COUNTRY FOCUS: OMAN
Oman has become a hotbed for data
centre deployment in the Middle
East due to its strategic geographical
position between Asia, Africa and
Europe. We look at new data centre
projects and technological innovations
that have put the country firmly on the
road to Digital Transformation.
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On the road to
transformation
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Equinix and Omantel to build new
data centre in Oman
Late last year Equinix, the global
interconnection and data centre company,
and the Oman Telecommunications
Company (Omantel), announced a joint
venture to develop a new network-dense
data centre that will be located in Barka, near
Muscat. This joint venture will establish the
first world-class, carrier-neutral hub in Oman
where carriers, content providers and cloud
providers co-locate critical IT infrastructure,
supporting traffic growth in MENA.
Oman is strategically positioned between
Asia, Africa and Europe, and the new Equinix
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INTELLIGENTCIO
International Business Exchange (IBX) data
centre will create a regional interconnection
hub with ultra-low latencies between global
business markets.
Jeroen Schlosser, Managing Director, Equinix
MENA, said: “We see significant potential
for Oman as a market generally and, in
particular, supporting CLS requirements as
subsea cable momentum accelerates. It’s
all about meeting the growing need for
interconnection – private data exchange
between businesses.
“The new IBX data centre in Oman will
benefit from connectivity to strategic cable
landing stations (CLS) and subsea cable
systems that terminate directly inside
the facility. It will also benefit from the
investments by Omantel in multiple strategic
subsea cable systems throughout the region
and world.
“This subsea cable connectivity will provide
customers with significant cost savings and
an increase in performance and security.
“There is a huge highway to Asia Pacific, a
huge highway to Europe, and people can
use that place as a landing spot to feed all
the different businesses that they have in
the Middle East region. And predominantly
we would see carriers, content providers, and
cloud providers using that space.
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