The Changing Landscape of Cloud Services in Dubai

Almost every business is doing all it can do to run with the rapidly evolving IT landscape, which has resulted in cloud adoption becoming the new normal. The enterprises that don’t want to get spoilt for choice have already left their legacy IT infrastructure far behind. In fact, 94% of enterprises are already using the cloud. An increasing number of companies are moving to the cloud in Dubai as well. The top reasons behind this acceleration in cloud adoption, however, are:

• The COVID-19 Pandemic
• Government’s public administration and smart city projects
• Cloud Services Providers launching data centers in Dubai
• Availability of Managed Cloud Services Providers in the region to support cloud adoption

Whether it is about hyper-scale or regional providers, both are in the race to fulfill the demand for various cloud services. Some of the big cloud market players like Microsoft have launched their data centers in Dubai, augmenting the existing cloud presence of the regional providers. This data center proliferation has accelerated the already-growing cloud market even more. The more companies move to the cloud the more it signals about the development of the economy in the region since the power of the cloud is crucial to unlocking the power of new technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain.

How COVID Lockdowns Drove Cloud Adoption in Dubai?

Factors like the rise of inventive start-ups, government initiatives, and the adoption of emerging technologies by booming SMEs were already contributing to the evolution of the cloud landscape in Dubai. The sudden eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic has added fuel to it. The lockdowns or restrictions caused due to it has amplified the need for access to internet-based services. They have generated the need for technologies that can support remote work and e-commerce.

Dubai Cloud Market to Grow Rapidly

With tech vendors consistently taking interest in expanding the cloud in the region, the cloud market in Dubai is expected to grow rapidly. The cloud service provider ‘Azure’ by the tech giant ‘Microsoft’ launched its data center in the region in 2019 itself. It was the first data center by Microsoft in the Middle East. According to Microsoft, it recognized “the unprecedented opportunity for digital transformation in the region” with a belief that “hyper-scale cloud services, in particular, can play a pivotal role in helping the UAE unlock its key socio-economic objectives while ensuring a safer, more secure environment which adheres to accepted international technical standards.”

Moreover, several initiatives launched by the government are driving cloud adoption in the region. While the National Innovation Strategy focuses on developing an innovation culture among organizations and individuals, the TRA Vision aims at encouraging electronic transformation across the UAE. All these initiatives have been taken keeping technological innovation in mind to boost cloud adoption in the region.

On top of it, other government initiatives like UAE Vision 2021 and Dubai Smart City will speed up cloud adoption in Dubai even more. These initiatives will hasten the demand for real-time operations for transforming public experience and services.

Emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) will grow even faster fuelled by:

• The huge volume of data generated on mobile and web applications
• The increasing need to reduce Operational Expenditure (OPEX) and Capital Expenditure (CAPEX)

However!

Did you know, despite all these developments, cloud adoption in Dubai remains one of the lowest globally? This deceleration in the cloud expansion in Dubai is attributed to the lack of relevant cloud skills in the region. While the demand for cloud expertise is too high, the supply is too low resulting in an acute skill gap. There is a need to re-skill and up-skill the IT workforce in cloud computing and other emerging technologies.

According to industry experts, to overcome the skillset challenge, however, there is the need to provide the relevant cloud training to the IT staff and get cloud skills developed. Not just that, Universities, education establishments, technical colleges, etc. must embed cloud computing courses and train into their curricula.

How Managed Cloud Services Providers Can Help!

Of course, upskilling and re-skilling of the IT workforce for cloud expertise are greatly required. However, you still can’t be sure whether after investing so much in the training and development of your staff, you would gain the results you were expecting. The reason behind it is there is always a difference between freshly trained and seasoned experts. So, while you would put your money at stake, you would certainly want results. This is why, perhaps, industry experts recommend outsourcing cloud migration and management services to a Managed Services Provider (MSP). In fact, if you look at the trend in Dubai, a large number of businesses are already relying on MSPs for cloud migration and management. Most MSPs not only provide cloud migration services but also cloud monitoring & management services. They have years of experience in managing cloud environments for clients across industries. Though if you wish you can spend all that fortune, building in-house expertise equivalent to that of MSPs may cost you heavily.