THIS ARTICLE IS POWERED BY
B Swaminathan
According to recent media reports, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries record remarkable growth in gross domestic product (GDP) by 7.3% in 2022. In the midst of economic turmoil, policymakers in the GCC countries were able to mitigate the economic effects of this turmoil.
Here are some of the leaders in the GCC distribution segments has to speak how the market has evolved post COVID and the investment patters.
Dr Manu Nayar, GM and Chief Technology Architect, Oregon Systems
We are focussed on critical infrastructure cyber security. Pre-COVID or Post-COVID, our approach towards cyber security is same. During COVID, most of the projects got delayed. Earlier many had to work remote. There were because of more virtual meetings were happening. In our industry, it is not possible to be only on 100% virtual meeting. Be it defence or manufacturing, cyber security is turning out to be the key factor. As far as the channel partners are concerned, they also faced equal challenge. Lack of skilled resources for cyber security professionals is one of the challenges for the industry. Having both industrial and technical knowledge are different. Candidates with IT automation knowledge or IT cyber security are only available. But what we need is someone who has the best mix of both IT security and IT automation knowledge. For example, we do an IOMT (Internet of medical things), we need candidates with knowledge of IT as well as critical healthcare infrastructure.
Deepak Motwani, Distribution Manager, Naizak
Earlier while people use to discuss on budget meetings, cyber security was always given the least priority. However, now, the situation is different and it is of course a topic of discussion in budgeting meetings. As a market, I say GCC is neither like West nor like APAC. Some markets prefer the company to be present within their country borders. While some companies prefer the OEMs appoint people within their country. In my opinion, even though there are a lot of changes in the workspace model, I should say, some companies still prefer conservative approach. For example, let’s take storage. While many private companies started embracing cloud, Government and related projects still prefer to have on-premise storage.
Yahia Al Masri, Country Sales Manager, Corporate channels, Al Jammaz Technologies
There are lot of technologies focus and demand in the market. SOCS and ransomeware solutions are in high demand. The customers are looking for solutions that support the SME segments in the market. The SMEs cannot invest heavily on cyber security. The small companies look for third party solution giving best solutions like MTR. Bigger companies can afford but small companies are unable to cover all the employees. SMEs should either have both cyber security engineers with higher pay or invest on some application on protection of their data. If companies cannot invest heavily, there are lot of affordable vendors and products that SMEs can implement through the third-party companies. Even our organization, cyber security as a division is new for us for the past 4 years. That segment is touching close to 30 to 40% of our total revenue. I see our cyber security division to increase day by day.
Pradeep Kumar, General Manager, Abcom distribution
The opportunities of technology are tremendous. The customers should have to make sure they have full proof system in place. How much investment is taking up is the question of the hour. The customers should increase their investments on IT infrastructures and the budgets need to be increased. The opportunities are huge in the market. The moment end-customers start investing more, distributors like us will grow as our system integrators. There are companies who look IT as an expense while there are some companies which look as investment. That is the challenge all IT distributors have to overcome. My personal opinion is that, we can never compare markets like GCC with other markets. This part of the world is so digitized and advanced. Most of the offices here are digital. Highly advanced solutions like identifying a person with detection of retina is in place in Dubai.
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