Intelligent Tech Channels Issue 07 | Page 14

FINANCIAL MARKETS ARE SUBJECT TO INHERENT RISKS. ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOG Heads in the cloud WE ENSURE CYBER FRAUD ISN’T ONE OF THEM. The banking & financial services industry has a host of sensitive data, large volumes of transactions and increasingly hyper-connected, complex networks. A highly attractive target for cyber criminals looking for high-value targets. At DarkMatter, our elite team of international cyber security specialists develop, manage and deploy end-to-end solutions to fortify the global banking and financial services industry against cyber threats. We safeguard your most valuable digital assets, your reputation and customers’ trust. Take your first step towards genius: contactus@darkmatter.ae (left to right) Fadi Kanafani at NetApp; Mohammed Abukhater, FireEye; Ossama Eldeeb, VMware and Ray Kafity, Attivo Networks. Adoption of a cloud infrastructure provides an affordable, efficient and agile environment for business processes, turning data from a burden into an asset, and more and more organisations in the region are making the transition. By Pippa Sanderson. A ccording to Gartner, the public cloud services market in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is projected to grow 22.2 per cent in 2017 to $1.2billion, up from $956 million in 2016. In addition, the fifth annual Cisco Global Cloud Index (2014–19) forecasts that Middle East and Africa cloud traffic will more than quadruple by the end of 2019. Not only that, by 2019, a total of 83 per cent of all MEA datacentre traffic will come from the cloud. From a regional perspective, the report found that the MEA is expected to have the highest cloud traffic growth rate of 41 per cent by 2019. Cloud computing is quickly becoming the standard way for technology companies to access IT infrastructure, software and hardware resources. The technology enables companies to be able to use applications and other resources managed by third-party companies that are stored in high-end server computers and networks. “Cloud adoption, in general, has definitely seen an increased uptake in the Middle East as more businesses are gaining confidence in both the security and reliability of the cloud,” says Shadi Salama, Channel Leader – Middle East, Cisco. According to Jeroen Schlosser, Managing Director of Equinix MENA, “Every cloud journey is unique. From scoping out the initial requirements, all the way to managing the mix of applications and services on which the business depends. Today, businesses can be found at every stage of this journey, with some just getting started and others completely invested.” Cloud computing can be undertaken in three main ways: private, public and hybrid. • • Private cloud: Private cloud resources are shared among internal departments and users, allowing them to self-provision and scale hardware or software resources as needed. Private clouds are not ‘open to the public’ and are protected within a closed environment. Public cloud: A public cloud is an on-demand IT service in which computing resources are delivered over the Internet by an external cloud service provider. These resources, including Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) 15