The Etisalat ICT Forum- Government 2011, focused on mobility and cloud computing as key developments in information technology that could better serve government agencies across all fields of operation. According to the speakers, the current environment marked by increased volumes of data and the extensive use of a number of mobile devices in organisations necessitates the need for organisations to leverage these trends to drive business objectives.
Speakers pointed out that in a diverse environment, the ability to access information at faster speeds from anywhere, anytime, and on any device can be a critical competitive differentiator for any organisation.
“The reason behind mobility being the one line item in IT budget that has held steady over the last 3 years is that increasing ubiquity of mobile devices in daily life; employees are simply more used to conducting their lives via these devices. But another critical reason is that if managed correctly, mobility can be a real market accelerator for many businesses- giving them a solid, sustainable advantage over competition,” said Zakaraya Alashek, business development manager for mobility solutions at Etisalat.
“Mobility has clearly emerged as a business transformation tool and Etisalat is all set to be at the driving seat to deliver value to customers with its range of innovative services, “said Abdulla Hashim, senior VP, business solutions at Etisalat
Alashek elaborated on how best enterprise mobility solutions may be implemented to provide long term tangible benefits to further boost government operations, “Etisalat is already engaged in helping organisations to leverage productivity gains across teams and operations with a variety of mobile data solutions and industry specific innovative applications such as the iPhone applications for Ministry of Health (MOH) and Dubai Airport Free Zone Authority (DAFZA).”
The forum also addressed the hype and general apprehension surrounding cloud computing, “Using applications, services and computing power delivered over the internet has become affordable. The barrier to adoption lies in understanding the benefits of how the system can streamline operations,” said Hashim.
Ramesh Krishna Bhandari, business development manager, cloud solutions at Etisalat, pointed out that organisations deciding on moving to the cloud should first define their objective to do the same. “The best way to set a standard is to compare what benefits the organisation more- investing in the cloud or managing said tasks internally?.”
According to him organisations, when moving to the cloud should use the phased approach based on criticality of functions and in depth analysis, “What organisations need to understand is that the cloud is not an all in –all out programme, you can chose to move applications to the cloud based on their criticality to business operations and data sensitivity,” he added.
“Etisalat is ready to provide its corporate customers a unified aggregated cloud platform with solutions that are scalable, secure and cost effective. We guarantee regular monitoring and maintenance as well as secure backup systems,”said Bhandari.
