Saudi spending on IT to hit $13 billion in two years

A survey of CIOs by Gartner's Executive Programs reveals that enterprises in the Middle East, specifically Saudi Arabia are increasing IT budgets expected by 14.3 percent this year. Areas of priority for the kingdom are seen as cloud computing, virtualisation and e-Government.

Meanwhile, analysts believe that by 2014, 35 per cent of global organisation IT budgets will be spent on cloud services. A recent study by Hewlett Packard and Coleman Research Group said 85 percent of Saudi companies are expected to adopt cloud technologies during 2012. “The importance of cloud computing solutions for us came from the e-Government initiative we need to align with. But cloud computing is definitely the key to the future of the kingdom’s IT modernisation plan - and the biggest benefit of cloud-based infrastructure is IT resource sharing,” said Dr Ayman Fayoumi, vice dean for IT at King Abdulaziz University.