Among the Middle East countries, Qatar’s cloud computing market is expected to have one of the highest CAGR of 57 per cent from 2016 through 2021.
Growth is attributed to government investment, economic development, and existing organisations’ urge to scale up regional operations and digitalise services. National information and communication technology (ICT) policies and initiatives and cost savings on infrastructure are additional factors driving cloud adoption.
The Middle East’s top cloud adopters, including Qatar, are expected to witness a surge in cloud adoption in the next few years. Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia are the biggest adopters of cloud computing in the Middle East. In Qatar, there is 3 to 5 per cent adoption in cloud hosting.
According to Abdul Rahman Al Thehaiban, Managing Director, META, Google Cloud, in conversation with the Peninsula said, “Qatar is an important market for Google Cloud and the company is keen to take the lead in building a digitally skilled workforce in Qatar and it’s the reason they launched the Google Cloud region in Qatar in partnership with the Qatar Free Zone Authority (QFZA).”
In July, QFZA, the Ministry of Transport and Communications and Google Cloud announced the expansion of their partnership to include a new Centre of Excellence (CoE) training facility and a new Google office in Qatar. This follows earlier announcements about a Google Cloud region in Qatar allowing new and existing customers, as well as partners, to run their cloud workloads locally. The CoE provides free, hands-on training in Google tools and technologies to businesses seeking to expand their technology skills and succeed in an increasingly digital world.
About 37 per cent of businesses use cloud software as a service (SaaS) for email, website hosting, and other purposes. Approximately 76 per cent of enterprises surveyed are familiar with cloud computing. Thus, cloud adoption is expected to increase sharply in the future.
Enterprises require a lot of flexibility and a cloud service provider offers cloud computing services that can be public, private, hybrid, or community-based. Additionally, cloud computing provides several service models, such as infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). Cloud computing’s advantages include being highly secure, scalable, and adaptable.
Enterprises also get digital tools and ready-made building blocks for innovation through the cloud. As the cloud gives you the ability to aggregate and put data together, liberating data from applications allows you to create new products and develop advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning capabilities.
They can leverage cloud technology to reduce costs and offer many financial management capabilities, including budgeting, right-sizing and cost forecasting. Cloud architecture considerations can help right-size cloud resources, use spot instances, enable horizontal and vertical scaling (automation), and choose the correct storage options.
As a result of providing industrial strength and cyber security capabilities, the cloud has become more secure than an on-premises security risk.
Although there are challenges in cloud adoption, including data sovereignty regulations, skills gaps and security, it is advancing the adoption of digital technologies.
With Qatar being a regional hub for innovation and technology, businesses have the opportunity to embrace the benefits offered by cloud-based solutions and accelerate the uptake of cloud-based solutions in the next few years.
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