SaaS Cloud Services Are on the Rise in the Region: Oracle

ahmed-adlyAhmed Adly, the ECEMEA Enterprise Cloud Computing Leader and Senior Director at Oracle, speaks to Channel Post about the cloud computing market in the Middle East region

What is the cloud computing market like in the region?
The cloud computing market in the Gulf is developing at a fast pace in the region as local enterprises adopt Software-, Infrastructure- and Platform-as-a-Service (SaaS/IaaS/PaaS) to cut costs and increase flexibility.

Cloud adoption by the public sector is another demand growth driver. A more favourable ‘on-demand’ pricing model with lower upfront costs versus on-premises deployments attracts existing software and infrastructure users to switch to cloud alternatives.

What sort of cloud services are being used in the Gulf region today?
SaaS cloud services are certainly on the rise in the region. At Oracle, we now have more than 500 customers on the cloud in the Middle East and this number continues to grow. Our SaaS sales have experienced triple-digit growth in the UAE, with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Human Capital Management (HCM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) sales dominating.

Besides these, IaaS services like compute and storage cloud services and PaaS services also offer a lot of promise. As per the latest IDC report, ICT spending in the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META) is forecast to total $243 billion in 2017. At the heart of most digital transformation efforts across the region is a combination of cloud, mobility, Big Data analytics, and social business. On the side-lines of these major trends we can also expect an increase in IoT adoption.

How popular are cloud services in the Middle East and African regions according to you?
Organizations across Middle East and Africa are fast realizing that cloud adoption offers them speed, value and better ROI. To further drive this interest, Oracle has over the last few quarters delivered more than 200 applications on the cloud and there is no match for this in the industry.

What kind of organizations/industries usually opt for cloud services in the region?
The private sector has certainly taken the lead in cloud adoption. Manufacturing, retail, banks, distribution and construction services are some of the top sectors in the region for cloud adoption.

What sort of revenue model does your company use for the cloud services you offer on the market?
We offer a monthly or quarterly subscription based model. We also give the option for customers to pay as they use to cater as they experience an increase in workloads.

How do you work with your channel partners to ensure optimum services are offered to clients?
We work closely with two types of partners; the first are ISVs who build, deploy and market their applications on Oracle marketplace .We also work with system integrators and implementation partners who work with current customers to migrate existing footprint from on premise to the cloud.

How cost-effective is the cloud services compared to regular data storage methods?
The economics of sharing infrastructure with multiple tenants is the core essence that makes the cloud model extremely efficient as compared to on premise solutions.

  • Speed of Innovation: The first major effect is to get more innovations, delivered at higher frequency for quickly transforming the business. This is especially relevant in a digital economy with fast changing market requirements and situations.
  • Simplicity of Consumption: This is the second major effect: the simplicity to consume innovations delivered as a service. This is especially true for IT as no more upgrades are required but also for the end-user as cloud apps are natively user-centric leveraging the most modern user experiences for making the job of everyone simpler.
  • Reduced TCO: The third major effect is the shift from a license-based pricing model to a subscription-based pricing model allowing customers to move costs from CAPEX to OPEX. This is especially relevant as IT costs are being scrutinized by each Board who seek for quicker ROI and higher margins.

Given the rise of cybercrime in the region, how secure and trustworthy are cloud services here?
Rise of cybercrime makes a stronger case to move to cloud. Security is a top priority for Oracle Cloud solutions and we have invested millions of dollars to secure our data centres. This is a significant cost component that individual customers cannot afford.

Security is embedded in Oracle’s “DNA”- within the product, the development cycle, and Cloud Operations practices – to ensure your information remains your information. Oracle’s vision is to create the most secure and trusted public cloud infrastructure and platform services for enterprises and government organizations.

Oracle’s mission is to build secure public cloud infrastructure and platform services where there is greater trust – where Oracle customers have effective and manageable security to run their workloads with more confidence, and build scalable and trusted secure cloud solutions.

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