End-user spending on public cloud services in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region will total $5.7 billion in 2022, an increase of 19.2%, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc. While still in double digits, growth in 2022 will be slower compared to the forecasted 21.6% growth in 2021.
“A renewed focus on technology growth post COVID-19 in the region is leading to continued growth in public cloud spending,” said Colleen Graham, senior research director at Gartner. “Various MENA governments’ policies on telemedicine, usage of autonomous vehicles, smart cities and a rapid move towards the next phase of the fourth industrial revolution are opening new growth avenues for public cloud in the region. Additionally, the attention given to building and nurturing talent will turn a new leaf in the region’s shift towards becoming a digital economy.”
MENA CIOs are turning towards cloud to secure the quickest time to value for their IT investments made over the last two years. In 2022, MENA CIOs will spend the most on cloud application services (SaaS), which includes business intelligence applications, email and authoring, content services, customer experience and relationship management, and supply chain. This segment will total $2.3 billion, an increase of 16% from 2021, and will account for 40% of the total investment made on public cloud services (see Table 1).
The second largest segment will be cloud application and infrastructure services (PaaS), which is forecast to total $1.1 billion in 2022, an increase of 25.8% from 2021. The highest growth will be recorded by cloud system infrastructure services (IaaS). This segment will grow 36.8% to total $895 million in 2022.
Table 1. MENA Public Cloud Services End-User Spending Forecast (Millions of U.S. Dollars)
| Segment | 2020 | 2020 Growth (%) | 2021 | 2021 Growth (%) | 2022 | 2022 Growth (%) |
| Cloud business process services (BPaaS) total | 647.9 | 7.8 | 734.7 | 13.4 | 807.2 | 9.9 |
| Cloud application infrastructure services (PaaS) total | 712.0 | 42.3 | 904.2 | 27 | 1,137.2 | 25.8 |
| Cloud application services (SaaS) total | 1,676.2 | 22 | 1,993.4 | 18.9 | 2,312.5 | 16 |
| Cloud management and security services total | 410.2 | 30 | 417.1 | 1.7 | 447.4 | 7.3 |
| Cloud system infrastructure services (IaaS) total | 442.2 | 49.5 | 654.6 | 48 | 895.2 | 36.8 |
| Cloud Desktop as a Service (DaaS) | 57.9 | 80.1 | 93.7 | 61.9 | 117.4 | 25.3 |
| Total | 3,946.5 | 26.6 | 4,797.6 | 21.6 | 5,716.9 | 19.2 |
Source: Gartner (October 2021)
Countries in the MENA region are being swept up in the global data revolution as they shift from oil-driven economies to data-driven economies. In a data-driven economy, enterprises harness profits from data and digital transformation and data and governance have become vital issues. “Public cloud services will have an integral role to play in this transition as many public and private sector projects in the pipeline are dependent on successful and secure deployment of public cloud services,” said Graham.
