THE CLOUDY OUTLOOK

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Updated : March 17, 2014 0:0  ,
By Editor

Red Hat recently announced the appointment of Fayçal Saile as general manager for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) region. An industry veteran, he shares his insights about cloud computing trends in the region.


Are cloud deployments seeing a good pace of adoption?

Given the variety of forecasts about various aspects of cloud computing, it’s hard to say what “was expected” in the general sense. In the case of public cloud providers specifically, though, it’s probably fair to say that it has increased more quickly than many expected as organizations have become increasingly educated about and comfortable with using cloud service providers for appropriate workloads. In general, there are “enough” cloud service providers although I expect to continue seeing new entrants (whether new companies or new businesses for existing providers) aiming to address the requirements of specific vertical industries or other groups that aren’t fully met by broad-based public clouds.

Are there opportunities for smaller integrators in the cloud model?

There are opportunities for mid-size and small providers but they will need to legitimately differentiate from the large providers such as Amazon. Differentiation could include tailored services for a specific country, industry, or other groups of users with unique data locality, regulatory, support, or localization needs (such as language). That said, the best large providers are continually adding services and will be tough to compete with on operational efficiency so smaller providers will have to pick their targets carefully and execute well to succeed.

How can the channel look to provide cloud services to customers?

One way that the channel can benefit from the cloud is to help their customers acquire public cloud services and implement private clouds, as appropriate, to satisfy their specific business requirements. The channel has, in effect, a trusted advisor role that draws on their expertise in the customer’s industry or whatever other aspect they’ve chosen to differentiate on. One implication is that–as has been the general trend over time–the channel will have to increasingly develop deep expertise in their focus areas as opposed to serving as a more passive intermediary.

Are users looking to multiple cloud service providers for their needs? Does this lead to complexities?

Industry analysts and others are in broad agreement that IT is increasingly hybrid. Multiple providers, whether IaaS, PaaS, or Saas, will be the norm as will be a mix of on-premise and public clouds. Managing this heterogeneity is therefore just something that organizations will have to do. Thus, they should strategically consider hybrid cloud management that’s built on an open approach that cuts across vendor and technology stacks.

Hybrid cloud is highlighted as the most robust way to approach cloud deployment. Is this the trend in the region?

While it’s still early days for hybrid clouds (and, indeed, cloud computing broadly), the trend is clearly toward IT becoming a broker of services whether built in-house or sourced from a variety of outside providers. Both hybrid IT and the integrated management and governance of hybrid IT services are where IT is headed and forward-looking organizations are headed down that path.

What are the critical things to look at before deploying cloud?

Cloud is a strategic decision. The most successful organizations will approach it as such–rather than just the next iteration of virtualization. They’ll proceed systematically–whether starting with a private cloud or by sourcing select public cloud services–and build toward a hybrid future using open technologies and approaches.