Government

Dubai Customs has acquired the Government Deployment of the Year Award 2015, for the project Transforming and Upgrading of Dubai Customs IT Infrastructure which ranked first at the contest organised by the Computer News Middle East (CNME); the leading IT publication in the Middle East from CPI Media Group.

The Transforming and Upgrading of Dubai Customs IT Infrastructure project is aimed at unifying application servers and database servers as well as transferring programs and customs declarations to the new servers at oracle databases Exadata and Exalogic. The implementation of this project helped Dubai Customs in adopting the Private Cloud, which is utilized to deliver remote, timely services to DC employees and clients alike in a highly-secure manner. On behalf of Dubai Customs, Younis Othman, IT Director, and the projects work team received the award at the sixth annual ICT Achievement Awards, which was held on October 18, 2015 at the Conrad Hotel in Dubai.

The Executive Director of Customs Development Division at Dubai Customs, Juma Al Ghaith presented H.E. Ahmed Mahboob Musabih, Director of Dubai Customs, with the award, in presence of IT and Customs Development leaders and staff. H.E. Ahmed Mahboob voiced his joy at winning this award for two consecutive years and hailed the exceptional efforts exerted by the projects work team, in cooperation with one of the best IT companies globally.
The Transforming and Upgrading of Dubai Customs IT Infrastructure project, according to Juma Al Ghaith, has contributed to increasing the IT infrastructure capacity in DC by 400 per cent, which led to expediting customs transactions. Al Ghaith stressed that Dubai Customs steadfast commitment to modernization and improvement of processes, as well as employees loyalty and having a clear vision have earned it a long record of tributes and recognitions in various areas.

The Director of IT at DC Younis Othman said that the project managed to cut down the use of RAM by 60 per cent and CPU by 75 per cent. Moreover, programmes were transferred from old devices to the new ones (Exalogic). In the meantime, a Disaster Recovery system is being developed to accommodate emergency situations. Following implementation, the project has reduced response time, increased capacity, improved operational competency and lowered overall cost, as 70 old servers were replaced by only four main servers, also cutting down annual maintenance charges, Othman added. Cloud storage options include public cloud and private cloud. The majority of public cloud deployments are generally used for web servers or systems where security and compliance requirements of larger organizations and their customers are not an issue. Private cloud computing, on the other hand, by definition is a single-tenant environment where the hardware, storage and network are dedicated to a single client or company.

Dubai Customs Risk Engine is one of the Private Cloud applications which can be securely accessed via the virtual Exadata and Exalogic devices by only authorised personnel. The Risk Engine is being configured to be used by the Chamber of Commerce. CNME is the Middle Easts leading IT publication. It has been the number one link between regional IT players and their key target markets for over two decades. CNME's ICT Achievement Awards recognise individuals and organisations that have delivered ground-breaking business value through the innovative application of technologies.

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