Top Tier - Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority

// CASE STUDY / DSOA
Buhannad explains that the ICT
platform across DSOA Free Zone and its
technology incubator are moving towards
a service oriented architecture.
Case study
Top Tier
The Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority deploys advanced ICT
infrastructure to power the technology companies that
call the premier technology park home
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// CASE STUDY / DSOA
A
s the premier
technology park
in the region, it’s
only fitting that
Dubai
Silicon
Oasis Authority has in place
an advanced networking
technology to match.
DSOA’s ICT strategy is
to deliver state of the art Infrastructure to DSOA’s community and customers, says
Badr Buhannad, senior vice
president Strategy and ICT
Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority. “This strategy is built
around four primary pillars
that are aligned with Dubai’s
Plan of 2021: a smart city, an
advanced technology hub, innovative people and a desirable society,” Buhannad adds.
ICT plays an outsized role
in DSOA’s business strategy,
considering that many of the
organisations with that operate out of DSO are themselves
technology leaders in their
own domains. “DSOA’s vision
is to provide an environment
for technology incubators
and create an integrated technology-based community,”
Buhannad adds.
To support the business
community that call Dubai
Silicon Oasis home, the Authority has over the years
built an ICT infrastructure
that supports its business
services on state-of-the-art
next-generation
hardware
and software, says Buhannad.
“We invested in an ar-
chitecture that ensures business availability to our clients
using certified Data Centre
Infrastructure to deliver continuous services to our clients,” he says.
Buhannad explains that
DSOA operates a tiered architecture to ensure all network, security, and servers
are deployed to provide resilience and performance.
“We provide plug and play
infrastructure, where companies do not need to invest on
ICT infrastructure and can
directly focus on their core
business, as all the offices are
interconnected to the Data
Centre and service providers
for high speed internet services,” he adds.
DSOA offers several services to its customers which
include a data centre services
through its two data centres,
offering hosting services tailored specifically to its tenants’ business requirements.
Both data centres are TIER
III certified with each providing a minimum N+1 redundancy for every rack cabinet, and delivering the high
levels of uptime availability
to customers.
The Authority’s network
solution also provides companies with a communication
platform for data networking,
removing the need for any
upfront investment. DSO’s
communications
platform,
Buhannad says, is continu-
DUBAI SILICON OASIS
AUTHORITY CASE
STUDY
Objective
To continuously provide
the ICT services that
its clients require, the
Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority is implementing
a wide-ranging technology upgrade across its
campus.
Solution
Provide a plug and play
infrastructure, whereby
clients do not need to
invest in their own ICT
infrastructure and can
directly focus on their
core business.
Results
DSOA is deploying
AVAYA’s SDN-based
network platform to
provision infrastructure
services to its clients.
This model reduces
CAPEX investments for
the clients and offers
We provide plug and play
infrastructure, where clients
do not need to invest in ICT and can
directly focus on their core business.”
DSOA the leverage to
expand the infrastructure to meet adhoc network requirements with
Badr Buhannad, senior vice president Strategy and
ICT,Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority
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minimum operational
overheads.
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ously developed to stay up
to date with the latest international trends and maintain
international standards of
networking. The plug and
play capabilities accompanied with the flexible physical and user reconfiguration
provides companies with the
opportunity to save on operation costs, he adds.
DSOA also provides telecommunication
services
which include an IP based
telephony system and internet services. All DSOA’s offices are equipped with an IP
based telephony system, providing clients with the option
of using DSO’s Virtual PABX,
hence saving the cost of clients establishing their own
DSO BY THE NOS.
7.2
square kilometres urban master-planned
community
120
high capacity racks in
a tier 3 data centre
1,600
megawatts capacity
power stations
5,000
cubic meter underground irrigation
tank
162,40
population working
and/or living at DSO
KIT LIST
Avaya SDN Fx
fabric technology
AVAYA COMs
AVAYA Aura
PABX platform.
All these services are offered on a subscription model
to clients.
Additionally, DSOA has
partnered with several Government departments to offer
public services to its clients
through a community portal
such as business registration
& licensing, customs clearance and visas among others.
“These services require high
availability and resilience to
ensure service availability for
clients as well as other community amenities, including
the availability of security services through surveillance,”
Buhannad says.
For starters, the Authority
is moving towards AVAYA’s
SDN-based network platform to provision infrastructure services to its clients.
This model, Buhannad says,
reduces CAPEX investment
requirements for the clients
and offers DSOA the leverage to expand the infrastructure to meet adhoc network
requirements with minimum
operational overheads.
The fabric based network is being built on top of
DSOA’s current infrastructure, deploying a fully SPBbased SDN-Fx network.
The ICT platform across
DSOA Free Zone and its technology incubator are moving
towards a service oriented
architecture, says Buhannad.
This demands a move to-
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wards next generation technologies such as SDN to meet
the agile needs of the market.
DSOA has also invested
in server consolidation and
virtualisation for its network
and server infrastructure,
which includes CCTV, network & telecommunications,
storage & servers, all based on
AVAYA and IBM platforms.
The Authority has also
deployed Outside Plant Backbone Cabling from its Data
Centres to all the surrounding buildings to extend its
We benchmark technologies based on
best practices in
the region and international standards for business
availability.”
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Buhannad: We benchmark technologies based on best practices in the region and globally.
THE CLIENT
Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority is a governmentowned free zone that promotes modern technology
based industries with urban master-planned community,
state-of-the-art infrastructure and in-house business
services. DSOA seeks to create a universally recognized “technology oasis” by facilitating and promoting
technology-based industries, research and development within a fully integrated community
network services for its clients. In addition, a disaster
recovery (DR) project has
been implemented to ensure
business continuity using the
best in class replication and
network convergence infrastructure, he explains.
The DSOA Data Centre
Infrastructure has been built
and certified on UPTIME
Institutes TIER 3 Infrastructure standards.
“This ensure our clients
get the optimal uptime for
their hosting requirements
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and the underlying network
infrastructure for the data
centre,” Buhannad says.
In selecting technology
providers to partner with,
Buhannad says DSOA chooses solutions based on proof
of concepts (PoCs) conducted with vendors, previously
technically shortlisted after
testing their technology. Providers are then selected based
on performance.
Additionally, the Authority’s commitment to corporate social responsibility
plays a part in making the final selection, Buhannad says,
with solutions chosen that
will not only add value but
are also energy compliance
and environmental friendly.
“We benchmark technologies
based on best practices in
the region and international
standards for business availability,” he says.
The vendor chosen also
needs to provide requisite
professional services to ensure the architecture is built
around a secure framework.
BUSINESS BENEFIT
The implemented solutions
will impact DSOA operations
significantly moving forward,
Buhannad says.
For one, the infrastructure and migration will be
able to ensure business availability during the transition
phase. The new solution
needs to integrate with existing systems. “DSOA’s move
towards Smart City Infrastructure for its existing and
future buildings requires integration with the underlying
BMS and CCTV infrastructure,” says Buhannad.
The proposed implementation also has a requirement
to provide interoperability
with legacy systems for communication of CCTV and
BMS infrastructure.
The DSOA Voice Infrastructure that was migrated
to has enhanced voice features for clients, with minimum disruption to its clients.
The data centre on the other
hand, built on an IBM Blade
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These
services
require high availability and resilience
to ensure service
availability for
clients as well as
other community
amenities.”
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WD and Mistubishi Electric are some of the global tech heavyweights with their regional headquarters at DSOA.
Architecture, ensures maximum scalability and availability of our virtual systems.
The SDN-Fx network is
expected to significantly simplify the network, enhance
the security as a multitenant environment, and secure
their investment by improving the SLA and TCO.
In terms of security, the
solution should improve
DSOA’s overall multi-tenant
security framework by providing isolated dedicated secured zones for each of their
tenants and services. The
new solution does away with
the legacy system that was
relying on VLANs and a lot of
filtering configured on multiple switches. In addition,
DSOA will avoid multiple old
legacy protocols that were
configured node by node.
With SDN Fx, one single reliable protocol (SPB) will be
configured and will provide
an automated self-learning
/ self- healing network with
more resiliency.
Using Avaya SDN Fx
technology is also expected
to minimize the configuration points across the network, thus minimizing the
probability of human errors.
To manage its ICT environment, DSOA has a
dedicated out of band management infrastructure to
manage the control plane of
the systems, ensuring manageability of the systems in
an event of a network communications failure. “We
rely on AVAYA COMs and
AVAYA Aura for managing
voice and data systems,” Buhannad says.
In the near future, DSOA
is moving to orchestrate the
data and voice infrastructure related operations to
be automated using partner
AVAY’A’s platform.
In addition, DSOA wants
to enhance the serviceability
of the infrastructure to provide flexibility to DSOA users
on mobility, voice and data
services. “We look forward
to adapting the AVAYA VSP
platform in our data centre
and core infrastructure in the
future,” Buhannad reveals.
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A feasibility study with
AVAYA has been conducted
to move towards the VSP
platform in DSOA’s data centre, video conferencing and
voice infrastructure for our
clients and DSOA employees.
DSOA is also planning to
upgrade its edge and core infrastructure to meet the backbone requirements of the
next generation bandwidths
of 40G and 10G to the edge.
To ensure optimal security of its ICT environment,
Buhannad says DSOA has
implemented best in class
ICT infrastructure security
complemented by regular security awareness sessions for
its employees.
“We also conduct periodic internal and external
penetration tests on our
infrastructure to ensure
strict compliance to security
standards,” Buhannad adds.
The security infrastructure on the other hand is
managed by security and
network operations centre of
DSOA ICT infrastructure.
THE VENDOR
Avaya is a leading global provider of solutions
for customer and team engagement. The company
provides technologies for unified communications and
collaboration, contact centre and customer experience
management, and networking, along with related services to large enterprises, midmarket companies, small
businesses and government organizations around the
world. Avaya’s SDN FxArchitecture delivers a simpler
network with an Automated Core that takes advantage
of a single, network-wide Ethernet fabric to remove the
need for manual configuration at each network hop,
which reduces the potential for error and accelerates
customers’ time to service.
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