Top 10 Entrepreneurial Arab Women That Are Making a Difference in the World
Entrepreneurial KEUANGAN WOMEN
Women from all over the world, including the Middle East, are kicking off life goals every day. But in the last few decades, opportunities and doors have opened up for women throughout the Arab world, allowing them to excel to their fullest potential. Here are 10 entrepreneurial Arab women to be admired.
Buthaina Al Ansari (Photo : commons.wikimedia.org)
Buthaina is the founder of Qatariat – a company that helps Qatari women gain access to the workforce. The company is made up of three parts: Qatariat Training and Development, Qatariat Magazine and Qatariat Development Consultancy. Named one of the 100 Most Powerful Arab Women in 2012 and 2013 by Arab Business magazine, Buthaina also sits on the board of the Qatari Business Forum and Arab International Women Forum in London.
Nayla Al Khaja
Nayla is an Emirati pioneer in the film industry, gaining the title of the first female film producer in Dubai. Having founded the film and television production company D-Seven Motion Pictures in 2005, Nayla’s company works with clients such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Vogue, Nike, Nivea, Gucci, Canon, and LG. In 2007, Nayla launched ‘The Scene Club’ – Dubai’s first film club and grew the club membership from 50 in the first year, to more than 10,000 today. Arabian Business named her one of the ‘500 Most Powerful Arab Women’ and in 2007, she won the Muhr Award for Best Emirati Female Filmmaker at the Dubai International Film Festival. Other awards won include the Emirates Woman of the Year award in 2005 and ‘The Youngest Entrepreneur’ of the year at the Global Businesswoman and Leader’s Summit Awards.
Wafa Al-Zerrouki
Wafa has been helping women to get out of poverty in rural Morocco and North Africa. Establishing the Wafa Association of Artisan Women in 2003, Wafa’s organization aims to help women sell their artisanal goods and be able to make a living from this. The organization originally started in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco and did so well that it spread to other parts of North Africa. Women involved in the program have the opportunities to attend craft fairs, exhibitions, technical training and workshops, and learn about effective marketing strategies for their small businesses. Wafa connects women with artisan skills on a local and international level.
Dr Hayat Sindi (Photo : commons. wikimedia.org)
Hayat Sindi is one of the most influential Arab women in the world when it comes to medical science. Currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University, the Saudi national aims to raise awareness of science among females in Saudi Arabia and the Muslim world. Hayat is the co-founder of ‘Diagnostics For All’ – a not-for-profit organization devoted to offering a low-cost and simple point-of-care diagnostics tool for developing countries, especially those who live rurally and don’t have easy access to hospitals and medical facilities. Educated in the UK, Hayat was the first woman from any of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf region to be accepted into Cambridge University. She was also one of the first female members of the Consultative Assembly of Saudi Arabia. During her education in the UK, she was often pressured to desert her religious beliefs, but she was a firm believer that ‘a person’s religion, color or gender has no bearing on scientific contributions’ and still proudly wears her head scarf to this day.
Haifa Al Kaylani
Palestinian-born Haifa is the Founder and Chairperson of the Arab International Women’s Forum. Raised in Lebanon and studying in Beirut and Oxford University in the UK, Haifa has traveled to more than 60 countries around the world and is fluent in five languages. The Arab International Women’s Forum is a not-for-profit organization that aims to give Arab women a voice. It helps them showcase their talents in both business and public life. Haifa’s personal goal is to use her skills to create a bridge of cultural understanding between Arab and international communities, especially women.
Sheikha Hanadi
A mover and shaker in the business world, Qatari national Sheikha has her finger in a few pies. Starting her career as an Assistant Lecturer in Economics at Qatar University, Sheikha is the Founder and Chairperson of Amwal, the Founder and CEO of the Al Waab City Real Estate development project, Vice Chairman of Nasser Bin Khaled Al-Thani & Sons Group, and is also Founding Chairperson at Q-Auto. Amwal, which was then known as the Qatar Ladies Investment Company, was the first investment company to receive a license from Qatar Central Bank to carry out investment banking and asset and wealth management in Qatar. Sheikha sits on many boards and has been on the Arabian Business list of most influential Arabs for several years in a row.
Maryam Matar
Emirati scientist, Maryam Matar, is the Chairperson and Founder of the UAE Genetic Diseases Association – a not-for-profit organization that works to reduce the frequency and impact of common genetic disorders in the UAE. Maryam was the first Emirati woman to have the title of Undersecretary to the Minister of Health in 2006 and in 2014, she was named one of the 20 most influential women scientists in the Islamic world by Muslim Science magazine.
Jouhayna Samawi
Syrian national Jouhayna is an art entrepreneur. Along with her husband and two cousins, she set up Ayyam Gallery in Damascus in 2006. This gallery showcased Syria’s art history and put a number of Syrian artists under the international spotlight. Ayyam Gallery was so successful, that they were able to expand to Beirut, Dubai, London, and Jeddah. Ayyam Gallery is not just an art gallery, but a cultural voice, showcasing well-known Arab artists.
Amani El Tunsi
Amani has created a platform for Egyptian women to speak their minds and discuss issues that they may not feel comfortable discussing in their day-to-day lives. Banat was Bas is an online space where issues such as sexual harassment, marriage, and spinsterhood are thrown around and dissected by the women of Egypt. Amani launched the platform in 2008, as she wanted to give women a chance to feel in control over their lives by accessing a plethora of knowledge. Banat was Bas is a website, radio station, rehabilitation center, publishing house, and even has a media and communications program to help women enter the workforce.
Wafa Al Rimi (Photo : Twitter)
Wafa is a talented woman on the rise. At only 16 years of age, the Yemeni founded Creative Generation, an organization that creates solar-powered appliances to use during power outages. The idea grew when Yemen was in the midst of the Arab Spring. The now 20-year-old’s entrepreneurial skills were acknowledged by Queen Rania of Jordan when she addressed the World Future Energy Summit. Watch this space. (*)
European Stocks Open A Rebound On The First Trading Day On Wall Street 2023
BRUSSELS – After experiencing sharp declines over the past year, many European stocks opened higher in the first trading session of 2023 on Monday (1/2/2023).
Reuters indicated during the opening of the stock exchange on Monday morning that the Stoxx 600 index in the region ended its sharp decline, up 0.8 percent.
The rise in stock values was also noted in the German DAX index (GDAXI), which witnessed a gain of 1.0 percent, after the London, Dublin, and other European stock exchanges that are currently recording ballots for green ratings on Wall Street. trade.
The rally in European stock prices began to occur after the unified central banks took drastic measures by raising the benchmark interest rate to the highest level.
The central bank’s monetary tightening aimed at controlling rising prices, as well as the economic slowdown, initially affected investors.
However, after the inflation rate in Europe was reported to have fallen to 7.0 percent, investor confidence began to recover, causing a significant increase in demand for the technology industry.
Among them, the production of automobiles and spare parts increased by 2.5 percent, and luxury products such as LVMH and dry goods increased by about 1.5 percent.
“With the 10-year bond yield above 2.50%, year-end loose trading is likely to lower inflation, thus raising expectations for next year,” said Commerzbank Research analysts.
In addition to the rise in share prices, the positive attitude of European market players also led to oil trading closing with a profit, as it rose 1.3 percent in Monday morning trading.
Although this increase cannot cover the losses of the previous quarter, this increase can slowly revive the European economy, which collapsed due to the effects of the war between Russia and Ukraine and the inflation of the global market.
Samsung Launches Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360 Laptop With 360-degree Hinge, Check Specs And Pricing
Reporting by reporter Mikael Davit Adi Prasetyo
SEOUL – Samsung officially unveiled Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360 laptop powered by Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 processor in South Korea on Wednesday (12/28/2022)
The plan is for the South Korean tech giant to start marketing the device in January 2023.
Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360 specifications
Cited by Gizmochina, the Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360 is equipped with a 360-degree hinge that allows the device to be used as a laptop or tablet.
Galaxy Book 2 Pro features a 2360 Super AMOLED display, a 33.7 cm touchscreen, measures 11.5 mm thick, and weighs 1.04 kg.
The laptop is equipped with Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 CPU, which improves performance and multitasking by 85 percent and 57 percent, respectively, compared to the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 processor.
To improve graphics and provide better processing speed, Samsung includes Adreno GPU.
In terms of connectivity, the Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360 uses Qualcomm’s Fast Connect 6900 system technology for a stronger Wi-Fi 6E connection.
The Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360 will be available in South Korea from January 26, 2023. The company sells this laptop for $1,485 or about Rs. 23 million.
Private Cloud Data Storage
Private clouds enable businesses to internalize the advantages of cloud computing. IT operations may be transformed by a private cloud, which offers features like elasticity, multi-tenancy, and self-service provisioning. However, in practice, private cloud storage is frequently provided utilizing out-of-date storage infrastructure. The private cloud should perform the same for storage. Traditional data backup and storage technologies are unable to meet the elasticity and flexibility demanded of cloud infrastructure on a scale comparable to the cloud.
What is a Private Cloud?
A private cloud is a type of cloud computing infrastructure that is utilized by just one enterprise, generally by a number of users. A private cloud’s crucial feature is its total separation from other businesses. Contrary to popular belief, private clouds are not limited to on-premises deployment. A private cloud may be owned by one company and operated in another physical location by a separate company (a service provider). The National Institute for Standards and Technology states that a computer system must meet the following criteria in order to be deemed a private cloud:
Provide on-demand self-service to computing resources
Make resources accessible from any type of device
Pool resources with multi-tenant resource allocation
Enable elasticity, with the ability to auto-scale resources up and down
Rating and metering, with resources, billed to consumers or allocated according to quotas
What is Private Cloud Storage?
A service approach for providing storage to users within an enterprise is private cloud storage. The same private cloud capabilities—on-demand access, resource pooling, elasticity, and metering—that are used to provide compute resources on-demand (such as Linux machines) may also be used to provide storage resources. Private cloud storage is typically purchased by businesses to meet compliance or security needs. On-premises applications that demand high-throughput or high-latency data access are another use case that necessitates placing the storage physically close to the storage consumer.
Private Cloud Storage Capabilities
Private cloud storage need to ideally be made available as a service. Similar to other private cloud resources, it ought to facilitate:
Elasticity: Users should have on-demand access to storage and be able to increase or reduce their storage capacity via a self-service system. Storage ought to be made available as a service that is separated from the underlying storage architecture.
Multi-tenancy: Private cloud storage should be able to accommodate numerous users, who might be several departments or business units while maintaining isolation so that no user can access the data of another. No matter the load, every consumer should have a guarantee of performance.
Reporting and billing: The private cloud should be able to track storage usage by various users and, in many situations, charge the appropriate division or business unit for their use, or at the very least, figure out their proportion of storage costs.
Private cloud storage is intrinsically constrained to the internal storage infrastructure maintained by the company, unlike public cloud storage services like Amazon S3, which enable limitless scalability. Hard drives, SAN, or NAS may be used to run storage, which may restrict an organization’s ability to implement resource pooling and multi-tenancy. A storage device that offers complete cloud computing capabilities is called Cloudian Hyperstore. It clusters storage nodes and uses Software Defined Storage to enable real resource pooling. Hyperstore supports multi-tenancy for various users inside the company, and the company may easily scale up storage by connecting more storage nodes.
Benefits and Challenges of Private Cloud Storage
Private cloud storage requires a specific explanation because it entails high initial costs and complicated maintenance, whereas pay-per-use public cloud providers offer identical services. Benefits of private cloud storage
Cost of ongoing operations – For big storage volumes, on-site storage is usually always more economical than public cloud storage.
Customization – In the public cloud, businesses can only use a limited range of storage services with rigid setup and usage restrictions. Organizations in the private cloud are completely free to choose their storage technology and tailor it to their own needs.
High performance—in the public cloud, a lot of users use the same storage infrastructure. Storage providers could not promise performance or might charge more for throughput or performance. Dedicated hardware installed on-site often perform far better than cloud-based alternatives.
Low latency—local storage will offer substantially lower latency than storage placed in a faraway cloud data center for on-premises applications.
Security – Due to its extreme isolation from other businesses, the private cloud may offer stronger security. However, substantial security protections that may not be present in a private cloud are provided by public clouds.
Types of Private Cloud
A private cloud may be divided into four main categories: virtual private cloud, managed private cloud, hosted private cloud, and on-premise private cloud, depending on who controls the private cloud environment and where the cloud solution is located. Let’s examine each one in further depth.
1. Virtual private cloud
With the aid of public cloud resources, a virtual private cloud (VPC) provides the advantages of a private cloud (greater control and a more isolated environment). Although the terms private cloud and virtual private cloud are frequently used interchangeably, they have several differences. The internal IT department of a firm serves as the service provider and the various business divisions serve as tenants in a typical private cloud. A public cloud provider serves as the service provider and the cloud users serve as the tenants in a virtual private cloud architecture. A virtual private cloud, to put it simply, is a hybrid form of cloud computing in which a private cloud solution is made available inside the architecture of a public cloud provider.
2. Managed private cloud
An unshared infrastructure private cloud concept is known as a managed private cloud. Additional names for it include dedicated and single-tenant clouds. A third-party provider is in charge of managing this particular private cloud. The company offers remote management, maintenance, updates, and support for the private cloud. Vendors occasionally also oversee cloud-based software solutions.
3. Hosted private cloud
Vendors of hosted private clouds provide cloud servers in their own data centers and are in charge of security administration. Users get access to more resources, a support staff, high-demand scaling options, and a user-friendly interface to help with server maintenance in a hosted private cloud model.
4. On-Premise private cloud
In addition to providing cloud servers in their own data centers, hosted private cloud suppliers are also in charge of security administration. Users of a hosted private cloud model have access to more resources, a support staff, high-demand scaling options, and a user-friendly interface to help manage servers.
Top 8 Best Practices for Implementing Private Cloud Storage
The worldwide cloud market is dominated by private clouds. According to Denodo, a data virtualization provider, about a quarter of all workloads across 150 worldwide enterprises were housed on a private cloud as of the fourth annual cloud utilization study. Private cloud adoption is critical for your IT strategy as businesses move away from generic public cloud solutions and toward something more specialized and secure. Here are the top 8 best practices for getting started.
1. Choose a hyper-scale private cloud provider
The lack of scalability is a major obstacle to the broad adoption of private clouds. The private cloud has always been challenging to grow because it depends on a pre-specified set of resources controlled by the organization or its cloud partner. Working together with a hyper-scale organization like IBM or Equinix could be able to solve this issue. Hyperscale basically indicates that the cloud architecture was created with the intention of growing in response to increased demand. The advantages of public and private cloud systems are successfully combined by hyper-scale-compatible private clouds.
2. Ensure that your private cloud partner offers managed services
Compared to public clouds, which can be set up once and forgotten, private cloud solutions often demand more IT work and more regular involvement. For a company to maintain an end-to-end private cloud that receives outside assistance, it will take a sizable in-house IT team, complex technologies, ongoing training, and major resources. It is advised to work with a private cloud provider that also provides managed services and manages the setup, use, and maintenance remotely. Another emerging approach is managed private cloud as a service, which is now provided through a collaboration between Cisco and IBM. Under this model, an outside partner runs your private servers, in this instance VMware and IBM, on a subscription basis.
3. Carefully assess the front end for ease of use
Enterprises want a strong front-end interface that can assist in tracking ongoing private cloud activity, even with managed services. What is the state of the storage? How are network resources and virtual machines provisioned? Can issue resolution automated procedures be defined? All of these and more are possible thanks to the front-end user interface (UI). It lessens the manual work required of the internal IT staff and aids businesses in maintaining communication with their managed services provider. Additionally, your private cloud partner should be able to provide tailored automation frameworks in line with your company’s needs.
4. Make private cloud storage interoperable with other environments
Private clouds are officially intended to be isolated infrastructure pieces that interface with other resources seldom, however, this might hinder productivity and performance. Because of this, interoperability is necessary, even if it results in a setting that resembles a hybrid cloud just a little bit. In fact, hybrid cloud-enabling interoperability is mentioned as a crucial component for private cloud adoption, which may assist offer a strategic and competitive advantage, in the 2021 IDC Survey Spotlight on on-premise private cloud solutions. The usage of identical management tools, server images, frameworks, and other cloud components across various settings will also be made possible via interoperability, resulting in a simpler, more affordable IT stack.
5. Bring uniformity into your application and hardware stack
Implementing a totally private cloud environment carries some hazards, one of which is that it can cause eventual spread and fragmentation. Consider, for instance, a situation in which IT begins provisioning.NET programs for Windows servers while providing Java apps for Linux servers, and two servers from separate manufacturers are operating on distinct settings. This gradually raises your maintenance expenses, muddles the process map, and adds to your overhead. Therefore, it is desirable to unify hardware configurations when outdated equipment is decommissioned as you grow your private cloud environment. To record all applications across operating systems and settings, the corporate application policy should allow for exceptions.
6. Leverage PaaS to accelerate your cloud application roadmap
Developers may design and host apps using a cloud-native approach with Platform as a Service (PaaS). To significantly reduce your time to go live, PaaS solutions offer standardized software components, essential middleware, dev tools, automation scripts, and pertinent web services. Given that private cloud requires a significant financial commitment, PaaS could hasten ROI creation. PaaS solutions are also self-service, user-friendly, and prepared for implementation with little assistance from a third-party provider. A private cloud and PaaS may support company activities and allow more effective resource usage.
7. Monitor CPU, memory, and storage issues on a per-application basis
The three most important variables need to be tracked in real-time. Your IT team can learn from a business intelligence dashboard what the current level of private cloud utilization is, which apps are the most resource-intensive, whether an app is using more resources than expected, and whether resource availability is keeping up with demand. You may need to invest in more private cloud resources if utilization is nearly always close to 100% or thereabouts. Additionally, creating long-term value can benefit from a dashboard that tracks CPU, memory, and storage usage. When historical data is visualized as time-bound trends, you can determine exactly when demand is at its highest and when your resources are idle.
8. Establish policies for backup and disaster recovery
Your IT infrastructure’s private cloud is crucial since it may be utilized as a working environment and to store very private data. A private cloud outage can seriously harm both your business’s operations and its clients. For this reason, you need a solid backup and disaster recovery plan that specifies failover procedures where crucial services are moved to a backup component in your cloud environment.
Closing thoughts
There are more options available now than ever before if you’re thinking about deploying a private cloud. However, to maximize the benefits of the private cloud, a thorough and well-thought-out approach is essential. Businesses must evaluate their operational procedures before deciding which kind of private cloud would work best for them. The appropriate cloud solution boosts an organization’s business growth, speeds up innovation, and improves performance, enabling it to compete successfully in a market.
