1) What is the main theme of your presence at GITEX this year?
Seagate is known for storing the world’s content, and that repute will be seen across our various activities and product lines showcased at this year’s GITEX Technology Week as well as during GITEX Shopper. For more than three decades our products have been helping people across the Middle East and around the globe to store, share and protect their valuable digital content. During this year’s GITEX, visitors will be able to see how we have advanced over the past year in offering the industry’s broadest portfolio of hard disk drives, solid-state drives and solid-state hybrid drives, as well as an extensive line of retail storage products for consumers and small businesses along with data-recovery services for any brand of hard drive and digital media type.
2) Are you releasing/launching anything new at GITEX 2013? If so, what?
During this year’s GITEX, Seagate will have an active presence showcasing its unrivaled range of both external as well as internal storage solutions.
For those interested in home computing and enterprise storage, our internal hard drive solutions will be out in full force including our latest developments in SSD, SSHD, NAS, Enterprise and Cloud technologies. This includes the world’s fastest hard drive—the Enterprise Turbo SSHD—as well as a new network-attached storage (NAS) HDD lineup plus two new enterprise-class HDDs optimized for emerging cloud infrastructures and large-scale data centers.
In the consumer space, Seagate has also made some great advancements this year through increased investments in its branded personal storage solutions. Our recently launched Seagate Wireless Plus and Seagate Central wireless storage devices will be leading our lineup this year, as well as the newly unveiled Seagate Slim drives and our bespoke business NAS solutions for SMEs.
3) How is your company presenting itself at GITEX this year to differentiate it from competitors?
The sheer diversity and quality of our product portfolios really do speak for themselves. By bring together a team of global Seagate solution experts and with an expanded stand at this year’s GITEX to showcase where storage technology is heading in the coming years, we are confident in offering visitors an unparalleled experience at this year’s exhibition.
4) What are the key trends influencing your approach to GITEX 2013 and the offerings you are pushing?
The global storage market is growing rapidly as a business sector as well as evolving in terms of its solutions offerings. Today’s global storage solutions are undergoing rapid advances in terms of hardware, software, and how they are implemented within the modern enterprise. Increased mobility and cloud-based storage applications are motivating end users to rethink their traditional approach to storage architecture.
5) How have you seen the Middle East respond to those trends in question, and how did you think that will change over the next year?
Looking ahead, we believe that data growth driven by cloud, mobile and open source advancement will present new and significant opportunities in the EMEA region. Organizations across the Middle East have largely recognized the value that they can reap from more efficient, tiered storage solutions which consider the long-term implications of these trends. We feel well positioned to help our customers take full advantage of that potential in the coming years.
6) How do you think GITEX 2013 will be different to previous editions?
GITEX has always played a major role in shaping the Middle East Africa and South Asia (MEASA) region’s technology landscape. Bringing together so many different stakeholders—bother geographically and in terms of expertise—we have found that each year’s event presents a fresh lineup of ideas, products and opportunities. There have been some notable expansions onto this year’s agenda in particular.
7) What are the key offerings you will be presenting at GITEX – sum up their key and unique features.
In terms of internal hard drives, Seagate’s laptop hard drives deliver industry-leading innovation for every mobile market need, offering superior performance, reliability and value.
Our desktop hard drives further deliver optimal performance for every desktop computing need—from entry-level workstations to high-performance gaming systems.
With more than 30 years’ experience in the enterprise storage market, Seagate also consistently designs, builds and supports the industry’s highest quality enterprise drives. This includes having led the industry in developing solid-state and hybrid storage technologies for extreme performance, reliability and endurance.
Within the consumer market, Seagate’s external hard drives deliver sleek, sophisticated storage designed to help consumers do more with their digital content. Our unique solutions allow consumers to store all their photos, videos and music easily; back up multiple computers on a small network; protect business-critical data, and access files anytime, anywhere.
All of these offerings will be presented at this year’s GITEX with visitors able to connect with our solutions experts and business leaders who are set to lead the sector forward.
8) How important is GITEX as a platform and event to your organization?
With the Middle East’s expenditure on information technology further expected to increase year-on-year, GITEX presents an exceptional opportunity to not only link up with our existing partners and customers in pursuing new opportunities in the region, but to also connect with other industry leaders with whom we can look at future collaborations—advancing the wider storage ecosystem in the coming years.
9) What is the top reason you invest in GITEX — do you see a healthy return on your investment, or is it more about presence/visibility?
We have found that the atmosphere at GITEX is constantly abuzz with brands looking to experiment with new ideas, pursue fresh alliances, and generally contribute to the future development of the IT storage market that we all work in so passionately. That environment is something quite unique even on a global level. The return we see from GITEX is thus as much about business development as it a platform for sharing knowledge and keeping our teams on the cutting edge of the regional technology field.
10) What does your company hope to achieve by appearing at GITEX 2013?
This year we are very much focused on showcasing new Seagate solutions which have just recently come onto market in the EMEA region. We expect many of these to have a monumental impact on the region’s storage industry—redefining traditional storage strategies at the enterprise level and giving consumers a whole new perspective on what it means to share digital content. With a number of senior Seagate executives and solution experts coming in for this year’s event, we anticipate this being one of the most exciting in our company’s history at GITEX.
11) What are your company’s main recent achievements in the Middle East market?
Both our external and internal hard drive businesses have done very well in the Middle East this past year. Amongst the notable highlights was the launch of our new range of consumer storage devices including the Seagate Wireless Plus and Seagate Central. Our B2B business has also gained momentum through a host of new product launches such as our third generation of laptop Solid State Hybrid Drives (SSHDs), desktop SSHDs and SSDs, as well as events like our Annual Middle East Partner Conference in which we have outlined new additions & incentives to our Seagate Partner Program (SPP).
Through such investments, this year Seagate was able to become the world’s first hard disk drive manufacturer to ship 2 billion units globally; a number fuelled by the explosive demand for storage capacity seen in the Middle East and across the globe.
