The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is seeing record-high IT spend–the region’s enterprise software market will top $760mn in 2018, according to the International Data Center (IDC).
Still, 60% of organizations in the region are concerned about potential gaps in their digital toolset, according to a survey by IDC and Veritas. Gaps can include cloud migrations, quick recovery from outages and disasters, and tracking service level agreements.
The survey also found that 60% of Middle Eastern companies will implement a digital transformation strategy by 2020. Companies will have to transform their digital toolset to succeed, according to UAE-based IT infrastructure and information management consultancy Condo Protego.
“Record-high software spend shows that Middle East CIOs understand the importance of cloud-based information management software. But if used improperly, then software becomes technology for technology’s sake without meeting business goals,” argues Savitha Bhaskar, COO at Condo Protego.
While cloud technology has helped organizations become more agile and efficient, spending on software alone doesn’t enable digital transformation.
“Organizations should have the best in-house capabilities to manage their IT effectively, especially in prioritizing data validity, classification, retention, and analytics for new levels of business insights,” added Bhaskar.
