BIOS Blog

Combined expertise will empower organizations to navigate the complex multi-cloud landscape effectively and efficiently

Partnership will see ZainTECH deliver unprecedented value to clients while ensuring compliance with local regulations

Dubai, UAE - Riyadh, KSA – March 19, 2024

ZainTECH, the integrated digital solutions provider of Zain Group, is pleased to announce the signing of a strategic partnership agreement with CoreStack, a global multi-cloud governance provider. This partnership aims to provide NextGen multi-cloud governance, FinOps, and cost management solutions.

Businesses have faced huge challenges and have undergone an incredible amount of change over the past few years, and this won’t slow down in 2023. Each year brings forth the opportunity to enhance your business operations and reduce your overall IT spend. In 2023, one trend that has been gaining a lot of attention is the growth of cloud adoption to perform AI and ML operations. These technologies are being used to automate a wide range of tasks, including data analysis, language translation, and image recognition. In fact, by the end of this year, 31% of organizations expect to run 75% of their workloads in the cloud.

Let’s find out which three crucial IT changes you need to embrace quickly to improve your business in 2023.

Investing wisely in your assets and infrastructure is key to a higher return on investment. However, to really understand which infrastructure is most cost-effective for your business, you need to perform meaningful cost comparisons.

Cloud Total Cost of Ownership, or TCO for short, is a metric that defines and assesses how effective the cloud is for you by adding up all the costs associated with the purchase, operation, and maintenance of your cloud components.

Businesses around the world are being wooed by hyperscalers and cloud vendors of all kinds. But not all cloud services are equal. Unfortunately, customers often have to wade through the (significant) marketing claims to formulate an accurate “apples to apples” comparison.

The research team at BIOS Middle East, the GCC's local cloud provider has created a whitepaper where you can see the key differences between its managed cloud and Hyperscalers.

With 2022 likely to continue to be a year of uncertainty, businesses across the GCC and elsewhere are now being forced to re-examine costs and streamline operations expenditure – all while complying with new regulations.

Lessons from other players in the region can inspire leaders to find new solutions in these trying times. Leading mortgage provider Abu Dhabi Finance serves individuals as well as companies with innovative flexible finance solutions. But it needed an innovative IT solution to avoid major CapEx, streamline OpEx, facilitate remote working, and ensure compliance with Central Bank regulations.

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.

Our customers are using cloud to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster. In this new case study, we’ll show you how BIOS Middle East helped our customer:

• Achieve a reduction in ongoing IT costs by over 50% and no future capital expenditure

• Achieve regulatory compliance for IT and improved security to protect critical data

• Provide an agile platform to innovate and increase efficiencies 

According to Gartner, “COVID-19 has disrupted operations and will have prolonged impacts on continuity of operations, modes of working and growth patterns. CIOs need to respond to the crisis with both short- and long-term actions to increase resilience against future disruptions, and prepare for rebound and growth.”

As businesses in the Middle East adjust to the new realities of operating during the COVID 19 pandemic, BIOS is committed to providing thought leadership information and solutions that can help our customers navigate these uncertain and difficult times.

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.