Regional customers using cloud to future proof, says Sage

Regional customers are adopting the cloud platform as a race to outperform their competitors. Five years ago, cloud skeptics dominated the crowd majority – today they are a minority. The driving need for regional end customers is to make sure their systems are future proof and to ensure their technology is cutting edge. The race to outpace competitors is around superior customer experience, feels Mansoor Sarwar, Regional Technical Director, Sage Middle East.

“What we are seeing most of the customers are talking about is making sure their systems are future proof, and they are at the cutting edge of technology. They understand if the competition takes the decision before them to introduce leading augmented and virtual reality, embedded tools in the customer experience, they will take the customers away,” says Sarwar, so it is a race to secure customers before they exit for a superior experience, elsewhere.

A typical inhibitor that prevents regional end customers, especially from the chiefs of finance, from adopting cloud platforms is their anxiety around security systems and data localisation. To overcome this mindset, Sage conducted extensive thought leadership workshops, conference room pilots, and external datacentre site tours, to prove that internal datacentre security is usually weaker than public datacentres.

Sage has also allowed its on-premises installed base of customers to co-exist with its cloud savvy generation. “Unlike many of our competition, we did not pull the plug on on-premises perpetual products even today. If a customer sticks to on-premises we do not force them. We give them this road map and visibility and how easy this switch is to the cloud world, but they can do it when and if they are comfortable and ready for it,” stresses Sarwar.

Today’s regional cloud skeptics are deliberating whether it is the right platform for them and having second thoughts. Converged and hybrid infrastructures, local versus global datacentres, are the topics of their considerations.