SMEs in Qatar switching to ‘Cloud’ in a big way

With the high degree of Internet and smartphone penetration, Qatar, as a country, is well placed to take advantage of the information revolution to become a knowledge-based economy, said a top industry expert from the US.  The adoption for new technology and innovation is very high. Increasing number of small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs), including most startups in Qatar and the region, are switching to Cloud-based technologies to ensure cost efficiency, agility, and better safety and security of data and information.
“Qatar is more digital than most of the markets in the world. The industry components are there for going more digital to become an information-based society across multiple sectors, including infrastructure, healthcare, transport among others, for taking advantage of the information revolution,” Rajan Krishnan, Group Vice President at Oracle told The Peninsula in an interview.
Rajan, who was here to participate at an event titled: ‘Oracle Digital Days in Doha’, added: “In this era of machine age (Internet of Things), on the one hand the market has the components, but to take full advantage of the revolution, you need to have some building blocks, such as the right set of infrastructure, platform, and capabilities that are built on standards that allow the user to take advantage of the modern tools.”
Elaborating further the concept of ‘ digital capabilities’ he said that suppose a customer walks into a store of an automotive retailer, so the supplier should know all the relevant information to avoid asking redundant questions to the customer, which may irritate him/her. Similarly in the supply chain, one needs to have visibility into inventory levels, visibility into logistics, transportation management, which should be at the finger tips.
“This entire gamut that is available with us can be consumed in the local market, like Qatar”, said Rajan, who is responsible for the ‘Applications Product Development’ at Oracle, the California-based tech giant. He noted that it is the fastest growing segment within the technology industry. And Oracle Cloud is the fastest growing Cloud company.
Rajan also said that many companies have made the transition from ‘on premise’ applications to Cloud service providers, to avoid taking the pain of buying software, installing, upgrading, maintaining, patching and managing the fleet.
He highlighted that switching to Cloud is not only cost effective and more efficient, but has many more advantages, such as, it provides more speed and agility to adopt innovation at a faster rate.
“Given the advantages, newer companies and startups are opting for Cloud right from the bagging to avoid dealing with the history and legacy of all the applications. While others are using hybrid, which means keeping some applications at their own premises, while the rest on Cloud."  
He further said that Oracle is the only company that provide all the capabilities— PaaS (Platform as a Service), infrastructure, and SaaS (Software as a Service)—unlike others.