FINAL WORD
I
n 2016, Middle East enterprises went
through one of the biggest transitions
in a decade as they began to embark
on their digital transformation journeys.
Characterised by growing uptake of
third-platform, enterprise mobility and
big-data initiatives, all supported by
increasingly complex hybrid networking
infrastructures, this necessary evolution
has not been without its challenges for
businesses in the region.
Enterprises move toward a
strategic architecture for digital
transformation
IDC predicts that, by 2017, 60% of
digital transformation initiatives will be
unable to scale due to a lack of a strategic
architecture. And by 2018, 70% of
siloed digital transformation initiatives
will ultimately fail due to insufficient
collaboration, integration, sourcing, or
project management. Research from
MIT Sloan Management and Deloitte
University Press concurs. They found that
less-mature digital companies tend to
take a tactical, piecemeal approach as
they solve discrete business problems
with individual digital technologies.
As a result, they don’t fully integrate
digital technologies with their business
operations, don’t solve the underlying
infrastructure problems that cause
frequent application performance issues
across the enterprise, and fail to deliver
the required technical capabilities at
scale.
Prediction: Enterprises will realise
that, for application, compute, storage,
and networking infrastructure to work
optimally, it all must work together,
seamlessly, as a system. Any point of
weakness or failure anywhere in the
infrastructure can make the whole system
fail. Thus, a strategic architecture must
extend across the enterprise and unite
all the components into a seamless,
software-defined system delivering
high-performing applications, data, and
services.
Everything becomes softwaredefined
Whether it is compute, storage or
networking, you can see increased
impact and adoption of software-defined
everything. In the software-defined world,
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INTELLIGENTCIO
TAJ ELKHAYAT
Regional Vice President,
Middle East and Africa at
Riverbed Technology
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION ISN’T A FAD AND
WE EXPECT TO SEE THE MIGRATION OF CRITICAL
APPLICATIONS TO THE CLOUD INCREASE IN 2017
ACROSS ALL MARKETS. LARGE ENTERPRISE CLOUDS
ARE NOW BEING ADOPTED BEYOND JUST CUSTOMERFACING RESOURCES LIKE ECOMMERCE WEBSITES
Prediction: Enterprise organisations
will implement technologies that ensure
agility, visibility and performance in
order to transition more and more to a
software-defined enterprise.
This is a new development as internalfacing applications are traditionally kept
internal. The challenge with migrating
old systems and applications to a newer
encrypted approach is that the network
capabilities can be stretched thin or
become too fragile. This ultimately
creates complexities tied to application
planning, performance monitoring and
final migration to the cloud.
Digital transformation drives
next wave of cloud
Enterprise-level internal resources
including business-critical applications
are now being moved to the cloud.
Prediction: Digital transformation isn’t
a fad and we expect to see the migration
of critical applications to the cloud
increase in 2017 across all markets. Large
enterprise clouds are now being adopted
management and control of computing
environment, storage and networking is
automated by intelligent software and
not by the hardware components.
www.intelligentcio.com