Category: Innovation

New Oracle Research Reveals that Businesses in EMEA are Unaware of Competitive Advantages of Cloud Agility

Study indicates that 58% of businesses’ IT organisations are unprepared for competitive threats, including competitors’ ability to launch new applications faster.

Oracle has announced the results of its ‘Oracle Cloud Agility’ study and revealed that businesses in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) overestimate their agility. While a majority of businesses believe they are agile, Oracle’s research highlights that many organisations cannot flexibly manage workloads or rapidly develop, test, and launch new applications, leaving them poorly prepared to deal with competitive threats. The study also found a lack of awareness among businesses around how technology, like Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), can be used to help address these challenges.

The Oracle Cloud Agility study surveyed 1,004 employees working for large enterprises in EMEA to understand business agility in the age of cloud. The results show that 62% consider their organisation to be agile (i.e., able to adjust quickly to new business opportunities or to iterate new products and services quickly).

Respondents are clear about the benefits of agility, with 78% stating that the ability to rapidly develop, test, and launch new business applications is either important or critically important to the success of their business. In particular, nearly one third of respondents (30%) believe the effective mobilisation of applications and services is the most important factor for business success today when it comes to IT infrastructure.

The study also reveals that the competitiveness impact of agility is critically important to businesses. In fact, the ability of competitors to launch innovative customer services more rapidly was identified as the top threat by businesses (27%). Up to 58% of respondents state their businesses do not have an IT infrastructure capable of responding to these competitive threats.

Significantly, the survey reveals the agility benefits delivered by PaaS are not being leveraged. In fact, according to the survey, 59% of EMEA businesses either cannot, or do not know if they can shift workloads between public, private, and hybrid clouds, and migrate on-premises applications to the cloud. Additionally, respondents indicate only 44% of businesses can develop, test, and deploy new business applications for use on mobile devices within six months, with this figure falling to just 27% within a one month timeframe.

‘There is something of an awareness gap emerging around how businesses can become more agile. While some companies already view themselves as agile, most of these are not yet able to realise the power of PaaS solutions to help them launch new services quickly. Other companies are just now starting their journey on the agility curve,’ said Tino Scholman, Vice-President, Oracle Cloud, EMEA. ‘If you want to become more innovative and experiment more often, then you have to make sure your Cost of Innovation goes down and goes down quickly. We want to help bridge this awareness gap by showing businesses how the right cloud platform solution can enable them to react almost immediately to market conditions and get well ahead of the competition.’

The survey results bear out the assessment that businesses are not fully aware of how PaaS can increase operational agility. Only 34% of respondents state that they fully understand what PaaS is, while 20% admit that they do not understand it at all. For those that say they do understand PaaS, only 28% cite reduced timeframes for application development as a main benefit, far behind less strategic benefits such as savings on the cost of internal IT infrastructure (45%).

‘The best PaaS solutions, such as the Oracle Cloud Platform, deliver levels of agility not seen before. With simplified integration into existing IT infrastructures, the Oracle Cloud Platform can help businesses react immediately to customer demand through new services, while simultaneously driving innovation around internal business applications.’

GSMA Urges Arab States to Maintain Flexibility in Support of Mobile Broadband Growth

Limited Spectrum Made Available for Mobile by Arab Spectrum Management Group Ahead of WRC-15

John Giusti, Deputy Chief Regulatory Officer, GSMA, commented on the outcome of the final meeting of the Arab Spectrum Management Group (ASMG) in Rabat, Morocco in preparation for this November’s World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-15):

“The GSMA welcomes the overall outcome of the ASMG meeting to identify new spectrum for mobile in a number of bands. However, we are concerned that not enough new spectrum will be available to give national regulatory authorities the flexibility they need to fully meet long-term mobile data demand.

“Mobile has already made significant progress in closing the digital divide and bringing both communications services and internet access to previously underserved populations across the Arab States, particularly given the lack of fixed line infrastructure in most countries. However, despite the progress to date, there are several markets where less than 20 per cent of the population has internet access1. Securing additional spectrum for mobile at the WRC-15 conference will be crucial to support future mobile broadband growth across the Arab States, as well as enable the mobile industry to help meet governments’ ambitions to develop smart cities, driverless cars and connected energy management in the region.

“The GSMA is pleased with the ASMG’s decision to support a portion of the L-band (1452-1518MHz) for mobile broadband. This band has met with almost global support ahead of WRC-15, which will lead to significant cost benefits for consumers around the world through economies of scale.

“We further commend the ASMG’s support in making 3.4-3.6GHz available in the high capacity C-band for mobile use, giving Arab States citizens access to high-speed mobile broadband in dense urban areas. We will continue our discussions to increase the availability of harmonised spectrum in the 3.4-4.2GHz frequency range to further optimise the delivery of mobile services.

“However, we were disappointed with the ‘no change’ vote for the sub-700MHz UHF band (470-694MHz), which has characteristics suitable for expanding affordable mobile broadband connectivity to remote and underserved communities. Strong support from some Arab countries for a co-primary allocation for mobile and broadcast in the UHF band was underscored by findings of a GSMA study presented to the ASMG, which showed that terrestrial TV penetration has dropped below 20 per cent in the region and continues to fall2. We call on administrations to support a change in the radio regulations at WRC-15 that would give them flexibility to manage this important UHF spectrum resource efficiently and address local market demand.

“Looking ahead to this November, we hope that the WRC-15 process will create a framework that will enable the Arab administrations that want to move forward to secure the future of the mobile internet to do so. We urge all governments throughout the region to plan ahead now and ensure they have the flexibility to satisfy future mobile data demand, as well as achieve the substantial social and economic benefits that mobile broadband would deliver.”