HP Helps Emirates Palace Hotel Maintain 5-Star Customer Experience with Dynamic IT Services Virtualizing IT environment with HP servers and storage ensures business continuity, reduces energy consumption, saves space.

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, date, 2015 – HP today announced that it has helped the 5-star luxury Emirates Palace hotel speed up check-in, facilitate reservations and eliminate downtime for guest services by consolidating and virtualizing its IT environment. As a result, the hotel can ensure that its guests enjoy the best experience possible.

Located on Abu Dhabi’s famous Corniche, with a 1.3km private beach, large conference center, 85 hectares of landscaped gardens, 302 rooms and 92 suites, the Emirates Palace offers the latest technology to help provide an unrivalled personal experience for each of its guests. High speed internet – one of the fastest and most extensive service in Abu Dhabi - is available across the entire grounds, and 24/7 "IT Butlers" are on call to provide IT support.

"To maintain our 5-star guest service levels and ensure that our guests enjoy their experience here, we needed to make our IT more dynamic," says Mehmet Akdeniz, Director of IT/AV, Emirates Palace. "The benefits of virtualizing our infrastructure are clear. With their proven experience of large virtualization projects, HP and MDS have enabled us to increase the reliability, flexibility and availability of our IT platform while containing costs and saving space. In addition, this has made our IT more sustainable and "green" by cutting energy consumption."

Working with local partner MDS, HP deployed a reliable, cost-effective virtual platform based on HP ProLiant blade servers and HP 3PAR storage powered by Intel® Xeon® processors to run the hotel’s business-critical applications, including finance, HR, reservations and IT support. As well as providing a faster response for guests, the new platform improves the productivity of the hotel’s administrative staff by allocating more space for server databases and storing more guest details.

Through extensive VMware virtualisation and server consolidation, HP has boosted the Emirates Palace hotel’s IT efficiency, performance and business continuity while improving space utilization in the data center. A compact HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosure with HP ProLiant blade servers running Intel® Xeon® processors with built-in intelligence and energy-efficient cooling has increased productivity by efficiently balancing workloads, and reduced power costs. It also enables more effective use of the hotel’s storage resources.

Data recovery times have been significantly reduced by an HP 3PAR solution running Intel® Xeon® processors with remote disk-to-disk backup replication, which allows the hotel’s IT team to back up all its data to disk and restore with performance of up to 40TB per hour. By eliminating duplicate data and providing up to 20 times more disk-space savings for efficient data protection, scalable HP StoreOnce B6200 Backup systems protect growing volumes of data and simplify data management across the whole environment.

To ensure that the migration from physical to virtual servers was achieved without interruption to the hotel’s daily business, HP Technology Services carefully tested all application servers before they went into production. Applications such as Exchange Mailbox, Opera, PABX and Micros run on dedicated HP servers.

"HP helps businesses like the Emirates Palace transform their legacy infrastructure to achieve tomorrow’s goals," says Herbert Zierl, HP UAE Managing Director. "HP simplifies the data center, making it more energy- and space-efficient while being less expensive to operate." Click here for more text

The role of a systems integrator is evolving as technologies become more complex and disruptive in a highly dynamic environment. MDS UAE, part of Midis Group, has witnessed for more than three decades the technological transformation that the region has experienced. And keeping in line with the evolving times, the company has been focusing on adapting itself from a reseller to a contemporary systems integrator.

Sami Abi Esber, President, Board Member, Midis Group, says that this has been one of the main focuses for the company. The SI has executed big and prestigious projects in the region over the last few years. It provides software applications and turnkey solutions to its customers, right from site preparations of a data centre to its infrastructure, including hardware, network and software.

"We have transformed MDS UAE from a reseller to a true systems integrator over the years," says Esber. "It is really a big change because if you take our role as a reseller four or five years ago, we were mainly providing installation and services of hardware and software. Now our role has totally changed, we have complex projects where we have to provide a complete solution including consultancy, implementation of infrastructure for our customers. Also instead of reselling only hardware, we are now offering a complete solution here. And this solution can be on-premise, hosted or even hybrid. This is a big change for us."

The systems integrator has acquired the regional managed IT services provider, eHosting DataFort, in order to give the systems integrator’s customers a full portfolio of solutions. "eHosting DataFort will be able to help us in providing hybrid solutions to our customers. We can build and host private and public cloud; and simultaneously we can continue doing on-premise installation and implementation for our customers. And this is within our role as a SI, we don’t want to be a co-location only or just hosting, we want to have a full IT service provider capabilities along with systems integration."

Over the next couple of months, the SI plans to integrate the newly acquired business to provide complete hybrid solutions to the customers seamlessly.

Managed services is an important avenue of growth for systems integrators. "Some of our customers prefer someone to take over the IT infrastructure and manage it, so that they can focus more and more on the core business. They outsource all the IT infrastructure and this is what we are doing now through eHosting DataFort – we are managing the hardware, storage, managing the full IT infrastructure for many of our customers," he explains.

MDS UAE has entities in UAE, Qatar, Oman and it has most recently opened up office in Kuwait two months ago. According to Esber, the company is seeing an impressive growth in Qatar and Oman.

"We have just started operations in Kuwait and we are hoping it will be a good market for us. We have experienced a good growth from Saudi Arabia as well, we are one of the major IT players in that market. However, the biggest growth for us will be from Qatar."

The systems integrator's technology partners include most of the major IT vendors in the market and it has recently signed a new partnership with Dell software.

As a part of a concept with the parent company, it acts as a major distributor where it presents a company in the region. "We are doing this for Dell Software for Middle East, Africa, Central and East Europe out of Dubai Internet City. There will be a company called D Software, and it will be the port of contact for Dell Software distributors and partners. And D Software is a part of the Midis group," explains Esber. The SI works closely with its vendor partners to provide a full profile of services and also customises the solutions depending on which vendor it is.

As is seen in global markets such as US and Europe, Esber believes the region will embrace the third platform technologies even more strongly.

"This is the main transformation that is happening in the market right now. We are seeing an increase in requests from our customers to consolidate storage, to understand Big Data better and to undertake more security projects. Foreseeing this, we have acquired a security company called Netcure, two years ago. This is also based in Dubai Internet City, and it provides only security services to customers."

One of the main challenges for the SI is to find talented professionals in the third platform and in other emerging technologies.

"There is a shortage of qualified professionals in this area. This is where I encourage young people and universities to put more focus on," Esber says.

The company has grown by over 17 percent this year and is targeting for a similar growth in 2015. Click here for more text (Source: Reseller ME, November 12, 2014)

Midis (MDS) Group, an IT group of companies was founded in 1981 and became one of the first IT companies to be established in the UAE. MDS is not only a System Integrator but has a lot in its portfolio. It is into Software Solutions, Data Centre infrastructure and site preparation, cloud infrastructure solutions, and managed services. "We also resell hardware from different vendors. We are active in all IT fields and sectors," says Sami Abi Esber, President, Board Member, Midis Group. In the Gulf region, the company is present in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ras al-Khaimah, Qatar, Oman, and Kuwait. MDS works with vendors like HP, EMC, Microsoft, Avaya, Oracle, Lenovo, Dell, IBM etc.

As it is known, the IT industry is witnessing a shift towards solutions and services from hardware. MDS is prepared for this next wave of technology. The company has consolidated its data centre and cloud credentials by launching Cloud Centre of Excellence in the UAE. "Here you can come and experience what is cloud, how it will work and everything you want to deploy as services it can be deployed here in our data centre. You can try it before taking any decision. It is a converged system, which is now available in one rack and has provision for any services from networking, infrastructure, and database," explains Esber.

By working with so many vendors, MDS is not tied to one single brand. It delivers end-to-end solutions and integrating the best of the products to offer the best solution. "We are providing infrastructure solutions to all cloud providers. We are not offering XaaS but we are helping our customers to offer private cloud or public cloud. Our role is not to be the cloud service provider; our role is to enable our customers to be that. This is the difference," elaborates Esber.

MDS is also well-positioned to provide security and mobility solutions. There is a separate entity within MDS group that focused on security. It is called Netcure and is specialized in providing security for data center infrastructure and different types of IT security. BYOD is gaining traction so MDS offers manageability of devices along with security.

Esber says that there are a lot of reasons why MDS is the most reliable partner in the country. One of them is the naming of MDS by IDC as the topmost IT service provider in the UAE from last nine years without interruption. "We are in the business since 1981. So many companies came and disappeared. MDS is here and growing. We add value to the business of our vendors and we have a long standing relationship with the vendors. We are financially strong and have the strongest coverage. We have the highest certification from vendors and direct relationship with them. That’s why we have a better engagement with the customer from commercial and technical point of view," says Esber. The customers of MDS include majority of oil companies. The focus is on enterprise business and not SMB.

Esber accepts that the reselling part is coming down and data centre and software business is coming up. The revenue of MDS Gulf is USD 750 mn. "Half of this is reselling or hardware business. Software business is going up and hardware business is shrinking because of virtualization and cloud," he adds.

As informed, MDS has been enjoying a combined average growth ratio of almost 15% from last five years. "As a company which is committed to the Gulf market, we are expanding year after year to offer our customers better services and better solutions," concludes Esber. Click here for more text (Source: Enterprise Channels MEA, June 08, 2014)

A major SSL security bug called Heartbleed has sent a major number of websites around the world into high alert. The bug exploits a flaw in the OpenSSL cryptography library and it allows the stealing of sensitive information. For more information click here. In order to test if your websites are affected by this flaw you can use the testers of Critical Watch and LastPass. MDS Computers will be more than glad to assist you in what is needed and help in patching the flaw.

Aruba Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARUN), a leading provider of next-generation network access solutions for the mobile enterprise, today announced that Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi, one of the world's most prestigious hotels, is the first hotel in the Middle East to deploy a 802.11ac wireless network allowing guests to use gigabit Wi-Fi across the sprawling property. This landmark implementation, by MDS UAE, a leading IT service Company in UAE, leverages Aruba Networks' 802.11ac and advanced security solutions.

Commenting on his organization's decision to adopt the latest in wireless networking technologies, Mehmet Akdeniz, Director of IT and AV at Emirates Palace said, "We remain deeply committed to offering our guests a truly remarkable experience. When we noticed that guest usage of bandwidth-hungry mobile applications was becoming a norm, we committed to deploying a solution that would meet their high expectations for the next four to five years. This is why we opted for Aruba's gigabit Wi-Fi solution."

Guided by MDS UAE through a six-month selection period, Akdeniz and his team evaluated solutions from Aruba Networks along with other wireless networking vendors. Aruba stood out by offering the most suitable 802.11ac technology for Emirates Palace. The Aruba 802.11ac solution, which includes the Aruba 220 Series Access Points, Aruba Mobility Controllers and the company's patented ClientMatch(TM) technology, delivered the capabilities, functionality, high degree of security and effortless integration with the hotel's newly deployed wired infrastructure that Akdeniz and his team required.

Emirates Palace deployed an Aruba 7220 series Mobility Controller and over 1000 Aruba AP-225 wireless access points across the expansive property about two months period to avoid inconvenience to guests. The hotel also implemented Aruba's AirWave Network Management platform, which delivers visibility into all devices and connections on the wireless network thus allowing administrators to proactively plan for capacity, visualize client performance and troubleshoot application issues.

Akdeniz said, "Having a highly regarded Aruba Platinum Partner carry out the implementation was a huge benefit to us. Even industry-leading technology is only as good as its implementation and MDS UAE ensured that the entire system was configured for optimal performance."

While the most noticeable benefit of the new system was the increase in capacity from 54Mbps to 1.3Gbps, the centralized nature of the solution proved to be an appealing feature for the IT team. The Aruba 7220 series Mobility Controller has completely eliminated manual configuration of individual access points and has even automated software updates of all the Aruba 225 APs. Furthermore, with solution features such as white list co-ordination, valid AP lists, control plane security (CPsec) certificates and wireless intrusion detection and coordination, Emirates Palace has now achieved the highest level of security for its wireless network.

Through the controller's intuitive Graphical User Interface (GUI), administrators can make rapid changes to the network and its security settings. This has enabled a high degree of customization of the network which is required to meet the specific needs of each high-profile meeting and conference that the prestigious venue hosts. Akdeniz elaborated, "We no longer waste precious manpower tending to labor intensive processes. Everything is easily managed from one location and our newfound visibility into every element of the network has enabled proactive troubleshooting and thus, drastically improved our reaction time. Complaints about poor network performance have virtually disappeared and our business customers are often amazed to find how quickly we can accommodate their connectivity requirements."

Akdeniz believes that the Aruba solution will now allow the hotel to deliver new features and capabilities to its guests. While the wireless infrastructure is currently used to support Internet services, point of sales and digital signage, the new network can allow a complete range of cutting-edge guest services. Emirates Palace already has plans under way to offer IPTV, online gaming for children, Internet music streaming and smart device-controlled operation of in-room entertainment. All of these services will rely heavily on the abundant availability of bandwidth - something that the Aruba Networks 802.11ac solution will provide for the foreseeable future.

"In the hospitality sector today, simply providing wireless is practically a given. But not all wireless is equal and this is something that our guests will be able to recognize instantly. We now have a solution that enables us to improve their experience in ways that they have not even considered as of yet. This is the kind of service excellence that Emirates Palace is synonymous with and we are happy to say that Aruba has been an enabler of our success," concluded Akdeniz. Click here for more text (Source: The Wall Street Journal, February 26, 2014)

MDS UAE has once again been nominated for the ninth consecutive year as the number one IT Company in the UAE in terms of IT Services by "IDC".

MDS has achieved "elite reseller" partnership with Juniper. We offer high quality services and solutions across all the Juniper portfolio and have been recognized by Juniper as an Elite Reseller based on our constant dedication and achievements. We are operate service specialists and we offer products that include Firewall/IPSec VPN & Intrusion Detection Prevention, High End Routing, Policy Access & Control, Routing and Switching. In addition to our products we also offer Advanced Security and Networking Infrastructure solutions. The type of Offerings are Consulting, Installation, Maintenance, Network Computing, Network Integration, Professional Services, Remote Support, System Integration, Training, Managed Services, IT Consulting. The solution Offerings are Content Delivery Network, IP Services, MPLS, Multicasting, Networking Solutions, Security, Storage Networking, VoIP, VPLS, VPN, WiFi, Customer Relationship Management.

MDS Computers, the global expert in designing, building and managing complete data center environments, has launched the first and only Cloud Center of Excellence in the UAE and the region.

The new MDS Computers center, is built entirely around the latest technology using the HP CloudSystem Matrix, which delivers a virtualized pool of network, storage, and computing resources that can be optimized and adjusted to meet the dynamic business demands of its users.

Speaking about this launch, Mr. Nader Eid, MDS Computers General Manager says: "MDS is referred to as one of the leading providers of cloud computing solutions. Therefore, we’re always keen on bringing in the latest technologies and providing unique services that will further help our clients conduct their businesses in the most efficient, accurate and cost effective ways."

"We are extremely proud to set up the first Cloud Center of Excellence in the whole region. The MDS Computers center will be open to our clients and other stakeholders to demonstrate and experience the fully fledged Cloud Center of Excellence" Mr. Eid added.

Built on market-leading technologies provided by HP such as HP BladeSystem and HP Matrix Operating Environment, The CloudSystem Matrix can be combined with HP Storage to deliver a fully integrated solution.

Explaining the capabilities of HP CloudSystem, Mr. Amr El Geneidy, Enterprise Country Manager in the UAE for HP Middle East says: "The HP CloudSystem Matrix unites the tools, processes, and architecture of both physical and virtual worlds to help cut costs, and speed up service delivery time. Therefore, converged infrastructure platform, can be adjusted to match dynamic business demands by provisioning and modifying complex infrastructures in minutes instead of months."

The HP CloudSystem Matrix is IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) for private and hybrid cloud environments; it allows users to provision physical and virtual infrastructures in minutes. This offering includes a self-service infrastructure portal for quick auto-provisioning, along with built-in lifecycle management to optimize infrastructure, manage the resource pools, and help ensure uptime. Matrix is integrated by design with broad support of heterogeneous environments including cloud bursting to a variety of public cloud providers including HP Cloud Services. Click here for more text