Cloud 
computing will start “booming” in 2012 following a phase of experimentation by companies this year, although the Middle East could remain behind more premature markets such as Europe and the US, according to US-based data centre and networking specialist, Brocade.
Yarob Sakhnini, systems engineering manager, CEMA, Brocade, said that service providers in the region stand to benefit from cloud computing in 2012 as public cloud grows in prominence.
“Cloud is still very young. There is no benchmark to base our growth so we are expecting things to pick up by next year. Now most of the projects are experimental. People are still trying to see what will happen. We expect things to start booming by 2012,” he said.
In terms of the potential cloud computing holds for telecom operators in the Middle East, Sakhnini sees a big difference between private cloud, which is controlled by the enterprise, and public cloud, which is controlled by the service providers. “Service provider networks become much more important when you are talking about public cloud,” he said.
“If you have a network where your data centre is just across the wall, the service providers’ network doesn’t really help there, but if you have got a data centre sitting half way across the world, then service provider networks become really important.”
However, in the Middle East, demand for public cloud could be slower than in more mature markets such as Europe and the US, as enterprises appear more reluctant to embrace public cloud, according to Sakhnini.
“We are seeing more and more people interested in private cloud in the Middle East rather than the public cloud, because the infrastructure for the public cloud is not there yet so people are hesitant to move their services from under their control and put it into somebody else’s control. This is why we are seeing more things happening on the private cloud today in the Middle East,” he said.
