Gulf treated to first-ever cloud services portal

Posted On April 15, 2014

By Issac John

Bruno Delamarre and Dilip Rahulan at the press briefing to unveil the new cloud services portal. — Supplied photo

Microsoft Gulf and Pacific Controls Cloud Services, or PCCS, unveiled on Monday a portal to offer the whole spectrum of Microsoft products as cloud applications to customers in the Gulf.

The portal — www.cloudservicesme.com — a first-of-its-kind initiative in the region, will provide software as a service, or SaaS, to offer businesses a range of Microsoft products and software.

With this partnership, PCCS, a leading provider of data centre infrastructure services and cloud services, will deliver Microsoft applications like Exchange e-mail, SharePoint, Lync and CRM as cloud applications for monthly subscriptions as against the conventional, perpetual licensing model.

Dilip Rahulan, executive chairman of Pacific Controls, the parent group of PCCS, said the innovative model would help customers convert software licensing and infrastructure cost to operational expenses.

The service is provided on-demand upon subscription (minimum one month), along with local hosting, and local helpdesk support.

“The anytime, anywhere access platform is fast time-to-market, so that no software or server purchase or upgrade is required,” Rahulan said at a Press briefing.

Microsoft partnered with PCCS in 2013 to provide customised, robust and scalable cloud-based solutions for enterprises.

“We are pleased to reinforce our service offerings with Microsoft in order to promote their much acclaimed and used applications on www.cloudservicesme.com, an innovative and value-added cloud service platform, to the region’s customers,” said Rahulan.

“Pacific Controls’ Cloud Services help enterprises save up to 60 per cent in the total cost of ownership. By optimising the IT system of enterprises, we look after their infrastructure and business applications so their IT staff can focus on projects that are core to their business and drive growth,” he said.

Bruno Delamarre, Microsoft Gulf’s regional director for Mid-Market and Partner Solutions, said the new service expects to have 50,000 companies as customers in the UAE over two years. “We also expect 40 per cent of our revenues to be generated from the SME sector in two years,” he said.

“At Microsoft, we know that a flourishing IT ecosystem supports enterprise and SME innovation. Through this offering being provided by Pacific Controls, businesses in the region will be able to enhance productivity and become more agile while solving some of their toughest business problems,” said Delamarre.

He argued that by using SaaS, businesses would be able to leverage cloud technology and the advances services it enables to perform better.

According to a recent report by the Boston Consulting Group, or BCG, SMEs who adopt Microsoft cloud services grew faster than SMEs who do not use any Microsoft products. The BCG research reveals that Microsoft products and services are the No. 1 choice of these technology leaders.

PCCS’ services are hosted at its Uptime Institute-certified Tier III Data Centre, located in Dubai Techno Park. The facility is the largest data centre campus of its kind in the Middle East.

The portal offers enterprises to choose from a range of Microsoft products and services. PCCS Exchange 2013 is delivered as a fully-managed solution, enabling security and integrity of customers’ e-mail.