EXPERT OPINION
technology is architected, particularly
when you want to move things in and out
of the cloud and protect your data. I think
containerisation is transformative – in a Big
Data world, this is massively disruptive.
This is a massive focus in Abu Dhabi. So,
I think the underlying technologies are
the same, it’s the application that’s most
important to a particular economy, county,
region, company, vertical sector – and this
can vary. ◊
Do you think that the demand
for technology innovation will
ever slow in pace?
Marc Waters, Managing Director UK,
Ireland, Middle East and Africa, HPE
compute processing on demand when
you need it with some nice microservices
– this is a really important part of your
hybrid mix and everyone should have that
within there.
My own personal recommendation to any
CIO reading this would be to think very
carefully about where you are putting
your data and keep in control of it because
once you pay to entrust your data into
somebody else’s cloud where you’re
renting space, you’re going to have to pay
a significant uplift to take your data back.
So I’d suggest understanding why you’re
doing that, what the cost is of doing that
and why it makes sense for your business.
What plans do you have in place
moving forward and what trends
do you expect to see evolving?
We have plans to continue to grow. In
terms of our market plans, we could
think about the domains of our business:
redefining collected experiences at the
Edge which involves security, connectivity
and analytics; optimising our customers’
hybrid environment in terms of the
balance of helping people understand
how best to take advantage of public
cloud technologies – one of the big trends
there is the embedding of technology and
embedding intelligence within technology.
Most of the demand that’s being driven
around data centre capacity is, in my
opinion, around AI and Big Data outcomes.
The data sets are becoming so different
and there’s an opportunity to look at how
42
Issue 13
Humankind is incredible and what’s been
achieved over many years on this planet
with innovators and with passionate
people driving transformation forward will
never be diminished. Humans will always
want to push the boundaries of research
and innovation.
That will continue and so it should.
Ultimately, the purpose of our company is
to bring together really smart people with
incredible technology to advance the way
that we all live and work. I truly believe in
that purpose.
The power of technology is huge in
solving some of the greatest problems on
the planet. Nothing will stop humankind
continuing to move forward and in terms
of whether robotics will replace workers
and take jobs – I think this has been
said many times before about many
technologies and I think all of it is additive
to humankind, rather than negative.
WE’VE GOT
VERY PEAKY
WORKLOADS
WHERE THE
DEMAND IS
UNSURE, YET
THERE IS HUGE
VALUE TO BE
DERIVED FROM
THAT.
How do modern technology
developments differ in the UAE
compared to Saudi Arabia?
The technology is the same so it’s
essentially all about the application of the
technology and what people are looking
to achieve. So, if you look at Saudi, there’s
a lot of focus on how you can use data
and high-performance compute from
a security perspective which is a very
important area within the economy.
If you look at Dubai or Abu Dhabi – they’re
using the same technology to deliver
slightly different outcomes. In Abu Dhabi,
we recently signed an MOU with Abu Dhabi
Digital Authority to build a data federation
platform for it which builds on an initial
MOU we signed earlier in the year to look at
using data to transform citizen experience.
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