With Tahawul Tech’s inaugural Masters of Tech Awards coming up on Monday 29th January 2018 at Jumeirah Beach Hotel in Dubai, we take a look at the nominees for the Cloud Computing category. The ability to deliver all kinds of IT as a service has the potential to transform business models, and these firms are currently leading the way in cloud provision and services. Here are the firms that are in with a chance of scooping a Masters of Tech Award:
Alibaba Cloud
A subsidiary of retail giant Alibaba Group and headquartered in Hangzhou, China, Alibaba Cloud was initially set up in 2009 as a private cloud to serve the internal demands of Alibaba’s e-commerce businesses. Alibaba Cloud now provides a suite of cloud computing services that covers elastic computing, object storage, relational database, big data analysis, and artificial intelligence in eight geographical regions around the globe. The firm launched its Dubai data centre last year, and is one of the few global cloud providers to have done so in the Middle East.
BMC Software
BMC Software currently has over 10,000 worldwide customers, and aims to challenge a selection of the most important issues that surround cloud today, including cost, visibility, performance, security, automation and migration. The firm’s cloud management tools and focus on DevOps have helped it carve out a strong reputation across the globe.
CA Technologies
From device to application and infrastructure CA Technologies’ cloud management solutions strive to optimise “every aspect” of public, private and hybrid clouds. The firm specialises in delivering information about app performance and visibility across cloud and non-cloud infrastructures, offering management tools that aim to eliminate complexity, reduce costs and increase quality.
Cisco
The world’s undisputed leader in networking has broadened its portfolio in recent years to adapt to an increasingly software-defined age, and now offers a selection of services – security-based ones chief among them – that can enable users to fully capitalise on the opportunities presented by the Internet of Things.
Citrix
Citrix Cloud services simplify the delivery and management of Citrix technologies extending existing on-premises software deployments and creating hybrid workspace services.
The virtual desktop infrastructure provider says its cloud services remove the worry of upgrade cycles through the use of evergreen updates and reduced infrastructure needs, and allow users to deploy apps and desktops – or complete secure digital workspaces – in hours instead of weeks.
CtlrS
CtrlS Datacentres was established in October 2007. The firm’s commitment to taking “total ownership” of projects has resulted in a client portfolio featuring some of the most renowned brands in Indian industry.
The firm has developed the capabilities to provide a suite of offerings from platform level services which include data centre infrastructure, storage, backup, hardware to OS layers, network and security layers.
Dell EMC
Following the completion of 2016’s world-record $67 billion deal that combined Dell and EMC’s enterprise technology businesses into one, Dell EMC now offers a broad suite of software and hardware products. On the cloud front, the firm now prides itself on the ability to manage IT customers who are moving into a hybrid world.
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise
Following the historic split from HP into its own enterprise technology business, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise is now a more agile IT service provider to its customers across the globe. The firm now offers a selection of game-changing services that are enhancing IT operations within the enterprise, including rapid infrastructure provisioning, storage in the cloud, developing and deploying cloud-native applications and brokering and managing a multi-cloud environment.
IBM
IBM plays in all three layers of the cloud, and has made it its mission to infuse artificial intelligence into its services. Over the last few years the firm has taken huge steps to reinvent itself as a cloud, analytics and AI firm, and has gained huge respect for its work around the services enabled by its Watson AI platform.
Microsoft
Microsoft Azure has become a major player in the enterprise public cloud market. The Microsoft Azure cloud combines IaaS and PaaS, allowing organisations to choose between public, private or hybrid clouds environments.
Azure was designed for enterprises looking to connect existing data centres to public or private clouds, and the platform supports popular operating systems, tools, languages and frameworks, including Windows, Linux, SQL Server, C# and Java. The firm’s launch of its AI & Research Group shows how its clouds will be underpinned by intelligent services that can benefit users at the edge in the near future.
Oracle
Oracle’s main cloud advantage arguably lies in providing a full IT stack, with its PaaS, IaaS and SaaS services running on its own hardware. Following its $9.3 billion of software firm Netsuite in 2016, the firm is now in an even stronger position to expand its already world-renowned software business.
Red Hat
Red Hat’s Cloud Infrastructure is a single-subscription offering that lets users build and manage an open, private Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud and “ease their way” into a public-cloud-like infrastructure based on OpenStack.
The firm’s platforms have gained a cult following in its open approach.
SAP
SAP’s Cloud Platform is a platform-as-a-service that offers application development services, and has already been hugely popular in helping a large number of the Middle East’s firms collect, manage, analyse and leverage information.
A staple name in the software industry, SAP has built its success on going to market by industry, and is helping customers in their transition to the cloud. The firm has struck up a number of important cloud partnerships to enhance its services, as well as pushing its HANA platform into the cloud.
Salesforce
Since its launch in 1999, Salesforce has since become the go-to name for CRM software. Since then, the firm’s “pioneering” use of cloud computing has changed the way CRM is delivered and used.
Ever since the firm launched its first CRM solution, Salesforce products have run entirely in the cloud, and CEO Marc Benioff is now widely known as one of the rising stars in the global technology industry.
Teradata
Traditionally focusing on its hardware appliances, Teradata has now reinvented itself to get back to doing what it does best – analytics. CEO Victor Lund has made it his mission to help customers succeed through cloud-based software that can churn through the zettabytes of data that will emerge in the digital age.
VMware
VMware’s Cloud Foundation is “the” integrated cloud infrastructure platform for the hybrid cloud. It aims to provide dynamic software-defined infrastructure, including compute, storage, networking and security to run enterprise applications in both private and public environments.
The virtualisation leader offers a comprehensive Cloud Management platform, and its solutions perfectly complement its expertise in network functions virtualisation.
Zoho Corporation
Zoho One delivers a suite of more than 35 applications with complementary mobile apps so that users can their “entire business” on one suite. The firm says that its offering allows users to reach customers, grow sales, balance books, and work in productive and collaborative ways from any device.
Vote now for the Cloud Computing firm of the year category for the inaugural Masters of Tech Awards.
