t cht lk
The new AWS Middle East (Bahrain) Region
offers three Availability Zones at launch.
AWS Regions are composed of Availability
Zones, which each comprise of at least one
data centre and are located in separate and
distinct geographic locations with enough
distance to significantly reduce the risk of a
single event impacting business continuity,
yet near enough to provide low latency for
high availability applications.
Each Availability Zone has independent
power, cooling and physical security, and is
connected via redundant, ultra-low-latency
networks. AWS customers focused on high
availability can design their applications to
run in multiple Availability Zones to achieve
greater fault-tolerance. AWS infrastructure
regions meet the highest levels of security,
compliance and data protection.
Customers welcome the new AWS
Middle East (Bahrain) Region
Millions of active customers are using AWS
each month in over 190 countries around
the world, including tens of thousands of
customers in the Middle East and North
Africa (MENA).
Enterprises across the region are moving to
AWS to become more agile and innovate,
and include Al Jouf Cement, Al Tayer Group,
Arab Banking Corporation (Bank ABC),
Aramex, Bahrain Bourse, Bank Al-Etihad,
Batelco, Emirates NBD, Flydubai, Gulf News,
Hassan Allam, Lulu International Exchange,
MBC Group, OSN, Seera Group, Union
Insurance and Virgin Middle East.
Public sector organisations, including Bahrain
government ministries, such as the Ministry
“
THE CLOUD HAS
THE CHANCE TO
UNLOCK DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION
IN THE MIDDLE
EAST.
80
INTELLIGENTCIO
“
DEVELOPERS,
START-UPS AND
ENTERPRISES,
AS WELL AS
GOVERNMENT,
EDUCATION AND
NON-PROFIT
ORGANISATIONS
CAN NOW
RUN THEIR
APPLICATIONS
AND SERVE END-
USERS FROM
DATA CENTRES
LOCATED IN THE
MIDDLE EAST.
of Education, Ministry of Finance, Ministry
of Information Affairs, Ministry of Labor and
Social Development and Bahrain iGA, as well
as other public sector organisations such
as Bahrain Polytechnic, Communications
and Information Technology Regulatory
Authority of Kuwait (CITRA), Mumtalakat,
Paris Sorbonne AD, Tamkeen and the
University of Bahrain, are also using AWS to
drive cost savings, accelerate innovation and
better serve the citizens of the region.
Well established family businesses in the
Middle East are also moving to AWS to
become more agile and innovative. Saudi
Arabia’s Abdul Latif Jameel is one of the most
respected family-owned businesses across the
Middle East, and operates in over 30 countries
worldwide, with diversified interests in major
sectors including transportation, energy and
environmental services, financial services, and
land and real estate.
Faisal Alsamannoudi, Vice Chairman, Abdul
Latif Jameel Commercial Development
Company Ltd, said: “We welcome the
opening of the AWS Middle East Region and
see it as a real opportunity to bring more
efficiency and innovation to our business,
in a secure way. We started our AWS
journey with Abdul Latif Jameel Commercial
Development Company, in Jeddah, by
migrating critical HR management systems
covering seven different companies – a
process that took us less than one month
and brought savings of up to 60%,
compared to our previous solution.
“With AWS, we are becoming more agile and
able to innovate quickly across different lines
of business.”
Another regional enterprise moving to AWS
is the Al Tayer Group, one of the largest
privately held family-run conglomerates
in the MENA region. Al Tayer Group has
interests in automobile sales and services,
luxury and lifestyle retail and hospitality.
Headquartered in the UAE, the group
operates in 12 countries in the Middle East
and manages over 200 stores.
Mohamed Al Fayed, Senior Vice President
of OmniChannel, Al Tayer Retail, said: “This
news from AWS is fantastic as we continue
accelerating our cloud adoption. Using AWS,
we were able to become more agile and
reliably launched five e-commerce platforms,
such as Mamas & Papas, Nisnass.com, and
Ounass alongside Android and iOS apps, all
within a year.
“We rely on several AWS managed database
services such as Amazon Aurora, where
we were able to cut costs by 40%, while
increasing performance by four times,
compared with proprietary database
technologies. We also leverage AWS spot
instances to reduce operational cost by 79%.
“We see great potential to improve our
business even further with the new AWS
Middle East Region, which will enable us
to serve our end customers with even
lower latency.”
Government organisations are also
working with AWS to lower costs and better
serve citizens in the region. The Bahrain
Information and eGovernment Authority
(iGA) is responsible for ICT procurement for
the Bahrain government and is leading the
government’s migration project to support
the country’s Cloud First policy.
www.intelligentcio.com