Antoine Abi Aad is an IT veteran and has enjoyed a distinguished career that has spanned over 30 years. He was appointed as General Manager of Emitac Enterprise Solutions in 2019, and he has played a key role in reinforcing their reputation as the leading systems integrator and IT managed services providers across the UAE.
In a compelling interview with CNME, he documents their lengthy partnership with HPE, which many industry analysts have described as a ‘dream team’, the approach Emitac takes when managing its large portfolio of customers – and the benefits of HPE’s GreenLake solution for customers seeking to remove the complexities of transitioning their operations to the cloud.
Abi Aad highlighted the importance of their collaboration with HPE and disclosed that they are serving over 100 customers that are using HPE technologies.
“Emitac are the company that brought HPE to the Middle East market in 1978. We have been partners for 43 years, and a large chunk of our partnership has been exclusive. The intrinsic nature of our collaboration was illustrated by the fact that in many instances clients thought employees of Emitac were part of HPE and vice-versa. This observation was unsurprising because our partnership is so intertwined. During our collaboration we have embarked upon some major and complex projects in which we have served some of the largest multinational enterprises and government organisations across the UAE. Today, we are serving and assisting over 100 clients based on HPE technologies, which also serves to reinforce the partnership we have and the key role Emitac plays in integrating HPE solutions across the IT ecosystem here in the Middle East”, said Abi Aad.
Emitac are a company that have branded themselves as an organisation that is ‘customer-centric’. According to Abi Aad they are always looking to innovate themselves and explained how they always focus on two key areas when dealing with their customers, whilst he also highlighted the importance of automation in the new digital economy.
“We face a continuous challenge at Emitac in terms of always having to re-invent ourselves, so we can put the latest cutting-edge technologies at the disposal of our customers. When we engage and interact with our customers’ we always focus on two key aspects, and the first one of those is we want to leverage our knowledge and expertise to enhance their operation and we try to do this by introducing automation. We want to ensure that all their processes are running efficiently – and we also equip them with high availability and business continuity solutions to make sure that they don’t have downtime, or a period when they can’t operate. The second key focus area for us is helping our customers with cost optimisation and the cost effectiveness of their operation. We reduce their costs by proposing an advocating for a managed services approach, in which we can offer them higher quality services and solutions at a much more affordable and cost-effective rate”, said Abi Aad.
The global pandemic as we know has triggered digital transformation and has sparked an increase in demands for new services and operating models in a series of industries and business verticals, and as Abi Aad discloses there has been an increase for managed services across the board over the last 18 months.
“Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the demand for managed services has grown exponentially and one of the main reasons for that is many enterprises were forced to hire personnel that had very specific and niche skillsets, but it has emerged that they are also utilising them on a 50-60% basis. However, when they come through us via managed services, we can offer them the same expertise, but they will be paying significantly less because we can share these resources amongst 2-3 different clients and this is how we can give them focused and dedicated support”, said Abi Aad.
HPE GreenLake has been described as a ‘gamechanger’ in the IT ecosystem and the General Manager at Emitac explained the intelligence that is embedded into the solution – and outlined how its helping enterprise overcome challenges presented by transitioning to the cloud.
“HPE are proposing their GreenLake solution to the market, which is a very intelligent solution that is enabling clients to manage their IT on-prem in a cost-effective manner, where they only pay as they-go, or as much as they consume, essentially, it’s a consumption-as-a-service model. GreenLake allows the client to only pay based on what they are using out of the technology that is being deployed on their premises. We know that moving to the cloud can be complex and challenging for many companies, but GreenLake can now help these enterprises navigate the complexities associated with cloud migration where they will pay based solely on consumption, so they get the same cloud experience and offering but it’s on-prem for them. It makes financial sense for our clients and this model is now trending amongst all of our clients”, said Abi Aad.
He concluded a wonderful and insightful interview by stating that despite the fact Emitac have been a success for half a century, they want to continue to be a success for another 50.
“We have been in this business for the last 50 years, and we are aiming to stay there for the next 50 years. Our image and brand are very important to us, as is our history. We always strive to deliver the best-in-class solutions and services to our customers, and we believe that we provide unrivalled customer-centricity to all our customers, and our ability to that is what really differentiates us from our market rivals”, said Abi Aad.
