GCC legislations curb growth of cloud computing
dubai — Regional governments need to bring in legislations to allow enterprises in the region to share their data to expedite the growth of cloud computing, according to industry executives.
“In this region, I see a shift from the traditional approach towards the cloud and service provision model. [But] in the GCC, there is legislation that certain data cannot be transferred over the country’s boundaries. In a Western European environment, you can have a data centre that is providing services in one country but using data from another country,” said Chris Cooper, Data Center Group (DCG) director, Lenovo Middle East and Africa.
“If you just look at the traditional marketplace, there is a real shift happening where customers are looking towards to be more competitive and agile. They are looking for service offering rather than just investing in historical architecture computer storing,” he added.
The public cloud services market in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region reached almost $1 billion in 2016. The forecast for 2017 is projected to grow 22.2 per cent to over $1.2 billion, up from $956 million in 2016, and is poised to reach $1.42 billion by 2019, according to figures released by consultancy firm Gartner.
Dubai has been attracting some major global data players, who are looking to strengthen their presence in the region.
In November, Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group, launched its first full-fledged public cloud in the region in Dubai that will be operated by Yvolv, a joint venture between Alibaba Cloud and Meraas Holdings.
“With the Dubai data centre, our global cloud network will be able to meet enterprises which are going global,” Simon Hu, president of Alibaba Cloud, had said at the launch.
Cooper said in order for companies to provide cloud services, they need the data centre to be within the country’s boundaries.
“But what is happening now is that those data centres are being built up, they are scaling up and scaling out and they are attracting customers but within that local environment,” he said, adding that be it public, hybrid or private industries, they are witnessing definite growth.
Firas Alfanney, Data Center Group sales director, METAR, said the farming industry is also adopting the technology to increase the production of food by using satellite images, drones and IoT sensors which analyse field data to increase produce.
“The UAE is leading the region in terms of technology innovations and cloud and we have seen a lot of announcements like the usage of drones by fire fighters and deploying equipment to their desired destinations,” he noted.