REGIONAL CHANNELS
services is on pace to reach $1.3 billion
in 2016, an increase of 8 per cent over
2015, according to Gartner. Increased
awareness about the business impact of
security incidents is causing organisations
to focus their security strategy on
detection and response approaches,
which is driving this strong growth in the
security market.
The public cloud services market in the
Middle East and North Africa region is
projected to grow 22.2 per cent in 2017 to
a total of $1.2 billion, up from $956 million
in 2016, according to Gartner. The highest
growth for the cloud services market in
the Middle East and North Africa comes
from Platform as a Service (PaaS) at 28.8
per cent growth and Software as a Service
(SaaS) at 28.5 per cent growth.
The new cloud-based disaster recovery
service will help protect IBM and Zain
customers against data loss from their
own servers or from other cloud services,
and can maintain readiness without the
need to invest in additional physical space
or stand-by hardware. The service will
provide replication of critical applications,
infrastructure, data and systems to IBM
Cloud so customers can recover from an
IT outage within minutes.
Amr Refaat, General Manager, IBM
Middle East and Pakistan, commented:
“Unplanned downtime or data loss is a
risk any business can face. Not only can
this lead to business loss but present a
threat to a company’s reputation among
its customers, stakeholders and the wider
public. Having a resiliency plan in place
should play an integral part in every
business. Through the new cloud disaster
recovery service, IBM and Zain customers
can run their operations with ease, while
we provide around-the-clock monitoring
of the recovery environments.”
“Today’s announcement comes as
part of our vision to transform Zain into
a digital lifestyle provider,” said Zain
Kuwait’s Chief Executive Officer, Eaman
Al Roudhan. “The business needs of our
corporate customers are continuously
changing and offering them innovative
solutions to help maintain resiliency is a
top priority for us.”
22
MENA public cloud management and security services forecast, $M. (Source: Gartner)
The cloud disaster recovery team will
monitor developing disaster events 24x7
to help ensure that the infrastructure of
IBM and Zain customers is equipped to
handle the latest threats to keep data,
applications and transactions secure. The
new service will also enable customers
to adjust and customise their resiliency
strategies to their own requirements to
optimise recovery time.
Zain’s strategy of being a sustainable
digital communications company has long
focused on the customer experience and
using technology to create more value.
The launch of this service is one of the
major steps in the company’s strategic
plan to introduce more distinctive digital
services dedicated to corporate and
enterprise customers. Zain believes that
corporations are unique by nature and
require unique services that recognise
and satisfy their needs promptly and
efficiently, and this announcement is a
testament to that belief.
The regional journey into digital
transformation and the Internet of Things
(IoT) will drive the need to increasingly
use managed services to ensure business
continuity and security, By 2019, 30 per
cent of large enterprises will increase their
security consulting services spending as
they transition into digital business. By
year-end 2018, over 50 per cent of IoT
device manufacturers will remain unable
to address product threats emanating
from weak authentication practices. A
total of 99.9 per cent of attacks will be
based on product vulnerabilities that
were known for at least a year. IoT and
mobility security will contribute less than
5 per cent of consumer security software
spending by 2018.
Gartner recommends that
organisations recognise the inevitable
adoption of cloud and virtual IT and shift
their defences to an adaptive security
architecture. Organisations should look
for, and secure, shadow IT whereby IT
has been adopted outside the normal IT
procurement and management processes.
Targeted attacks, ransomware and
denial of service attacks are the most
relevant threats to enterprises today;
however, they are enabled by failing patch
vulnerabilities and overloading security
personnel with alerts.
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NTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS