Aqaba Water Company implements Middle East’s first Private Cloud in water utilities

Aqaba Water Company has selected an HP private cloud solution to help improve the delivery of citizens’ annual quota of fresh water.

The project, co-financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), will provide a high-end computing environment that enables Aqaba Water’s engineers to rapidly address supply and demand-related issues. It will also provide an intelligent platform for Aqaba Water’s SCADA operations which allow operators to monitor and control remote wells.

A subsidiary of Water Authority of Jordan, AWC is responsible for the planning, construction, operation and maintenance of the public water supply and sewerage services in the province of Aqaba.

“We needed to move our IT operations to the next level in order to address the challenges faced by water utilities,” says Ahmad AbulSaoud, CTO, Aqaba Water. “This latest step is a result of the various achievements and advanced solutions that we have put in place to assist in increasing revenue-generation. We selected an integrated HP and Microsoft private cloud solution as the platform of choice to host our software and other IT services due to the rich, secure, advanced features that HP and Microsoft were able to demonstrate. We look forward to this project delivering on its pre-set objectives, and believe that this will uniquely position Aqaba Water as a reference model for utilities within the Middle East region.”

Modern, effective, secure e-services will be supported by HP and Microsoft technologies including a cloud-ready HP Converged Infrastructure based on HP CloudSystem with HP Matrix Operating Environment, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Microsoft System Center for Cloud Management as well as a self-service portal that will make IT services available on a flexible, pay-per-use basis. Automated failover and built-in lifecycle management will help to ensure uptime. In addition, a space-saving HP StoreOnce B6200 Backup system will significantly accelerate Aqaba Water’s data backup and restore, with performance of up to 40 terabytes per hour. Its virtual tape drives will be available as a large backup storage pool, enabling Aqaba Water to create as many virtual drives and virtual disks as required, and giving much more flexibility to move data around than previously.

A high performance HP network centrally controlled with HP Intelligent Management Centre software will form the backbone of Aqaba Water’s IT infrastructure for data transfer and communications. HP IMC will enable the IT team to see the whole network, manage it from a single console, and deliver maximum availability across the organisation. To enable business continuity and disaster recovery, HP TippingPoint Intrusion Prevention Systems will protect against on-line threats and ensure that Aqaba Water’s network security is always at the highest, most up-to-date levels.

“As the utilities sector is faced with increasingly complex patterns of demand and supply, it is vital that companies remain nimble and attuned to the latest IT innovations,” says Salah Isawi, managing director, HP Levant and Iraq. “HP will help improve Aqaba Water’s customer service levels by maintaining business continuity and reducing costs.”

Microsoft participated in project inception by providing a roadmap and integrated architecture for the full solution, as well as providing a discount on licences and premium support.

“Microsoft solutions for private cloud, built on Windows Server, Hyper-V and System Center, are a key part of the company’s end-to-end approach to cloud computing,” says Hussein Malhas, Country Manager, Microsoft Jordan. “By improving the way Aqaba Water currently consumes IT, we can help them leverage investments and skill sets they already have, while taking advantage of the new value the cloud provides in cutting costs, reducing complexity and improving productivity.”