Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 25 | Page 82

EDITOR’S QUESTION YOUSUF KHAN, CIO, PURE STORAGE – and that means building a hybrid cloud. Today, major retail brands – which were previously never considered technology companies – are generating more data than high tech firms did a decade ago. To gain advantage from that data, organisations must be highly analytical and strategic about which workloads and applications live where. F or consumers and businesses alike, digital technology has proven disruptive. Consumers can, in theory, embrace or reject the trend as they see fit. But a reluctance to embrace digital technologies can leave organisations falling behind competitors. The good news is that enterprises in the Middle East are already making strides in this area. In a recent survey we conducted, of 300 IT decision makers in the region, 72% of respondents stated that their organisations are committed to being information-based companies. It is often the responsibility of IT leaders to innovate in line with the business’s digital vision, without breaking the bank. In response to this, public cloud has seen increased adoption across a multitude of industries. The demand for simpler storage, combined with a data explosion, has created the perception of an unstoppable drive towards the public cloud. A ‘cloud-first’ 82 INTELLIGENTCIO strategy is the popular buzzword for executive leadership. But it’s important to understand what that really means. The narrative that cloud and traditional storage are at direct odds, while compelling, is oversimplified. Within today’s landscape, there are more options than just public cloud and traditional on-premise. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has exploded, while private cloud has also seen significant increase in relevancy. A strategy that deploys some combination of these options is referred to as hybrid cloud. This is a route that most enterprises in the Middle East are opting with 69% of businesses saying they will increase their public cloud usage in the next 18 to 24 months. In parallel, private cloud (57%) and SaaS (56%) usage is also expected to grow in the same timeframe. Strategic infrastructure is key to optimising for the new reality of digital business Analytics and business intelligence are two of the top focus areas for CIOs with 74% of survey respondents reporting that they see more demand in the business for real-time analytics than a year ago. To effectively utilise both, IT professionals must understand the strengths and limitations of different infrastructure options to create the optimal hybrid environment for their organisation. Public cloud has revolutionised the standard for easy IT. It’s simpler to manage, and removes the time and energy burden of technology upgrades from the customer. It’s a utility model, which is attractive to organisations for which CapEx is limited, and provides the flexibility needed to scale up and down quickly depending on fluctuating demand. The other side of the same coin is scale over time. As an organisation’s data requirements grow, so does the public cloud bill. Many CIOs report directly to the CFO, and when we speak to them, cost certainty is a recurring theme. A volatile and unpredictable operating expense can be untenable when building a digital organisation. n www.intelligentcio.com