BIOS Blog

To be taken with a pinch of salt.

Cloud in the Middle East:
Studies show only 5% of companies have fully embraced cloud. We expect this to significantly increase (well, we would say that). The advantages of cloud through the elimination of CapEX and depreciation coupled with the scalability and agility are just too big for companies to ignore. We hope CEO’s now take a more active position in deciding which technology to build their businesses on.

IT departments going to the board to buy Traditional IT will face more and more push back. We expect traditional IT providers and vendors to find themselves swimming in an ever diminishing pond. We also expect several ‘kodak’ moments in 2018 for those providers and companies that don’t embrace cloud.

BIOS Middle East is delighted to announce that once again we have been recertified as a Cisco Gold Partner and have passed the focused audit for our Cloud and Managed Services. As one of only 15 Cisco Gold Partners in the UAE, BIOS renews its exclusive status which is renowned for being the highest possible level of accreditation with Cisco. The status recognises BIOS’ ability to sell, install and support Cisco solutions. The certification is judged on factors including personnel, support and specialisation.

Speaking of the recertification, BIOS’ Managing Director, Dominic Docherty said, “Here at BIOS we pride ourselves on employing exceptional expertise and delivering unbeatable products, solutions and services. Our partner relationships are central to our objectives which allow us to not only deliver outstanding technical solutions but to build our portfolio of industry-leading accreditation, setting us apart from our competitors. We have had a strong partnership with Cisco for many years and I am delighted that they have once again recognised BIOS as a Gold Partner.”

The United Arab Emirates is leading the charge in the Middle East’s rapidly evolving financial technology sector, with international interest and investors flowing into the region. As this interest grows, FinTech investors are looking for stable, established infrastructure to support and grow. And a big part of today’s FinTech infrastructure is cloud services, which are supporting the revolution of FinTech in the Middle East.

Financial services is no longer the staid, nine-to-five business it once was. With customers demanding 24/7 access to their accounts from multiple devices, financial services firms have been forced the embrace cloud technology whether as soon as possible to meet customer demand and avoid getting left in the dust. Cloud services support this change in a number of different ways.

You might think that your network is safe from attack. You might have even weathered the storm against ransomware or a DDOS a

ttack. But have you tried your luck against a determined, sophisticated attacker? A security gap analysis can help you find gaps in your network that attackers will capitalize upon, securing your netw

Whether you’re looking for a new backup and disaster recovery service provider or you’ve had the same one for ages, there are several questions you should keep in mind to ensure you have the most effective backup and disaster recovery plan.

1. Are you backing up the right files?

Obviously, you need to be sure that your backup and disaster recovery plan covers the most important files for your business. But think beyond just work product and database files: what about system configurations, metadata, application licenses, hidden files and calendar events? Backups of these “edge cases” will be essential to restoring your system from scratch if and when the time comes.

We are happy to announce BIOS have achieved the following ISO certificates for our cloud and managed service offerings:

• ISO/IEC 27001:2013 - information security standard
• ISO 9001:2015 - Quality management systems
• ISO 22301 Societal security -- Business continuity management systems
• ISO 20000-1: Service management system

By certifying with these standards it provides evidence to our customers that BIOS have and continues to invest in tools, personnel, policies, procedures and controls to ensure their systems and data are secure and managed to internationally recognized standards.
BIOS previously became the first Cisco Gold Partner in the Middle East to also become a Cisco Master Managed Service Provider and a Cisco Powered Cloud Provider. Our journey to becoming ISO certified began with attaining these levels of accreditation which are largely based on the ISO standards.

BIOS Middle East, the United Arab Emirates #1 Cloud Service Provider, is ready to face the future with its new integrated cloud offering. Azure Stack built on Cisco and managed by BIOS brings the power of Microsoft Azure in-country. Azure Stack will provide the same look and feel as Azure while federating to Azure to take advantage of things such as Big Data Analytics, Development tools & Artificial Intelligence. The stack which comes with a fully managed service and security wrap around is available on a shared platform, Azure Stack-as-a-Service or as a dedicated appliance, Azure Stack. The shared platform caters for SME's while the dedicated platform is targeted towards Enterprises. BIOS launched this groundbreaking new product on the CISCO stand at GITEX 2017, the Middle East's largest IT industry exhibition.

Takaful Emarat, UAE's premier provider of Shariah-compliant life and health insurance, is enhancing its infrastructure with BIOS, United Arab Emirates' foremost cloud computing and disaster recovery specialist. After an exhaustive search by a panel of internal experts, the Dubai-based Takaful Emarat chose to work with BIOS's, in-country cloud, CloudHPT.

Key among Takaful Emarat's requirements was an in-country cloud infrastructure, which could leverage various techno

logies for a complex IT environment. The company's tech refresh will replace much of Takaful Emarat's legacy IT infrastructure, allowing the company to remain competitive in a challenging marketplace.

Dominic Docherty, Founder and MD, BIOS Middle East and Mohammad AlHawari, Executive Board Member, Takaful Emarat-Insurance

Back in the early days of computing, all resources were local. Even when machines were networked, tools for maintaining and managing computer systems were entirely onsite. Everything was handled by internal IT techs that were employed by the company that owned the computers. Much of the software that ran on these computers was purpose-built or heavily customized, requiring professional programmers to update and maintain. It wasn’t long before this changed.

            Managing services and staff internally, like we did in the old days, is extremely inefficient. When viewed from an industry-level perspective, it leads to a massive duplication of services and redundant efforts. Expertise becomes constrained, as individual veterans are siloed from one another, and cost goes up for everyone.

SIEM stands for Security Information and Event Management. It’s a complex web of technologies and software tools that provide real-time monitoring and reporting of large scale IT infrastructure. By hosting a centralized viewpoint for security event management, log collection and infrastructure alerts, IT teams and cyber security professionals can keep tabs on networks of any size.