Company: eHosting DataFort
Company Type: Managed Services and Cloud

Milestones in eHDF’s History:

  • 2003 - eHDF signs contracts with key customers including Govt
  • 2006 - eHDF is first data centre services provider in the region to offer blade servers, SAN
  • 2007 - eHDF signs a contract with Panasonic to host and manage its business critical IT
  • 2008 - eHDF becomes first company in Middle East to achieve three ISO certifications
  • 2009 - eHDF expands its data centre footprint by opening a new data centre facility within the Dubai Outsource Zone
  • 2011 - eHDF gains its BS25999-2:2007 continuity management certificate
  • 2011 - eHDF signs contracts with major organizations such as FVC, DWTC, DAFZA
  • 2011 - eHDF wins 'Managed Service Provider of the Year' for the fourth Consecutive year
  • 2012 - eHDF launches private cloud, gains several important private cloud contracts
  • 2013 - ehdf launches public cloud with an easy-to-use self-service online portal, managed services

How did the company start and what is its history to date?
DataFort was launched in 2001, and in 2002 that region's most sophisticated data centre facility was built in Dubai Internet City. It was called the 'eHosting' centre. In 2003 both 'Data-Fort' and 'eHosting' merged to form one single company called eHosting DataFort (eHDF). eHDF is now the region's leading managed IT services provider across the Middle East region for the last five years. eHDF's customer base includes small, medium and large enterprises across industry sectors including financial and banking, government, retail , construction, media etc.

What does eHDF do?
eHosting DataFort is a leading provider of managed hosting and cloud infrastructure services and is a fully owned subsidiary of TECOM Investments, a member of Dubai Holding. With world-class data centres and state of the art infrastructure, eHDF has 24/7 managed operations and a service desk to provide round the clock support to customers across the globe. We also offer high and service level agreements, with regards to guaranteed uptime and availability, and with Accreditations in assurance and best practices, we are amongst one of the few service providers in the world to have obtained the prestigious ISO 9001, ISO 20000, ISO 27001, ISO 14001, ISO 18000, BS25999 and ITIL certifications.

Our customers are leading organizations such as Dunia Finance, Ministry of Public Works, Jumeirah Group, Dubai Financial Market, Panasonic, Tejuri.com, Societe Generale Bank, Dubai Airport Free Zone, Dubai World Trade Centre, DMCC, Madar Holding and many more. Our core services include: Managed Hosting Services (Managed Dedicated Servers & Managed Services), customers can lease one or more dedicated servers, which eHDF manages up to the operating system layer; Cloud Infrastructure Services (Managed and Unmanaged Private Cloud & Public Cloud), cloud services provide a Virtual Data Centre environment with a shared pool of compute capacity, storage and network; Managed Co-location Services (Racks, Cages), Managed Co-location is an extension to the traditional Co-location where most of the capital expenses are offset by managed services charged on a monthly basis; Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity (DR Sites and DR Seats), customers can choose from a broad range of services including Disaster Recovery Sites, Comprehensive Disaster Recovery & Replication Solutions and Disaster Recovery Seats; Co-location Services. As part of our portfolio, we offer co-location services through which customers can house IT equipment within eHDF's state-of-the-art data centres.

Why is your presence in the Middle East region?
We are headquartered in Dubai Internet city and we own and operate multiple Tier 3 data centres located within Dubai.

What are eHDF's goals?
eHDF's key goal is to be recognized as the leading managed IT services and cloud infrastructure services provider in the UAE. It is out endeavour to help even more businesses realize the potential of managed services and cloud computing to help reduce the TCO of their IT assets.

Regional Successes

  • eHDF implemented the first private cloud in the UAE for Emcor Facilities Services (EFS), an integrated facilities management service, operation and maintenance solution provider in the MENASA (Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia) region.
  • eHDF was selected to host and manage DMCC Tradeflow, the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre's (DMCC) online trade enabling platform based on a strict selection criteria out of a total of 20 global and regional service providers.
  • eHDF is hosting and managing Tejuri.com, one of the region's most prominent e-shopping malls, supported by the Dubai Department of Economic Development (DED) which was launched in March 2013. Tejuri.com is using eHDF's private cloud hosting services to offer its customers a further enhanced online shopping experience.
  • eHDF has very successfully implemented a number of innovative managed services and disaster recovery projects for organizations including Dubai Financial Market, Panasonic Middle East, the Khaleej Times, the Ministry of Public Works, Dunia Finance, Societe Generale Bank, ING Investment Management Middle East among a wide range of others in the private a public sectors.
  • This year, eHDF is focusing on launching new services in the UAE, such as public cloud, a set of remote backup services, Managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection services and remote infrastructure management.
  • The UAE's eHosting DataFort has also embarked on major capital investments to scale up its data centres in order to address the increased customer demand on its facilities and wide range of public and private cloud services.

Source: Network Middle East, November 2013