BIOS Blog

September 12, 2021, Dubai, UAE: BIOS Middle East (BIOS), the Middle East’s leading local cloud and managed service provider, has announced the renewal of the Cisco Gold partnership on multiple levels, including the Gold Service Provider and Service Integrator certificates. With the recognition, BIOS expands its role as a trusted Cloud and Managed Service Partner for organisations across the GCC that look to Cisco advanced solutions for an unmatched digital experience. Cisco recently released new requirements for its partners, and the new achievements acknowledge BIOS’ leadership and investments across all areas of cloud, networking and security.

More companies are tapping into the cloud as hybrid working models continue to shape our operating environment. But as business uncertainty continues, CIOs are often being pressed to make cloud purchasing decisions based on price alone.

But we’ll share a secret with you today.

Cloud computing isn’t about price.

Or as we like to say here at BIOS, pay peanuts, get rain clouds.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates: BIOS Middle East, a specialist in disaster recovery services, has been appointed Disaster Recovery Service (DraaS) provider by National Takaful Company PJSC, “Watania”, as part of a proactive strategy on the part of the Abu Dhabi-based insurance company to ensure business continuity and embed resilience across its operations.

The acceleration of digital transformation has led to a corresponding increase in the collection and storage of all kinds of personal and business data. However, the laws governing where this data can and cannot reside along with various mandated controls are complex and ever-changing depending on which country and industry you do business in.

In the UAE, for example, data protection laws require all sensitive data – such as financial, medical or personal information – should not be hosted outside the country. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has its own very strict laws and countries such as Oman, Bahrain and Qatar are currently exploring new laws around data sovereignty. If you operate in an industry where you have any personal data of your customers, such as in; Healthcare, Insurance, or Finance; Data Residency should be high on your list of considerations when moving to the cloud.

Disaster recovery (DR) enables GCC organisations to continue functioning in the event of a catastrophic event. A strong DR solution can make or break an organisation’s ability to recover from such a setback, whether this is natural or manmade. When every second of downtime means lost revenue, disaster mitigation demands quick thinking and immediate action.

As Gartner explains, DRaaS is a great option for infrastructure and operations leaders who want to cost-effectively improve IT resilience, meet compliance or regulatory requirements, and address resource deficiencies. But with so many vendors offering all sorts of disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) packages, CSOs can easily come down with a severe case of analysis paralysis. But the DRaaS market consists of hundreds of providers, each with varying abilities to support requirements. These requirements encompass different workload types, geographies, levels of onboarding and ongoing support, number of recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) options, and target recovery locations, according to Gartner

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) has proved its worth over the course of the pandemic. A recent case study from an MEA wide conglomorate shows how BIOS has helped the entertainment and retail group secure business and operational continuity.

BIOS leveraged their in-country, Gartner-recognized cloud solution called CloudHPT to build a DRaaS solution. 

As the business world acquaints itself with the new normal, innovation and digital competitiveness have emerged as game-changers on the road to long-term agility, according to a Gartner survey of nearly 2,000 CIOs in 74 countries. And as the pandemic proved, digital leadership is underpinned by organisational resilience.

 

But what is the right resilience approach for GCC companies?

Disaster Recovery as a service (DRaaS) has shot into the spotlight over the past year, in large part because of its cost-effective role in allowing organisations to recover data and IT infrastructure even in the most extreme situations. As Gartner defines it, DRaaS is a facility in which the provider manages server image and data replication to the cloud, run book creation, automated failover and failback to and from the cloud, and network element configuration during and for recovery operations.

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) has proved its worth over the course of the pandemic.

A recent case study from Majid Al Futtaim ventures shows how BIOS has helped the entertainment and retail group secure business and operational continuity.

BIOS leveraged their in-country cloud solution called CloudHPT to build a DRaaS solution for MAF Ventures. Gartner recognized BIOS’ CloudHPT as ‘Visionary’ for Disaster Recovery as a Service.

Adopting BIOS DRaaS solutions instead of purchasing hardware and software (HW/SW) solutions to build capabilities in-house can generate significant value efficiencies. After implementing BIOS DRaaS solutions, they realised a number of significant benefits, including savings of over $1 million.

Enough reasons for expenditure on disaster recovery (DR) have emerged over the past year, from incidents linked to the pandemic or arising from an increase in sophisticated malware exploits. As people continue to work remotely and data and workloads need to remain accessible at all times, DR becomes even more important – but can organisations afford a legacy approach? Is disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) worth considering and can it deliver on the commonly projected cost savings 30% to 50%?

Saudi Arabian CIOs agree that cloud can help them bridge the challenges of flexible working, scalability, security, intellectual property compliance and cost efficiencies.

But it’s understandable that as a corporate leader you may have apprehensions about such a big step. Although the local environment facilitates cloud adoption following the launch of the Saudi Cloud First Policy, each organisation within the Kingdom has its own priorities, workloads and technical concerns.

As with any new technology, migrating to the cloud in Saudi Arabia requires asking a few strategic questions.