UAE data centre market poised for significant growth: IDC

The UAE’s data centre market is set for significant growth over the coming five years, with International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.3 per cent for the 2013-2018 period. Increasing demand for business continuity and disaster recovery, together with growing computational and storage needs, is spurring this growth in data centre services revenue. At the same time, increasing customer interest in cloud services is also ratcheting up demand for data centre space and associated services, IDC said. “The UAE market offers sizeable opportunities for both data centre services providers and IT services providers to work with customers in establishing their data centre infrastructures,” said Adriana Rangel, research director for systems and infrastructure solutions at IDC Middle East, Turkey, and Africa. "The UAE data centre technology market is at a crossroads," continues Rangel. "On the one hand, there is a strong push toward investments in infrastructure projects and application modernization initiatives across various industry sectors. On the other, customers are aiming to curb their IT spending and are constantly evaluating new technology models to help them improve the way they function while keeping their overheads down. Among these models, data centre -delivered services have become quite popular as customers are increasingly utilizing third-party data centre for their hosting requirements. Customers are also increasingly hosting their disaster recovery sites with third-party data centre providers, with stringent SLAs in place to ensure the high availability, redundancy, and quality of the services delivered," Rangel added.