du announces Blockchain Edge, UAE’s first platform as a service

Farid Faraidooni, Chief New Business and Innovation Officer, du.

There are many drivers behind the demand for blockchain and its deployment solution suite, with business continuity, enhanced security, seamless services, and substantial operational expenditure savings among the main benefits. At the same time, the increasing demand that du is witnessing also stems from the fact the du manages, monitors, operates, and deliver all infrastructure and production components.

Following the UAE government, as a part of its digital transformation efforts, decided to capitalise on blockchain technology to transform government transactions on the federal level, 50% of which will be conducted using blockchain by 2021.

du supports clients’ critical functions and enables their services to be operational and accessible 24 hours per day, seven days per week.

While blockchain is a technology of the moment and entails many benefits in the future, the transition is very much a project. Implementation does take time, and those that pursue blockchain must become acquainted with new processes.

Principal challenges associated with the technology include a lack of awareness and understanding of how it works, identifying and understanding the most relevant applications of blockchain, difficulty bringing together the required stakeholders as well as a lack of blockchain talent and the difficult integration with legacy systems.

It also entails a complete shift from traditional ways of doing things, and some experience discomfort when winding down on responsibilities and effectively passing them over to technology by way of automation.

There are several key use cases concerning du blockchain and its deployment solution suite. One of the most prominent is the first blockchain platform as a service called Blockchain Edge in the UAE hosted on Dubai Pulse.

Today, there are two live cases for Blockchain Edge, which includes a unified business registry with Dubai Economy, enabling them to have a complete data exchange platform, and Al Wasl Housing with Smart Dubai Government Establishment SDGE for digitising the tenancy contract process.

Farid Faraidooni, Chief New Business and Innovation Officer, du.
Farid Faraidooni, Chief New Business and Innovation Officer, du.

Partnerships and alliances are fundamental to the success of du’s blockchain and deployment solution suite. In fact, du has an ecosystem of partners, many of which are involved in blockchain-related activities to deliver enterprise-to-enterprise solutions Some of the principal partners and customers include Smart Dubai Government Establishment and Dubai Economic Department, who are playing a key role in automating business processes in the UAE.

du collaborates with a host of end users that use blockchain and its deployment solution suite, with many examples that serve as encouragement and inspiration for others turning their attention to blockchain.

A recent example is Dubai Civil Defense, which recently partnered with du to become blockchain-powered and accelerate transformation. Another is Dubai Civil Aviation Authority, whose partnership with du for Dubai Pulse Cloud migration and blockchain network integration was announced in December 2020.

Business continuity, greater security, and seamless services are simultaneous priorities across all verticals, all of which are delivered by du.

Blockchain Edge is a cloud native blockchain infrastructure that can provision a private blockchain networks on Dubai Pulse Infrastructure with a high level of customisation, which accelerates technology adoption in the government, financial, education, logistics, and healthcare sectors, transforms organisations, empowering them to accelerate technology adoption, focus on business requirements, build applications on a fully managed cloud service.

The platform supports multiple blockchain protocols with ready to use features and capabilities as fully managed service so customers do not need to periodically monitor the platform infrastructure or manually scale it based on number of transactions requests or when adding new member to a network.


Key takeaways

  • While blockchain is a technology of the moment and entails many benefits in the future, the transition is very much a project.
  • Blockchain Edge is a cloud native infrastructure that can provision a private blockchain networks on Dubai Pulse Infrastructure.
  • du’s platform supports multiple blockchain protocols as fully managed service.
  • Blockchain is a technology that entails many benefits in the future.
  • The transition is a project and implementation does take time.
  • Principal challenges associated with the technology include a lack of awareness and understanding of how it works.
  • There is lack of blockchain talent and difficulty in integration with legacy systems.

There are two live cases for du’s Blockchain Edge, including Dubai Economy’s business registry and Al Wasl Housing with Smart Dubai Government Establishment.