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IBM Services today announced two IBM Data Centers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one in Abu Dhabi and the other in Dubai, to provide cloud managed services to enterprises and help accelerate their journey to hybrid cloud. IBM Services is the services and consultancy arm of IBM.

The local data centers will help organizations shift to a hybrid cloud model, and benefit from having the flexibility to move select critical workloads to a secure local cloud environment, hosted in the UAE while keeping mission critical data on-premise. This will not only omit the need to invest in additional physical space for local data residency but help organizations abide by their data sovereignty requirements and restrictions. Organization will also be able to integrate this local cloud environment with their existing IT infrastructure and different cloud environments.

Today, most companies are only 20 percent along their cloud journey, renting compute power to cut costs. According to IDC, 90% of enterprises will embrace integrated hybrid cloud tools and strategies to support different applications and use cases by 2024. IBM works with its clients in the region to help them in their cloud transformation journey and leverages its leadership in hybrid cloud for the enterprise following the recent $34 Billion landmark acquisition of Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions.

IBM has been offering cloud managed services to organizations across various sectors, globally and in the region, and today, it continues to help its customers through its data centers in the UAE. Customers will not only be able to migrate their IBM and non-IBM based workloads and business applications to the data centers but can have IBM manage and modernize them and handle their day-to-day operations. As a result, they will have the ability to free their IT resource to focus on adding value to the business and rapidly address fluctuating business demands and industry changes.

Additionally, the data centers will deliver data backup and protection services for customers. In the cases of network failure or downtime, data and workloads hosted in the local data centers will be recovered instantly and available for use in real-time. According to an IDC report, the average cost of downtime is $250,000 per hour across all industries and organizational sizes.

“IBM has reshaped its portfolio to deliver what clients need, investing heavily in hybrid cloud and the emerging technologies that optimize business workflows in the cloud, such as AI, blockchain, analytics and cybersecurity,” said Hossam Seif El-Din, Vice President, Enterprise & Commercial, IBM Middle East and Africa. “Through our data centers and with our recent acquisition of Red Hat, we are helping organizations accelerate their move to hybrid cloud and interconnect different clouds, creating unified systems designed for increased consistency, automation and predictability.”