COUNTRY FOCUS: SAUDI ARABIA
CIOs are increasingly
becoming aware of the
benefits that these
technologies offer and
are showing a growing
inclination toward
adopting managed and
outsourcing services
In 2015 a study from IDC estimated
that the outsourcing, managed services,
and data centre services market in
Saudi Arabia is expected to total $570.6
million in 2015. The market is set to
grow 16.2% year-on-year, primarily
driven by increased spending on network
and desktop outsourcing, and hosting
infrastructure services.
“Organisations in Saudi Arabia are gradually
warming to the idea of commissioning third-
party providers for managed and outsourcing
services. While the inherent preference of
Saudi organisations to retain complete control
over IT and keep their infrastructure in-house
has inhibited the widespread adoption of
these services across Saudi Arabia, CIOs
are increasingly becoming aware of the
benefits that these technologies offer and
are showing a growing inclination toward
adopting managed and outsourcing services,”
commented Uzair Mujtaba, Senior Analyst for
Software and IT services at IDC Saudi Arabia.
CLOSER ANALYSIS
McDonald’s Saudi Arabia invests in new data centre
In line with its ongoing success and
expansion in Saudi Arabia, Riyadh
International Catering Corp., the
developmental licensee for the
McDonald’s Corporation in the
Central, Eastern, and Northern
regions of Saudi Arabia, has
invested in a new data centre fitted
connectivity infrastructure from
Reichle & De-Massari (R&M).
This Riyadh-based data centre will
serve as the IT operations hub for over
130 food outlets across the Kingdom
and will host applications that are vital
to services offered to the quick service
restaurant giant’s customers and
employees in the country.
According to Waleed Naseer F. Al
Saud, VP, Business Support, at Riyadh
International Catering Corp (RICC),
the data centre is the ‘brain’ of the
organisation’s IT infrastructure and
is critical to delivering applications
such as email exchange, ERP, reports,
data base, web applications, digital
signage, and Digital Multimedia
Broadcasting (DMB).
The new data centre now boasts a
number of R&M solutions including
Cat6A cabling, HD patch panels, OM3
fibre optic cabling, server cabinets, as
well as R&M’s copper and fibre optic
www.intelligentcio.com
raceway systems. These overhead
raceways have been implemented to
ensure the bend radius of the fibre
optic cabling is well maintained and
controlled within standard limits, to
avoid any degradation in performance
during daily moves, adds and changes.
The technology highlight however
is the R&MinteliPhy Automated
Infrastructure Management (AIM)
solution, which has been used for
real-time visibility as well as seamless
monitoring and management of
the entire physical network. With
features such as easy and up-to-date
documentation, remote management
of infrastructure work orders and
simplified asset management,
R&MinteliPhy allows McDonald’s
to better plan and manage future
infrastructure expansions so it can
extend its branch network without
being held back by IT constrains.
The R&MinteliPhy system was
designed to allow full infrastructure
management of McDonald’s data
centre and office cabling cabinets
at their Head Office in Riyadh. With
this system, a single analyser at
the end-of-row cabinet controls all
cabinets in that row, which will help
McDonald’s IT team to save critical
space in that data centre. The
system is currently monitoring more
than 1000 Cat6a and fibre optic
links in the data centre and is ready
to be linked with remote locations
as well for full future management.
INTELLIGENTCIO
43