IBM joins Middle East data centre race with two UAE facilities

Big Blue wants to tap into vast number of workloads that remain on-premises

IBM is the latest tech giant to open data centres in the Middle East to connect with companies and governments subject to strict data residency regulations.

The company will use the facilities to provide managed services to enterprises based in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and help accelerate their journeys to hybrid cloud.

“Through our data centres, we are helping organisations accelerate their move to hybrid cloud and interconnect different clouds … creating unified systems designed for increased consistency, automation and predictability,” said Hossam Seif El Din, vice president, enterprise and commercial at IBM MEA.

The company joins cloud rivals AWS, Microsoft, Oracle and Alibaba Cloud in launching facilities in the Middle East.

AWS has three data centres in Bahrain and the UAE, while Microsoft opened data centres in Dubai and Abu Dhabi last year.

Oracle also opened its first data centre in Abu Dhabi last year, with another UAE and two further Saudi Arabia facilities planned this year.

Meanwhile, Alibaba Cloud invested in a facility in the UAE in 2016. SAP has also opened data centres in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

In addition to helping public sector, financial and banking companies with their hybrid journeys, IBM’s UAE data centres will provide data backup and protection services. According to IBM, only 20 percent of companies in the region have moved to the cloud.

Investment in data storage in Saudi Arabia and the UAE is set to rise to more than Dh.1.5 billion (£310m) by 2022, according to IDC.