Nominations open for Middle East's first awards for Data Centre sector

The categories include Best New Entrant in Middle East Data Centre; Best Co-location Middle East Facility; Best Data Centre Middle East Region; Best Middle East Green Initiative Award; Best New Cloud Services Middle East Region Award; Best Sustainable Data Centre Design Middle East Region; Best Managed Services Provider Middle East Region; Best Disaster Recovery Provider Middle East 2010; Middle East CTO Award for Innovation in Data Centres; Judges' Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Data Centre Sector Award (CEO Award), and Special Award for Innovation and Education in the Data Centre Sector Middle East 2010

The prestigious international awards will offer companies engaged in the data centre industry with wide recognition and outstanding marketing differentiation. Closing date for award entries is 21 March. The online entry form is available on www.datacentres.com/me/

In a new innovation, companies can accompany their nomination with a video that can be used to enhance their response to the entry criteria. The videos of winning companies will be played at the awards ceremony. The final shortlist and award winners will be announced at the official ceremony and gala dinner on 3 May at the Fairmont Bab Al Bahr.

Philip Low, Managing Director at BroadGroup, organisers of Data Centres Middle East 2010, said: "Data centre operators confront many new challenges as the pace of change in technologies increases and market growth is sustained. These awards that have been introduced for the first time in the region to define best in breed benchmarks for service quality, management excellence and technical achievement for the industry."

The second Data Centres Middle East will be held on 3-4 May in Abu Dhabi, attracting influential IT experts and decision makers in the data centre industry from all over the region to gain strategic insight and discuss how their presence can strengthen their foothold in the market for the long term.

The two-day forum will include a special focus on enterprise customers of data centres and their evolving outsourcing needs as emerging private clouds, new technologies and market shift impact the sector. Uniquely, the conference is provided each year with results of new research conducted by BroadGroup Consulting. Special workshops will cover Data Centre Security, and Architecting and Building new Data Centres.

Injazat Data Systems is the patron of the event, while HP is the Diamond Sponsor. Industry sponsors include Noodlesoft Technologies, and Colo-x.

Middle East IT Insight, TradeArabia, IX News Search, Data Centre News, Telecom Deal Alert and IT One are the Media Partners for the event.