Digital Transformation Missions Gather Pace in Saudi Arabia

Riyadh – :

IT decision-makers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) are doubling down on their digital transformation efforts, according to new research by market insight specialists YouGov¹.

Commissioned by F5 ahead of next week’s GITEX conference in Dubai, the findings highlight encouraging progress and awareness for emerging technologies set to underpin the nations’ future transformation plans.

“Businesses in Saudi Arabia are clearly ramping up their abilities to provide fast, seamless digital experiences,” said Ehab Derbas, Senior Director for Saudi Arabia and Egypt at F5.

“We’re now seeing that organizations are starting to anticipate greater automation as IT and operational technology convergence. In addition, they are also embracing the promise of AI to adapt to conditions that change faster than ever. At the heart of all this are applications, and their safe deployment across multiple clouds.”

Driven by consumer demand and expanding app portfolios, most decision-makers ranked 5G top of their trends chart (47%), followed by multi-cloud networking (40%). Web Application and API protection (WAAP) services claimed the third spot (35%), with the technology encompassing WAF, DDoS protection, bot management, and API protection. Thirty-five per cent are also keeping an eye on AI Ops platforms (combining big data and machine learning functionality to support all primary IT operations functions).

Digital transformation gains (customer-centric) teeth

The focus of all respondents’ digital transformation missions centered on customer-centricity and operational efficiencies.

43% are employing AI and machine learning to augment operations (e.g., AIOps or AI-based security), whereas 42% are automating business process by integrating applications (e.g., multi-channel communications between chat and website, a seamless experience between mobile app and desktop for a digital banking or e-health solution). 40% are also using AI and machine learning to automate and optimize business processes for efficiency and/or effectiveness (e.g., fixing workflow bottlenecks in customer service).

In other future-seeking moves, 34% are replacing and/or augmenting business functions with applications for new revenue streams (e.g., implementing a marketing automation system), and 32% are employing APIs to create new or participate in third-party ecosystems (e.g., open banking or social media logins).

In terms of specific digital transformation benefits, 40% hailed employee productivity improvements (improved collaboration and decision-making), followed by customer satisfaction (39%), operational IT efficiency (38%) and new business/market penetration opportunities (37%).

Modernizing app portfolios and services

YouGov noted both growth and increased dispersion of app portfolios; 32% of respondents work for organizations with between 100 and 500 applications in play; and 30% of organizations juggled portfolios of between 500 and 1000 apps.

Zooming in further, application services are increasingly deployed in a variety of different environments, with a high percentage of organizations using a mix of models. Forty-three per cent use public cloud, 41% leverage on-premises solutions and 38% benefit from co-location models. The popularity of managed services (31%), edge (28%) and SaaS (26%) deployments further underline a shift towards app heterogeneity.

Notably, more than half of Saudi IT decision-makers (51%) are now deploying modern apps (mobile, cloud-native and microservices).

Navigating multi-clouds

Sixty per cent of Saudi respondents indicated that cloud services spend was up in the past year. In related projections, 39% expect more than 50% of their app portfolio to be hosted in the cloud within the next three years.

The most prominent emerging strategic cloud trends over the next three years include private cloud services (36%), SaaS (33%), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (31%) and Platform-as-a-Service (30%).

When asked about app deployment challenges across multiple clouds, 35% said they struggled to manage the complexity of management tools and APIs. And 34% struggled with gaining visibility into application health and controlling application sprawl.

Security also remains a perennial challenge, with 83% reporting that they would benefit from additional cybersecurity expertise in their organization. Skill gaps were flagged for network security (23%), multi-cloud (21%) and public cloud (21%).

“The deployment locations for applications and the security and delivery technologies that support them are diverging, and as SaaS adoption and edge deployments generally increase, the balance will continue to shift toward greater dispersal,” added Derbas.

“Today, Saudi organizations enjoy new levels of freedom to choose the ideal deployment and consumption model for each app security and delivery technology, depending on priorities and what they want to achieve. That is why, more than ever, making the best decision for each supporting technology—and thus for the application itself—requires focused attention as well as vendors whose solutions can work both effectively and consistently across a large variety of deployment models.”