Users in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have a new managed cloud to look up to.
UAE telco is launching its Business Cloud Platform with the help of Encloud, a Dubai-based MSP and systems integrator.
The new cloud platform has all three main levels of the cloud stack, starting from the bottom with IaaS, moving to the middle with PaaS and ending at the top with SaaS. These are all in addition to UAE telco’s exiting managed portfolio, which boasts backup and storage and virtual servers, all of which come with bandwidth.
The pair has more partners than each other. Cisco, Citrix and EMC are on this bandwagon, helping support virtual desktop, community cloud and private cloud services.
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“Managed services provide companies with the opportunity to employ a full suite of IT services to suit their business needs, without having to employ professionals within their company,” said Hatem Bamatraf, executive vice president of the enterprise du. “The launch of du Business Cloud Platform services brings further value to our managed services suite, giving our enterprise customers the freedom to focus on their core business while we take care of the rest.”
The Middle East and North African markets are hot when it comes to cloud services, or so says Gartner. Through 2016, these services will grow over 20 percent a year.
Clouds in the Kingdom
Recently MSP Today shared news that Saudi Arabian IT shops are cautiously looking at the cloud as a way to save money and increase efficiency, all this according to a report from research house IDC.
Now IDC is diving into the UAE market for managed IT services, and see these services taking hold quicker than the cloud.
In Saudi Arabia, the desire for privacy and security of corporate data leads IT managers in the kingdom to cast a wary eye towards the cloud. Also, the penetration of virtualization, which lies underneath cloud services, is low.
Managed IT services apparently cause fewer concerns. Like with the cloud, the driving factor is improved efficiency of operations.
IDC found that managed and datacenter services are growing 16 percent and 20 percent per year respectively, and the two markets constitute just over a half billion dollars in annual sales.
This is quite a change for the two countries, which have traditionally been reluctant to embrace this sort of outsourcing. “This region has traditionally not been very pro outsourcing,” noted Saurabh Verma, program manager for IT services at IDC Middle East, Africa and Turkey. “However, prevailing macroeconomic conditions, changing customer priorities, dynamic market conditions, and a variety of other factors have created a strong value proposition for managed services. Organizations are being pushed to reduce their operating expenses and increase efficiency at the same time, and many are finding it very difficult to improve their processes with in-house IT resources. In addition, intensifying competition and increasingly demanding customers are driving them to outsource their ‘peripheral’ activities and focus more on their core business,” he added.
Top services include shared Web hosting, colocation and dedicated server hosting.
In the region, customers tend to not go all in for services, and don’t generally allow a service provider to take over large swathes of the IT operation. Instead, customers hand off smaller portions of their infrastructure.
“Discrete outsourcing, shorter contract durations, smaller contract sizes, and the flexibility that comes with not having to transfer resources are combining to make managed services a strong value proposition for the region’s businesses,” Verma said. “All of these attributes enable customers to ‘test the water’ before opting to evaluate a larger outsourcing contract with their supplier. As such, we believe that both managed and datacenter services will continue to witness strong growth in the UAE and Saudi Arabia over the coming years.”
Edited by
Alisen Downey
