Browse
related articles
The Forum brought together leaders of the UAE IT services market, CIOs, IT managers, key decision-makers from public and private organisations and executives of major IT services companies to discuss a broad spectrum of topics ranging from IT outsourcing and data centres to storage management, connected networks, applications centralisation and latest technology innovations.
In his opening address, Ibrahim Mohamed Lari, Chief Executive Officer, Injazat Data Systems pointed out:
"The IT services market plays a vital role in supporting the UAE's fast-growing economy. However, the objectives of IT services and businesses need to be synchronised as outsourcing has turned information technology into a business enabler rather than a management overhead."
The UAE's IT services market expanded 34.1 per cent year-on-year to reach a value of US$ 413.73 million in 2005, reveals a recent report on IT services released by International Data Corporation (IDC). The reports also points that the IT outsourcing category stands out, having achieved year-on year growth of 519.5 per cent largely as a result of one large deal - the IT services outsourcing contract between Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority and Injazat Data Systems.
In a presentation on 'Data Centre Trends and Future', Mateen Greenway, Fellow at Electronic Data Systems (EDS) observed, "The data centre of the future will have to support the growing needs of agile enterprises, which is rarely the case today. Agility improvements too will have to be made a measurable part of data centre strategies to ensure that they meet business requirements."
Dr Philip van Heerden, Senior Analyst, IDC said: "The United Arab Emirates' IT services market grew strongly in 2005 driven by the increased adoption of IT outsourcing services. Competition, coupled with a shortage of skilled staff will eventually result in the inevitable consolidation of the region's IT service providers in the coming years."
Lorcan Malone, COO of Injazat Data Systems spoke about how IT outsourcing best practice supports public and private organisations reduce overall costs, increase flexibility and scalability and focus on their core competencies. Speakers from Cisco Systems, EMC Computer Systems, Citrix and Sun Microsystems presented technology-related IT services topics such as Connected Communities, Applications and Resource Centralisation, Next Generation Information Infrastructure and IT standards, and the Open Source Community.
In its first year of operation, Injazat Data Systems has signed contracts worth more than AED 700 million and has grown into a 300-strong team of professionals--of whom more than 40 per cent are UAE Nationals--providing high quality IT-managed services to a growing number of organisations in the private and public sectors.
Posted by Anne-Birte Stensgaard, Senior News Editor
