By 2024, 98% of organisations in the UAE will be looking to their data as a revenue driver, with 43% recognising it as a significant source of revenue – up from 23% today. This is according to new research announced by VMware.
The research, entitled The Multi-Cloud Maturity Index, was conducted amongst almost 3,000 business and IT decision makers in the EMEA region, including 240 in the UAE. It reveals that 45% of decision makers in the UAE strongly agree that using multiple clouds will enable them to maximise their data to innovate – while addressing critical issues such as national and sector data sovereignty. In fact, data sovereignty is highlighted as one of the key challenges facing organisations in the UAE – with 98% admitting it’s a concern.
The ambition to realise more value from data, however, comes with additional challenges. Security (35%), skills (28%), difficulty stitching different cloud environments together (32%) and siloed access to data (28%) remain key obstacles for organisations in the UAE. Organisations must also improve the control they have over their operational and cloud expenses, with 75% and 70% respectively agreeing this is a concern if data is to drive genuine business value.
“The reliance on data to fuel innovation and drive competitive advantage is now the backbone of the digital business. Being cloud smart – the ability to choose the right type of cloud for the right data, including highly sensitive information that needs to remain within national borders – is becoming the de facto business model for organisations looking to drive advantage from their data,” said Joe Baguley, VP & CTO, EMEA, VMware. “Organisations who are fully exploiting the competitive advantages of using multiple clouds to manage data are seeing benefits across the business. To achieve success, however, they must be able to take control of where their data resides – without compromising security, compliance or sovereignty, and the choice of providers to manage it.”
There is agreement (80% of UAE respondents) that the benefits of multi-cloud – the ability to use and manage different types of private, public, edge and sovereign clouds – outweigh the challenges. Some 35% believe multi-cloud use has had a very positive impact on revenue growth, while 51% also believe it has had a very positive impact on profitability. In fact, only 3% believe multi-cloud is not critical to business success.
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