“Due to continued low global oil prices, the macro economic situation in Gulf countries is creating increased economic pressure. We expect this to negatively impact IT spending, including infrastructure projects, in 2015, and indeed are already seeing signs of decreased spending in the region,” said Mary Mesaglio, research vice president at Gartner.

CIOs will continue to focus on digital transformation with an eye on cost optimization. Cloud, infrastructure and data center, and business intelligence/analytics appear as the Top 3 CIO priorities in Gulf Countries, and these technologies, along with mobility, are emerging as the core foundational technologies for creating digital business in this region.

“Cloud is one of the key drivers for IT infrastructure spend by enterprises and governments while they are creating on premise infrastructure to drive agility and performance,” said Naveen Mishra, research director at Gartner. “Consolidation is another driver for data center initiatives in this region.”

As enterprises and governments invest in mobility, they are increasingly concerned regarding data privacy, security and associated risk. CIOs and infrastructure leaders have a challenging task of supporting these organizational initiatives while protecting corporate and citizen data in 2015 and beyond. These concerns are further creating barriers to adoption of public cloud in the region.