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THE CASE FOR A ‘CLOUD BEST’ STRATEGY
Patrick Smith, CTO EMEA, Pure Storage discusses why it’s time UAE organizations shift from a cloud-first strategy to a cloud-best one A lot has already been written about how the COVID-19 pandemic has fast-tracked most UAE organizations’ digital transformation efforts. As a case in point, according to AppDynamics’ The Agents of Transformation Report, 86% of UAE technologists reported that digital transformation projects which would typically take more than a year to be approved, were signed off in a matter of weeks and 78% point to digital transformation projects that have been implemented within weeks rather than the months or years it would have taken before the pandemic. One solution that has come into the spotlight like never before is the cloud. Before the pandemic struck, cloud adoption was growing in popularity with $222.8 billion in public cloud investment in 2019 according to Gartner. While IDC reported that public cloud represented more than 30 percent of the overall cloud IT infrastructure market this year and estimated growth of almost 40 percent by 2023. Therefore, even before the pandemic, it was clear how critical cloud was becoming in supporting application delivery and assisting developers with new projects.
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CXO DX / DECEMBER 2020
So what is the reason for its popularity? CTOs and CIOs are looking for agile, simple and scalable solutions. These characteristics continue to make the cloud model even more attractive when businesses are tasked with delivering projects quickly and have to manoeuvre the challenge of legacy IT equipment, as is the case for many companies operating in the current environment. That being said, it’s important that leaders should refrain from rushing to adopt a ‘cloud-first’ strategy, and instead opt for a ‘cloud-best’ approach. This means aligning cloud to your business strategy, not the other way around. In doing so, it prevents over-spending for underwhelming returns, and keeps IT closely aligned to business needs.
NO LONGER A QUESTION OF PUBLIC CLOUD OR PRIVATE CLOUD
Those who are approaching the cloud for the first time face the classic question around which type of service to choose, public
