In demand

“For example, keeping operating systems patched and secure is another one of the biggest operational challenges that IT organisations can face. With Oracle autonomous Linux in Oracle Cloud, you can minimise the availability and security risks that stem from missed or incorrectly applied patches by using more automation like auto scaling, lifecycle management across pools, and monitoring. Oracle Cloud also uses customer isolation, data encryption, high availability, and a zero-trust architecture (which verifies anything and everything trying to connect to its systems before granting access) to protect data and prevent breaches.”

For those organisations that don’t want to migrate their data outside their firewall, due to whichever internal requirements they have on data sovereignty, Oracle even offers the ‘Cloud at Customer’ service where essentially, they build a cloud infrastructure at the client’s data centre.

Another challenge is one of costs. While savings are often cited as an important reason for companies to migrate some or all of their on-premise IT infrastructure to the cloud, pricing and cost structures can create hurdles. A recent IDG survey of more than 530 IT and business decision-makers conducted on behalf of Oracle found that 40 per cent of respondents identified controlling costs as their top public cloud challenge.

“That’s why we worked to address the economic as well as functional demands when we designed our cloud. Oracle Cloud is architected to minimise variable and hardto-predict costs, deliver consistent pricing across regions, provide service and billing flexibility, and offer industry-leading price/ performance and business value,” insists Al Thehaiban, adding that these services help Oracle Cloud provide customers with price advantages of “up to 65 per cent or more”.

IDC forecasts more spending on digital transformation in the UAE of companies in the UAE are accelerating digital transformation

FUNDING THE CLOUD Spending on public cloud in the UAE to grow at a CAGR of 25% between 2019-2024.

Looking ahead, organisations need to rethink the way they leverage technologies, especially emerging technologies like AI and blockchain. In that context, cloud becomes a very important consideration, because it allows organisations to build more operationally-efficient infrastructures with the agility to scale up or scale down, observes Lalchandani. “I think this will be an exciting story for Oracle because some of the AI, machine learning and automation features are going to become critically important for organisations as they modernise their applications,” he says.

Al Thehaiban emphasises that the role of the company remains clear, especially in the current situation. “Oracle has been in business for decades doing the mission-critical work that keeps businesses and organisations around the world up and running. Ensuring business continuity for our customers is always a top priority for Oracle, and now more than ever, we are focused on helping our customers quickly respond to the unique demands they may be facing.”