NEWS
Microsoft
announces new
cloud data centre
region in Qatar
icrosoft has announced plans
to establish a new cloud data
centre region in Qatar to deliver
its intelligent cloud services. The new
region is anticipated to be available
starting with Microsoft Azure in 2021,
and Office 365, Dynamics 365 and Power
Platform to follow.
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The announcement by Microsoft was
made in partnership with the Ministry
of Transport and Communications at an
event attended by the Prime Minister and
Minister of Interior HE Sheikh Abdullah bin
Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, HE Minister of
Transport and Communications Jassim Saif
Ahmed Al-Sulaiti and President, Microsoft
Global Sales, Marketing and Operations,
Microsoft Corp, Jean-Philippe Courtois.
The new region will be administered
through an entity at the Qatar Free
Zones, showing their potential globally in
incubating such initiatives, thus boosting
self-sufficiency and sustainability as well
as leveraging Qatar’s ecosystem to be
effective in developing the region.
Government entities, organisations, public
and private enterprises and developers will
have access to scalable, highly available
and resilient cloud services to accelerate
their Digital Transformation journeys –
to better engage customers, empower
employees, optimise operations and
transform products and services – from
the new cloud region in Qatar.
“The new Microsoft cloud region will
deliver unprecedented opportunity for
government and businesses in Qatar
to successfully embark on their Digital
Transformation journey,” said Courtois.
EfficiencyIT won the ‘IT Systems Reseller and
Managed Services Provider of the year’ award
EfficiencyIT picks up wins at SDC
Awards 2019
fficiencyIT, a specialist in
data centre design and
build, Edge Computing
environments and IT services,
has announced it has won ‘IT
Systems Reseller and Managed
Services Provider of the year’ at
the 2019 SDC Awards 2019. Now
in its fourth year of operation, the
award recognises the company
for its expertise within the critical
infrastructure space and its focus
on delivering highly resilient, energy
efficient Digital Transformation
solutions to customers.
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Nick Ewing, Managing Director,
EfficiencyIT, said the award was
testament to the hard work and
expertise of the team, its culture of
adding value and to the trust that
customers place in them to keep
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their most critical IT systems online,
ensuring they perform as efficiently
and resiliently as possible.
EfficiencyIT also received a second
accolade for ‘Edge Project of the year’,
awarded in collaboration with The
Wellcome Sanger Institute and EIT’s
vendor partner, Schneider Electric.
Under the watchful eye of EIT, The
Wellcome Sanger Institute have
deployed APC by Schneider Electric
Smart-UPS uninterruptible power
supplies to provide resilient power
protection in the research labs and
utilise Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure
IT next-generation DCIM platform,
with its Artificial Intelligence (AI) and
Machine Learning (ML) capabilities,
to proactively manage the data centre
and minimise downtime. ◊
www.intelligentdatacentres.com