Royals say cloud ecosystem to boost Bahrain biz by 2020; Cloud pulls heavy tech biz in Bahrain, gives economy a fillip
Cloud services will now secure the personal information of any individual or protect the data of any organization in an absolutely safe and digital ecosystem, said the business honchos who had gathered at the fourth edition of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Summit from across the globe held in Bahrain between September 30 and October 4.
The new facility has been improved 60 per cent in certain key areas such as function agility, speed, data storage elasticity and, the best part of the deal is, the user has to pay only for as much space s/he has used.
But, why use cloud? And, why come to Bahrain? What has the small island territory to offer to Amazon? The land, which comprises 33 islands, is precisely mushrooming as the tech hub of the Arab world. While Dubai and Kuwait have a lot of potential in terms of human capital, Bahrain has its cards ready to invest in various start-up schemes.
The reasons which Amazon thinks could make Bahrain a well of investment are: one, the place is business-friendly and offers 100 per cent foreign ownership of businesses across most sectors; two, the country has the most favourable tax regime in the GCC (Gulf Corporation Council); three, the place is highly competitive because some of the regions require extremely low operating costs; four, its easy accessibility, because it’s, is only 30-minutes drive to Saudi Arabia and less than 1-hour flight to the rest of the GCC countries; and five, Amazon believes the island has the Gulf’s best educated and most-skilled workforce.
AT A GLANCE
WHY INVEST IN BAHRAIN
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31% cheaper to do business than Dubai and Qatar
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2018 Data protection law passed
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47.4% students in Bahrain work
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12.5% of the population are entrepreneurs
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27.5% Financial companies
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11.5% Consulting companies
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3.4% Education sector
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17.5% FinTech companies
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4.8% in Govt jobs
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9.8% in Information Technology companies
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4.5% Marketing sector
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4.0% Energy sector
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17% Other sectors
Source: BFB annual survey, 201
“The plan is also to establish a cloud kingdom and bring all the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the start-ups (in Bahrain, internet-based technological companies) under one computing ecosystem,” said a business heavyweight who was present at the Summit.
But, how does that benefit the banking system? The royals say this new system would help the world economy grow with the technology and skill they develop and launch in the market by 2030.
Besides, the country also has good reasons of trailblazing in what they are promising today. The Bahrain Economic Development Board (BEDB), that has already attracted the big fish at the ‘dinar’ table, says it will further streamline the government and the banking systems by using cost-saving digital architecture such as machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), increasing the computing scalability, developing giant-capacity chip servers, bringing in more and more investments and creating a large number of indigenous application services.
“Salma, which is a Siri alternative for the Arabs, will also will quickly translate data into Arabic and make use of voice rather than the fingers and convert text operation to speech by 2020,” said Mohamed Al Qaed, CEO of Information and e-Government Authority, Bahrain.
“Also, no economy can grow without workforce. Learning cloud computing skills is a must and therefore it is essential to train more and more people and involve maximum diversity,” said Teresa Carlson, Vice-President, Worldwide Public Sector, AWS.
“We need to educate the young people in handling the cloud operations, balance the resource and the human capital and, most importantly, develop a spirit of entrepreneurship. We have to encourage the start-up community and allow them to facilitate the cloud computing atmosphere. For now, we’re following the cloud processing system set by the United States of America (USA) and help people become computer savvy,” said Al Qaed.
Major players working with EDB to add jewels to crown
Bahrain is undergoing a renaissance, and this transformation is being brought about by several key operators. Tamkeen, an organization in the Economic Development Board (EDB) that helps start-ups with funds and resources from scratch and nurtures them till the time the hatchling gets wings, offers mentorship programmes and helps new companies set their economic strategy and grow into independent entrepreneurs.
The development board, which started in 2000 and modelled after Singapore, has offices in 16 countries including India, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Hong Kong, etc. “The reason why we have spread so far is that of the good relationship we share with these countries. A lot of our youth are foreign educated and brings good investments to Bahrain. These countries are keen on coming here and do business with us,” said His Excellency Khalid Al Rumaihi, CEO of EDB.
Revolutionary start-ups:
- Bahrain Fintech Bay (BFB), launched in February 2018, is a private-public partnership (PPP) between EDB and Singapore-based FinTech Consortium. BFB works hand-in-hand with EDB
- getbaqala, an online grocery delivery start-up
- C5, mentors start-ups to up-skill on big data, cybersecurity, public safety issues, AI, energy and ecotech learning
- Gudjuju, provides jobs to women and refugees
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