INDUSTRY WATCH
C
an you describe recent
ICT project initiatives at
Drake & Scull and how
they have better served as a
business purpose?
While Drake & Scull went public in
2008 it was the Boards commitment
to ensure the DSI PJSC would be a
market differentiator in the construction
industry in the Middle East and
Africa. While the organisation grew
exponentially the companies within the
holding entity needed to adapt rapidly
with thin margins and the financial crisis
in the “rear view mirror”.
phase where the required change
management process and systems were
already in place.
Hence the Board of Management
embarked on a journey to transform
a 150-year company’s culture by
harnessing mature information
technologies to achieve business
agility. The ERP being the main driver
for investment in IT, we used this
opportunity to revolutionise Information
Technology in Drake & Scull PJSC
and their subsidiaries. We planned,
designed and implemented a private
cloud infrastructure, preparing to deliver
Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platformas-a-Service.
With the sound IT strategy, the right
team, agile technology & strategic
partners we completed this design,
acquisition, implementation of two data
centres and ERP within 545 days.
Our private hybrid cloud developed
and deployed on Solaris & Oracle Sun
infrastructure spread across two Tier 2
& Tier 3 data centres in the UAE. This
required to consolidate all traditional
server systems spread across multiple
data centres in the Middle East to a
single “Domain” in the UAE.
This also required us to restructure our
complete network design to prepare
for the Web 2.0 hosted applications.
From individual client IPs to Portal SSL
based security was redesigned and
implemented.
Email was consolidated over Microsoft
Exchange for our 4000+ email accounts
and was migrated to the data centre.
The intention for drawing all systems
into a centralised data centre was to
ensure consolidation and ISO 27001
governance our systems were controlled
within. This was key differentiator
during the ERP implementation
www.intelligentcio.com
DSI PJSC were the first company
globally to implement Oracle JD
Edwards, Solaris & the complete Red
Stack Oracle hardware on a hosted
virtualised on hybrid Infrastructure out
of the UAE. This gave us considerable
advantage to keep our investment to
the minimum and still have 140 virtual
servers required for high availability,
business continuity & disaster recovery
demanded by our ISMS policies.
A unified communications strategy
and technology roll out contributed to
AED 3 million on savings since 2013
in UAE only. A combination of Avaya
IPT, Microsoft Lync and creative offers
from du our mobile partner enabled us
to increase collaboration and increase
efficiency by reducing turnaround time
in our correspondence.
We also designed, implemented and
rolled out multiple portals, including
our DSI Intranet and corporate website
which was all integrated in our cloud
WE ALSO DESIGNED,
IMPLEMENTED AND
ROLLED OUT MULTIPLE
PORTALS, INCLUDING
OUR DSI INTRANET
AND CORPORATE
WEBSITE WHICH WAS
ALL INTEGRATED IN OUR
CLOUD BASED CUSTOM
DEVELOPED “SINGLE
SIGN ON” SOLUTION…
INTELLIGENTCIO
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