Public Cloud Adoption on Upward Trend in Saudi Arabia

According to a recent survey, the adoption of cloud services is increasing in Saudi Arabia as a result of national initiatives like the Cloud-First Policy.

Hybrid multi-cloud computing vendor Nutanix has released the Saudi-specific findings of its fourth global Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) study and research report, which assesses how well businesses are implementing the cloud.?

Present Status of Adoptions

The adoption of multi-cloud by Saudi businesses appears to be in the planning stages as they now manage various distinct infrastructures over which they're spreading data and workloads. 81 percent of respondents in the study feel that multi-cloud is the best operating model for their IT infrastructure, according to the research. The adoption of multi-cloud by Saudi businesses appears to be in the planning stages as they now manage various distinct infrastructures over which they're spreading data and workloads. The infrastructure environment is slightly dominated by private clouds, which suggests some cloudification of legacy applications. In Saudi Arabia, 25% of respondents said they still only run three-tier data centers, with plans to reduce data center use to 9% by 2024 and increase the use of integrated multi-clouds.

Saudi Arabian respondents to the ECI reported that as companies begin to modify their infrastructure, they confront difficulties with inter-cloud security, mobility, administration, and skill sets. These issues should eventually be resolved as containers and tools continue to develop and emerge. These solutions isolate data and applications from underlying cloud platforms, centralize and integrate operations, and automate processes across cloud platforms. Maintaining user data privacy and protecting cybersecurity will continue to be top-of-mind moving targets as adoption grows, the Kingdom has predicted.

What Does The Cloud-First Policy Highlights?

In order for the commitment to supporting the Kingdom's cloud-first and cloud-smart strategy, these "cloud first" strategies are particularly effective at raising cloud service awareness in the area, which will speed adoption. Moreover, Saudi Arabia is actively pursuing the adoption of various clouds, whether private or public. In order to provide their clients and residents with better services, businesses in the Kingdom are looking to multi-cloud.?

Development Phase

Particularly numerous manufacturing businesses in Saudi Arabia's Eastern region utilized cloud computing to further cut IT costs. Enterprises moved to the cloud as the world moved inside, and fundamentally this is why reputable businesses like Saudi Aramco in conjunction with Google Cloud and STC conjunction with AliBabaCloud transferred their operations to the cloud.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in Saudi Arabia have already started utilizing cloud computing to suit their technological requirements. More than a quarter of firms intend to implement a mix of on-premise/dedicated private clouds, different public clouds, and legacy platforms, according to a QuantAlign Research survey.

In addition to these adoptions, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has put into place a cloud-first policy. This plan attempts to hasten the shift of government organizations from traditional IT systems to cloud-based ones.

The results of applying cost-saving methods linked to the adoption of cloud computing were a good societal transformation, including the potential to secure the prosperity of the local economy by ensuring business sustainability of the enterprises across industries.

A decade ago, when Amazon Web Services began offering its services, the public cloud market blossomed, and it has continued to expand ever since. Between 2021 and 2030, the Saudi Arabian cloud computing industry is anticipated to register a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35.5%.

Saudi Arabia is constructing NEOM, a $500 billion artificial intelligence-run megacity, from the ground up. The project is being sponsored by the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund. Oracle was named the first tenant of NEOM Tech's hyper-scale data center, helping to support the same. The data center houses the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), which offers a high-performing, resilient base for cloud applications. The built data center seeks to empower innovators to test their ideas at scale inside the Kingdom in addition to attracting international firms by establishing a strong platform for knowledge sharing.

Key Findings Of The Report

Multicloud is the most popular IT model among ECI businesses globally, and usage in Saudi Arabia is increasing:?Early adopters in the Kingdom, who make up (25%) of ECI respondents from Saudi Arabia, reported that their most popular IT deployment approach at the moment is the utilization of various clouds, whether private or public. Although workloads seem to be split fairly evenly among independent private clouds, three-tier data centers, multi-clouds, and public clouds in Saudi Arabia, private cloud-only installations do slightly predominate. This varied distribution suggests that IT shops are in the early phases of their multi-cloud initiatives and are in a state of transition. Saudi Arabian respondents stated that they will hasten the implementation of multi-cloud, with plans to boost penetration to 57% in three years.

Adoption of the public cloud:?Saudi Arabian respondents indicated that they are only beginning to use the public cloud. There, 54% of respondents said they never used any public cloud services. Only 5% of respondents claimed they utilize three or more public cloud providers.

Multicloud Inducers:?Better customer service was given as the top justification by Saudi respondents for using or planning to use multi-cloud (47%). Enhancing remote work and collaboration came in second (36%). 35% of respondents also cited executive cloud mandates, better business continuity, and the capacity to scale quickly and on-demand as factors influencing IT infrastructure transformation in their firms.

Application mobility:?A large percentage of Saudi Arabian respondents (83%) reported moving applications from one IT infrastructure to another in the previous year. Although the rate of mobility is considerable, the utilization of legacy data centers in conjunction with it suggests that the multi-cloud approach is still in its early planning stages. According to the statistics, implementation is being slowed down by efforts to overcome obstacles such as a lack of skilled workers and operational and management complexity. The two main reasons Saudi businesses relocated one or more applications last year were to enhance security and regulatory compliance and facilitate quicker application development.

Increased activity is anticipated to occur soon: Container technology, which bundles apps with all of their dependencies for easier migration among cloud infrastructures, was cited by 81% of respondents as being crucial to their companies either now or within the next 12 months.

The first concern is security:?Although the usage of multi-cloud is growing, these are still early days and present significant difficulties. Respondents identified managing security across cloud borders as the most frequent challenge in multi-cloud management, both in Saudi Arabia (54%) and globally (49%). The job of integrating data across cloud environments consistently ranked in the top three most-mentioned concerns among ECI respondents, whereas Saudi respondents listed maintaining consistent performance as their second most frequent, noticeably more frequently than average.

Any new technology faces difficulties that are exacerbated when implementing and controlling it needs specialized knowledge:?In order to satisfy business demand, the majority of Saudi respondents (83%) claimed they lacked internal IT capabilities, particularly in IT automation (45%) and artificial intelligence/machine learning (50%) In addition, 84% of respondents felt that their companies needed the means to make managing multi-cloud setups simpler if they were to succeed. Most ECI respondents shared the skills gaps and worries about expanding IT complexity, and they highlight the increasing need for solutions that connect and, to some extent, automate activities across cloud platforms.

Sum Up

Concentrating more on confidentiality, integrity, and availability could strengthen the security and trust of every company, including the government, with regard to the cloud. The main focus of Saudi Arabian organizations is now seen to be on promoting cloud-first policy further, creating a framework for cloud computing regulations, and adhering to cloud security protocols and compliance, which is helping businesses achieve their goals for cloud-first digital transformation.

The cloud is a major factor in the more than 70% of businesses that accelerated their digital transformation goals by at least a year. Given how rapidly cloud technology is developing, it will be interesting to watch what other factors Saudi Arabia's cloud sector will be fueled by.