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New Cisco Research Reveals Collaboration, Cloud, and Security are its Top

Challenges in the UAE

According to Cisco’s new Accelerating Digital Agility Research, remote work tools and protect customer or employee data in the
CIOs and IT decision makers (ITDMs) across the UAE are looking distributed work environment. IT teams must create optimized
to maximize investments in digitization and drive innovation after end-user experiences to keep pace with IT environments that
a difficult year which raised the profile of IT leaders in driving have become increasingly distributed, dynamic, and complex.
critical workplace innovation. Over the past twelve months, Close to two thirds of the CIOs and ITDMs surveyed agree that
CIOs and ITDMs from across the globe have been challenged to user experience should focus on delight versus satisfaction.
accelerate their digital and cloud capabilities while protecting their To deliver a great user experience, 86% think it is important to
organizations from a growing list of expanding security threats. ensure a consistent application performance across both the
In their efforts to create smart workplaces, IT leaders in the UAE application and infrastructure, and 86% believe it is important to
must look to maximize critical investments made in 2020. To set make infrastructure as dynamic as application software to meet
up their organizations for success in 2021 and beyond, IT leaders the changing policy and optimization needs of the application
have adapted priorities and strategy to focus on core issues and developer. While the user experience should aim to delight,
including delivering secure collaboration tools to keep distributed the majority of respondents (85%) say it is important or very
workforces productive, maximizing technology investments from important to maintain application-to-infrastructure security to
the past year, delivering the best digital experience to employees meet compliance without slowing down the business. The need
and customers, embracing cloud and “as a Service,” and tackling for agility, speed, scalability and security is driving adoption of
corporate and societal issues with technology. "IT leaders are at hybrid cloud environments and SASE (Secure Access Service
the forefront of ensuring critical success for their organizations Edge) solutions. CIOs and ITDMs are using cloud to achieve
in 2021," said Shukri Eid, Managing Director, Cisco Gulf Region. business resilience. However, there is no one-size-fits-all cloud
"Even as questions remain and new challenges will surface, CIOs solution. While most CIOs and ITDMs (83%) agree it is important
and IT decision makers in the UAE are telling us they need to to offer freedom of choice when it comes to cloud environments
accelerate digital agility for their teams, so they have the speed, – whether on premises, public cloud, private cloud or SaaS –
flexibility and choice to consume services across both traditional 87% think offering a consistent operational model across these
and modern environments." environments is essential. CIOs and ITDMs have adopted SASE
Key findings: solutions because they were investing in cloud applications
To prepare for the future of work, teams need highly secure that needed to be secured (63%), they like to stay up-to-date on
access and the best collaboration experiences to succeed as a industry best practices (57%) and/or their workforce is going to
hybrid workforce. While a majority (60%) of CIOs and ITDMs are stay distributed (47%). Customers expect a cloud-consumption
unsure of what the future of work looks like, 86% believe that experience regardless of whether their solutions are deployed
maintaining security, control, and governance across user devices, on-prem or in the cloud, leading to widespread adoption of “as
networks, clouds, and applications is essential. Most (87%) agree a Service” solutions. Of those surveyed, 77% have adopted “as
it is important to empower a distributed workforce with seamless a Service” solutions and 81% use flexible consumption models.
access to applications and high-quality collaborative experiences. Three fourths of those surveyed believe that “as a Service” will
Securing the expanded threat landscape created by a distributed help deliver a better experience for the end user and a better
workforce is paramount – 86% believe it is important to secure experience for IT teams, helping their organizations achieve
operational consistency. In addition, 72% say “as a Service” will
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provide better business outcomes, and 78% want “as a Service”
solutions to simplify processes and remove risk. Technology will
be a driving factor in the facilitation of CIOs and ITDMs to tackle
talent retention, internal corporate initiatives and broader societal
issues in 2021. Most CIOs and ITDMs (89%) believe the ability
to attract and retain talent in the all-digital world will be critical.
Nearly half of those surveyed said they are upskilling current talent
(40%) and investing in talent in new areas (42%) over the next
12 months. Most CIOs and ITDMs (93%) plan to tackle internal
initiatives in 2021, including sustainability (50%), employee
Accelerating Digital mental health (46%), privacy (53%), diversity and inclusion (49%).
Agility In addition, 91% will tackle external societal issues in 2021,
Global CIO and IT decision maker technology insights including digital divide (38%), healthcare (42%), climate change
for a cloud-first world
(32%), social justice (37%), human rights (35%), misinformation
A Cisco Digital Report
or “fake news” (30%), poverty, hunger and homelessness (30%).

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