COVER STORY
AN OPEN APPROACH PHILIP ANDREWS, VP- CEMEA AT RED HAT, EXPLAINS WHY ENTERPRISES NEED TO RETHINK THEIR TEAMS, PROCESSES, AND TECHNOLOGIES TO STAY COMPETITIVE IN THE DIGITAL ERA. insight – we have seen transformations that work well and those that struggle. We have the skill sets, technology, and a culture of 28 years in the open-source environment to help our customers build best practices and digital DNA to run the right applications in the right way.
D
igital transformation can mean a lot of different things. How do you define it? With digital transformation, you are trying to change how you do business by using technology more effectively. There are many critical elements to this, but most importantly, you need people with vision, creativity, and skills to bring in cultural change. You need to be able to build processes and new applications quickly because, generally, digital transformation is supported by new applications that engage with customers, partners, and employees. And you also need a platform on which 14
CXO INSIGHT ME
MAY 2022
these applications can run. So if you have the right people, skill sets, culture, digital processes, and a platform to put it all together, it is what I call digital DNA. How does Red Hat support its customers’ digital transformation initiatives? We are working with many organisations, helping them get the right architecture, culture, vision, and technology and transition from typically large applications, which are slow to change, to building innovative applications that can change at the speed of business. The first thing we bring to the table is
Why do enterprises in the region need to embrace IT modernisation, especially when we don’t have many legacy technologies? The entire world has been driven heavily towards digital transformation because of Covid-19. Many people were thinking about it, and suddenly, because of lockdown, they had to implement digital engagement with their customers because that was the only way. So that kind of innovation level was seen everywhere – it was global. And everybody has a legacy unless you are starting a new business. I think the Middle East is a leader in adopting digital technologies. For example, governments throughout the Middle East have launched many initiatives in the area of digital government to broaden civic engagement and transform governance. Why is a hybrid cloud environment critical to digital transformation? Firstly, you need to build the right digital DNA. This makes it imperative to build applications that can run on-premise, in the private cloud, or public cloud environments because the last thing you want to do is get locked into one single cloud vendor. If you are a global company, not all clouds are available in the physical places you may need them, and also, you may want to have the ability to select to encourage competition between clouds. Besides,
