Cloud Migration and Modernization in the Middle East and Africa: Imperative to building a resilient organization on your terms

Executive Summary
The cloud conversation in the Middle East and Africa region has moved from aversion to adoption quite rapidly in last two to three years. The region, which is known for in-house datacenters and on-premises implementations, is welcoming cloud adoption and providing a positive response to the vendor and partner ecosystem. Cloud is increasingly becoming a foundational platform for digital transformation, with more and more digital initiatives recommending cloud as a de facto IT platform for infrastructure, data, or applications. The rapid rise in application transformation initiatives, wherein cloud-native apps are being developed more than monolithic, traditional applications, is a testimony of the changing times.
More than a technological change, digital transformation is a cultural change for an organization regardless of its size, nature of business, and industry. Digital transformation touches not only the IT department but also the business units that interact with customers, suppliers, and government authorities. A broad and deep view of digital transformation, keeping the customer at the center, and workflows as the pathways that connect the customer with the organization, can help the leaders of an organization to leverage the potential of its digital initiatives. Even though public cloud may not be available or accepted in every industry and organization, adopters can coexist with the traditional environment and serve common goals related to customer satisfaction, organizational sustainability, financial performance, and employee happiness. Therefore, it is imperative for leaders to look at cloud with a long-term strategy and address hindrances in adoption.
Business resilience, which ensures sustained organizational growth even during uncertain times, is about building capabilities to respond rapidly to changes and minimize unplanned disruptions. Resilience is incomplete without studying the weak links, being critically aware of them, and creating a plan to address them, because today's smooth processes can become tomorrow's bottlenecks.(Read More)