Unleashing some of the market trends that are getting vibrant in the Middle East region, Sami Abi Esber, President of Mideast Data Systems –UAE (MDS) highlighted the opportunities for network integrators in the region. In an exclusive interview with Faiz Askari — Head Online & Features, Network World Middle East, Sami excerpts:
What are the market trends that are existing in the Networking market?
The fast growing adoption of IP Networks in the region has created fresh opportunities for equipment manufacturers, service providers, value-added resellers (VARs), system integrators (SIs) and application developers.
In which direction according to you does the Middle East market is surging ahead, again with regards to the Networking market?
The Middle East region is investing in new Networking technology trends, especially the Security and Intelligent Secure Networks technologies.
What are the top three priorities of an enterprise CIO in terms of network management? How do you look at those opportunities?
The ability to adapt to the changing needs of their Enterprise Growth. Another priority of today’s IT head is to secure their infrastructure without affecting the business within the Enterprise. Apart from these, taking full control of their infrastructure centrally is also an aspect where they are always focus on. However, at the same time , CIOs prefer these goals to be achieved with a new Intelligent Unified Networks.
How do you see the potential of wireless networks in the region?
Wireless solutions became more Secure than before, hence the potential in the market is high for new Secure Wireless Solutions.
What kind of challenges does this industry is facing these days?
-Skills shortage in the market.
-Convincing CIO’s with of the economic benefits of the Intelligent Unified Networks.
Intelligent Networks are also an area which is getting lot of attraction from the customer’s side, can you through some lights on this?
Intelligent unified Network solutions make it easy to plan, deploy, manage and maintain the networks, and bring to market adaptive networks that deliver high-performance, no-compromise functionality, which helps in getting the most business value from your networks
What are views about the status of Data Center networking? What all offerings does the Middle East market has in the Data Center networking area?
Enterprises are moving to Data Centers solution with Disaster Recovery, where they will host all their servers and storage systems.
With the new MPLS – WAN Connection technology that is offered by the Local ISPs, Enterprises and SMBs are encouraged to build their Data Centers and Disaster Recovery, and connect between them with high bandwidth and affordable price nowadays.
Network Security is also a big area where IT managers are floating their budgets, how do you look at this opportunity?
Most companies are investing more on protection of information and considering it as top priority task. Now the security domain exhibits strong signs of maturity and even greater potential for excellent opportunities, for that more investment in Qualified resources is required to take advantage from the Service business to implement security solutions
