India's Wipro will provide high-end operations management services at the newly launched data centre in Dubai Internet City (DIC) following an agreement signed by the Dubai e-government.

The move is aimed at ensuring uninterrupted value-added services to citizens, a government statement said.

"The Dubai e-Government department has taken concrete steps towards providing the citizens of Dubai with non-stop round-the-clock e-services, with the launch of its data centre. The launch of the centre and the move to DIC is in accordance with the directives of General Shaikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Defence Minister, and is a significant step to the foundation of the e-government initiative as a gateway to the integrated e-services of the Dubai Government," it added.

The agreement with Wipro was signed at the Dubai Ruler's Court by Dr Khalifa Mohammed Ahmed, court director, who represented the Dubai e-Government Department, and Azim Premji, Wipro chairman.

"The establishment of the data centre is a major step to demonstrate our commitment to provide a robust technology platform for the e-Government's initiative and a promise to ensure the uninterrupted and smooth technical operation of the services," said Dr Ahmed. "This is a significant step towards realising Shaikh Mohammed's vision of a paperless government, where citizens can save on crucial time, avoid long queues and red tape, and yet receive the personalised services of the various government departments."

Announcing the agreement Dr Ahmed said, "The Dubai e-Government Department was committed to selecting the right partner to provide world class services and this agreement emphasises our keenness to work with the best players in the market."

He added: "The IT sector on the Indian sub-continent is one of the fastest growing in the world and has established its supremacy against international competition, in recent years.

"We welcome the entry of top-notch firms like Wipro into the country, because this supports our vision of building a high-tech knowledge economy in the region and assists us in offering high-quality IT services to the people of UAE and the Middle East."

The agreement with Wipro involves managing infrastructure from leading platform vendors including Sun Microsystems, Cisco, iPlanet and Vignette. Dubai has taken a lead in the region in deploying e-government applications and is among the first few governments in the world to provide such integrated services to its citizens.

The data center, comprising 34 servers and high-end networking equipment with full resilience, is connected to all government departments using the Government Information Network (GIN) and is hosted in the secure Lampertz room at the DIC Data Centre.

"The move to the DIC complex underlines the confidence in the technical infrastructure at DIC and ensures that the e-government department will be able to leverage the existing high-tech systems in Internet City to offer optimum services to the citizens of Dubai," the statement said.

The IT security room at DIC is a fire-protected steel chamber with fire-protected passages for cabling, entering and exiting the room and has 24-hour security personnel on duty," the statement said.

"We are proud to be associated with Dubai e-Government in leveraging IT for the benefit of its citizens.

This is in line with our strategy to work with local governments to bring IT to the masses," said Premji. "The Middle East market is critical to achieving our global vision and we are committed to bringing robust, globally proven processes in software and technology integration services to our clients in the region."

Wipro Limited, a $660 million global IT services major is currently among the top 20 IT services organisations in the world, providing IT infrastructure, solutions and services in India and high-end software and technology services to global markets.