Almost three in four Middle Eastern organisations that have not moved their digital estates and IT environments to the cloud, plan to do so in 2019, a Microsoft survey published by Tradearabia shows. The "2019 Middle East Digital Transformation Manifesto" surveyed over 1,300 technology and digital decision makers in the Middle East.
Nearly half of respondents (48 percent) said that their organisation had yet to move some or any of its IT infrastructure to a third party cloud, but more than 73 percent plan to do so in the coming year. Almost two in five Middle East organisations (39 percent) have adopted Artificial Intelligence (AI) and more than one third (37 percent) plan to do so in 2019.
Some 72 percent are planning to spend on AI this year, suggesting that most previous adopters intend further investments. Around one in three (34 percent) expect to spend more than 5 percent of their budget on AI, and 9 percent are setting aside more than 10 percent.
Some 63 percent of respondents said their company lost either productivity or data to a cyber incident in 2018, and 46 percent of these victims were affected more than once. Almost one in ten victims reported incidents once a week or more.
The overarching lesson from these findings is that the region's need for a trusted, secure, intelligent cloud has never been greater, said Ihsan Anabtawi, chief operating and marketing officer for Microsoft Gulf.