INDUSTRY WATCH
BEFORE WE MADE OUR FINAL DECISION , WE CONDUCTED A MARKET STUDY . WE LOOKED AT THE PROS AND CONS OF HOSTING , PUBLIC CLOUD , PRIVATE CLOUD AND ALL SORTS OF HYBRID SOLUTIONS .
Al Naboodah Group Enterprises is one of the leading brand names in the United Arab Emirates . Founded in 1958 by brothers Saeed and Mohammed Al Naboodah as a trading company for agricultural machines , the group has since developed a diverse portfolio of 15 different businesses in the fields of construction , MEP , automotive , transportation , electrical products , logistics , travel and renewable energy . this was the perfect opportunity to build a central data centre . “ Before we made our final decision , we conducted a market study . We looked at the pros and cons of hosting , public cloud , private cloud and all sorts of hybrid solutions ,” he said .
“ In the end , Al Naboodah decided to go with the solution that offered the highest level of maturity and to build our very own enterprise private cloud .”
Today , the Group IT Department offers a range of shared IT services , all of which are fully managed in-house . It is our department ’ s role to support the business in reaching its goals , by ensuring that all IT requirements are delivered on time and at the right quality level .
Mario Foster , Group CIO at Al Naboodah Group Enterprises , said : “ I joined Al Naboodah about four years ago with the clear mission to modernise the IT environment . Decades of fast , organic growth had led to a scattered and very heterogeneous IT landscape , in terms of both hardware and software . The group ’ s companies ran different brands and types of standalone servers , standalone storage and network infrastructure .”
Foster said there was no dedicated group data centre , only separate server rooms , each tailored to the specific needs of the group ’ s different companies . “ This fragmented environment proved to be really complex to manage , while at the same time making it very hard to keep up with the various companies ’ evolving IT needs ,” he recalled .
Enterprise private cloud
When Al Naboodah Group decided to move to its new headquarters , Foster convinced the board that
The IT team studied the market even more closely , comparing traditional hardware with converged and hyperconverged infrastructure and delved deeply into all of the options out there . “ Our evaluation of nine tenders from a range of vendors eventually led to the selection of Nutanix ,” he said .
“ I have to admit that , at first , the employees of the Group IT Department had some reservations . Nutanix was all new to them , but it was precisely this strong , innovative offering that convinced us . We had in-depth interviews with Nutanix ’ s technical teams and were invited to visit several of their reference customers . The Nutanix team ’ s patience and commitment to introducing us to the benefits resulted in our team gaining sufficient insight to be convinced that hyperconverged infrastructure was the way to go .”
Foster pointed out that the company deployed Nutanix in its brand-new data centre , located at the group ’ s new headquarters in Dubai .
Nutanix is the core of the company ’ s enterprise private cloud . All mission-critical applications run on the hyperconverged infrastructure , including Microsoft Exchange , CRM , SQL , SharePoint , Citrix XenApp , Veeam , . NET development environment and
www . intelligentcio . com INTELLIGENTCIO MIDDLE EAST 73