Message from the CEO

Dear industry colleagues,

2014 marked a number of milestone achievements and successes for eHDF, setting us firmly on the path to achieving our long-term goals. Through the 10th edition of the eHosting DataFort Newsletter, I would like to share with you some of the highlights of 2014 and provide a glimpse of the year ahead.

eHDF has witnessed a significant increase in its customer base in 2014 and has deployed several crucial projects enabling organizations with the timely provision of various IT services including application hosting, hosted private cloud, managed services and disaster recovery.

Owing to this, eHDF was recognized by leading industry publications for providing the highest level of IT services. We recently bagged two distinguished ICT awards back-to-back and were named 'Managed Services Provider of the Year' at Computer News Middle East's (CNME) 5th ICT Achievement Awards 2014 as well as 'Services Provider of the Year' at the 10th Arabian Computer News (ACN) Arab Technology Awards 2014, in addition to being recognized in early 2014 as the 'Best Managed Services provider' by the Network World Middle East awards. These awards are a testament to our commitment to the regional managed services and cloud market and our mission to provide the latest technology solutions to our clients' ever changing business demands.

Continuous innovation in products and services is a cornerstone of eHDF's success. Based on regional ICT requirements, we unveiled UAE's first online self-service Public Cloud offering with convenient pay-as-you-go packages. We also augmented our cloud and managed services portfolio by adding Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM), a service which enables real-time monitoring and management of a company's critical IT assets, Office 365 in partnership with Microsoft for an organization's messaging needs, and BIZPACK, an IT and managed services bundle for newly established companies setting up operations in the UAE. These product launches were also a key highlight of eHDF's participation at GITEX Technology Week 2014.

Continuing our focus towards tracking industry trends and changing customer demands, we conducted the 3rd Business Continuity Management (BCM) survey, the findings of which were recently released. The survey results show an increased focus on BCM investments across the Middle East which range from US$100,000 to US$1 Million. However, in terms of maturity of BCM and IT DR readiness, there is still a long way to go as 56% of respondents rated their organization's IT DR readiness as average or below average and 64% of the respondents rated their BCM readiness as average or below average. Taking this into consideration, eHDF will continue to further develop our DR and BCM offerings over the next year.

The year ahead looks very promising. The UAE is growing at a very rapid pace with regards to ICT and is using technology to foster innovation and efficiency. In addition, it has high ambitions to be smarter using information technology and cloud will play a big role in these developments. Every vertical is evaluating cloud and its advantages in order to drive innovation in core business functions. From healthcare, telecommunications and education to government, energy and media, CIOs do not underestimate the importance of this. In fact, a 2014 Frost & Sullivan study expected the GCC cloud computing market to grow sevenfold and expand at an annual rate of 32.8 per cent to reach $668.5 million by 2020!

As we ride the cloud wave to 2015, we continue to monitor customer needs, and how best we can deliver solutions to such needs. As always, we count on your support, feedback and active involvement to continue to offer you the best in class solutions. Wishing you a healthy, prosperous and exciting 2015 and beyond.

Best Regards,

Yasser Zeineldin