IT Infrastructure Spending in Middle East and Africa Expected to Reach US$3.5 Billion in 2014: Gartner, Inc.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates - IT infrastructure development must work in parallel to data storage efforts, a challenge many businesses in the region continue to face,according to industry experts.
Businesses in the UAE and the Middle East are making great strides towards Big Data, with hopes of better understanding the market, tracking trends, and developing effective sales strategies. According to the Middle East Top 10 ICT Predictions for 2014 by the International Data Corporation, Big Data deployments in the region are expected to progress from a pilot to a production phase this year.
However, without the necessary IT infrastructure in place, they may never truly benefit from their efforts, said Savitha Bhaskar, general manager of Condo Protego, a leading data Storage and Security firm based in Dubai.
"If an enterprise does not develop its ITmodelto cope with its growing data capacity, it may suddenly find that rather than progressing the business, all this information is becoming a burden and an additional cost," said Savitha. "Truly reaping the benefits of data collection depends on the approach organizations use to store, manage, and analyze all the valuable information they collect."
Data virtualization is one of the most useful and cost-efficient approaches to storing and managing data. The method involves separating the hardware, the physical server on which data the data is stored, from the application that is using it. One clear example of data virtualization is the public / private cloud.
"Virtualization allows a business to outsource all its information to another location, which can then be accessed virtually from any front-end device," Bhaskar explained.
"There are a number of clear benefits to this, including consolidation, the ability to store, access, and move data from multipleapplicationshomogenously;remote access, since all the information is stored in a central location; and resource allocation, giving enterprises the flexibility to shift data according to business needs.
"All of these factors ultimately lead to reduced costs, significant time savings, and an overall better use of resources so that businesses spend less time on day-to-day tasks and more time strategizing and focusing on meeting their business goals."
Businesses across the Middle East are beginning to recognize this crucial link between Big Data and IT development. Spending on IT infrastructure, comprising storage, server, and enterprise networking equipment, in the Middle East and Africa is forecast to reach US$3.47 billion this year, a 4.1 percent increase from 2013, according to Gartner, Inc.
The research firm reports that this spending will be driven by datacenter modernization efforts, coupled with new datacenter build out, by both local and international companies. Server is the biggest component of this infrastructure market, accounting for US $1.3 billion in 2014, and set to reach US $1.54 billion in 2017.
This trend reaffirms that one of the most integral components to successful virtualization is a strong storage strategy.
"The two must work together," said Bhaskar. "By consolidating the different data sources into a single database, an enterprise can then analyze this information for different purposes."
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About Condo Protego
Condo Protego - Latin for "to store and to protect" - is the leading regional 'consultative solutions provider'. From enterprise to SME-sized customers, Condo Protego focuses on data storage, virtualization, security, and data protection - providing not only 24x7 support coverage, but also unprecedented 30-minute response time. Condo Protego is entirely customer-centric and believes "business is about people". For more information, visit www.condoprotego.com
Media contacts
Manal Ismail, Wallis Marketing Consultants, +971 4390 1950
condoprotego@wallis-mc.com
© Press Release 2014
