United Business group (UBG), a leader in IT infrastructure management, technical support services, IT consultancy and technology resource outsourcing in Kuwait, has partnered with IBM Cloud to transform its business into a managed service provider.

IBM and UBG will offer a flexible hybrid cloud platform based on OpenStack to deliver customised cloud services to customers in Kuwait.

The businesses will be able to choose to have their data located in country and given the option to have the data reside either on premise or off premise.

The market shift toward cloud-enabled business models is accelerating and buying behaviour is largely focused in ‘as-a-service’ options, which is driving a huge demand for in-country managed services and the hybrid cloud, said a statement.

To address this market change, UBG employed IBM Cloud to offer customers in Kuwait the option for subscription model cloud-based offerings to save costs and increase operational agility, choice, and flexibility, it said.

The new model will also grant customers the transparency to use all data and apps across multiple platforms, the control and governance to manage heavy workloads, and a multi-layered approach to ensure security across every interaction point.

UBG will also offer to its clients in Kuwait Bluemix, IBM’s Digital Innovation Platform, to speed up app development, cutting deployment time from months to minutes.

The new model also allows businesses to select from a range of hardware configuration options based on open standards and deploy services from IBM’s SoftLayer global data centres based on the needs of the workload.

The businesses will be able to focus more on building functional applications and services and less on the backend processes, such as the infrastructure and cloud management systems.

Marawan Megawer, vice president - Global Business Partners, IBM Middle East and Africa, said: ”By offering our customers access to a hybrid cloud platform based on open standards, we will be able to help break down the barriers between clouds and on premise IT systems, providing clients with control, visibility and security as they use both public and private clouds.

"Data location across an ever growing number of clouds is an increasing concern for customers, and we are unveiling new developer services to make this easier to manage.”

IBM recently opened its first office in Kuwait to strengthen its ability to provide solutions and services to a rapidly expanding customer and partner base in the country.

The office is part of a broad program of investment that IBM is making across the Middle East. The new office will act as a sales and customer service hub for IBM’s comprehensive line of offerings in the region.

Muraleedharan Nanoo, managing director, UBG, said: “We are leveraging IBM Cloud, analytics, mobile and security offerings in order to create high-value, competitively differentiated services. Our goal is to improve development productivity and reliability to better serve our customers.” - TradeArabia News Service