oracle, the world's leading enterprise software company.
The study of 458 companies in the Middle East, Europe and South Africa, conducted by IDG Connect on behalf of Oracle, found that more than half of businesses will have reached cloud maturity within two years, while the concerns and considerations around moving to the cloud have evolved.
Key findings from the research in the Middle East include the fact that 89 per cent of respondents said that the cloud enabled them innovate faster; 70 per cent said it helped to retain existing customers; and 76 per cent said it helped them win new customers.
For hybrid cloud adoptions, traditional barriers, such as concerns over security, are being displaced by operational concerns such as managing multiple IT architectures and network bandwidth. Those building private cloud infrastructures continue to see security as the prime concern, the study said.
Respondents also cited “winning the support of key business decision-makers” as the most important building block of successful hybrid cloud infrastructures, suggesting that influence on cloud deployments extends beyond IT into broader business functions. For private cloud infrastructures, respondents cited ‘standardisation of IT’ as the most important. These figures suggest that the CIO’s role is more important than ever in coordinating multiple architectures and effectively communicating the benefits of cloud deployments to the wider business.
One-in-five businesses (19 per cent) have reached ‘cloud maturity’, with 38 per cent saying that they will have reached maturity within two years. Respondents identified the most important building blocks for successful hybrid cloud deployments as winning the support of key business decision-makers (36 per cent), building a strong relationship with a supplier (30 per cent) and cost efficiency (15 per cent). The biggest barriers to hybrid cloud adoption are managing multiple IT architectures (60 per cent), Scalability (60 per cent) and network bandwidth (58 per cent) .
Johan Doruiter, Oracle’s senior vice-president of Systems in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), commented: “As cloud rapidly reaches maturity, we are seeing a shift in how enterprises perceive the chief benefits and barriers to adoption. Traditional areas of high concern such as data security and reliability are moving down the list and these are actually cited as key benefits of cloud adoption by most enterprises.
“These traditional concerns have been replaced by the operational worries, including how to manage multiple IT architectures and ensuring networks have sufficient bandwidth. For enterprises that are reaching maturity with their cloud deployments, it’s increasingly important to be able to manage public, private and hybrid deployments through a single, consolidated view,” he added.
”We see an understandable difference in security focus between private and hybrid cloud deployments”, said Bob Johnson, vice president and principal analyst, at IDG Connect.
“For companies focusing on private cloud deployments, security is a prime concern, indicating that enterprise workloads are moving into the cloud. Organisations with the hybrid mix of on-premise and public cloud services have realized the benefits of opening up their infrastructures to partners and customers, and as a result are open to a corresponding enhancement of the strength, maturity and sophistication of their security systems.”