Doha-

HE the Minister of Transport and Communication Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti on Monday inaugurated the new server floor at Ooredoo's Qatar Data Centre (QDC5) marking tens years of Qatar Data Centre innovation. 
The ceremony was attended by Chairman of Ooredoo HE Sheikh Abdulla bin Mohammed bin Saud Al-Thani in addition to senior executives, major customers, VIPs from across Qatar and leading technology experts. 
HE the Minister of Transport and Communication said " The Ministry of Transport and Communications is focusing its attention on positioning Qatar as a leading nation for the digital economy, and has made significant strides towards achieving that leadership role." He stressed the need to intensify efforts to ensure network safety and security across Qatar. He also emphasized that the Ministry is working on enhancing market conditions and making existing and upcoming knowledge-sharing easier, and underlined the Ministry's support for all projects that will help drive Qatar's move towards deploying smart solutions. 
Qatar Data Centre contributes to the growth of businesses in Qatar by expanding the scope of solutions and technologies that are available to them. He indicated that Ooredoo has become one of the leading companies in this area in the region, HE the Minister said. 
For his part, HE Sheikh Abdulla bin Mohammed bin Saud Al-Thani said that the Qatar Data Centre has evolved into the most advanced and sophisticated facility in the region and continues to enable businesses to achieve greater efficiencies and deliver significant success, stressing that Ooredoo will continue to invest in new services and solutions for its customers and look forward to further innovation in the future. 
Officially launched in 2006, the Qatar Data Centre was the first facility in Qatar to offer businesses a full suite of enterprise services, evolving into one of the most important technology assets in Qatar's drive to become a "smart" nation.

The first facility was approximately 2,000 sq. feet and provided colocation and basic reporting services. Over the past decade, Ooredoo's Data Centre offering has grown so that it now manages and operates five data centres with a capacity of more than 55,000 sq. feet, with potential future expansion capacity of up to 100,000 sq. feet. 

Chief Executive Officer, Ooredoo Qatar Waleed Mohamed Ebrahim Al Sayed stated: "Our network of Qatar Data Centres is the beating heart at the centre of Ooredoo's ICT development strategy, which will see us become a major provider of technology and solutions to organisations and businesses not just across Qatar – but for the whole region." "The Qatar Data Centre's growth has played a vital role in Ooredoo's journey to being a data experience leader, and we will continue to drive innovation across the facility," he added. 

Qatar Data Centre facilities have been designed in compliance with Tier-3 standards and provides local and regional organisations with a full range of services including Hosting and Co-location, Cloud Services, Data Backup and Restoration, Managed Storage, Email and Web Security and more. 

HE Sheikh Nasser bin Hamad bin Nasser Al-Thani, Chief New Line of Business Officer, Ooredoo Qatar, said: "QDC 5 is one of the first data centres to deploy 'Data Centre Infrastructure Management', which monitors the facility's capacity, space, power and cooling through one integrated platform. This captures real-time information about our facility infrastructure and power usage efficiency. We have also invested in the human resources to manage and operate this facility, including achieving multiple ISO standards." Ooredoo continues to support the launch of new breakthrough technologies for customers, in-line with its strategy to become an ICT innovation engine for Qatar and the region. 

Recently, it has launched 'Advanced Managed Services', to enable customers to safeguard servers, applications and data with the highest levels of security, infrastructure availability, redundancy and disaster recovery options. 

In addition, plans are in place to launch an online portal for Qatar Data Centre's customers, where they can raise Service Requests, follow-up on issues and request on-demand reporting.