DATA CENTRE PREDICTIONS
Aaron White, Regional Director – Middle
East at Nutanix
applications run, putting the
organisation at potential risk
• • With organisations moving to the
hybrid cloud model, finding and
retaining hybrid IT talent is proving to
be a big challenge
How
do the
results
of the study
to in
How
do the
results
of the relate
study
the relate
Middle to
East?
in the Middle East?
The UAE and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
(KSA) were included as part of the study.
Both countries threw up similar results and
are grouped into a ‘Middle East’ bucket
when reporting findings:
• • The Middle East runs slightly fewer
workloads in traditional data centres
and outpaces the global and EMEA
regional averages in its deployment of
hybrid clouds
• • Today, the Middle East runs half
(50%) of its workloads in private and
hybrid clouds
• • In the next 12 to 24 months, companies
in this region intend to move significant
numbers of workloads out of their
traditional data centres. Based on survey
responses, Middle Eastern companies’
data centre penetration is expected to
drop from 37% today to just 14% in that
time frame
• • Public cloud use shows the most
growth in the Middle East over the
next two years. Public clouds will then
account for more than a third (36%) of
the region’s overall workloads, followed
by hybrid clouds at 29%, and private
clouds and traditional data centres,
collectively at 35%
18
Issue 04
• • While controlling public cloud spend
was revealed to be a universal
challenge among global respondents,
the Middle East seems to be doing
better than its peers with just 31% of
the Middle Eastern respondents having
reported being over budget with their
public cloud services compared with
36% of global and EMEA respondents.
• • In addition to managing their public
cloud budgets better than their
peers on average, Middle Eastern
respondents more often reported
that public clouds fully met their
expectations than the rest of the world
• • Data security and compliance and
lower total cost of ownership (TCO)
were ranked as the top benefits of
using a public cloud in the Middle East
Hybrid Cloud is mentioned a lot. Are most
Hybrid cloud is mentioned a lot.
businesses
aware
of its benefits?
Are most
businesses
aware of
its benefits?
It is clear from Nutanix’s global Enterprise
Cloud Index that organisations worldwide,
including those in the UAE, are aware
of the benefits of hybrid cloud, with
91% of the enterprises surveyed stating
hybrid cloud as the ideal IT model. The
reasons for this sea change away from
the traditional data centre are many.
In essence, however, organisations are
both switching on to the benefits of the
cloud – on-demand scalability, pay per use
economics and so on – and, at the same
time, becoming wise to the fact that not
all clouds are the same.
As a result many are opting for an
application-centric approach to IT and
choosing the best home for their apps –
be that a public or private cloud– rather
than modifying apps to always fit one
chosen platform.
Few are sticking with just one cloud
and many would like to be able to move
workloads around between clouds – for
both technical and financial reasons –
and it is this ability that has been ranked
above cost and security concerns in the
Enterprise Cloud Index survey.
Unfortunately, we’re some way off
being able to turn this aspiration for free
movement of apps into a reality. Today
there is a real lack of visibility when
apps are deployed across a hybrid mix of
clouds. Simply put, if you can’t see an app
on every cloud it touches you can’t hope
to manage it and fix it when things go
wrong, or make sure it stays compliant.
And you certainly can’t automate the
processes involved.
What is the relevance of Nutanix in today’s
What is the relevance of
cloud
computing
era? cloud
Nutanix
in today’s
computing era?
Most, if not all, businesses today are digital,
when you consider the technologies they
consume for every function, from human
resources and accounting, to marketing
and internal communications.
What is driving this are the internal
‘clients’– the departments looking for
this functionality and not the IT teams
supporting them. Increasingly, the cloud
– and, indeed, a multitude of clouds – is
an attractive platform for businesses to
manage and run their applications, often
with the familiarity and simplicity of
applications individuals might use in their
own private lives.
Thus, businesses needing flexibility,
scalability and freedom have been using
public cloud services, but this comes
with challenges of usability and flexibility,
and even a ‘lock-in’ to unknown costs
and unused capacity as well as data and
application mobility. This has rendered
some IT staff focused on tactical
management, reactive problem solving
and blind discovery, versus thinking about
the ‘customer experience’ within their
organisations. Simply put, IT is losing
relevance and influence at a time when no
technology transition has ever been bigger.
The antidote to public cloud lock-in is the
freedom to easily move between clouds.
It includes knowing the costs, the ability
to choose the right location for the right
data and the peace of mind that security
and governance are not an afterthought. It
is about blurring the lines between public
and private, between renting and owning.
Because it’s not all about technology. It’s
about what the technology enables.
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