End-user spending on public cloud services in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region will total $5.7 billion in 2022, an increase of 19.2%, according to the latest forecast by Gartner.
“A renewed focus on technology growth post-COVID-19 in the region is leading to continued growth in public cloud spending,” said Colleen Graham, senior research director at Gartner. “Various MENA governments’ policies on telemedicine, usage of autonomous vehicles, smart cities and a rapid move towards the next phase of the fourth industrial revolution are opening new growth avenues for public cloud in the region. Additionally, the attention given to building and nurturing talent will turn a new leaf in the region’s shift towards becoming a digital economy.”
MENA CIOs are turning towards the cloud to secure the quickest time to value for their IT investments made over the last two years. In 2022, MENA CIOs will spend the most on cloud application services (SaaS), which includes business intelligence applications, email and authoring, content services, customer experience and relationship management, and supply chain. This segment will total $2.3 billion, accounting for 40% of the total investment made on public cloud services.
In parallel with that, the highest growth will be recorded by cloud system infrastructure services (IaaS). This segment will grow by 36.8%, followed by cloud application infrastructure services (PaaS) with an anticipated 25.8% increase and cloud desktop as a service (DaaS) with an anticipated 25.3% increase.
Countries in the MENA region are being swept up in the global data revolution as they shift from oil-driven economies to data-driven economies. “Public cloud services will have an integral role to play in this transition as many public and private sector projects in the pipeline are dependent on the successful and secure deployment of public cloud services,” said Graham.
