Dubai - MENA Herald: Simplifying IT infrastructure can help UAE small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to save 50 percent on operating costs and drive innovation in the Digital Economy.
UAE organizations are increasingly virtualizing IT infrastructure, with business applications running on multiple servers. This can reduce hardware operating costs by 50 percent and energy costs by 80 percent, according to virtualization specialists VMware.
In turn, organizations are combining data storage, processing, and virtualization in one simple, easy-to-use, factory-assembled computing block called converged infrastructure. Add in a layer of automated IT configurations, and it becomes hyper-converged.
The UAE is aligned with a recent report by converged infrastructure company VCE that shows 80 percent of global business leaders want a scalable, flexible IT infrastructure for business growth and innovation, argues UAE-based IT consultancy Condo Protego.
“IT is the key business differentiator for UAE SMEs. Converged and hyper-converged infrastructure can deliver immediate benefits in saving time and money spent on IT. By not having to worry about their IT infrastructure, staff are freed up to focus on achieving mission-critical business goals,” said Andrew Calthorpe, CEO, Condo Protego.
Demonstrating the demand, the global hyper-converged systems market is growing 2.5 fold from USD 2 billion in 2016 to USD 5 billion by 2019, according to Gartner. The Middle East’s wider converged systems market is up by 12 percent in 2016, according to IDC.
While converged and hyper-converged infrastructure is seeing strong take-up among SMEs in the UAE, there is also impressive demand among medium-to-large enterprises that have numerous remote and branch offices, such as banks and government agencies.
“Building your own converged or hyper-converged infrastructure is like trying to build a car out of tens of thousands of parts – it can be time-consuming, expensive, and may not even work. Converged and hyper-converged infrastructure from a vendor is like a factory-assembled car that has been tested and is ready to drive,” added Andrew Calthorpe.
In the UAE, Condo Protego is seeing strong demand for VCE’s new VxRail hyper-converged infrastructure, combining EMC’s hardware and VMware’s virtualization platform.