BIOS Blog

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.

When you’re shopping for a managed cloud provider, there are several attributes you’ll want to evaluate and keep track of. Essentially, you need to make sure that your managed cloud service can meet your company’s needs reliable and consistently, with the right services and products to make your managed cloud solution painless from start to finish. Let’s evaluate the top five steps you’ll need to take to choose a managed cloud service provider

Cloud computing has become widely adopted across a broad range of industries in the Middle East and North Africa. Both small companies and large enterprises have recognized the importance of adapting innovations into their daily business operations to secure a steady growth within a constantly evolving market.

The need of integrated services that handle the DRaaS, SaaS, and IaaS of a company has led many businesses towards considering a cloud-oriented approach that either uses a hybrid or a cloud-only system to guarantee the security and integrity of company data.

According to a research conducted by IDG, businesses are relying now more than even on cloud computing to achieve business growth. A report by Gartner states that by 2018, at least 30% of companies in the service sector will move their enterprise resource planning ( ERP ) applications to the cloud.

As the cloud service sector continues to mature, the one-fits-all approach no longer applies to the industry. Strategic IT advancements continue to have a profound impact on business development, yet, the pressing need of innovation changes the way tech-driven companies operate. The need of personalisation of cloud services has created a market where the cloud strategy and IT initiatives are aligned closely to the goals of the business.

The 2017 edition of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) providers has just been released and CloudHPT is recognized in the “Visionary” quadrant.