GCC CIOs and CTOs’ number one target is digital transform according to Rimini Street survey.
Rimini Street, a global provider of enterprise software products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products and a Salesforce partner, today announced the Gulf Co-Operation Council (GCC) States’ IT spending habits in their The 2022 IT Buyer Sentiment Survey.
Conducted by Censuswide on behalf of Rimini Street, the survey elicited the opinions of 505 CIOs and CTOs in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman working in telecoms, financial services, oil and gas, retail and manufacturing, between October and November 2021.
Digital transformation key
72% of CIOs and CTOs agree digital transformation investments are key to their success and 52% expect to see return-on-investment (ROI) in one to two years. However, 76% of respondents admit that up to 50% of their licensed enterprise software applications go unused.
“The findings in the GCC are very similar to a global study we did in early 2020 with CFOs, who also say digital transformation investments are critical to their success,” said Emmanuelle Hose, group vice president and theatre general manager, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Rimini Street. “The major question facing GCC CIOs and CTOs is, ‘What is the best route to achieve modernisation?’, because the study suggests there are doubts about the cloud and its ability to offer a smooth transition. Our report indicates there are opportunities to optimise existing applications and innovate at the edge, which we can help clients with by offering unified support so that they can focus on change.”
Number one priority
Across the region, 15% of respondents said digital transformation is their number one priority compared to other corporate priorities, but there was variance across the region with respondents tallying as follows, Oman 23%, KSA 22%, Bahrain 18%, UAE 13%, Qatar 8% and Kuwait 4%.
According to Rimini Street, this raises questions over the value of highly complex, disruptive migrations of core enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications to their Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) equivalent, as such projects often take many years to complete. CIOs and CTOs in the region want innovation with security and privacy protection as the number one priority for IT initiatives, followed by next-generation disruptive technology initiatives, risk management and compliance, and revenue-generating technology initiatives. The challenge is choosing a strategy that allows them to move with agility and at pace, targeting innovation where it will be most effective.
“We appreciate that most companies want and need to customise their ERP system for performance and differentiation, but often lack the right software vendor support, which does not typically include customisation support in standard maintenance programs. This forces the need to hire expensive, external consultants or dedicate internal resources to support business-critical, customised code,” said Taher Haj-Yousef, regional manager Middle East, Rimini Street. “By switching to third party support, clients alleviate these challenges and avoid highly disruptive change. It also demonstrates that there is a clear alternative path to modernisation by optimising existing applications and innovating at the edge.”
Varying approaches
The survey suggests that CIOs and CTOs are considering a variety of approaches to modernising their enterprise application environments. 30% plan to migrate to the cloud with a hybrid cloud model, while 28% plan to ‘lift and shift’ to a public cloud infrastructure-as-a-service such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud or AWS. 26% are planning to migrate to a private cloud, but only 16% are considering a ‘rip and replace’ migration, which would have them switch from their existing in-house applications to the SaaS equivalent of their current applications. More than half (54%) are considering a move to a hosted cloud environment for their internally run enterprise applications but intend to move away from their existing vendor.
This shows that there are a variety of methods to modernise enterprise IT environments, often without requiring the disruption of replacing stable existing business applications. Further, it underlines the point that customers do not feel obliged to stay on the migration path dictated by the software vendors and are looking for alternative approaches.
Vendor frustrations
CIOs and CTOs across the GCC are not entirely satisfied with the support that vendors offer. 27% say one of their top challenges with their enterprise application vendor is a lack of support for customisation, and 26% complain of a lack of access to an experienced engineer. The top three challenges with software vendor support are explaining the same issues multiple times (41%), high costs (39%) and a lack of responsiveness and ownership (39%).
Given companies across the region are moving into a crucial phase of transformation, it is vital they have confidence that their mission-critical business applications are supported and are receiving value-for-money in terms of the level of support provided. As many clients have hybrid IT environments, it also means they have multiple service levels spanning cloud vendors and partners, which can lead to longer service times in a vendor-based support model.
To further collaboration between regional and international CISOs, EliteCISOs recently held their first regional conference.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Louis Parks
Quelle/Source: ITP.net, 07.01.2022
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