Myth: IT services are expensive
1. Your company has been founded in 2001 and is one of the pioneers in providing Managed IT Services in the region. How competitive this market is at the moment?
Managed IT services market has certainly grown since we started in 2001. According to a report in 2012 Frost & Sullivan had indicated that the UAE managed services market would grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17 per cent for five years. This has certainly been true in the last few years as we have seen a huge uptake for managed IT and cloud infrastructure services by both enterprises and SMEs. The most popular services that these organisations look for have been managed hosting, disaster recovery and business continuity, managed security and managed storage and back up services. Lately we have also seen a surge in Cloud Infrastructure Services (both Private Cloud and Public Cloud Infrastructure Services).
There has been an increase in managed IT services providers in the market and the market has become competitive over the last few years. eHosting DataFort owns and operates data centres in the UAE and we believe it is our best-in-class service delivery and service support that makes us stand out among other players in the market. Our customers rely on us to provide them with innovative focused solutions with emphasis on delivering high quality service experience backed by measurable and guaranteed Service Level Agreements (SLAs). We also have dedicated service desks that are available 24/7 365 days a year to help our customers.
2. What makes eHDF so competitive in the trends of IT outsourcing to overseas markets? How do you manage to keep local clients?
There are many reasons that make eHDF competitive as compared to overseas players.
eHDF owns and operates data centres in the UAE and provides the advantage of a local datacenter with low latency. If a company has users located in the region, it would be more beneficial for them to host in a local data centre as it offers lower latency compared to being hosted internationally.
In addition, having your IT services hosted out of a local data centre means you have full accessibility of the IT infrastructure and data centre facility with local 24/7 Multi-lingual support and more interaction with the service provider.
In terms of Security and regulatory compliance, many organizations need to have their data hosted within the boundaries of the country and working with a UAE based / local service provider helps meet security compliance requirements.
eHDF's business principle and model has been to provide the highest level of IT services to achieve customer satisfaction and deliver service excellence in accordance with international industry standards. This approach has helped us in maintaining our leadership position in managed services in the UAE. We also believe in the approach that one size does not fit all and create solutions as per our customer's needs. We engage with our clients and become an extension of their IT team providing clear guidance and support to achieve the end goal of seamlessly integrating our services with their existing IT infrastructure.
3. What, in your opinion, is the most important part of the business from the organisational perspective?
I'm a strong believer that Technology, People and Processes are the most important elements of our business from an organisational perspective. We have invested in a state-of-the-art data centre that forms the backbone of our Managed IT and Cloud Infrastructure services. We continuously upgrade to the latest technologies and have partnerships with leading technology vendors.
As important as cutting edge technology, equipment, and software are to the IT sector, when all is said and done, it is people that make the real difference. At eHDF, our people are at the heart and soul of what we do. Our team has the necessary skills to handle the most complex technology deployments.
In addition to technology and people, we have well defined comprehensive processes to ensure superior service delivery and service support. We adhere to industry best practices for IT Service Management so that we can offer the highest value to our customers.
4. eHosting DataFort has been awarded many times gaining titles such "Best Managed Service Provider of the Year" as well as "Best Co-location Provider" and the reward for "Best Use of New Technology". What is the secret of constant improvement and recognition?
It's great to be recognised for the work we do and for this I'm always thankful to each and every staff member at eHDF and also our clients that contribute to our success.
We do this in various ways - we constantly invest in improving our data centre infrastructure and in fact we have invested heavily in data centre upgrades this year. We always strive to deliver the best customer service and our customer satisfaction levels have surpassed all our expected levels year after year. We continuously invest in the best people and take pride in the strength and experience of our team. Above all, we constantly try to deliver innovative technology solutions to address customer challenges and enable IT to enhance their business.
5. Which one of the wide spectrum of services do you expect to develop the most in the future?
We expect cloud infrastructure services to develop the most in the future.
Our cloud offering includes private and public cloud services which are experiencing a huge uptake and we see this trend to continue in the future.
The public cloud services are especially appealing to small and medium businesses who can buy locally-hosted cloud infrastructure services. Multiple configurations and OS flavours are also available for customers to choose from and the platform allows quick scale up thus providing a model with no capital investments on hardware. Such solutions are imperative for businesses that require rapid provisioning at low costs, but still need reliable IT infrastructure.
6. I noticed you also offer Disaster Recovery services. How important this would be for SMEs?
Disaster recovery is very important to ensure business continuity for any business to be able to provide continuous service through any disaster whether natural or otherwise, and more important for SMEs as their business is heavily dependent on the internet. It is important to have a plan to cope with it, business continuity requires a company to analyse essential components to ensure that a business can resume operations when a disaster occurs. We offer a range of optional add on Disaster Recovery Services so as to ensure our customers are provided redundant IT operations in case of a Disaster.
7. What are the growth and expansion plans of eHDF?
eHDF has growth and expansions plans on multiple fronts.
With respect to products and services, we are seeing a huge uptake on our Private and Public Cloud services and we see our customer portfolio expand on this. We will also be launching new services like remote infrastructure management, Office 365 services and the next version of advanced DR services to enable customers to pro-actively test and monitor their DR KPIs, like success rates, RTO and RPO.
Remote Infrastructure Management or Remote Monitoring and Management Services will be offered to Small, Medium & Large enterprises for Monitoring and managing their IT infrastructure (Servers, Desktops, Laptops, Network Devices, Backup, Printers etc.) partially or fully. These services will greatly reduce the chances for downtime and at the same time increase the efficiency of the IT system's performance thereby allowing customers to concentrate on their core business without worrying about the IT infrastructure.
We will also be launching new services catering to start-ups and SMBs setting up a new office in free zones to help them fully set-up and manage their IT infrastructure.
To meet the growing demands from our existing customers and new businesses we have expanded our data centre capacity and have upgraded many of our infrastructure elements.
8. In one of your interviews you mentioned SMEs make up 90% of businesses in Dubai and huge interest group of yours. What percentage of your clients are SMEs and why this group is important?
According to a report released in January 2014 by the Dubai SME, the agency of the Department of Economic Development mandated to develop the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector, the total contribution of SMEs to Dubai's gross domestic product stands at 40 per cent. These enterprises are a growing presence in sectors that drive growth in Dubai; sector-wise, trading SMEs account for 47 per cent of the total GDP contribution with services and manufacturing following with 41 per cent and 13 per cent respectively.
In the same report it showed that SMEs that use advanced IT systems account for 21 per cent of the total, this is a clear indicator that there is a huge number of SMEs that can benefit from advanced IT solutions and we believe that managed IT services and cloud services is probably the best option for these organisations as they don't need to invest in upfront CAPEX and can reinvest and deploy these savings in other critical areas of the business.
We currently have a substantial SME customer base and we see this number growing substantially in 2014 and continuing to grow in the next couple of years as businesses develop and gear up for Expo 2020.
9. How do you attract this market and what tailored services you can offer?
We are currently offering private and public cloud services which are most interesting for the SME sector.
eHDF's Cloud Hosting Services provide an enterprise with the computing power, storage and network capacity, security and flexibility it needs, when it needs it. At the same time, it reduces IT costs significantly and simplifies management and maintenance requirements.
Cloud computing can phenomenally decrease a SMEs overall costs including capital costs and ongoing operational costs as it is a usage based pricing model. With cloud services, the SME owner can reduce their overall risks by paying on a predictable monthly subscription model. In addition, cloud enables an SME business to deploy services faster and dynamically provision any additional capacity as and when needed. Moreover, cloud based services are simple to adopt and more accessible as they are accessible over the internet.
10. Bespoke usually means expensive. Is it true in case of Managed IT Services or myth which we should banish?
Bespoke in our industry does not mean expensive, it definitely is a myth. It only means that there is no one size fits all solution and our services are tailored to specific customer requirements.
With our public cloud services that we have launched for SMEs, we will have an online store with an easy to use self-service portal and automatic billing and charging mechanism to enable fast provisioning.
11. How SMEs can benefit from "The Cloud" model? How entrepreneurs can use this model internally?
With the rapid pace of technological advancement, small to medium enterprises face the challenge of keeping up with bigger competitors in the market.
There are 3 types of Cloud Services which are available to SME's namely Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS). SaaS and IaaS are gaining a lot of popularity amongst SME's as they have the flexibility to use Software and Hardware Infrastructure on a pay as you model and can scale up or down their usage of the same based on the business growth.
In addition three types of cloud service models are available for use by SME's which are: Private, public and hybrid cloud services. Through the process of virtualization offered by cloud computing, SMEs can pool resources and introduce capabilities such as dynamic provisioning. As a result, the cloud platform enables quick deployment times, suitable for campaigns and peak loads.
The absence of a hardware component and the shared nature of numerous other resources means that the cloud is an economical hosting option. Unlike buying hardware with set specifications, cloud offers flexible capacity based buying options that allow the company to pay only for what they need, making it ideal for small to medium businesses.
Each business has unique data management requirements, which can be determined based on a number of factors such as operational processes, human resources, scale of work, and especially financial capabilities, among others. If an SME wants to save on CAPEX then Cloud is the way to go.
12. Lastly, could you please give some guidance for SMEs about the importance of ICT infrastructure?
The growth of technology over the last decade has been tremendous including how mobility solutions have taken over both the enterprise and individuals needs with androids, hand-held devices and mobile phones. And increasingly we see ourselves dependent on technology whether it is a retail shop, providing service or manufacturing company.
This makes it important that every businessman should include the IT infrastructure in the business plan. The rate of data creation and need for structured management typically determines the need for assisted services such as cloud computing, however, our recommendation would be to have a system in place right from inception, which can be adapted and built upon according to growing needs of the organization.