MDS, HPE highlight enterprise digitalisation trends moving the UAE market

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Jacques Najjar, general manager, MDS; Cesar el-Ferkh, deputy general manager, MDS; and Kshitij Saxena (KS), GreenLake Channel lead – Middle East & Africa, HPE speak to Gulf Business on the sidelines of GITEX GLOBAL 2023 on the trends shaping enterprise digitalsation, navigating between virtual and physical enterprise storage frameworks, as well as the impact of artificial intelligence.

Q: What are companies that are at the forefront of digitalisation trends prioritising?

JN: Digital Transformation refers to integrating digital technologies, strategies, and innovative approaches into various aspects of a business to change how it operates and delivers value to customers. It involves a comprehensive and strategic overhaul of traditional processes, business models, and customer experiences to keep pace with the rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Companies succeeding in the journey are doing four things:
Embracing cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT, cloud computing, and big data analytics.
Reengineering and streamlining existing processes by introducing digital tools and automation.
Adopting Cultural shift by encouraging a mindset of innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning throughout the organization.
Leveraging digital channels and data-driven insights to personalize and enhance customer experience, increase engagement, and build long-term relationship.

Q: How does HPE GreenLake Work?

KS: We’ve always believed that Cloud is not a destination but an experience. The customer should have the ability to decide where it makes best sense to place resources – whether in a public cloud or on premise. And yet be able to consume all of it in a seamless pay-as-you-go, consumption based mode. HPE GreenLake is a market leading cloud platform delivering IT as a Service. It offers a range of cloud services for different workloads, such as compute, storage, networking, database, analytics, and more. HPE GreenLake enables customers with a cloud-like experience on-premises, with flexible pay-per-use pricing, scalability, and the ability to manage their entire hybrid cloud environment from a single dashboard. More than 72 services has been added to HPE GreenLake from infrastructure all the way to AI and big data.

Q: Modernisation of the data centre – why are organisations embracing as-a-service trend?

Organisations are embracing as-a-service trend and solutions provider are pushing for it for multiple reasons. Let me first start with scalability. Organisations have the luxury to scale up and scale down. In a fast changing world, it is very important to provide organisations with the luxury to adjust their needs on the market and client requirements.

Cost optimisation is another factor. The as-a-service model allows us to reduce heavily, the capital expenditure of the customer. At the same time, this gives them the ability to invest somewhere else. This also allows the customer to only pay for the resources that he or she is using and hence he or she will not overpay.

The other important part is to enhance or optimise the core competency as a customer. Outsourcing the infrastructure and the platform as-a-service allows the customer and employees to be managed outside and gives them more time to elevate their solutions.

Additionally, we have the need for compliance. Unfortunately, not every customer has the luxury to be on top of every security requirement and be able to continuously invest heavily in it. The Pay-as-you-go model, where everything is managed by the solutions provider will allow them to enjoy the features of security for as much as they use.

In summary, customers are adopting as-a-service model for better flexibility, reducing cost, and ehanced customer experience.

Q: How does HPE set itself apart?

KS: HPE sets itself apart from its competitors by offering a unique edge-to-cloud platform that delivers a cloud-everywhere experience, flexible and scalable IT services, and innovative solutions for data-driven insights. HPE has a strong portfolio of products and solutions that address the growing demand for data at the edge, such as Aruba, HPE Ezmeral, and HPE Edgeline. HPE helps customers connect, protect, analyze, and act on data from any device or thing, anywhere.

HPE is a leader in innovation, investing over $2bn annually in research and development and acquiring strategic companies to enhance its capabilities. HPE also leverages its global network of labs, innovation centers, and partner ecosystems to co-create solutions with customers and solve their most complex challenges. HPE is committed to delivering value to its shareholders, with a target of returning at least 60% of free cash flow to them in FY22. HPE also offers competitive benefits and wellness programs to its employees, such as stock purchase plans, insurance, and 401(k) match.

Q: Specific areas of expertise/strengths of MDS that will help deliver HPE GreenLake solutions to digital first companies?

JN: MDS is the biggest System Integrator in the UAE for more than 15 years as per IDC. We have experience in all aspects of the digital landscape. Cloud, AI, Cyber Security, Application modernization and everything as a service under one roof. Backed by a large pool of expertise and extensive experience in all industries that our customers operate. We act as the trusted advisor that can lead them in their journey for the ultimate setup in this new digital world.

Q6: What trends look to drive the IT services market in the region? How is MDS navigating the rapidly-changing market which has been impacted by AI?

CF: I believe we are very lucky to live in such a country where they enjoy being the leaders and get ahead of the trends in the market. There are a lot of trends and in the UAE, we are observing these and gearing up to work towards it.

Some of these are:
– Digital transformation will remain a key pillar and will expand its footprint
– AI is definitely another one, and we will see more use cases once the chatbot adoption is more widely used
– Cloud adoption – From our experience as a major business integrator, as we get to meet a lot of customers, we can see that many of them have private and public cloud storage options. As a systems integrator, we would love to be of help in migration and integration.
– Cybersecurity – With the facilities that are available, we see a lot of phishing attacks, and companies to secure themselves against these.

So, it is very important for us as a top systems integrator to elevate ourselves and equip everyone around us.