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Newsletter
 
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AL AHRAM NEWSPAPER
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AL ALAM AL YOM NEWSPAPER
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OTHER RESOURCES
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^UP^
Ahmed Nazeef opens a new gate for data
transferring
December 19,2002 - Al Ahram Newspaper
Ahmed Nazeef, the Minister of Communications & Information
Technology, opened the first regional center for transferring
Internet data between the Arab countries, with total investments
of LE 3 million brought by an international company, and a
national partner.
The center will put Egypt squarely on the internet’s
international map, and it will support its position as a main
exchange point for internet and phone traffic. This exchange is
only the 2nd of its kind in the Arab world, and will join 35
other exchanges worldwide, and aims to directly exchange
internet information, data, and e-mails between the Arab
countries, instead of passing it to the U.S.A, and returning it
to the region again. This alternative process would reduce time,
costs, & overloading over the rented lines.
The exchange would help to increase the security level of
exchanged data. This exchange, located at Egypt Cyber Center
(ECC) in 6th of October City is deemed to be the most secure
point in the country to guarantee the continuity of the service,
and to fulfill the needs of the internet companies 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week.
Ahmed El-Oteify, the head of the project development, said that
the number of Internet users is expected to reach 15 million
users by 2005, and without this new exchange it will be
difficult to produce a higher quality service to cover this
increasing number of users. El- Otaify added that the center has
reached an agreement with the best three internet companies in
the region, and this agreement is expected to increase the
exchange the internet traffic by more than 20%.
^UP^
(OUTSOURCING)
The Perfect Solution
November 23,2002 - Al Alam Al Youm Newspaper
Indian companies achieved great benefits from using the
“Outsourcing” system, which is the now the most profitable
system for Indian IT companies even without leaving their
country. This step came as a result of the 9/11 aftermath, which
forced the international companies to increase their dependency
on a worldwide market place, to reduce the number of total
damage should one of their main centers be exposed to future
strikes or failures.
Maybe this is the best opportunity for the Egyptian companies,
programmers & engineers to reach the level that the Indian
companies have reached in the last two years, especially with
our advantage of an inexpensive but powerful labor force. Ahmed
Adel, the CEO of “Raya Software”, explains the difficulties from
his point of view, “The concept of charging a specialized
company to do a specific technical tasks is still a new concept
for the Egyptian market, despite the fact that this concept
became a concept worldwide, but nowadays this concept is growing
rapidly in our country”, Adel added “For example, (Raya) created
a flexible system which guarantees a non-stop running and
developing solutions, and also programs like the CALL CENTER
system, ATM machines, & database storage”.
Dr Ikram Fathi the counselor of the Minister of Communications
said that the Outsourcing system is a new way of charging other
specialized companies to do a specific tasks, with keeping the
right to follow and supervise these projects to the ministry,
giving the example of the project of training program for the
fresh graduates, which is achieved with the cooperation with
Egyptian private sector.
Mr. Abdel Aziz Khedr the head of marketing at HP claimed that
the company cares about delivering its services with every
possible way through the rent system, the newest system in the
Middle East.
Ahmed Hamza the head of marketing at “FOGETSO” said that the
aftermath of the 9/11 crisis directed the giant international
companies towards outsourcing to reduce the higher level damages
caused by the crisis. Hamza pointed out too that his company
achieved a lot under this new system, at both the international
and regional level, through a big number of infrastructure
establishment project to some of the big companies.
On the other side Mr. Nour El-Din Zaki, the head of Marketing at
ECC insisted that the Egyptian market has the potential and the
need to outsource. Zaki added, “I think this new system is a
golden opportunity for small companies to find their own way in
the information technology sector by achieving specific tasks
for the bigger companies”. Zaki also thinks that the banking
sector would be the sector most in need for the outsourcing.
Zaki justifies his point with the increasing number of clients
in each bank's database that could force these banks to overhaul
their IT systems. Outsourcing would provide a more economical
solution, as well as allowing the bank to concentrate on its
core competency, namely financial services.
^UP^
ECC launches the “Business Continuity” solution
November 12,2002 - Al Alam Al Youm
Newspaper
Egypt Cyber Center announced the launching of the “Business
Continuity” service that provides an alternative system for the
client’s systems, in case of temporary or constant failure. This
service provides an alternative technical environment which
contains all the basic data of the client – linked, and sends
information to the main technical environment at the client’s
site preventing information from being lost if the system ever
failed or was damaged.
Nour El-Din Zaki, the head of Marketing at ECC, said that the
alternative site recovery provided by the center would contain
three levels, the first level is the “Cold Site”; which keeps
the clients database on a storage tape.
The 2nd stage is the “Warm Site” which includes the hosting of
the client’s data on one of the center’s servers at scheduled
daily backup intervals, and activating the link between the main
website and the alternative one to be able to retrieve data
should an attack or failure occur, up to the point of the last
synchronization.
The last stage is the “Business Continuity – Hot Site”, the most
secure mechanism for protecting the client’s database, by
linking the center directly with the client’s main database in
real-time to create a mirror system at the center that works
instantaneously if the original system fails.
^UP^
Egyptian
Businesses to Increase Storage Outsourcing Options with New
Alliance between ECC Solutions & STME
August 03,2003 - STME Website
STME, the Middle East’s premier enterprise storage company,
announced today it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding
(MoU) with ECC Solutions, (previously called Egypt Cyber Center)
– a provider of outsourced managed and professional services and
data center solutions for a variety of medium and large
businesses – to create a storage-on-demand infrastructure for
Egyptian enterprises.
As part of the deal, STME is providing the ECC Solutions with an
EMC Symmetrix-based solution that will be offered to companies
interested in outsourcing their data protection and management
needs to ECC Solutions. Under the agreement, both companies will
be responsible for promoting the new service and attracting
customers. Clients of ECC Solutions and STME’s storage offering
will pay according to the number of terabytes used, taking
advantage of the new storage-on-demand infrastructure.
“Enterprises in Egypt are increasingly aware that their data,
especially customer-related and financial information, is of
critical importance. Competitive industries such as banking and
telecoms are leading the market in terms of storage awareness
and demand. The ECC Solutions and STME partnership is addressing
the specific demand for a reliable, secure storage environment
without the hassle or expense of implementing and managing this
technology in-house,” said Jon Bamford, Chief Executive Officer,
ECC Solutions.
“By entering this partnership with STME for enterprise storage,
we are complementing our existing data center offerings to
create a comprehensive outsourcing alternative in the Egyptian
market. Being responsible for hosting, monitoring and
maintaining our clients’ mission-critical e-commerce platforms
and e-business applications means we have to guarantee
unfettered access to information, and that’s what we’re
delivering through our new joint storage offering.”
ECC Solutions’ data center, based in Cairo, provides the
physical environment necessary to ensure e-business continuity
for a number of major enterprises, most notably from the
financial services sector. The data center, with more than
25,000 square feet of space, serves customers in Egypt and
across the GCC and Levant markets.
“A growing number of Egyptian businesses want reliable and
secure data storage, but don’t know where to start in creating a
strategy. By employing an EMC-based environment, ECC Solutions
will be able to branch out even further to attract more clients
interested in the business benefits of the outsourcing model,”
added Sherif Iskander, Vice President for Sales in Egypt and the
Levant, STME.
Andrew Calthorpe, Senior Corporate Vice President, STME,
participated in the MoU signing with ECC Solutions. He noted,
“STME has garnered significant marketshare in Egypt through
major deployments in the telecoms industry and other sectors,
while ECC Solutions is well-established in the banking industry.
Together, we should deliver real value and competitive advantage
to companies who want the benefits of enterprise storage without
the challenge of installing and administering it.”
The EMC Symmetrix deployed at the ECC Solutions provides
multiple-host connectivity, uses large cache memory
configurations for high performance, and has maximum redundancy
for protection against component failure or loss of power.
^UP^
ECC teams up with HP to launch Egypt's first Internet Data
Center
September 19,2001 - HP website
Hewlett-Packard Middle East and the Egypt Cyber Center (ECC)
opened the doors today to Egypt's first Internet Data Center as
a part of a $25million project.
The ECC Data Center is located in 6 October City, Cairo, Egypt,
and has been set up to provide small, medium and large
businesses with the ability to outsource their IT hosting
requirements to ECC.
The ECC Data Center will provide the physical environment
necessary to ensure a businesses' e-presence 24 hours a day, 7
days a week - all powered by the latest HP technology.
The Data Center will comprise 25,000 square feet of space and
will specifically host, monitor and maintain mission-critical
Web sites, e-commerce platforms and e-business applications, for
company's in the local market and will offer its services to its
Middle East neighbors in the G.C.C, and Levant.
Inaugurating the Data Center, Dr Atef Ebeid, Prime Minister of
The Arab Republic of Egypt said "I am delighted to see such a
wonderful example of the new economy being set-up in Egypt and I
encourage all forward thinking business people to embrace the
internet and take our country towards a bright new tomorrow".
ECC's Chairman, Tawfik Bardai, commenting on the new ECC Data
Center said:
"ECC knows its customer's success depends on a successful and
resilient e-Business. We can help them plan, build and manage
their e-business, resilient connection to the Internet, and
working with them to integrate their front-end web services with
the back-end enterprise systems. Once launched, our customer's
e-business will be secure, run at peak performance, be data
protected, and be flexible to quickly accommodate future demands
and of course secure in the knowledge that ECC has employed the
latest HP proven technology."
Egypt's leading private equity house (an ECC partner) Commercial
International Investment Company CIIC's MD Yasser ElMallawany
said ECC is a project that offers critical data services to the
Egyptian and Middle Eastern business community contributing to
the development and prosperity of the region as a whole.
Commenting on the launch, Dr. Ali Ferling, GM HP Middle East
said:
"HP is delighted to be involved in this advanced project through
its advanced technology and by putting in place the US $ 15
million initial investment financing. Working with ECC we firmly
believe we have developed an excellent long-term solution for
companies' to outsource their data Centre/IT function to a
specialist."
^UP^
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