Doha: Companies are moving towards cloud computing and Qatar was an early adopter of cloud technology. Microsoft Azure region, which is expected to launch this year in Qatar, will provide unprecedented opportunities for organisations and attract businesses and partners into the country, said an official during an event.
The US Chamber of Commerce, in association with Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) organised a webinar entitled ‘Emerging Opportunities in Qatar’s Digital Economy Sector. Majd Abbar, National Technology Officer at Microsoft discussed Microsoft’s success story in Qatar highlighting the country’s digital transformation journey and the role Microsoft is playing in accelerating it to help achieve Qatar’s 2030 National Vision.
He said, “The recent Microsoft government agreement framework which was signed between Microsoft and the then Ministry of Transport and Communications has allowed the different government entities to start the cloud transformation in the migration to the cloud. We went further than that by expressing our commitment through the establishment of the new Microsoft Azure region in Qatar which will be launched this year.”
“This is going to provide unprecedented opportunities for all the organisations across all segments and industries and more importantly to the people of Qatar. This region that we are launching in Qatar is a global region, it is not only for Qatar, but this will also attract business and partners into the country, and it will reduce the barrier for entry into the market into Qatar,” he added
A recent IDC report found that Qatar’s technology sector and the increased adoption of cloud services is going to generate a net revenue of over $3bn by 2024 which will have a huge impact on the GDP.
Considering the mega projects such as Tasmu and the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, Abbar noted, “Having Microsoft Azure region in Qatar will ensure this will be a tournament to remember. We have leveraged our global experience in the field of sports, in venue entertainment, we have brought our whole ecosystem of partners, solution specialists, industry experts to be able to provide major solutions.”
“We are partnering with local startups to create better synergies between entrepreneurship and the IT at a local level. Startups are important, they disrupt the economies by creating and bringing new ideas. We are working with a lot of the incubators such as the QFTH, QDB, Tasmu, QSTP and providing support in all sectors – fintech, smart cities, health care and last year we onboarded 20 startups into our partner of this ecosystem opening the entire Microsoft marketplace to those startups,” he noted.
“The fact that Qatar was early adopters of cloud technology allowed them to respond in a way to address the challenges of this pandemic to enable the business continuity across all of the vital sectors. For example, in less than 48 hours more than 1,40,000 employees were enabled to work remotely which is a huge accomplishment being able to act so quickly which is the result of this proper digital foundation. Almost half a million students and teachers were enabled to learn remotely through remote learning in a very short time. In health industry, the doctors, the emergency workers were enabled to harnessing technologies in new ways and introducing management vaccine systems online,” he added.
