Throughout the rapid evolution of cloud computing from its earliest stages, we have witnessed the development and extension of many different cloud service specialisms, applications, and optimizations. However diverse and complex the cloud becomes, we can classify its core DNA into two strands i.e. public and private.

With public cloud services coming from data centers and offering maximum flexibility, breadth, and scope, private or on-premises cloud sits alongside the public cloud in a sort of yin-yang balance to provide control, privacy, and compliance where needed. Businesses quickly realized that a hybrid combination of the two strands was the most prudent workable approach.

Rob Tribe, VP, System Engineering, Nutanix

What else do we need to know about how hybrid multi-cloud happened and how this technology should be most productively implemented today?

Core Validations

Among the core validation points that exist for hybrid multi-cloud is the need to locate certain workloads in specific geographic locations.

This can be due to latency requirements if a particular application’s functionality depends upon it working to a precise number of microseconds, or it can be to fulfill upon regulatory compliance rulings and legislation. Potentially, it can be a result of both.

CapEx to OpEx in Public Cloud

For applications that use a lot of compute resources but on a highly variable basis and only for a short burst of time, on-premises private cloud represents a disproportionate Capital Expenditure (CapEx) outlay with the risk of purchased resources lying idle and unused.

A good example here might be quarterly or annual tax processing; the workload is high and heavy, but essentially intermittent on a comparatively date-specific basis. Running this type of workload in the public cloud enables us to shoulder a cost that specifically tracks the consumption of resources, which is logically an Operational Expenditure (OpEx) weighted use case best suited to the public cloud.

Straddling the Colocation Intersection Point

Looking at the middle ground and looking for the deployment sweet spot, we need to think about what happens if we start a new business from scratch with modest capital investment and limited physical equipment or resources.

In this scenario, it of course makes sense to use as many suitable public cloud services as possible in the first instance; they require little or no pre-procurement expenditure and offer the maximum breadth to scale if and when the business flourishes, and grows.

Hybrid Multicloud Reality

If a company has progressed to this point but then opens a new office in a new territory or country, it may very reasonably look to adopt a greater weight of public cloud in its new location.

If the business finds that it gets a better deal (commercially, support-related, or platform-related) in one country from one particular CSP, then it may switch some workloads to Microsoft Azure, push some workloads to Google Cloud Platform, others to AWS, and still others to any of the smaller tier players in this market. This is a hybrid multi-cloud reality.

A New De Facto Standard

If we have learned anything at this point, it is perhaps just how far hybrid multi-cloud has become a kind of de facto industry standard for prudent, strategically tactical cloud implementations. It offers the greatest scope for deployment flexibility, functional dexterity, and cost optimization.

Skillsets will need to be tuned, bolstered, augmented, and extended in line with the specific actions of cloud architects, Site Reliability Engineers (SREs), and the now cloud-native DevOps developer+operations teams that will exist in this space.

Where once we had cloud, we now have cloud multiplicity, connectivity, and an occasional instance of exclusivity. It’s a small but hybrid multi-cloud world after all.

Q&A with Christian Alvarez

What should channel partners do to remain relevant and successful in a Hybrid Multicloud World?

We see customers’ reliance on and expectations for enterprise cloud capabilities intensifying. Many are building the future of their businesses on hybrid multi-cloud IT operations, which blend private and public cloud services. This paradigm shift in customer expectations and cloud acceleration is leading prudent service providers into new partnerships.

Christian Alvarez, Senior VP – Worldwide Channels

You can’t do it alone. Scaling a business and sustaining profitability requires working on creating partnerships that give customers a simpler way to drive their digital transformation. That involves consulting, design, new products, integration, customization, and 24×7 support. Partnerships can provide the expertise needed to promote, sell, design, integrate, customize, deploy and support new applications on-premises, in the public cloud, or hybrid cloud architectures.

That’s what’s behind the Nutanix Elevate Service Provider Program. It helps providers pursue partnerships that can improve customer experiences, competitiveness, and profitability. There’s no minimum commitment or cost to service providers to join the program, which allows carriers of all sizes to participate.

How have you updated your channel program to align with modern-day trends?

“Channel Autonomy” is one of our key objectives when it comes to our channel program. We wish to empower our channel ecosystem so that they can independently drive our business with minimal involvement from our sales team. We want to train them and make them true champions of Nutanix and in this way the partner and distribution community will be a true extension of our company. 

Q&A with Adam Tarbox

What are some of your immediate priorities in your role?

The key priority at the moment is on building on the existing deep relationships we have with partners.

We are also focusing our efforts on being even easier to do business with by investing in the simplification and automation of our processes to allow partners to transact faster. Another area of focus is enabling each partner’s differentiation with a platform that enables partners to build not only traditional deployment services but also stand-up new practice areas. When it comes to DevOps or AI, this can provide sources of competitive differentiation as well as faster time to market of new offerings.

Christian Alvarez, Senior VP – Worldwide Channels

What is Nutanix’s mission or goal in EMEA?

Our mission in EMEA is the same as our overall corporate mission which is to ‘Delight customers with a simple, open, hybrid, and multi-cloud software platform with rich data services to build, run, and manage any application’. Our vision is to “Make clouds invisible, freeing customers to focus on their business outcomes.”

What are some of the main challenges facing you and the business today?

The past year has brought many changes to the channel partner ecosystem and subscription and consumption are on everyone’s mind. This is creating uncertainty for the channel ecosystem as it looks for new ways to sustain profitability. Many vendors have announced that they are moving towards subscription but haven’t provided insight to partners on what this means aside from some new incentives. As many vendors have taken renewals ‘direct’ – we have not and will not, we have always and will continue to be committed to the channel and our distribution partners.

How Dell helps small, medium, and large enterprises with digital transformation?

Digital transformation is a top priority for businesses in the Middle East as organizations, both large and small, that continue to leverage the latest technologies to drive innovation and growth.

Regional businesses have transformed the way they consume and deploy software infrastructure and applications. This includes a growing demand for cloud technologies, with a focus on hybrid models, which enable businesses to adapt and grow in today’s data-driven, location-independent era. This shift was noted in Dell’s Digital Transformation Index study, where 80 percent of global businesses accelerated their digital transformation plans, with 79 percent reinventing their business model due to disruption caused by the pandemic. In the region, the study showed that 90 percent of organizations in UAE and Saudi Arabia, fast-tracked their digital transformation programs in 2020.

Murray Irvine, Senior Director, Data Centre Compute and Solutions – MERAT, Dell

In this critical time of change, Dell Technologies’ end-to-end product and services enable customers to create remote workforces, secure critical data, and scale without disruption.  It works closely with small, medium, and large enterprises to address pressing business challenges with its world-class, end-to-end services, and solutions that span the cloud, data center, and the edge.

Tell us how cloud-based infrastructure and platforms offered by Dell help businesses grow, improve flexibility, and increase profitability?

Dell Technologies Cloud is a suite of cloud solutions that provide a consistent operating model for easier management of public, private, and edge cloud resources. Reports cite that over 50% of infrastructure will be deployed at the edge by 2023, which illustrates the value of multi-cloud to manage all environments consistently. It provides organizations with convenient and on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources including servers, storage, applications, networks, and other computing services.

Rather than acquiring, installing, and maintaining computing technology on-premises, with the Dell Technologies Cloud services, organizations can quickly add capacity without incurring capital expense while significantly increasing agility and scalability. It allows organizations to simplify operations, improve cloud economics, eliminate operational silos and manage hybrid cloud infrastructure with ease.

Furthermore, the solutions combine cost-effective, scalable, and resilient data storage with native public cloud services to deliver the best of both worlds for the cloud. These solutions are ideal for deploying demanding, data-intensive applications on multiple public clouds. The services are fully-managed by Dell Technologies, thereby freeing an organizations’ valuable resources to run their business rather than managing the infrastructure.

Kindly articulate hybrid cloud and differentiate it from multi-cloud services from a business perspective

Hybrid cloud environments are composed of two or more public or private cloud infrastructures that are connected by standardized technology for orchestrating workloads across clouds, enabling cloud resources to work together to manage cloud servers, storage, and networking resources.

Multi-cloud computing on the other hand refers to the use of multiple cloud services rather than relying on a single cloud service provider. A multi-cloud environment typically uses two or more public cloud services (provided by third-party providers). Multi-cloud environments may also include a private cloud, which involves cloud technology that resides within a company’s own data center.

As opposed to multi-cloud environments where each cloud has its own set of tools and processes, a hybrid cloud with a consistent management experience provides a common set of tools, significantly reducing the cost and complexity of managing hybrid cloud environments.  Enterprises today are transitioning from multi-cloud strategies to hybrid cloud environments to extract more benefit from their cloud investments.

Speak about the collaborations that Dell have made to strengthen its cloud deployment and support services

Our partners are at the forefront of solving customers’ most pressing cloud challenges and we’re focused on continuing to build this ecosystem for the benefit of our customers. They play an instrumental role in instilling the possibility of what can be achieved while guiding customers through a data-centric and insights-driven roadmap.

Businesses understand that having the right partner to collaborate in today’s fast-paced environment is truly a competitive advantage. We enable enterprises to seamlessly extend the hybrid cloud experience to partners such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and more than 4,200 additional cloud partners.

Discuss the scope of cloud-based infrastructure and related solutions in the post-pandemic era

Hybrid cloud is proving to be a significant gamechanger as organizations look to unify their environments and get superior flexibility, scale, agility, innovation, and a consumption model that aligns with their business needs.

This includes incorporating a mix of on-premises data centers to public clouds and the emerging edge —allowing them to have greater control of their workloads, data, and cloud journey. By 2022, IDC predicts that over 90% of enterprises worldwide will be relying on a cloud mix to meet their needs, with 2021 being a defining year for the multi-cloud.

The increased interest in hybrid cloud is driven mainly by cloud edge computing. As enterprises turn to cloud edge computing to better manage and process the vast amount of data being generated by edge devices, they seek more hybrid cloud architecture solutions to help them streamline their operations. This shift will drive momentum for hybrid cloud operating models that extend out to the edge, beyond the traditional data center. As adoption increases, we will see more organizations taking up as-a-service models for the cloud, spanning Infrastructure-as-a-service (Iaas), Platform-as-a-service (Paas), and Software-as-a-service (SaaS) to leverage the benefits cloud offers.

This presents a real opportunity for customers to increase investments in distributed technology infrastructure. In particular, ensuring that the tech infrastructure they invest in is simpler and faster to deploy. Dell Technologies enables organizations to unlock better outcomes by building on tools and skill set that provide a consistent experience across hybrid cloud environments.

COVER STORY

The cover story explores the broad spectrum of cloud computing and its business prospects in the Middle East.

Cloud computing occupies a significant position among emerging technologies for over a couple of years. To improve efficiency, reduce cost, and mitigate data security risks, businesses have started moving to the cloud. Simultaneously, solutions providers developed cloud-based software solutions for their enterprise customers and facilitate digital transformation, backup, recovery, and restoration. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba, and SAP have established their name in the market as hyperscale providers in tandem with the growth of cloud business.

Even though cloud vertical has portrayed stunning growth naturally, the pandemic has redefined its popularity and potential further ahead. Both, cloud service and solution providers, found business scopes leveraging the increased demand for featuring business continuity during and after the pandemic.

The large enterprises and traditional businesses weren’t cloud agnostic in the pre-pandemic era as they trusted in-site data security with local data centers and private cloud. When their workforce had shifted to home and (or) remote locations due to lockdowns, these enterprises had to choose multiple applications and software agents to safeguard their data from cyberattacks or infiltrations and run the business. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) had faced tougher times because of their conservative approach towards digital transformation and modern technologies. The period was challenging for businesses that have heavily invested in infrastructure.

The Spectrum of Cloud Services

Microsoft claims, “cloud computing eliminates the capital expense of buying hardware and software and setting up and running on-site datacenters – the racks of servers, the round-the-clock electricity for power and cooling, and the IT experts for managing the infrastructure.” Besides these merits, enterprises seemingly kept the agility, accessibility, pricing, and security features as key determiners to choose appropriate cloud services.

Most cloud service providers – including hyperscale and regional providers, kept themselves intact to those qualities and are offering service to SMEs and large enterprises either directly or via partner networks. Cloud-based software solution providers also play a vital role to bring enterprises into the cloud landscape. Most of their solutions help companies migrate to the cloud and they support multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud approaches.

Public, Private, and Hybrid Cloud

The shared public cloud has been offered to enterprise customers by Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Oracle, Alibaba, IBM, and others. Although the cloud has been shared across organizations, they claim to be offering utmost data security and flexibility. The public cloud services provide enterprises with high elasticity to scale with flexible pricing options. Plus, enterprises don’t need to bear the maintenance cost of infrastructure if they choose the public cloud. Considering cost and efficiency, public cloud services are suitable for small and medium-sized businesses as they don’t have to invest in on-premise infrastructure.

The enterprises that need to follow strong local data regulations and compliance choose to go for on-premise data centers or local third-party data centers and private cloud. The private cloud also has the elasticity to scale besides dedicated and secure space for data.

Hybrid options relatively hold neutral standards in the cloud space. The organizations that have to follow local regulations, in terms of data security and privacy laws, would likely choose hybrid cloud services. So, they get to store data and apps in a local cloud and use the public cloud for data backup. In case of any compromise reported, they can protect and avoid potential loss if the backup has been taken to a public cloud.

Encryption, Backup, Recovery, and Restoration Services

Cyberattacks are observed with ultimate importance as much as physical attacks across the world as the trend of these offensive maneuvers to computer systems of enterprises started to impact the economic and political stability of nations. Financial, legal, healthcare, mission-critical, and personally identifiable information and government records have to be protected with superior importance. Unfortunately, computer systems that protect these are the primary targets in cyberattacks e.g., ransomware attacks.

Computer and networking systems can be vulnerable due to programming mistakes, excess usage of software or networking agents, lack of updates, and so on. If cybercriminals exploit such compromises, an enterprise will have to pay for a huge loss. The crucial role of cloud service providers comes in monitoring and maintaining these systems – including backup, encryption, recovery, and restore.

Backup as a Service (BaaS) is one of the business opportunities utilized by solution providers, today. Whichever enterprises need a routine inspection on their software ecosystem would seek help from these solution providers. Typically, these solution providers introduce a cloud-based software agent for enterprises that gives end-to-end support including backup, encryption, security, and recovery.

Middle East’s Big Cloud Tech Opportunity

The post-pandemic era seeds a big opportunity for all modern technologies across the Middle East region. Cloud adoption is widespread as companies desire to enhance options of business continuity, work flexibility, customer engagement, and profitability. Policy and regulatory support from various governments enlarge the operational space for both hyperscale and regional providers. SMEs and large enterprises alike are rushing towards modern computing and investing time and resources to train their workforce to adopt the latest solutions. The hybrid model will continue to stay and emerging technologies, which facilitate business success beyond challenges would attain further credibility; cloud computing is certainly one of them!