Dubai - MENA Herald: Equinix, the global interconnection and data centre company, has released the findings of its Enterprise of the Future survey revealing that the UAE is one of the world’s leading countries in terms of pursuing interconnection, with 86% of UAE businesses intending to be interconnected by 2017, putting the UAE ahead of countries such as Netherlands and Switzerland.
The survey, carried out among 1,000 global IT decision-makers including the UAE, uncovered a significant momentum towards the adoption of interconnection-dependent IT strategies by enterprises seeking to drive revenue growth.
According to the survey, 45% of interconnected UAE companies have realized that interconnection will have a significant impact on the bottom line with more than $10 million in revenue opportunities and cost savings. Furthermore, the survey reveals that the top priority for Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in the UAE is revenue growth and an increasing number of officers believe that the best strategy to support this growth will come from greater interconnection to support new products.
Using GITEX Technology Week, the third largest technology event in the world as a platform to highlight the findings of the Enterprise of the Future survey, the global interconnection and data centre company has shone a spotlight on the global demand for interconnection that is set to transform IT strategies over the next two years.
“As we enter the interconnected era, CIOs are facing new challenges. With businesses becoming increasingly interdependent and cloud-enabled, they need more reliable, secure and instantaneous connectivity to clouds, networks and other enterprises to compete. At the same time, they are facing more users with more devices, needing increased amounts of data in more places across further distances and locations. Equinix makes this possible with an Interconnection Oriented Architecture™ which involves shifting the fundamental delivery architecture of IT from siloed and centralised to internetworked and co-located. It means that using interconnection, companies can move systems, applications and security services closer to users, bypassing the public Internet,” said Jeroen Schlosser, Managing Director, Equinix MENA.
He added: “The Equinix Dubai International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centre is the first world-class, network-neutral aggregation point in the MENA Region, enabling organisations to access fast-growing markets, interconnect, expand, and accelerate their business with high-speed connectivity to anywhere in the world, from the Americas and Europe to Asia Pacific.”
“GITEX is the perfect platform for us to showcase how interconnection is changing the world. With UAE leading the way in terms of embracing the possibilities of Interconnection, we are confident that the country will serve as an innovator in this interconnected era,” further added Schlosser.
Some other key findings of the survey are:
- 60 % of Dubai CIOs feel systems uptime, cost to scale, cloud/ mobile product maturity or availability, and cloud/ mobile access vulnerabilities are key barriers to achieving a desired IT architecture.
- Globally, Dubai, along with US and China, is leading the charge on businesses embracing interconnection.
- In the Middle East, 44 % of CIOs are working with partners to gain greater scalability and agility while 49 % are working with partners to reduce risks, improve security and minimize exposure to their businesses.
- 76% of UAE companies want to deploy IT infrastructure to support new products/offerings.
- 62% of UAE companies had interconnection familiarity, with 92% understanding its importance to compete.
- 88% of UAE companies will deploy multi-cloud interconnection over the next 5 years.
- 90 % of IT decision makers feel cyber security is the top technology trend in the UAE driving interconnection, followed by sustainability and Big Data at 68 % and mobile at 62 %.
- As for technology barriers, 80 % of IT decision makers feel slower systems uptime is a barrier to interconnection, 68 % who feel it is the costs involved in scaling.
(For more information on the UAE findings, refer to the attached infographic)
Equinix will share further knowledge insights during GITEX on how the Internet of Things will empower connected business to utilize these connections to create new capabilities, richer experiences and better economic opportunities, as part of a panel discussion titled “The next big thing is here – 28 billion reasons to evaluate it” on October 19th . Speaking on the panel, Jereon Schlosser, Managing Director, Equinix MENA, will talk about building networked communities for future generations and open data and cloud services interplay.
