The awareness of cloud computing among the Government establishment in the Middle East and Africa region (MEA) is quite low.
This was clearly evident in a survey conducted by International Data Corp. (IDC) in the region. The results show a low inclination towards adopting cloud computing in the MEA. However,no specific reason for such a scenario was given, but there seems to be a lack of confidence for the technology. This could be seen from the respondents' answers.While respondents understand the benefits as well as the terminology of cloud computing, there are security concerns that ultimately tilts opinion against it.
The MEA IT market is a lucrative one with $91 billion expected to be spent in 2015. This is 28.2 percent higher than estimated IT spending of $71 billion in 2012. The growth to be driven by mobility, social technologies, cloud computing, and data.
More than 50 percent of the senior Government officials from IT are quite familiar with various terms of cloud computing, the IDC survey indicates. However, only 20 percent understand the terminology of cloud computing. The catch of the survey is that 60 percent of the respondents evinced no interest in implementing any form of cloud computing within their organizations.
It will be a big task for cloud computing service providers to convince users of the advantages, and the cost involved to avail such services. This will require significant effort from the service providers for widespread adoption in the MEA region to occur.
Significantly 85 percent of the respondents' attitudes towards cloud computing indicates they believe the technology is still immature and in development mode. In spite of this, 74 percent of them understand the benefits of cloud computing. Yet, concerns about cost and bandwidth are what prevents them from adopting the technology. This was evident as 72 percent of the respondents voiced concerns, whereas 68 percent are concerned with the inherent security risk involved.
It appears that security is the major concern for governments in adopting cloud computing in the MEA, but the IDC survey points out that there is a lack of understanding. Governments seem hold the view that cloud computing is not suited for the government sector in its current form.Obviously, their fears about security are quite understandable because of the sensitive information of its citizens. It is not just government, big corporations shy away from cloud computing on the same plank.
The current scenario clearly suggests that the IT vendors need to create awareness of cloud computing in the region.