Mena data center spend poised to reach record $5bn by 2020

Dubai / Emirates Business

As the Middle East accelerates its digital transformation and Smart Cities growth, regional data center spend will reach a record-high of $5 billion by 2020, industry experts announced ahead of GITEX Technology Week.
Middle East and North Africa data center spend to reach a record high of $5.1 billion by 2020, increasing by 8.5 percent from 2017, according to a recent report by market research firm Statista. Much of this spend will go towards enabling smart cities, aligned with the GITEX Technology Week theme of “Experience Future Urbanism”.
Data center modernisation ranks as one of the top digital business priorities for regional CEOs in the next two years, with technology infrastructure modernisation enabling new digital business models, argues Condo Protego, the UAE-based IT infrastructure and information management consultancy and solutions provider.
“Record-high Middle East data center spend shows that regional CEOs understand that modernizing IT infrastructure can deliver a competitive advantage and enable Smart Cities,” said Savitha Bhaskar, COO, Condo Protego. “GITEX is an ideal platform to showcase how modernised IT can lead to real-time insights for better customer and citizen engagement, new revenue streams, and greater efficiency and data protection.”
Showing the strong opportunity for data center modernisation, 81 percent of IT dec- ision-makers agree that without IT transformation, their organizations will no longer be competitive, according to a recent Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) global survey commissioned by Dell EMC and Intel.