Tapping into boom time

AMD is looking to build strong relationships in the Middle East as it pursues the challenge of adding value to enterprise virtualisation investments.

Chip-maker AMD believes that the region is set to witness a massive uptake of virtualisation technologies in the next one to two years.

"Nearly every customer I talk to over here wants to discuss virtualisation. It's quite literaly busy changing the server world," says AMD server and workstation product manager for the European channel, Christopher Dobroschke.

When it comes to the particular challenges facing the growth of the virtualisation market in the region, Dobroschke points out some key issues, namely the complexity of virtualisation and an unusual hesitancy to adopt new technologies.

"I have noticed a hesitancy to adopt new things and what we have seen in the UAE is that people still tend to bank on the same old solutions that may seem secure but are no longer so. Conventional wisdom is that you can't go wrong with this brand or with this solution, and that is the real challenge. The region needs to embrace new things because they can add real value and provide brand new opportunities." He went on to say that the complexity of virtualisation projects mean that enterprises need to look beyond the initial benefits of the technology, like capital savings, and focus on long term goals.

"Consolidation is one initial step in virtualisation but what about the next steps? What are the challenges for my business and what is the long term goal I want to achieve with virtualisation?

It's really about having this clear vision. The virtual world is so complex that you can't always make these decisions on your own and that's why you need to have partners who can help you determine your objectives and requirements, and map a route to achieving them."

When it comes to identifying the direction that virtualisation is heading in, Dobroschke believes that the trend is moving from enterprises towards SMBs. "I also see a transformation of the datacentre to a dynamic datacentre.

Virtualisation can help change computation to whatever your future demands will be; you can actually be much quicker in adapting to new challenges. Those are the main themes for virtualisation in the next two years."

According to him, AMD is looking to build strong relationships in the region as it tries to add value to the virtualisation space.

"We aim to form strong relationships with both vendors and end-users. We can add value to the region because we have experience on a global level, and can bring that expertise to the Middle East," says Dobroschke.

AMD is a worldwide partner for Microsoft's Technology Centres. Microsoft Gulf runs the regional centre in Dubai. AMD provides these centres with the latest hardware technology, including servers, workstations, PCs and notebooks. On a local level, AMD supports the Microsoft Innovation Centres and provides the servers and client hardware for the centre based in Kuwait.