UAE SMEs unlock Islamic economy gains with data management

DUBAI — UAE small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are unlocking Islamic economy gains by better managing their data, industry experts announced today. The UAE has been ranked as the top Islamic Economy country in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, according to a recent report by Dinar Standard and Thomson Reuters. The Islamic economy is set to grow from $4 trillion in 2014 to $7 trillion in 2020. Among examples of SMEs delivering Islamic economy innovation, slaughterhouses can use apps to better integrate the supply chain with farmers and distributors, smaller banks can have real-time customer dashboards, and Muslim fashion and cosmetic start-ups can identify consumer trends on social media and help scale up in new markets. Facing tight margins, SMEs, which account for the vast majority of the UAE’s businesses and jobs, are increasingly using cloud-based business applications, Bring Your Own device strategies, and social media to remain competitive and cut IT costs. “UAE SMEs are the cradle of innovation for the Islamic economy, and are at the forefront of adopting cloud applications to drive new business models. However, compared to large enterprises, SMEs cannot afford to go down for any amount of time – a single slip up could wipe out their business,” said Savitha Bhaskar, COO of UAE-based SMB consultancy Condo Protego. “With the rapidly-dropping cost and rapidly-increasing power of backup, recovery, and high availability solutions, UAE SMEs absolutely need to embrace these latest technologies to protect and secure their data and their businesses to keep the country’s Islamic Economy running 24/7,” added Savitha Bhaskar. Supporting innovation, backup and high availability software by Veritas allows SMEs to effectively store and protect, their data. In data center innovation, Condo Protego is seeing strong demand for EMC Unity, the recently-launched line of all-flash and hybrid storage that provides simple and always-available performance at a low cost. Condo Protego – Latin for “to store and to protect” – is the leading regional ‘consultative solutions provider’. From enterprise to SME-sized customers, Condo Protego focuses on data storage, virtualization, security, and data protection – providing not only 24x7 support coverage, but also unprecedented 30-minute response time. Condo Protego is entirely customer-centric and believes “business is about people”. — SG