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ISSUE 48 // www.intelligentcio.com
GITEX
reviewed
Looking back
at the event’s
major highlights
Future-proofing
operations
Port operator
prepares for increase in
container volumes
Spotlight
on Iraq
Refugees benefit
from iris
identification technology
Mission
critical
Batelco has selected a Ciena platform as the foundation for its new
Gulf network cable system which connects all countries across
the GCC and provides Bahrain with a new international gateway to
deal with the ever increasing amount of essential traffic.
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EDITOR’S NOTE
W
elcome to the latest edition of
Intelligent CIO magazine. We
hope you have managed to
unwind if you were one of the thousands of
visitors to GITEX.
When I attend the event people often say
to me that GITEX represents the only time in
the year when you can meet everyone you
know in the industry under one roof.
It certainly seems to be the case – as usual it
was a pleasure to meet old friends and greet
some new faces.
Appropriately enough this issue features a
review of the whole spectacle. With more
than 100,000 people visiting this year’s
GITEX, we take a look back at some of the
highlights from Dubai Police’s floating station
to Etisalat’s Lazareth Flying Motorcycle.
Turn to page 25 to relive some of your
favourite moments of this year’s event.
This month’s cover is graced by Adel Daylami,
Chief Global Business Officer for Batelco.
Batelco has selected Ciena’s Converged
Packet Optical Platform as the foundation
for the new Batelco Gulf Network (BGN)
Cable System which connects all countries
across the GCC as a reliable alternative
to submarine cables with greater scalable
capacity and shorter inter-Gulf latency.
This runs over a state-of-the-art optical
transport network and provides Bahrain with
www.intelligentcio.com
a new international gateway enabling it to
deal with mission critical traffic.
Al-Daylami tells us why Batelco selected
Ciena’s platform as the foundation for the
new BGN. He discusses Ciena’s expertise
that enabled Batelco to achieve its vision of
ensuring the BGN is a reliable alternative to
more vulnerable submarine cables.
As usual we have the latest news from
around the region and your favourite
features. If you would like to be included
in the magazine feel free to email me at
mark@lynchpinmedia.co.uk and don’t forget
to visit https://www.intelligentcio.com/me/
for daily updates.
Turn to page 58 to find out more about
the project which has enormously positive
repercussions for the whole region.
On page 55, we look at how the Gulf
Stevedoring Contracting Company (GSCCO),
a port operator in the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia, is leveraging Nutanix software to
increase IT capacity to support growing
operations across Saudi port facilities while
also reducing IT management overheads.
Mark Bowen
Editor
This includes successfully accommodating
a 50% spike in container volumes with no
impact on operational efficiency. Hossam
El-Masry, Information Technology Manager,
GSCCO, told us about the transformative
effects of the solution.
He said: “With zero downtime even during
major capacity upgrades, migration to
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud has revolutionised
our IT infrastructure, making it quicker, more
reliable and much easier to both scale and
manage. “We simply couldn’t have handled
the recent massive growth in container traffic
without it.”
INTELLIGENTCIO
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