While highlighting the significance of Cloud in the business environments and its benefits, Amir shared that cloud-based solutions like ERP also come equipped with localizations tailored to suit the specific requirements of the Middle East region and individual countries.
By Amir Adly, Senior Solution Architect, Infor
From an improved security posture to greater levels of efficiency and innovation, moving to the cloud is key for companies in the region to seize growth opportunities
With the business climate in the Middle East remaining strong, even in the face of global economic headwinds in other parts of the world, it is critical for organizations in the region to ensure they are well-positioned to tap growth opportunities and overcome diverse challenges.
One of the most powerful tools that can help organizations achieve their goals and aspirations is the cloud. The cloud is not just a technology, but a paradigm shift that changes how organizations operate, collaborate, and deliver value. By moving to the cloud, organizations can access a range of benefits that can boost their performance and competitiveness in the region, especially in GCC countries and Egypt, where governments have launched visionary initiatives to promote digital transformation and economic diversification.
Spending on public cloud services in the Middle East, Türkiye, and Africa will grow at 25.0% to surpass $10.4 billion in 2023, according to IDC. But despite this, many organizations may still be unaware of the urgent need to move to the cloud.
When deployed in the right way, cloud allows organizations to improve their security, efficiency, and ability to innovate at scale, all while giving teams greater visibility of their operations and helping them to capture and extract value from data.
The advantages of moving to the cloud are so great that those who delay making the move will quickly fall behind their peers who seize the initiative.
Despite cloud’s clear advantages, many organizations in the region are yet to make the move, delaying the decision due to fears around the cost, complexity, having the right expertise, and being able to steer their operation through the significant change that moving to a public cloud entails.
This article highlights the key reasons why your organization should move to the cloud sooner rather than later to realize the full transformational potential of a cloud-based approach.
Flexibility – A public cloud solution undergoes continuous updates, eliminating the need for disruptive annual upgrades. Cloud-based solutions like ERP also come equipped with localizations tailored to suit the specific requirements of the Middle East region and individual countries. For example, Infor’s cloud-based ERP customers automatically get access to valuable solutions such as e-invoicing, which effortlessly handles pan-regional invoicing needs. This is especially important for companies with regional operations, simplifying complex aspects like invoicing, where each country has its unique requirements.
Innovation and Scalability – Multi-tenancy offers elastic storage capacity, ideal for advanced technologies reliant on vast data volumes, such as the internet of things, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Consequently, it frees up IT teams from maintenance tasks, allowing them to concentrate on more strategic endeavors.
Security – Multi-tenancy clouds systems to continuous scrutiny by security experts who remain vigilant against evolving attack methods. Infor’s cloud partner, AWS, has designed its cloud to be the most secure global infrastructure on which to build, migrate, and manage applications and workloads, backed by its set of 300+ cloud security tools. Infor’s cloud customers benefit from this level of security without needing an expensive in-house team.
Continuous Upgrades – Unlike the cumbersome software upgrades that are part and parcel of on-premises systems, multi-tenant cloud deployments receive smaller, more frequent updates from the provider. This approach eliminates the need for in-house changes that could potentially disrupt day-to-day operations.
Cost Efficiency – Multi-tenancy cloud can enable organizations to optimize their staffing requirements – investing in staff where they are needed most to support core operations rather than IT administration. In short, it optimizes cost control, ensuring resources are allocated efficiently.
Platform as a Service – With a multi-tenant architecture’s no-code/low-code tools, organizations can create reports, personalize interfaces, and more without the need to modify the underlying code. Modern multi-tenant solutions also provide extensibility tools and the ability to personalize interfaces without cumbersome modifications.
Streamlining Opportunities – Migrating to a multi-tenant deployment presents a chance to revamp workflows, priorities, and even corporate culture by instilling new perspectives and attitudes among staff. For instance, it enables customer-centric strategies or a focus on product innovation.
In conclusion, the Middle East is a region of immense potential and promise, and the cloud is essential to tap into these opportunities, offering various benefits that can help organizations enhance their performance and competitiveness. These benefits include flexibility to adjust to changing demands, security to protect their data and systems from cyber threats, scalability to grow with their business needs, cost-efficiency to optimize their IT spending, continuous upgrades to access the latest features and functionalities, and streamlined operations to simplify their IT management and governance. Organizations in the region must adopt this game-changing technology to gain an edge in the market. By doing so, they can not only cope with the evolving challenges but also drive the innovation and transformation of business in the Middle East.
