The partnership doesn’t mark Virtustream’s entrance into the market, but it will broaden its reach in the Middle East by offering public and hybrid cloud services to SMBs and enterprises
Cloud hosting provider Virtustream announced on Friday that it has partnered with telecommunications company Mobily to provide joint enterprise cloud services in Saudi Arabia.
Virtustream has an office in Saudi Arabia, so the partnership doesn’t mark its entrance into the market, but it will broaden its reach in the Middle East by offering public and hybrid cloud services to SMBs and enterprises through a joint solution. Mobily is Saudi Arabia’s number two telecom operator, and recently posted fourth quarter net profit of $500.8 million, beating analyst expectations.
Virtustream raised $15 million in funding last year to help grow its xStream cloud management platform, and extend into new markets, Saudi Arabia being one of them. Mobily will use xStream software to run its public and hybrid clouds, and the software was one of the key reasons for choosing to partner with Virtustream on this solution.
A study by Coleman Research Group showed that 85 percent of Saudi companies were expected to adopt cloud technologies by the end of 2012, illustrating a strong demand for cloud services in the market. Last year, HostGee launched cloud servers in Saudi Arabia to support this demand.
Businesses in Saudi Arabia will be able to move mission-critical applications to the cloud, including SAP, Microsoft and Oracle applications. The Mobily/Virtustream cloud service promises improved efficiency, application level performance SLAs, consumption-based pricing, as well as security and compliance, according to the press release.
Aside from public and hybrid cloud services, the joint solution includes professional services to help with cloud strategy development and migration.
“The Mobily/Virtustream cloud platform provides enterprise-class cloud services in the Middle East,” Dr. Marwan al Ahmadi, chief business officer at Mobily said in a statement. “We look forward to working with Virtustream to provide our customers with best-in-class enterprise cloud solutions that are the first of their kind in the KSA market.”
Virtustream’s enterprise cloud business expertise and its range of US and EMEA services will serve to complement the joint cloud, Mobily said.
“We see this as the perfect time for cloud services in the region and the alliance of Mobily and Virtustream in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia presents tremendous opportunities,” Rodney Rogers, chairman and CEO at Virtustream said in a statement. “Mobily is a leader in the telecommunications industry, and the best possible partner for Virtustream. The power of Mobily’s fiber and mobile networks and world class data centers behind a proven enterprise class cloud solutions makes this offering truly unique.”
Talk back: Have you done any research on expanding your cloud services to Saudi Arabia? Do you offer public or hybrid cloud hosting in the Middle East? Let us know in a comment.
About Nicole Henderson
Nicole Henderson is the Editor in Chief of the Web Host Industry Review where she covers daily news and features online, as well as in print. She has a bachelor of journalism from Ryerson University in Toronto. You can find her on Twitter @NicoleHenderson.
