BIOS Blog

Businesses in Saudi Arabia are accelerating their digital transformation journey with the cloud with benefits such as scalability, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility associated with the cloud.

In response to the fast-paced changes and to drive a cloud-led transformation, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology issued policies and regulations under KSA Cloud First Policy in February 2019 as part of Saudi Arabia’s 2030 Vision.

The acceleration of digital transformation has led to a corresponding increase in the collection and storage of all kinds of personal and business data. However, the laws governing where this data can and cannot reside along with various mandated controls are complex and ever-changing depending on which country and industry you do business in.

In the UAE, for example, data protection laws require all sensitive data – such as financial, medical or personal information – should not be hosted outside the country. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has its own very strict laws and countries such as Oman, Bahrain and Qatar are currently exploring new laws around data sovereignty. If you operate in an industry where you have any personal data of your customers, such as in; Healthcare, Insurance, or Finance; Data Residency should be high on your list of considerations when moving to the cloud.

Moving IT operations to the cloud benefits both large organisations and medium-sized enterprises alike. The flexibility of the cloud to scale up and scale down, the newfound agility to launch services quickly and the cost savings are hard for most companies to ignore. Consequently, there has been a significant uptake in cloud services in the Middle East and worldwide.

GCC cloud market is expected to more than double in value by 2024, growing from $956m this year to $2.35bn at a cumulative annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25 per cent, a recent study by IDC reveals.

In the Middle East, as around the world, the coronavirus pandemic saw technology leaders tasked with maintaining business continuity in the face of work-from-home developments, data privacy threats and increased cyberattacks. 2021 could accelerate that trend.

With COVID-19 likely to continue shaping the immediate business ecosystem, CIOs will be entrusted with a greater share of the business. Technology leaders will be under greater pressure to deliver big results and performance metrics will be more closely monitored.

Accordingly, for Middle Eastern CIOs looking to stay ahead of the game in 2021, here are three tech-focused resolutions that are easy to implement and could win management appreciation.