Middle East’s cloud and datacentre growth explored at the Future Datacentres and Cloud Infrastructure Summit

Dr. Esam Al Falasi – IT Director, Ministry of Economy, Dr. Sabri Al-Azazi - Executive Director, Federal Authority of Identity and Citizenship, Malik Al Madani, Chief Innovation Officer, Director of Strategy and the Future Department, Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Authority (FCSA), along with Nicoleta Teodorovici, Consul General, Consulate General of Romania and other dignitaries opened the inaugural edition of the Future Datacentres and Cloud Infrastructure Summit 2019, organized by Expotrade Global.

Over 200 senior IT professionals from the GCC region attended the first day of the Future Datacentres and Cloud Infrastructure Summit. Dr. Esam Al Falasi, IT Director, Ministry of Economy delivered the welcome address, following which Dr. Sabri Al-Azazi, Executive Director, Federal Authority of Identity and Citizenship delivered the keynote address on the topic, datacentres - the main block of the internet and information processing power. 

During his presentation, he highlighted a number of statistics including by the year 2025, datacentres to use 20% of the world’s energy, placing its carbon footprint at 5.5 % of the global value. While talking about the amount of data being generated, he emphasized on how the size of the digital world is predicted to continue increase by a factor of 44 by 2020, and the key drivers for the growth of the datacentre industry are multiple factors, such as the change in computational technologies, proliferation of smart cities across the world, amongst others.

Malik Al Madani, Chief Innovation Officer, Director of Strategy and the Future Department, Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Authority (FCSA), presented on the history of UAE with innovation, and shared examples of innovative concepts and systems implemented within his organization, while Armand Verstappen, Manager Site Operations, eBay Classifieds Group presented on a topic titled case for a circular economy in the datacentre industry. 

The two day summit has over 40 regionally and internationally renowned subject matter experts delivering keynote sessions, case study presentations and participating in panel discussions.

Hashim Saeed, Head of Information Technology, AZIZI Group moderated a panel on next generation datacentres & getting ready for the future of IT. He was joined by panelists Binoo Joseph, Chief Information Officer, EMAAR Group; Dinesh Ramesh, Regional Sales Director, Gigamon; Abdullah Alharbi, Engineering Specialist and Site Lead at Corporate Data Center, Saudi Aramco, Armand Verstappen, Manager Site Operations, eBay Classifieds Group; Mukund J, Asst. Vice President – Infrastructure, Noor Bank and Hamed Obaid Areidat, Head of Infrastructure & Operations, Federal Authority of Identity and Citizenship.

The first day ended with a panel discussion on the topic datacentre security that was moderated by Aftab Hameed Khan, Head of IT Department, Ilyas & Mustafa Galadari Group. He was joined by panelists Hanin Mohamed AlMuhallabi, Head of Technical Infrastructure Section, Sharjah Roads and Transport Authority; Khawar Fayez, Head of Unit – Network, Abu Dhabi City Municipality; Krishan Kant Srivastava, Head of IT Infrastructure, Operations & Application, Landmark Hospitality; Rajendra Srivastava, Head of IT Infrastructure, IFFCO Group of Companies, and Safdar Zaman, Head Of IT Strategy and Governance, Nakheel PJSC.

Meshal Bin Hussain, Director of Information Technology, Ministry of Finance will open the second day of the conference with a presentation on the topic reimagining government cloud services. His session will be followed by a presentation by Rami Al-Haddad, Group CIO, National Aviation Services (NAS) on the topic titled from cost center to a profit center - a digital transformation story.

The event is supported by NVIDIA, Intel, Fortinet, Panduit, Mistubishi Electric Hydronics, Forcepoint, Gigamon, and many others.