EDITOR’S QUESTION
SACHIN BHARDWAJ,
DIRECTOR MARKETING AND
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT,
EHOSTING DATAFORT
C
loud computing has been a transformational
force in the IT industry. Several of the most
recent innovations driving growth and innovative
business models are a product of the technology. Cloud
adoption in the Middle East is growing significantly
as enterprises are seeing tremendous value in
having a scalable and flexible pool of resources at
their fingertips. The assurance of lower IT costs and
scalability has drawn IT decision makers to move their
business-critical data and applications to the cloud.
Customers are driven to cloud services for cost
optimisation, agility and more time for them to focus
on creating profitability avenues as most IT operations
are shifted to cloud and managed by serviced
providers. Cloud allows easy and feasible extension of
business capabilities and provides enterprises with a
competitive edge over those who are lagging on the
technology front. The popularity of the model in the
Middle East is another driver towards cloud adoption.
manner to meet scalability demands thereby enabling them
to be flexible, where they can scale up or scale down as their
requirements change.
Adopting a multi-cloud strategy comes with its own set of
challenges. Managing multi-cloud solutions from different
vendors across different cloud environments can be difficult
and time consuming. If not monitored and managed
properly, it can lead to several operational issues. Many
regional organisations are signing on managed cloud services
providers to assist them with their multi-cloud solutions, where
they will manage issues with interoperability, infrastructure,
network, storage, backup management and monitoring,
security and other challenges. By partnering with a trusted
managed cloud services provider, organisations will be able to
monitor their cloud solutions from one single place and avoid
complications. They will also get regular maintenance and
24x7 support to ensure issues are resolved quickly. n
As part of their digitisation initiatives, an increasing
number of enterprises in the region are adopting a
multi-cloud strategy. A single cloud approach works
well for small businesses and start-ups. However, an
enterprise’s different business units have diverse
requirements and workloads, which cannot be met by a
single cloud model.
A multi-cloud approach offers organisations a number
of benefits from low costs, unlimited scalability,
agility and improving disaster recovery and security.
By working with multiple cloud services providers,
enterprises can lessen their dependency on a single
provider and can also avoid vendor lock-ins, data centre
outages and bandwidth issues. Compliance regulations
and data sovereignty requirements have also led
companies to implement the multi-cloud approach.
Through a multi-cloud approach, organisations
can leverage the best of breed technologies and
services from different innovative vendors and cloud
service providers to meet the requirements of each
department. They can mix and match best-in-class
solutions and services from different cloud services
providers to create a customised solution for their
business. This approach also helps them to adopt
new technologies from multiple vendors in a phased
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