Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 37 | Page 53

COUNTRY FOCUS: KSA fit towards the direction of our Vision 2030 to reform the society and the economy of KSA towards being a knowledge-based economy and diversified from oil and invest in the right direction. When it comes to IT it represents more than 33 billion Saudi Riyal by the end of this year. So that's a massive contribution? It is massive and it is growing. And if we add to that the communications industry, which relies heavily on IT as well, then the number would be over 100 billion riyals. We believe that this should contribute to the GDP of the country. Currently the contribution of the IT industry to the economy and to the GDP of www.intelligentcio.com “ WHEN WE LOOK AT THE CLOUD LANDSCAPE IN KSA IT’S CLEARLY THE FUTURE AND THE PRESENT AT THE SAME TIME. KSA is less than 4% despite the huge spend on IT in KSA. The Ministry of IT and Communications is working day and night to enhance this contribution of ICT to the GDP. We at SAP are proud to be the first multi-national IT company worldwide to invest, build and operate a local cloud data centre, a local cloud hub, that will serve both the public sector and private sectors. And we are proud that we have several organisations and enterprises in KSA live on our local cloud data centre, be it very large enterprises, public sector entities or small and medium businesses. That will contribute INTELLIGENTCIO 53