Smart Dubai Government Opts for Dell EMC

Dell EMC and Smart Dubai Government Establishment (SDG) revealed a project to shape the transformation of SDG to an agile and digital shared service provider.

SDG is the technology Arm of Smart Dubai, the city-wide initiative to transform Dubai into the smartest and happiest city.

SDG has deployed Dell EMC’s Enterprise Hybrid Cloud platform to establish an IT-As-A-Service Infrastructure to a flexible provision of ICT infrastructure to government entities which in turn allows for provision of new services for individuals and organizations across Dubai. The Establishment has further added Dell EMC’s range of data protection and availability solutions to create a secure and reliable backup and recovery environment.

The centralized environment enables the agility, reliability and higher levels of automation allowing SDG to focus on the crucial task of introducing services and initiatives enhance the delivery of smart services for all stakeholders.

Customer Benefits:

• Smarter, Efficient Service Delivery: The hybrid cloud platform enables self-service and automation capabilities to expedite service delivery across all internal and external stakeholders, eliminating manual, time-consuming and error-prone IT processes.
• Increased Efficiency and Transparency: SDG is able to gain deeper visibility into performance and capacity usage of the infrastructure resources and generate accurate reports to drive operations and wider strategy. This aids in regular performance monitoring and reporting to allow for regular progress updates across various applications, initiatives and programs to enable proactive problem solving and enhance customer experience.
• Enhanced Protection and Reliability: SDG has leveraged the combination of Dell EMC Data Domain and Dell EMC Networker to create a unified backup and recovery system that is designed to maintain 24/7 data protection and availability. With Dell EMC Avamar’s integrated variable length deduplication technology, the Establishment facilitates fast, efficient backups across all virtual environments and remote offices to ensure information is secure and services are up and running.
• Foundation for Growth: Dell EMC gives SDG a blend of flexible infrastructure to support current business applications while enabling the scale to developing next-generation applications for the future.
  

Customer Challenges:
SDG is responsible for driving the initiatives and investments to achieve the vision of HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the VP and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai to deliver smart services and infrastructure to create happiness. In its role, the Establishment oversees smart transformation processes and initiatives across government entities to help ingrain speed, efficiency and effectiveness across all government services and bodies.

Believing ICT to be a core building block to help achieve this vision, SDG aimed to revamp existing IT infrastructure and provision IT-as-a-Service capabilities to support its ambitious growth trajectory. SDG’s strategy and vision is geared toward reaffirming its position as the central provider of shared services across all internal users as well as other government entities to enhance resource optimization and expedite service delivery while enabling financial transparency.

With a mandate to transform and accelerate the IT foundation, SDG worked with Dell EMC Consulting to implement their strategy and enable ITaaS using Enterprise Hybrid Cloud with its integrated package of services, software and hardware built on thousands of engineering hours in Dell Technologies labs. The solution accelerated the deployment of an enterprise hybrid cloud, and also fueled time to value.

The integrated and engineered cloud platform based on the technologies from  Dell EMC and VMware, Inc., and  implemented by Dell EMC services enables SDG to provision the scalability, speed and agility of the public cloud experience together with the heightened control and security of private cloud infrastructure.

The combination of technologies within the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud, including Dell EMC Vblock converged infrastructure, Dell EMC ViPR Controller software defined storage automation together with Dell EMC VPLEX and VMware vCloud Suite allows SDG to enhance storage capabilities without adding unnecessary managerial complexity. The heightened infrastructure automation delivered by Enterprise Hybrid Cloud further enhances the organizations ability to improve service delivery, while enabling deeper visibility into costs and resources in addition to reporting accuracy.

SDG moved from a traditional backup environment to a cloud ready data protection system based on Data Domain, purpose built protection storage that delivers 24×7 data integrity management. The deployment of Avamar and Networker enable the Establishment to enable fast, efficient backups of critical information while leveraging powerful deduplication capabilities to maximize performance of critical applications and data. Selection of data protection products enables SDG to create a smarter, simplified backup and recovery infrastructure to assure the performance and availability of critical applications and services.

Together with Dell EMC, SDG has created an advanced and agile governance platform  to transform its position as a central broker of shared services to drive workflows and performance across key government bodies and deliver a ‘customer centric’ experience for all stakeholders

H.E. Wesam Lootah, CEO, SDG, said: “A strong ICT backbone lies at the heart of our vision to establish the smart government and position Dubai as the smartest city in the world. As the entity responsible for driving smarter, innovation-based initiatives to enhance the delivery of services and optimize the use of resources across all government entities in the Emirate of Dubai, we needed a platform that successfully met the mandate for accelerated growth and service excellence. The Dell EMC’s Enterprise Hybrid Cloud delivers a rigorously tested, fully engineered platform, offering the business agility we need to automate secure self-service infrastructure services across our different lines of business and stakeholders. We are proud to announce this strategic step forward in our journey of innovation as we come ever closer to our goal of achieving the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum for bringing our nation and its community hopes for an aspiring future.“

Habib Mahakian, VP, Gulf and Pakistan, Dell EMC, said: “We are extremely proud to be a part of this exciting journey and assuming the role of a trusted advisor as we work towards achieving the vision of a smart, innovation-backed city that aims to offer its citizens and wider community a sustainable future and improved quality of life. We thank the Smart Dubai Government for sharing its futuristic vision with us and engaging Dell EMC to empower IT as a broker of trusted cloud services. We take great pride in this association and in introducing an industry best practice built on Dell EMC industry leading technology and services to create a unified and single vision of IT within the government to enable better services, improved workflows and enhanced efficiency.”