Sahan Weerasinghe, Head – Cloud & IDC at Dialog Enterprise, shares insights into how the company is helping Sri Lankan enterprises to harness the transformative powers of cloud technology.
Dialog Enterprise commenced data centre and colocation services 15 years ago in a bid to drive digital transformation within organizations by connecting all mission-critical infrastructure and IT services with the power to support high-performance computing and virtualized environments.
In 2017, the data centre in Malabe, Colombo, was the first facility in Sri Lanka to be given a Tier III award by the Uptime Institute, testifying that it met certain standards for redundancy and reliability which quickly saw it become the first choice for all leading banks and financial institutions in the country. This Tier III data centre at Malabe is ideally positioned in Sri Lanka’s IT corridor and has placed Sri Lanka on the world map as a well-recognized data hosting destination.
Five years ago, Dialog Enterprise introduced cloud technology for enterprises that run on the underlying infrastructure, connectivity, and physical network of its data centres to enable on-premises critical workloads of customers. It also joined the VMware Cloud Provider Program (VCPP) to help build cloud environments for customers through a Pay as You Go (PAYG) licensing model and underwent rigorous security and compliance audits becoming the first and only VMware Verified Cloud provider in the market. In 2021, Dialog Enterprise was appointed as the first and only Dell Technologies Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) in Sri Lanka and later its only CSP Gold Partner, to offer Dell Technologies’ Enterprise Infrastructureas-a-Service (EIaaS) solutions to local customers. It also launched the first resident Huawei Cloud Stack Online (HCSO), paving the way for local enterprises to use Huawei public cloud services, eliminating unnecessary USD outflow from the country. Thanks to these efforts, Dialog Enterprise became widely recognized as operating internationally renowned Tier III data centres which are connected to global cloud platforms such as Microsoft, AWS, Google, Huawei, and others.
Today, Dialog Enterprise provides colocation services to a multitude of large-scale enterprises ranging from the financial industry to diversified holdings, multinationals, and public institutions. It also supports a growing regional clientele with some of the leading multinational companies in the region using its stateof-the-art hosting services to transform their businesses through digital technology, while driving immeasurable value to investors, customers, and employees.
How can Dialog Enterprise help businesses deal with the various challenges confronting them during this difficult time?
Due to factors such as CAPEX limitations, liquidity challenges and uncertain market conditions, large enterprises have had to deprioritize some of their digitization projects and relook at their current IT strategy. SMEs were used to hosting their workloads on hyperscaler platforms paying US dollars monthly via their credit cards which became highly impractical when there were regulations imposed limiting the number of US dollar transactions that could take place.
During the last six to eight months, this is one area where we have seen unprecedented growth, with most companies scaling back from hyperscaler platforms and preferring local cloud offering which offers rupee-denominated services. In order to further reduce dollar outflow from the country Dialog once again invested in upgrading its VMware stack to its latest VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) framework across multiple Tier III Data Centers which would also serve to help businesses digitize and gain the capacity to expand and grow.
Even at a time when country-wide power cuts were taking place, this never had an impact on the Dialog Data Centre Service Levels of our Critical Customer Infrastructure. This is a result of Dialog Data Centers being designed in line with leading standards, operational best practices, industry-leading equipment, as well as the expertise and commitment of our highly trained engineers.
In terms of technological and professional expertise, what makes Dialog Enterprise the go-to solutions provider for cloud and colocation?
Our Cloud and Colocation solutions allow enterprises to seamlessly manage their own cloud services more efficiently and effectively with greater control and convenience. We also offer a range of other technologies, tools and services that enable businesses to transform themselves and work with cloud and colocation solutions from anywhere. These include superior data centre and cloud experiences coupled with self-service portals, unmatched multi-cloud and connectivity offerings, a predictable monthly fee billed in local currency plus a highly skilled and trained support team. Dialog would manage the complete customer life cycle from direct billing and provisioning to management and 24/7 customer support. These services include:
Dialog Data Centre Colocation Services: As the most trusted data centre provider in Sri Lanka, we enable critical co-location and connectivity services and promote cloud readiness.
Dialog Enterprise Cloud: Extending the capabilities of a Software-Defined Data Centre with a self-service portal and hybrid cloud capabilities, Dialog Enterprise Cloud enables efficient management of cloud services and is a complete Greenfield deployment, built with high-performance infrastructure.
Dialog Cloud Backup as a Service: This is a data protection solution that leverages Dialog Cloud to provide tapeless backups for customers who already have workloads on site.
Dialog Cloud Disaster Recovery as a Service: This allows a company to continue with business as usual during unexpected downtimes due to natural disasters, malware, human error, or any other system failure.
Enterprise Infrastructure as a Service: This cloud computing service offers essential computing, storage, and networking resources on demand, on a pay-as-you-go basis, helping organisations reduce maintenance of on-premises data centres, save money on hardware costs, and gain realtime business insights.
Huawei Cloud Stack Online: This is a local cloud solution which provides enterprise services on par with the user experiences of Huawei Public cloud.
Dialog Direct Cloud Connect: We have formed strategic partnerships with Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Huawei Public Cloud, to provide a dedicated direct cloud connection to our clients enabling faster and more secure connectivity.
Desktop as a Service: This is a form of virtual desktop infrastructure service hosted on the cloud, that is outsourced, and managed by Dialog Cloud and empowers enterprises to meet their technology requirements in infrastructure and computing.