Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 54 | Page 27

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// TRENDING Aaron White, Regional Sales Director – Middle East at Nutanix “ THE ENTERPRISE HAS PROGRESSED IN ITS UNDERSTANDING AND ADOPTION OF HYBRID CLOUD, BUT THERE IS STILL WORK TO DO. 2. Many of UAE’s repatriated apps appear heading for private clouds instead of traditional data centres. UAE companies reported one of the lowest current uses of data centres (40%), coming in significantly below the EMEA (54%) and global (53%) averages. By sharp contrast, UAE was third highest in reported usage of private cloud (45%), trailing only Japan (60%) and Saudi Arabia (47%). While the UAE expects its use of private cloud to decline over the next five years, its use will decline more slowly than elsewhere and will remain moderately higher (22%) in three to five years than the EMEA regional (16%) and global (16%) averages. 3. There’s a significant disconnect between what UAE companies deem the ideal IT infrastructure and what they’re deploying today. UAE IT professionals were almost unanimous in agreement (97%) that hybrid cloud represents the ideal IT operating model, topped only by China (99%). Still, UAE respondents reported one of the lowest penetrations of hybrid clouds in EMEA today (7%), significantly behind the EMEA (12%) and global (13%) averages. 4. UAE companies plan to adopt a hybrid cloud model more slowly than other countries. However, they expect to arrive at a 51% penetration in three to five years, which generally aligns with averages for EMEA and across the world. 5. Lack of internal IT skills and retaining qualified IT staff are top concerns for UAE companies. UAE respondents agreed that they lack the internal IT skills required to meet business demands 60% of the time and 61% agreed that they had difficulty retaining IT talent. Both percentages were higher than the EMEA and global averages. Aaron White, Regional Sales Director – Middle East at Nutanix, said: “It is clear that hybrid cloud is the future. Hybrid cloud capabilities constitute a growing necessity in the dynamic, digital business climate, in which enterprises demand the freedom to dynamically provision and manage applications based on business needs. “Reaching this ideal IT operating model will require more comprehensive hybrid vendor solutions, as well as greater expertise in designing, building and operating hybrid clouds. “As organisations continue to grapple with complex Digital Transformation initiatives, flexibility and security are critical components to enable seamless and reliable cloud adoption,” said Wendy M Pfeiffer, CIO of Nutanix. “The enterprise has progressed in its understanding and adoption of hybrid cloud, but there is still work to do when it comes to reaping all of its benefits. In the next few years, we’ll see businesses rethinking how to best utilise hybrid cloud, including hiring for hybrid computing skills and reskilling IT teams to keep up with emerging technologies.” Ashish Nadkarni, Group Vice President of Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies at the IDC, said: “Cloud computing has become an integral part of business strategy, but it has introduced several challenges along with it. “These include security and application performance concerns and high cost. As the 2019 Enterprise Cloud Index report demonstrates, hybrid cloud will continue to be the best option for enterprises, enabling them to securely meet modernisation and agility requirements for workloads.” To learn more about the report and findings, download the full Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index 2019 at www.nutanix.com/enterprisecloud-index. • www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 27