Almoayyed Computers playing key role in Bahrain’s cloud vision

S.M. Hussaini, CEO at Almoayyed Computers Middle East (ACME) spoke to CNME to explain how the Bahrain-based company is helping their customers transition to the cloud while supporting the government’s cloud vision.

How significant was it for Almoayyed Computers to achieve Amazon Web Services government competency status in May this year?

We knew we had to be the best – the driving force behind that there was the opportunity of becoming a competency partner, the very first in the Middle East. We put in all effort to make sure we achieved the AWS government competency status. It’s a great opportunity and it is an honour for us to be the first one.

The Bahrain government has recognised the importance of the cloud and has initiated its Cloud First Policy. How big a role will Almoayyed Computers play in terms of helping the government achieve their objectives on the cloud?

It’s our responsibility to understand the initiatives and stay in line with the government objectives – this is what we’ve been working on for the past few years. When this mature policy emerged, it was very important that we understood the opportunity and the role that we were going to play in terms of delivering value to the government. We started preparing early and the first step was to hire and have the skillset we needed to make sure we could deliver what the government had set up to do. We’ve been positioning ourselves to be ready for this transition. We also made sure our partners eco-system is cloud ready to ensure a very smooth migration journey.

Have you seen any resistance from customers or partners to this new cloud strategy and what has been your role in educating them?

We have seen an initial resistance, but the government has done a great job in terms of changing the mindset of organisations in the country. At the same time awareness and education around cloud is at an all-time height in general. We’ve played a role in terms of ensuring to showcase how easy and beneficent it is for our customers to migrate to the cloud. At the same time, our approach has been to deliver a complete solution so that they could fully understand the value they get, with minimum issues. Overall, we spent a lot of time helping customers to prepare for the cloud era and they are aware of the efforts our team puts into helping them – they are aware of our skillset. They trust us to help them move from on-prem to the cloud with ease and flexibility and we have customers from across multiple verticals.

Almoayyed has forged a stellar reputation for delivering successful software projects in an innovative way. It is a partner of IT behemoths like Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services. However, in your opinion what differentiates the company from its rivals – and how has it managed to sustain its status as a market leader for so many years?

I think our main differentiator is that we have always worked with our customers in mind. The idea is to deliver the best and the most optimal solution. When we talk to our customers, we don’t just give them a solution, we walk them through it, and we explain why our recommended solution works for their needs. We go on a journey with our customers – if they encounter challenges, we are there to help them overcome them. We are completely customer centric. We don’t see customers as opportunities, it’s a mutual and long-standing relationship.

There has been somewhat of an economic downturn in the UAE over the last twelve months and that has rather inevitably affected many enterprises. How has the economic climate been in Bahrain and have you enjoyed a good year from a financial perspective?

We have seen Bahrain going through different cycles. In the last couple of years however the country has been going through a massive transformation. However, there is so much work to be done still in terms of preparation for the future to come. At ACME, we had a successful year where we grew in terms of revenue thanks to a combination of activities, we are currently engaged in. This year we have been quite busy and it’s very interesting to see how we are moving up the curve. Our customers are looking into optimising and modernising the solutions, to then getting new workloads deployed. They want to move forward in their digital transformation and we can help them do that. Currently we are in a small economy, but we have ambitions to grow.