Business applications and data are at the core of digital transformation

Assaad El Saadi, Regional Director Middle East, Pure Storage.

Digital transformation is, in reality, a business process transformation that leverages technology to make things possible. So, whether we call it business transformation or digital transformation, we are essentially talking about the same thing. Two elements are at the core of any digital transformation effort – the business application being used in combination with data.

The fundamentals of technology have not changed. Business objectives must underpin any technology deployment with the view of driving business growth. However, it is equally important to be using the right tools at the right time, and quickly recognising when a technology is no longer viable, and when to change direction.

Business heads are the idea creators. They are the ones that best know the strategy for the core business and the types of products and services that they need to offer in order to gain a competitive advantage. Couple this with the technology, specifically with data and applications, as being the core of any digital transformation effort, and that is where the magic happens.

Given technology’s role today as an enabler of business, arguably the most critical responsibility of a technology head is being a champion of innovation. Leaders must ensure that innovation is part of the company culture and that any technology investment is tied to the company’s medium and long-term goals. 

Leaders also needs to keep abreast of the latest technologies and build relationships with vendors who are designing tomorrow’s products. Finally, once technology is deployed, there needs to be collaboration with the rest of the IT team to ensure that the investment not only delivers on the strategic goals but also delivers functionally.

Pure Storage FlashArray X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe & NVMe-oF flash storage array with the potential to unite SAN and DAS into a single, consolidated, shared and fundamentally more efficient data-centric architecture. The new FlashArray X family makes everything faster, databases, virtualised and containerised environments, test and dev initiatives and web-scale applications, thus enabling companies to drive business intelligence and get the most value out of their data.

FlashBlade is built for advanced scale-out storage, architected to accelerate modern workloads and simplify infrastructure. It is tuned to deliver multi-dimensional performance for any data size, structure, or access, enabling organisations to go from big data to intelligent data and delivering 10x or greater savings in power, space, and cooling costs on average.

AIRI is the industry’s first complete AI-ready infrastructure. Architected by Pure Storage and NVIDIA, the solution is powered by FlashBlade storage and NVIDIA DGX-1 and DGX-2 servers. With use cases across genomics, machine learning, AI, IoT and many more, AIRI offers enterprises a simple, fast, and future-proof infrastructure that can serve as the foundation for AI initiatives. 

Assaad El Saadi, Regional Director Middle East, Pure Storage.
Assaad El Saadi, Regional Director Middle East, Pure Storage.

Highlights 

  • Digital transformation is, in reality, a business process transformation that leverages technology to make things possible.
  • The most critical responsibility of a technology head is being a champion of innovation. 
  • Leaders must ensure innovation is part of the company culture and any technology investment is tied to medium and long-term goals. 
  • Leaders also need to keep abreast of latest technologies and build relationships with vendors designing tomorrow’s products. 
  • Once technology is deployed, there needs to be collaboration with the rest of the IT team.