Microsoft announced the general availability of Azure Availability Zones, to be delivered via its UAE data centres in Dubai. The investment is aimed to enhance the competitiveness of UAE businesses through the vital provision of business continuity and disaster recovery solutions. Microsoft emphasises its commitment to futureproofing operations and protecting significant advances made in their digital transformation programmes.
Naim Yazbeck, General Manager, Microsoft UAE stated that with the advent of the financial system, uptime and incessant access to critical data, applications and workloads have become the foremost concern for region’s technology shareholders.
As businesses move onward amidst enhanced industry furore and competitiveness from market disrupters, competitiveness hinges on the ability to remain operational even as external issues undermine supply chains and markets. Reserves alone will not deliver such competences. Swift recovery necessitates strategy-focused infrastructure and solutions to work efficiently. That is what Azure Availability Zones delivers, Yazbeck added.
Azure Availability Zones business continuity and disaster recovery strategy
Azure Availability Zones is a significant building block of a wide-ranging business continuity and disaster recovery strategy. It is designed to ensure resilience and data in times of crisis and availability of business-critical applications, by advanced architecture and built-in, end-to-end safety and security.
The unveiling of Azure Availability Zones also indicates the readiness of Microsoft’s UAE cloud natives to create the fortitude of organisations’ futureproofing programmes, commenced in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic crisis.
Azure Availability Zones would build on the capabilities and benefits offered through Microsoft’s enterprise-grade data centres in Dubai, which began operations in June 2019. The facilities’ services have empowered several organisations to further increase their capabilities and reimagine their operations. Amongst those that have already migrated to Microsoft Azure Availability Zones in the UAE are Commercial Bank of Dubai, Emirates Group, Mashreq Bank and First Abu Dhabi Bank.
As an organisation, the bank believes in the power of technology to deliver a smarter and more agile customer experience as well as enable their people to be dynamic and stay at the forefront of developments in their industry. The new availability zones would allow them to enhance the way the bank uses Microsoft Cloud, offering them a greater level of resilience, data security, and flexibility. Sequentially it, would support their customer-centric ethos, and allow them to deliver greater benefits for their customers, mentioned Srinivasan Sampath, Acting Group Chief Technology Officer of First Abu Dhabi Bank.
The intelligent, trusted, versatile Microsoft Cloud has been the foundation of digital transformation for regional innovators for more than three years now, Yazbeck added.
Yazbeck further implied that business agility, cost rationalisation, productivity, security, governance, and compliance are just some of the benefits that have been experienced by their regional cloud clients. Now that Availability Zones has been opened up to the region, the bank anticipates looking at speedy acceptance as customers seek to safeguard the substantial development they have created.
