SAFE IN THE CLOUDS?

While cloud computing is expected to grow in the Middle East and Africa, concerns about security are pushing against that trend.

THERE IS LITTLE DOUBT THAT CLOUD computing in the Middle East is set for an exponential boom. A combination of steadily growing economies, increased investment by governments in large projects and a widening mobile subscriber base is expected to foster its growth in the region.

According to a recent report from research firm Gartner, Middle East and North Africa region’s (MENA) cloud market is set to total $4.7 billion from 2014 to 2018, with business products as a service growing by 8.1 per cent through 2018.

Furthermore, the firm said that the public cloud services market in the MENA is on pace to grow 23 per cent in 2014 to total $629 million, up from $511 million in 2013.

Cisco, the networking solutions provider also predicted recently that the Middle East and Africa will post the world’s highest cloud traffic growth rate in the years to come, growing more than eight fold from 2013 to 2018.

The region’s cloud traffic will grow from 31 exabytes in 2013 to 262 exabytes in 2018, at a rate of 54 per cent, boosted by the region having the highest number of mobile devices per user, at more than seven, according to the Cisco Global Cloud index 2013-18.

The region will also rank second in the Asia Pacific region in the growth rates of total data centre workloads (24 per cent), cloud data centre workloads (39 per cent), and traditional data center workloads (five per cent) from 2013 to 2018.

But these are predictions. In the field, technology professionals active in the region say that they are coming up against serious questions from clients and customers surrounding security, delaying and sometimes putting off their transition to the cloud.

A YEAR OF BREACHES

Over the past year, serious breaches in