The first day of Cairo ICT 2023 featured a session on “A New Era of Data: Opportunities in the Field of Large-Scale Data Centers”, where experts discussed the importance of data centers in the era of artificial intelligence and the capabilities that artificial intelligence solutions created by relying on the huge data generated from storage in data centers.
The session participants agreed that successful partnerships between local, regional, and international companies would achieve remarkable results in the field of a regional center for data centers. They also highlighted the role of the government in providing investment incentives, which would enable Egypt to achieve impressive outcomes in the field of data centers.
Tenput Arsalnok, Director of the Strategic Partnerships Sector at Khazna Emirates Company, said that the company started in 2012 and began operating in 2014. He explained that Khazna owns 15 data centers in the Emirates, and 15 others under construction.
He added that the company currently manages approximately 300 megawatts in its data centers in the Emirates, and expects to reach about 550 megawatts of data volume in the Emirates in the next two years.
He stated that Khazna is the first giant data center company in the region, extending from France to India. The company chose Egypt as its first destination for expansion outside the Emirates, based on several factors, including the population in Egypt, which exceeds 100 million.
He pointed out that one of the main reasons that drove Khazna to expand in Egypt is that it is the primary gateway to enter the market in partnership with Binya Company. He anticipated that the two companies, through the new partnership, would start building the data center during the first quarter of next year.
He also touched on the impact of artificial intelligence on the data center scene shortly, citing a report issued by Egypt that indicated that the growth rate in GDP in Egypt, if it relied on artificial intelligence, would achieve 7.7% growth, adding about $43bn.
He emphasized that providing investment incentives would help Egypt transform into a regional data center.
Hossam El-Din Abdel Salam, founder and CEO of I-sys, addressed the idea that data is like a snowball that is constantly growing and stressed that companies always aim to analyze data.
Abdel Salam called for flexibility in the laws regarding data exit and storage on cloud computing.
For his part, Ahmed Talaat, Director of the Solutions Sector at VMware, pointed out that it is possible to transform any data center or storage centers in companies or outside them, into data centers that can be analyzed and make decisions based on that data easier.
He also stressed that predictive cloud computing is no longer in its previous concept, which would predict the future based on the past.
