TALKING BUSINESS
73% of MEA businesses
committed to being
‘information-based’, but
face workload dilemma
A recent survey by Pure Storage reveals
what is holding Middle East and African
businesses back from truly becoming digital.
P
ure Storage, the market’s leading
independent all-flash data
platform vendor for the cloud era,
has announced the results of Evolution
2017, a groundbreaking independent
global research survey that explores
the ways businesses in the Middle
East and Africa (MEA) and across the
globe are balancing infrastructure and
applications, today and beyond.
The global research, which included
a survey of 500 IT decision makers
in the MEA region, finds that 73% of
businesses in the region are committed
to being information-based companies,
and as such are embracing digital
transformation. The key factors driving
adoption of digital solutions in the
region include new business models
(52%), need for faster innovation
(47%), customer demand (47%),
competition (43%), new customer
acquisition (43%) and cost saving
initiatives (42%).
It’s clear that businesses in the region
are facing digital transformation head-
on, as 77% see more demand in the
business for real time analytics and
interactive simulations than a year
ago and digital solutions are typically
driving almost half of revenue (47% on
average) for MEA organisations today.
But despite this growth, technical
complexity (53%) and reliance on IT to
deliver strategy (41%) have prevented
businesses in the MEA region from
truly becoming digital. Public, private
and hybrid cloud, SaaS and traditional
on-premises all have momentum, but
30
INTELLIGENTCIO
“Technical
complexity and
reliance on IT to
deliver strategy
have prevented
businesses in the
MEA region from
truly becoming
digital.”
businesses still lack confidence in where
to place specific workloads:
• On average, businesses in the
MEA region are running 48% of
applications with traditional on-
premises IT – higher than both public
cloud (23%) or private cloud (24%).
• Security (57%), availability (52%)
and performance (47%) are cited
as key drivers for continued use of
traditional on-premises and, as such,
39% of businesses expect their on-
premises usage to grow over the next
18–24 months.
• Although security continues to be
cited as the main concern with public
cloud (38%), 69% of businesses say
they will increase their public cloud
usage in the next 18–24 months.
In parallel, private cloud (57%) and
SaaS (56%) usage are also expected
James Petter, Vice President, EMEA,
Pure Storage
to grow in the same time frame.
• Interestingly, 76% of businesses in
the MEA region think that cloud and
on-premises should complement one
another rather than compete.
“Evolution 2017 shows that businesses
in the Middle East and Africa are
making significant steps towards
digital transformation, but the report
also reveals some key barriers to
progress. Cloud confusion seems
evident in workload fragmentation
and cloud repatriation. As data
volumes continue to grow and unlock
greater opportunities, managing and
harnessing data with a future-proofed
approach is essential for organisations
in the region,” said James Petter, Vice
President, EMEA at Pure Storage.
“Pure’s vision is to help customers
put their data to work, by delivering
an end-to-end data platform, built
for the cloud era, that provides the
effortless and scalable block, file and
object storage services necessary to run
classic applications, test/dev, big data
analytics, and modern webscale apps
– all with the speed and efficiency of
flash,” concluded James.
As businesses in the MEA region
accelerate in to the ‘cloud era’, Pure
Storage is committed to helping
them gauge where they are in terms
of balancing infrastructure and
applications in their business and
providing guidance on how they can
future-proof their storage infrastructure
to capitalise on opportunities offered by
the cloud. n
www.intelligentcio.com