Oracle’s regional full-year revenues rise 33%
In 2016, he said that 12.5 per cent of the region’s infrastructure spend was dedicated to cloud buildouts, a figure that is expected to top 25 per cent within the next five years.
For enterprises looking for a cost-effective approach to driving operational efficiencies, he added that cloud computing undoubtedly represents the transforming future of IT investment opportunities, and the offerings landscape is wide open with both private and public cloud options.
According to Gartner, IaaS is projected to grow 36.8 per cent globally in 2017 and reach $34.6 billion. SaaS is expected to increase 20.1 per cent, reaching $46.3 billion in 2017.
“We expect both our PaaS and IaaS businesses to accelerate into hyper-growth, the same kind of growth we are seeing with SaaS (Software-asa-Service),” Khehar said.
“We have big expectations and big challenges. We are adding on an average more than 300 SaaS customers every quarter in the region and have 600 live customers as of now. Oracle has more than 2,000 cloud customers from the region,” he said.
Oracle’s cloud revenues in East Central Europe, Middle East and Africa grew 56 per cent quarter on quarter in the fourth quarter ending June 30 and 33 per cent for the fiscal year.
“We expect the numbers to go even higher this fiscal year. Moreover, the new regional requirements from the customers for VAT because people have to add on workflows, feature and functions on products to be cloud ready, will boost growth,” Arun Khehar, senior vice-president for applications business at Oracle ECEMEA said.
He said that cloud is a big deal as many companies have old infrastructure and there is a need for innovation but also a great pressure to do things such as increase security and adhere to governance mandates which are not innovative.
Research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts show the public cloud market in EMEA will exceed $20 billion (Dh73.50 billion) in 2017, with a year on year growth rate of 26 per cent.
“The market should pay close attention to the investments that Oracle is making to gain market share in this rapidly growing market as buyers pivot to cloud and look to accelerate their digital transformation journeys,” said Phil Carter, chief analyst at IDC.