EMC has been selected to complete a project for the consolidation and virtualisation of Bahrain’s Central Informatics Organization (CIO), the starting point of its journey to cloud computing.

The implementation is intended to result in a raft of benefits including the unification of the government’s IT infrastructure, scalability for future applications and growth, enhanced security and the real ability to offer IT as a service, said a statement. 

The new storage infrastructure, built by EMC, is designed to provide the CIO with efficient utilisation of storage using EMC’s latest technologies, while dramatically minimizing immediate management, capital cost and future investment, it said.

The project comprises a new EMC family of unified storage, with improved capacity for each site to meet application and Business SLA’s. EMC VNX, the latest unified storage technology from EMC — is fully optimised for virtual applications, designed with the latest Intel multi-core processor technology.

Additionally, EMC RecoverPoint will be implemented as a major replication component between the CIO’s two data centres (also including EMC storage and provisioning software) which will enable the CIO team to manage this virtualised environment. EMC technical services teams are working closely with the CIO to help transform their infrastructure and IT operations into a strategic business asset, converting IT into a provider of services and laying the foundations for private cloud, while deploying the best practices to build their disaster recovery site.  

“At CIO, we believe in the vital importance of the use and exchange of information and our vision is to achieve the highest standard of living for citizens through comprehensive, secure, accurate and timely information and services, which makes it imperative for us to utilize the latest, future proof, progressive technology solutions to meet our business criticality and requirements. EMC is our ideal partner, and its storage solutions will add efficiency, agility and scalability to our IT infrastructure while allowing us to maintain control and ensure security of our data,” said Sheikh Salman Mohammed Al Khalifa, director general of Information Technology.

“To manage and secure its vast amount of information, CIO needs a storage infrastructure that is efficient, smart and secure.  We are very proud of the confidence put in EMC and we are positive that the new infrastructure will enable the CIO to start providing real improvements and benefits to all involved and continue the journey to the cloud, offering cloud services for the Bahraini government and improving its performance, in order to meet the expected capacity and growth of Bahrain IT services”, said Habib Mahakian, regional director, North Gulf, Levant and Pakistan Area, EMC. - TradeArabia News Service