Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 33 | Page 96

t cht lk need to seize these business opportunities through collaboration and innovation. When it comes to the Digital Transformation of industry (Industry 4.0), the service sector’s increasingly intimate personal relationship with customers and the exciting cognitive Smart City developments we see across the region, the network really is everything. Luc Serviant, Vice President Middle East and Africa, Orange Business Services It’s the network that provides the tracks along which the apps and data flow but it’s getting complex with hybrid cloud and other options multiplying the possibilities and also the complexities. This is the point at which we see the future of the network turning soft, with software defined networks such as SD-WAN creating new possibilities to accelerate the innovation we need to achieve the region’s economic visions and increase flexibility for expansion, facilitate mergers and acquisitions, simplify the journey of the customer IT manager and reduce costs and complexity. Our partner Riverbed Technology’s recent regional survey showed that Software- Defined WAN (SD-WAN) adoption in the Middle East is following the global trend, with nearly 50% of enterprises already having initial discussions around its adoption and 78% of organisations agreeing that SD- WAN will be a critical part of their network infrastructure within the next five years. For those regional survey respondents, the