The cloud is transforming businesses across the world. But like all resources, it's not evenly distributed. Some parts of the world have seen a huge uptake. Others lag behind, dogged by issues with infrastructure and investment.
The picture in the Middle East is mixed, as you'd expect from a region that covers 2.8 million square miles and 18 countries with a total population of 371 million.
Fine-grained analysis will show that cloud adoption in Egypt, for instance, is higher than in Bahrain. Nevertheless, the overall trend is one of accelerated growth. Businesses across the Middle East are embracing the cloud and major global players are investing in the region more and more.
But before we take a closer look at the state of the cloud in the Middle East, let's define our terms. In this context, what do we mean by "the cloud"?
What kinds of clouds are being adopted?
To the layperson, "the cloud" might mean the place where you back up your photos. But it's a much bigger term that covers the virtualisation of software, infrastructure, platforms and more.
At the time of writing, single-cloud environments are on the wane. Most businesses are investing in either hybrid or multi-cloud environments. This is partly because a patchwork can be more cost-effective than a seamless tapestry. Secondly, it can have benefits for cyber security: if one provider goes down, another can leap into action without any interruption to your workflow.
On top of this, there's a global uptick in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Cloud-based AI and ML are now a key part of business intelligence and automated data analysis across the world – and the Middle East is no exception.
This is partly down to increased investment from global players like Microsoft, Amazon, IBM and Alibaba Cloud, all of which have opened data centres in the region.
Why is adoption slower than elsewhere?
In recent years, the Middle East has been shown to be a region with huge potential for cloud computing investment. McKinsey, for instance, analysed its potential for public cloud adoption and concluded that it could generate a whopping $183 billion by 2030.
However, adoption has been slower than in other parts of the world. There are, McKinsey claims, three main reasons for this.
The first has to do with infrastructure. Despite its ethereal-sounding name, the cloud depends on tonnes of racks, servers and cables in large data centres – and those in turn depend on high-quality internet.
The picture is mixed in the Middle East – but some of its constituent countries have poor connectivity and not enough (or not-big-enough) data centres. Without improvements in this area, growth is likely to lag behind other regions.
Secondly, there are issues surrounding compliance. Many businesses are unclear about where data can be stored and how to practice good data governance.
Finally, many countries in the Middle East have relatively small populations and relatively contained economies. Both of these characteristics have limited the scale of external investment.
However, the region has its success stories. Perhaps the most impressive is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The case of Saudi Arabia
In Saudi Arabia, cloud computing saw a huge spike in 2023 – a 40% year-on-year increase in the year's last quarter. The government's Ministry of Commerce reported that it issued 1,759 cloud computing permits in this period.
