By Editor
As one of the two ISPs in the UAE, Du has a great reach into the enterprise segment through it voice and data services. It has also built up leading edge capacities and competence in IT Managed services and is looking to make further inroads. Hany Fahmy Aly, Executive Vice President, Enterprise Business at du discusses elaborately on the ISP’s range of offerings in Managed Services
Discuss du’s consulting and Managed Services available for the B2B enterprise segment
A managed service is defined as the remote management of information technology to support a business customer’s processes. A managed service typically includes remote provisioning and trouble management, remote monitoring of all solution elements, detailed service-level agreements, and contracts that extend beyond one year.
We offer a range of managed services for our business customers. Our consultative approach helps to understand enterprise’s business needs and develop tailored solutions. All solutions are based on proven methodologies and have been designed to ensure a transparent, impartial, and meets business challenges.
Our managed Services has five key portfolios. Global Managed Services helps organisations stay connected seamlessly to their international business locations around the world by tapping into our secure and fully-resilient global MPLS network. Du’s Business Cloud solutions offer organization the ability to leverage benefits of private, public or hybrid cloud backed by industry leading Colocation services. Our Managed Security services allow customer to focus on business while du managed security services take all the operational challenged and stay ahead of the evolving treat landscape. Managed Video Conferencing as a service allows organisations to collaborate quickly and efficiently. On the Mobility front, our range of services includes Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Machine to Machine (M2M) communications.
Are these services available throughout the UAE? Any other territories outside the UAE?
Our Managed Services are predominately designed for UAE-based business customers, however, businesses are increasingly going global and therefore we have partnered with services providers across the globe to ensure that customers are able to connect their overseas branches together. The feature rich Global Managed Services allows customers to use du’s MPLS network to experience next generation features with inherently self-healing network.
Do you see a growing demand for such managed network services and others from the Enterprise segment?
Managed Connectivity, mobility and managed security are the highest growth markets, being driven by the need of organisations to roll out next generation networks and secure them (a key activity for all), in order that they are subsequently able to attain the many business benefits of a highly connected and mobile workforce. Enterprises realize that efficient and costs effective ICT infrastructure is not only necessity but also help them to gain competitive advantage. Our Managed Services allows them to focus on their core business without worrying about managing ICT infrastructure.
Do you provide these services with your own in-house technical services team or through partnerships with other integrators in the region?
We have developed expertise over the years to offer a complete range of Managed Services. Our typical engagement with customers for Managed Services begins with a team of pre-sales Engineers who understand customer’s business and technical requirements and design solutions specifically to meet their needs. Once a customer signs off the proposal, our project management teams ensure that all activities are synchronized and delivered efficiently. After delivering services successfully, our services management team takes care of the customer throughout the lifecycle of the service.
What are the virtualized solutions that you provide? Discuss demand for these in region.
Cloud is a game changing phase of IT that is not only impacting the way computing services are and will be delivered, but also the way in which users will use IT. Cloud makes a compelling business case on both technical and commercial aspects. It replaces CAPEX component of the IT infrastructure with a ‘Pay-as-you-grow’ or OPEX model. At the same time, it offers non-commercial benefits such as scalability and ease of implementation. These benefits of Cloud help organizations quickly source computing resources On-Demand. Today, Cloud is a reality that has just begun to realize its potential.
Among many other projects, our ‘College on the Cloud’ (http://www.du.ae/en/about/media-centre/newsdetails/du-and-IHC-join-hands-to-make-College-on-Cloud-a-reality is one of the leading cloud projects which we have successfully delivered.