Microsoft to open data centres in Dubai by early next year

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Microsoft to opendata centres in Dubai by early next year

Microsoft has recently revealed plans to open its first data centres in the Middle East in Dubai and Abu Dhabi by early next year. Sayed Hashish, the regional general manager for Microsoft Gulf, announced that four new data centres will be opened across the world: Switzerland, France, Germany and the UAE. He later discussed the growing opportunities for cloud computing in the region.

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The data centre in Dubai will be resourced, managed and run by Microsoft to offer a full intelligent cloud with Azure, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365. “We will be offering the full cloud spectrum – private, public and hybrid – to our customers in the region. Azure has grown 98% in the last quarter globally and our commercial cloud revenue grew 56% year-over-year to $5.3 billion,” Hashish said.

Microsoft is already supporting 4,000 startups across the region and many more are expected to come on board once the data centres open. “The integration of the data centres with Microsoft’s global cloud infrastructure will connect regional businesses with global opportunities, help accelerate new investments and job opportunities and improve access to cloud services for people and organisations across the Middle East”, Hashish mentioned.

“We have been in the Middle East for more than 20 years and are committed to the region. The decision to have the data centres now comes from the opportunities arising from the digital transformation in the region and address some of our customers such as healthcare, government and public sectors’ need to have local data residency,” Hashish underlined.

President of Microsoft MEA, Samer Abu-Ltaif underlined that the company sees enormous opportunity in MEA, particularly for cloud technology as a key driver to economic development. Pressing issues of the MEA region such as youth employability, education and healthcare could be tackled through cloud computing since it’s a healthy and sustainable solution, according to Abu-Ltaif.

Microsoft isn’t the only tech giant making a move in Dubai since Alibaba Group is set to be its second data centre in Dubai this year. Amazon Web Services has also an office in Dubai with Alibaba Cloud.