EFS Journey towards Cloud Adoption

1. CASE STUDY
Emcor Facilities Services
Unchartered shores
A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are for. Emcor Facilities Services
(EFS) says this snippet of wisdom was its driving inspiration when it ventured into the
unknown with the Middle East’s first private cloud implementation.
decided to implement something that hadn’t been
done in the Middle East before – a private cloud.
It manages its clients’ assets by optimising the
recording and analysing their service data history.
government establishments spread geographically
computing that is on-time and with anytime access is
all disparate systems and create a centralised
“This model embraces service-oriented
new high availability data centre to ensure business
A necessary move
says it would have struggled to streamline backend
cloud and at the same time ensuring this does not
he adds.
to relieve the IT burden on existing budgets as with
company only has to pay for connectivity.
M
ost organisations can be separated into two
areas when it comes to IT – those that wait
for new technologies to prove successful
before jumping on the bandwagon, and those that
risk failure in order to lead and pioneer.
There are of course positives and negatives to both.
They’re delving into the unknown and as such can win
big or lose badly.
26 Computer News Middle East december 2012 www.cnmeonline.com

2. as its business application system.
competent technology delivery platform. Delivering a
and also got a validation by an external feasibility
infrastructure and applications.
“This then led to the initiative to construct a
one of the largest data centres in the region led us to
“The idea in this project was to migrate to a model
where we would invest only in core infrastructure and
move the rest to a lease model that would allow us to
Its strategy was to migrate its systems to a hybrid
where the data centre infrastructure – including core
storage area networks – would all be leased.
overheads by outsourcing IT was welcomed by the
“The objective was to undertake initiatives and
invest in technologies that would help us boost the
model itself continues to be smoky for many in this
at around seven – because of its preference of outsourcing
day-to-day processes to the service provider.
“The idea is that because our business is
we wanted to outsource that and pay as we go.
Unique concept
The project involved a unique hybrid build-out of
disaster recovery environment - that all leveraged
the telecom provider’s backbone at the time of the
selection exercise.
“We also must not forget the most important
project we wanted to ensure our hardware and data
production and disaster recovery data centres in the
vicinity of Dubai. Both data centres were in different
Terence Sathyanarayan, Head of Group Technology, EFS
EFS currently
manages 100
projects valued in
excess of
$1bn
27Computer News Middle Eastdecember 2012www.cnmeonline.com

3. that 30% of the work was already done.
assessments and penetration testing to assure the
systems were watertight from a security perspective.
“Before doing that we checked the background
do all of our security testing. We needed someone
switching to the cloud involves more security
concerns than an on-premise data centre.
the private cloud the security concerns are the same
“There is a completely different mechanism rule
get all of those things back. We spent a good amount
“If there’s one way to describe a smooth project –
when the technology used is unchartered territory
public cloud where the service provider leases its
own choice of hardware.
setup was necessary.
Big success
CASE STUDY
steering committee that all together delivered the
but with professionalism and a strong working
during the implementation process. It remains the
“This ensured the IT systems were installed as
per industry best practices and it meant that security
standards and bench marks were set high to ensure
he says.
data loss prevention was also enabled across the
organisation.
“This was a very critical aspect as we have a very
unique method of working. The project also gave us
security across the organisation and the ability to be
proactive to client requirements and provide agile
“We could leverage the high performing
areas at a fraction of the cost as compared to
purchasing dedicated solutions and implementing
them ourselves.”
Trilok Mohnani, Senior IT Infrastructure Officer, EFS
Emcor Facilities Services
of the work was
already done due
to eHDF’s data
centres being ISO
compliant.
30%
28 Computer News Middle East december 2012 www.cnmeonline.com