First government organisation in Bahrain migrates to Amazon Web Services

Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund, Mumtalakat, has become the first government organisation to migrate cloud services to Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) new datacentres in the country.

The IT team at Mumtalakat completed the migration to the AWS datacentres just weeks after the supplier announced their availability.

Through the deal with AWS, Mumtalakat will keep its systems closer to home. It wants to reduce its use of international datacentres and improve the speed and resilience of its IT services.

The entire migration process was handled by the organisation’s internal IT team, said Mohamed Sater, Mumtalakat’s head of IT. “This is the main advantage of having a capable and trained team to handle the migration activity, speeding up the migration and ensuring high-quality service,” he said. “Our software is now running in Bahrain, with a lower latency and faster speed. This was done with minimal downtime for our users.”

Mumtalakat has more than halved its technology operational costs by reducing its data backup, storage and security costs.

AWS already had infrastructure in Bahrain, and the launch of the Bahrain AWS region, with three datacentres, connects to its global network.

AWS set its sights on a Bahrain-based region in September 2017 when it set up a hub there.

The wider Middle East is a growing customer base for the company. Its customers in the region include Al Tayer Group, Anghami, Aramex, Bahrain Bourse, the Bahraini government, Classera, Dubizzle, Emirates NBD, Fetchr, Flydubai, Hassan Allam, MBC Group, Emirates NBD and Virgin Middle East.

AWS attracts customers of all sizes in the region. For example, delivery app service startup Fetchr runs its entire technology infrastructure on AWS, while United Arab Emirates (UAE) bank Emirates NBD is working with AWS with technologies such as AI and machine learning.