Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 05 | Page 53

INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud Even the most aggressive enterprise cloud computing strategy can’t get off the ground without a solid interconnection platform. However, today’s legacy, corporate-centric network topologies and siloed business and IT organisations are not flexible or agile enough to handle ubiquitous and “shapeshifting” cloud computing environments. By nature, multi-clouds allow enterprises to pay-as-they-play, but current connectivity infrastructures do not play along, forcing businesses to either over-provision or, much worse, under-provision their interconnection capabilities. To gain the business advantages of an interconnected cloud backbone fabric, enterprises need a globally distributed, Interconnection Oriented Architecture that shifts the fundamental delivery of IT from siloed and centralised to internetworked and colocated. This level of interconnection helps enterprises take full advantage of cloud capabilities and enables their users to gain anytime, anywhere, any device access to cloud services. This approach reduces the overhead associated with IT services and other business process applications, allowing companies to focus on growth and expansion. Finding an interconnected cloud ecosystem enables the enterprise to create vital value-chain resources that spur new products and services and speed time to market, all while enabling greater resiliency and more adept protection of essential corporate assets. As companies move through different phases of cloud maturity, their challenges naturally evolve. At the outset, they worry about gaining cloud knowledge and what to put in which cloud. As their enterprises grow more cloudagile, they work to master multi-cloud security and advanced cloud operations. By integrating a solid interconnection strategy into their cloud migration plan from the start, enterprises set the stage for optimum performance across the cloud continuum. (For the full article, please visit http://www.intelligentcio.com/me/whitepapers/wpequinixdwa-q12016-02/ www.intelligentcio.com At a glance… MENA public cloud services forecast to reach $864.2 million in 2016, says Gartner The The public cloud services market in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is projected to grow 18.1% in 2016 to total $864.2 million, up from an estimated $731.6 million in 2015, according to Gartner, Inc. Business process as a service (BPaaS), the largest segment of the cloud services market by revenue in MENA, is expected to grow 6.4% in 2016 to reach $262.4 million. The largest growing market, cloud management and security services, is projected to grow 27.5% in 2016, followed by software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) with growth of 26.4% and 23.4%. “The forecast for overall cloud services in the region shows sustained momentum with a projected growth rate of 20.6% in 2017. Global market dynamics, currency and exchange rates remain a determining factor in this growth trajectory,” said Sid Nag, Research Director at Gartner. “BPaaS revenue remains the largest segment with enterprises continuing to move to cloud based models as opposed to the traditional business process outsourcing (BPO). Furthermore, growth of SaaS and PaaS is an indicator of organisations and vendors moving away from on premises license based application software and application development platforms to subscription-based SaaS and PaaS models.” Gartner predicts that in 2019, total public cloud services spending in the MENA region will rise to $1.42 billion, with the largest growth coming from cloud management and security at 21%, followed by SaaS and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) with growth rates of 20.2% and 19.3% respectively. INTELLIGENTCIO 53