What makes Dubai, and the wider Middle East region, an attractive market for Orixcom to operate in?
The UAE has a burgeoning SME sector, strong GDP growth, a trend towards opex vs. capex and a population with a huge and growing appetite for digital content. Dubai is rapidly becoming a smart city with digital services powering all aspects of the economy.
However, the UAE is also underserved by the IT market lack of skills that requires guidance, hands on help and a local presence to put the required services and solutions in place to support this organic growth, but is supported by key government strategies to underpin the SME area.
These factors are mirrored and magnified at a macro level across the whole Middle East region.
Particularly looking at the cloud area, the forecast for MENA is extremely strong and healthy, Gartner predicts that from 2013 through 2017, $3.8 billion will be spent on cloud services in MENA and it is widely accepted and recognised as a key enabler that will support and transform the development of the MENA region - allowing everyone to access powerful and affordable world-class technology services.
What a great opportunity – that’s why Orixcom loves operating here!
What are some of the challenges of operating in the Middle Eastern market and how do you overcome these?
Leading the way can be hard work as you’re helping to educate and develop the market. At Orixcom we spend a large proportion of our time providing lots of practical help and guidance, more so than we anticipated when we started.
We blend world class technology (software, products and services), with best practice operations, and lots of practical expertise and management. That’s why we say Orixcom is the ABC of cloud - advise, build and co-operate.
It’s the approach we take with customers looking to move into cloud solutions – basically providing the full end-to-end expertise, capability and support needed to build, deploy and operate commercially successful cloud services.
What are your strategic priorities in the Middle East for 2015 and what announcements can we expect from Orixcom in the region this year?
We will continue to grow both our telecoms and cloud business with expansion into more of the regional markets. And we are identifying services and market leading partners to add more value to customers during the year.
What major trends do you see occurring in the Middle Eastern market in 2015?
As an industry we can sometimes be guilty of just sitting around talking about new trends and directions such as cloud.
We know many examples of serious players who have spent several years doing that, but haven’t launched any meaningful services to their customers.
It’s critical to get on and starting doing it. Orixcom has done that, and we can help others short-circuit the endless debates and instead focus on helping real customers and generating real revenues – that’s our business!
What topics do you hope to discuss in your panel session during the event?
I am chairing the keynote panel focussing on the regional disparity in connectivity and hoping for an engaging and thought provoking session.
With our experts I’m hoping we can discuss new low latency routes and increasing reach, provide updates on cables to Iraq and others along with understanding regulatory hurdles for upgrading network and connectivity infrastructure.
These are essential topics to support the wave on new services including cloud.
What does Orixcom hope to achieve by attending Capacity Middle East 2015?
We are demonstrating our continued commitment to the region and seeking new potential partnerships to strengthen our offerings.
It is also an opportunity for us to say thanks to our wonderful customers and partners in telco and cloud.
