Dubai Smart Government showcases capabilities of Unified Government Disaster Recovery Site & Cloud One services to Dubai government delegates

UAE, December 30, 2015 - Dubai Smart Government Establishment (DSG) recently organized a visit for Dubai government delegates to its Unified Government Disaster Recovery Site (UGDRS) and Cloud One services, which is being managed in a secure location in Jebel Ali, Dubai in partnership with Etisalat. The DSG team were led by H.E Wesam Al Abbas Lootah, CEO of DSG and Matar Al Humairi, Director of Infrastructure Management Department at DSG. 

The delegation was given an overview of the facilities by Ahmed Al Hammadi, Director of Digital Solutions at Etisalat. This was followed by a presentation on the UGDRS and Cloud One services by Matar Al Humairi, Director of Infrastructure Management Department at DSG. The delegates were then taken on a tour of the facilities to inspect its command and control centre, security, backup power, cooling and environmental solutions which has made it the largest green data centre campus in the Middle East that has been certified as Tier III and awarded with LEED Gold Certified by USGBC and the ISO 27001. 

H.E Wesam Al Abbas Lootah, CEO of DSG said: We launched the UGDRS in September 2014, in implementation of the decision issued by HH Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council, on Dubai Government’s information security, which is aimed at devising an integrated strategy for protecting Dubai government’s information and information systems in a secure and reliable environment to ensure business continuity.”

Lootah continued: ‘Our recent visit was to share the capabilities of the UGDRS and Cloud One with our key stakeholders in Dubai government and show them the capabilities of having a secure government information security environment that will ensure service continuity and contribute to the sustainable development of Dubai as the world’s smartest city. Our data is already backed up here and we are pleased that some of our partners in Dubai government are already using the datacentre. We are confident that more partners will move their data to this world-class centre, which provides best in class practices and standards and leads to immense costs savings, when compared to government entities trying to create their own data centres.”

In his presentation, Matar Al Humairi, Director of Infrastructure Department at DSG, emphasized the cost saving benefits of having a unified UGDRS in a single location. An in-depth feasibility study was made before choosing the UGDRS including identifying the location and operational costs. The study, included gathering the required basic information through site visits and workshops with government partners, studying the specifications and design of the UGDRS for using cloud computing, shared network infrastructure, return on investment and alternative solutions for disaster recovery. 

Mr. Humairi also presented the Cloud One services of DSG to provide infrastructure as a service (IaaS) at the same location, allowing Dubai Government entities to migrate their services onto a robust, flexible infrastructure based on a modern hybrid cloud architecture.