Focus on Data Helps UAE SMEs Thrive in Islamic Economy

The UAE is at the center of the Islamic Economy, ranking among the top three worldwide in several key Islamic economy verticals. The government also aims to make Dubai the global capital of the Islamic Economy.

Many of the UAE's Islamic Economy businesses are small- and medium-sized (SMEs), such as fashion designers and cosmetic makers, halal farmers and butchers, and Islamic banks and financing companies.

They are now aiming to scale up to reach more customers and markets. While many of these SMEs have business plans in place, in our customer discussions, many of them lack the IT plans to meet their business needs.

The foundation of these IT plans should be storing, protecting, and managing vital business data – such as customer profiles, sales and transactions, corporate financial reports, and supply chain and inventory.

In particular, we're seeing strong demand for information management and business continuity solutions from VERITAS, and the all-flash and hybrid data storage solution from EMC, Unity.

While most large enterprises have the budgets and plans for robust data backup and storage, many SMEs are smaller and place their data management and storage on the back-burner.

This is risky. No company of any size can afford to go down for any amount of time. But for SMEs, the difference can be fatal. Among SMEs that lose data, 50 percent never re-open, and 90 percent fold within two years.

With the global Islamic economy presenting a USD 7 trillion opportunity by 2020, UAE SMEs should adopt, as soon as possible, the highly-available data storage, backup, and recovery solutions to thrive in the Islamic Economy.