FRONT-RUNNERS

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Updated : June 29, 2014 0:0  ,
By Editor

Transformers are those companies ready to adopt new technology and required investments in IT and technology. Taj El-Khayat, Managing Director, Middle East, Turkey, North, West, and Central Africa for Riverbed discusses how the company partners with these trail blazers


What’s the profile for some of the Transformers in the region in terms of segments and motivation for adopting the new technology?

Business leaders across different sectors and segments in the region are starting to realise how trends such as big data, social media, mobility and cloud computing are changing the way IT co-exists within the organisation’s business model, and within the relationship dynamics with its customers. Being a Transformer company means to first understand and appreciate the value of IT and how it can enhance business performance, productivity and profitability. Our findings in the region are pretty much in line with the regional increase in IT spending. In fact, 23% of companies in the Middle East are Transformers as opposed to 25% in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region. We strongly believe that this number will rise soon as 44% of enterprises in the region consider innovation as a top IT priority, whether it’s networking or data centre consolidation.

Transformer companies in the region perceive these new technologies as representing a significant opportunity to innovate, improve efficiency and provide differentiated customer experiences in highly competitive marketplace. It is important for Transformers to embrace change before their competitors in order to differentiate themselves. To get a clearer understanding of how these Transformer companies think, 47% of companies see innovation as a driver of IT strategy whereas 60% consider technology as a driver for innovation. Transformers prioritise consolidation and new architecture over other factors while non-Transformers prioritise maintenance and ongoing operations, thus efficiency.

How can Riverbed help those organizations ready to take the next step?

Although sometimes business leaders tend to take a proactive approach on deploying new technologies, poor infrastructure can definitely hamper these innovations and in turn their respective investments. In fact, only 9% of the companies in the Middle East realize this intertwined relationship between infrastructure and expected results following the implementation of an IT project.

Also, 42% of the organizations do not demonstrate an ability to establish a clear relationship between IT investment in networking and/or infrastructure. Therefore, Riverbed is making efforts to educate the market through its partners and the channel community who are invited to act as consultants for end-customers on the whole IT architecture and their investment choices.

Riverbed offers an Application Performance Platform to organisations who are keen to take the next step towards innovation.  It also provides companies with customer support services to adopt innovation and secure ROI while providing an enhanced end-user experience. The Riverbed platform is the only complete solution in the market that optimizes application and data delivery and provides the end-to-end visibility to detect and fix performance issues before end users notice any problem.

It is estimated that 27% of technology investments are achieving optimal impact on employee productivity. Riverbed clearly realizes the impact of end-user experience on business performance and therefore puts it at the centre by ensuring business-critical applications perform as they should.

Also, given the findings of the recent Transformers survey commissioned by Riverbed, 43% of technology investment failures can be traced back to network/data centre performance issues. In this framework, Riverbed can support organizations by deploying a data centre consolidation project or providing them with a unique and holistic Riverbed Performance Management (RPM) suite to enhance their network performance monitoring capabilities and equip them with the ability to detect IT glitches at an early stage before business and profits are affected.

What effect on their business, and bottom-line, will organizations realize when they adopt the “next big thing”?

Today, expensive applications offering the promise of improved business performance are failing to maximise their potential at a substantial cost to the company. This is because they fall short of being the next big thing. As resources become even scarcer, organizations have to carefully plan their investments and aim at achieving resource efficiency while targeting at innovating and leveraging existing technology.

In fact, 41% of applications fail to realize the expected ROI of their IT investments due to wrong decisions or lack of coherence and consistency in the IT infrastructure that impedes the achievement of optimal results and allows IT glitches, thereby delaying users and draining productivity. New technologies are supposed to be the driving force behind innovation, and as such, if the applications underperform, so does the business.

By adopting the next big thing, companies will still be able to reap the benefits of their innovation appetite while preventing any innovation value leakage. Transformers enjoy greater productivity and about 64% expect ROI on most or all of their new technology investments within 2-3 years.

How crucial is the Middle East market to Riverbed’s larger EMEA, and global, objectives

The Middle East market is one of the top priorities for Riverbed mainly because it showcases an appetite for innovation in addition to the other business basics including, resource efficiency, improved employee productivity, and cost reduction.

The latest figures from Gartner suggest that IT spending in the Middle East could reach US$ 211 in 2014, with an 8% percent increase from 2013.  The Middle East can be considered as one of the fastest regions in terms of growth. In addition, regional governments are suggesting initiatives focusing on smart cities and putting IT at the centre stage of their services. The booming IT landscape could reap many opportunities for a company like Riverbed. Hence, we are determined to increase our presence in the region and deepen our relationships with our channel partners and regional partners to create rewarding opportunities.

How is Riverbed itself responding to all these changes brought on by cloud, social media, etc.?

Riverbed has undergone a transformation and evolved from a mono-product company started with Riverbed SteelHead to encompass a wide array of products in response to critical business problems including, Riverbed SteelFusion, Riverbed SteelApp, and Riverbed SteelCentral.

Today, Riverbed offers the industry’s most complete application performance platform to allow customers to host applications and data in any location, regardless of distance, while ensuring the flawless delivery of applications and data. Under this platform, Riverbed champions the concept of location-independent computing which has been the idea behind the solutions the company has brought to the market for years. As companies strive to meet their business objectives faster and in a cost-effective manner, the Riverbed Application Performance Platform will be paramount.

For example, Big Data is posing a big storage challenge for businesses across the Middle East. Riverbed SteelFusion solves the problem of delivering block storage over the WAN enabling organisations to centralize their data while ensuring applications on the edge perform at LAN speed. Large corporations are enabled to consolidate and centrally manage remote servers and storage, streamline data protection, continue operations even during network outages, and improve security without affecting performance.

Are you advocating for 360 degree IT transformation or scale out of existing infrastructure and if so how would Riverbed come in under both conditions?

Transformational IT projects such as cloud implementation or others can yield huge savings and efficiencies. However, expectations of improved business performance, and other benefits are definitely undermined by infrastructures unable to support leading-edge technology. An infrastructure that is not equipped to handle leading-edge applications will pose challenges. To overcome these and ensure technology investments deliver optimal value, organizations need to consider increased skills/resources and increased security threats along with aligning the IT infrastructure with the company’s core business.

At Riverbed, we firmly believe in the need to make companies understand the need to strike a balance between investment in macro trend technology and the back office that will support it. Through our channel program, we are making conscious efforts to reach out to end-customers and encourage our partners to act as consultants.

Companies need to bear in mind the need to secure the right levels of investments across the IT function and develop a balanced IT operation that combines innovation with consistency. In fact, we would advise companies to reduce their IT spending on adding new applications onto existing infrastructures.