The Ministry of Economy, represented by The Entrepreneurial Nation, and Amazon Web Services launched the AWS Connected Community initiative to support the digitisation of SMEs in the UAE. The initiative is based on the latest cloud computing solutions and products, taking advantage of more than 200 services of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform. It is designed to accelerate the growth and expansion of SMEs in the local and international markets in line with global best practices.
H.E. Abdullah Ahmed Al Saleh, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy, explained that the Ministry has been supporting the UAE’s efforts to develop an integrated entrepreneurship and SMEs ecosystem. In this regard, the Ministry has been provisioning more incentives, initiatives and support programs to enable entrepreneurs to grow and expand their businesses and activities in regional and global markets, thus solidifying the UAE’s status as the number one global destination for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial projects.
The Undersecretary pointed out that the cooperation with Amazon Web Services opens up new growth avenues for SMEs by accelerating their digital transformation and enabling them to benefit from more than 200 technological and digital services offered by the AWS platform. It contributes to accelerating their overall growth and enhancing their competitiveness to become large companies and achieve cross-border successes.
Yasser Hassan, General Manager, Commercial Sector at Amazon Web Services Middle East, Africa, and Turkey, said: “We are pleased to partner with the UAE Ministry of Economy for this initiative through which, we aim to provide support to SMEs and entrepreneurs and enable them to gain experiences and new and diverse skills that prepare them for the digital future and accelerate the pace of growth and innovation. Over the past years, the UAE has succeeded in creating an ideal and conducive environment for the growth of SMEs to become an attractive destination for entrepreneurs wishing to establish businesses.”
“It is Amazon Web Services’ mission to address the challenges faced by budding entrepreneurs and SME-owners by providing them with the latest solutions, services, and cloud technologies from our wide and diversified portfolio of services. In today’s digital era, companies of all sizes must focus on upskilling their workforce and adopting cloud computing technologies. This will enable them to take advantage of the enormous opportunities and capabilities that these technologies offer to gain competitive advantages in the local, regional and global markets,” he added.
The AWS Connected Community initiative will conduct a set of sessions and virtual workshops for entrepreneurs and SMEs to enhance their capabilities in the areas of innovation, and digital economy and technology, including cloud computing, smart applications and solutions, digital media, IoT, robots, Blockchain, storage and digital databases. Led by several leading experts and investors in entrepreneurship, the sessions will also provide an integrated set of incentives for online payments to participating SMEs.
This digital initiative is part of ScaleUp platform, one of the three main tracks of The Entrepreneurship Nation that offers support to SMEs in the UAE through services and products designed specifically to accelerate the expansion of local companies to grow into global ones.
The Ministry invites all SMEs wishing to participate in the AWS Connected Community initiative to register by visiting https://theentrepreneurialnation.com/program/aws-connected-community/?lang=en The submissions will be open from the 12 June.
ScaleUp, SkillUp and StartUp are the three main tracks of The Entrepreneurship Nation, which was launched by the Ministry of Economy in November 2021 to fundamentally transform the national entrepreneurial sector in line with the Objectives and Principles of the 50. It leverages an integrated series of partnerships between the government and private sectors within the country and with leading regional and international institutions and companies in the fields related to entrepreneurship.
Amazon Web Services has an integrated platform for cloud computing services and solutions and provides more than 200 services in cloud computing, storage, databases, networks, analytics, machine learning, AI, and the IoT to customers in more than 84 countries worldwide, including the UAE, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and Switzerland. The Amazon Web Services platform is the most comprehensive and reliable cloud service offering in the world, with 98 standards of security and compliance certificates in the services provided to its customers.