FEATURE : CLOUD SOLUTIONS
Laurent Garcia , EMEA Cloud Business Leader , Cohesity
creating more interactive learning environments – irrespective of where the user may be .”
IBM ’ s Ratshefola emphasised that CIOs are looking to improve efficiencies in the midst of ever-increasing complexities . “ We believe that we have introduced solutions and services to help them navigate this and the next year will really be about expanding on this and helping them navigate new challenges and changing requirements . One of the most consequential cloud projects introduced is the financial services-ready public cloud . Banks operate in a complex environment and have a myriad of challenges to tackle as their workloads move more to the cloud ,” he said . “ To address these issues , we launched the financial services-ready cloud . And to reinforce this , IBM has unveiled a programme for Independent Software Vendors ( ISVs ) and Software- As-a-Service ( SaaS ) providers . The programme helps them demonstrate that they have met the stringent security , resiliency and compliance requirements of IBM ’ s financial services-ready public cloud .”
Second , added Ratshefola , IBM is offering IBM Cloud Satellite which extends IBM Cloud services anywhere a client needs them , delivered As-a-Service on-premises or at the Edge . “ Clients can increase their business agility by automating deployment and management of cloud-native services across all of their computing environments-for both development and operations . This means that with IBM Cloud Satellite our clients can run workloads where it makes the most sense ,” he explained .
Cloud integration
Al-Zoubi reiterated that prior to enacting cloud migration , CIOs must first determine their level of cloud integration – whether this involves ‘ shallow ’ or ‘ deep ’ cloud integration and a single cloud provider or multi-cloud environment , depending on the needs of the business .
“ It is always essential to set KPIs and metrics which can measure how well the newly implemented solutions are performing against expectations . Often the easiest way to measure the success of cloud solutions is in the on-going experience of discovering far greater visibility over processes and areas for improvement ,” he said . “ Crucially , CIOs must also ensure that they make the right decision when it comes to the speed of cloud migration . For some , it makes sense to migrate entire applications at once – for others , it may be more sustainable to migrate to the cloud component by component . This is especially important if you have one service or component inherently reliant on the operational ability of another .”
Cohesity ’ s Garcia explained that whether large or small , enterprises have travelled a long journey to move to cloud technology to manage their resources in a better way . At present , cloud technology is dominating the landscape across development and infrastructure . “ While the traditional life cycle was still a massive challenge for the organisations to deal with , and the critical business drivers for every industry may vary , different organisations ’ business criteria are also other . In such circumstances , modern cloud technologies can be the best because the continuum of cases is broad , ranging from data-intensive . The use of virtual machines , containers or serverless as a default system can be the right choice ,” he said . “ As one of the most important things is being used for customer services currently is the use of SaaS-based systems . SaaS models have proven themselves with salesforce in the enterprises . The chief point of the SaaS model is the need to get and run infrastructure at scales that can divert the core business purpose for an enterprise , and this provides such portability and fidelity across different environments .
With 2021 expected to witness massive cloud solutions adoption in the Middle East , pundits believe this will also see the acceleration their Digital Transformation strategies .
According to Al-Zoubi , there is no doubt that cloud adoption has been on the increase and will continue to grow in the year ahead – as organisations accelerate their Digital Transformation strategies and recognise cloud as a key enabler of businesses continuity and growth .
“ In October 2020 , Cisco introduced a new Wide Area Networking ( WAN ) Edge platform to deliver secure and automated access to applications . Cisco Catalyst 8000 Edge Platform accelerates cloud adoption by providing businesses with flexible options for secure connectivity and visibility to applications across cloud , data centre and edge ,” he said . p
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