GEC NEWS WIREThe education sector in the MEA region is investing heavily on innovative classroom technologies. And the emergence of concepts like BYOD and mobility is giving a boost to the mobile learning environment.
Q. Tell us about NetSupport’s presence in the Middle East region?
As an education software specialist, NetSupport initially focused on the western markets like the UK, Germany, France, and North America amongst others. But as of today, we are doing business in about 100 countries. And Middle East is a very strong region for us with respect to the education sector. Here, we work very closely with Ministry of Education of different countries and in the process deal with many universities and colleges of this region.
Q. What kind of products and services do you provide to the education sector?
For the last 25 years, we have been at the forefront of developing innovative solutions to aid in the management of desktop computers and their users. For the education sector, we offer a host of world-class products that help us address any type of customer requirements. For example, NetSupport School is the class-leading classroom software solution, providing teachers with the ability to instruct and visually/audibly monitor, as well as interact with their students, individually, as a pre-defined group or to the whole class.
Then we have, NetSupport Manager, which is multi-platform remote control software that continues to deliver the very latest in remote PC support and desktop management capabilities. From a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone, one can monitor multiple systems in a single action, deliver hands-on remote support, collaborate and even record or play back sessions. We also offer a focused classroom management software solution, called NetSupport Assist, which ensures teachers have the tools they need to monitor, engage, and collaborate with their students.
We even work in conjunction with different partners like Intel for their classroom suite to actually control the content being delivered. Within the education space, we are also talking about BYOD and mixed computing and technology.
Q. What kind of potential do you see in this market?
We see a huge potential because learning has now become digital. Schools want to use new methods and mechanisms for teaching, which includes tablets as well as mobile technologies. And for the integration between the two, you need one solution which is universal. For NetSupport, our solutions while working with so many different partners and manufacturers are totally agnostic. We don’t specialize on one particular platform. We want our tools to be facilitators so that they allow better content to be delivered in the classroom. With regards to content, the barrier normally for any school is to control its reach to the students. Hence, there is a marriage between the content and the technology delivering it.
Given the increased access today’s students have to mobile technology, it’s great that schools have been quick to recognize the role that tablet devices can play in the classroom. For classroom management vendors such as ourselves, it’s vital that we continually develop not only the feature set of our solutions but also ensure our platform support is as broad as possible and accommodates the latest developments in IT − helping teachers to remain in control of computer-led collaboration and assessment and encouraging students to engage with classroom technology and peer-based learning.
Q. What kind of target have you set for this region?
If you talk about this region, probably across the Gulf, we have active relationship with Ministry of Education in Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lybia, Morocco, and many other places. Probably, in the last six months, we have shipped about a quarter million copies and in a year’s time, we are expecting to deliver 2-3 million devices across the Gulf region and North Africa.
I think the potential is huge because five years from now, every student will need to have some form of computing device to have an equal chance of getting a fair education. With the growth in the students, the technology has to grow as well. And we have to keep in mind affordability aspect as well, as the cost of technology comes down, it will become more accessible. If you deliver technology via tablets, you have luxury to move them around schools without having them wired into the infrastructure.And every year, there are new academic tools that are being delivered on those mobile platforms.
Q. How do you sell your offerings in the marketplace? How competitively are they priced?
The software is license based and you can either download it or get it on CDs. Most of our customers worldwide download the software but in some countries, it is delivered by our partners. By far, the biggest market for us is Windows but with Android and iOS tablets coming in, it has slowed down a bit. We work with Microsoft as partners to promote education.
Due to the affordability factor, we are increasingly seeing, tablets are being presented as an alternative to the Windows and in many cases, they are cost-effective as well. This shift will continue to develop but some markets have luxury of both. The challenge for all technology and much you will see for corporate is that an Android tablet does not replace your PC for day-to-day job and the same goes for school as well, where you can’t replace PC if somebody wants to teach computing programme. But in terms of the tool for research, e-books, and online referencing, it is an alternative. So, many schools are looking for both the options. Recently, we have seen big deals happening in this region, where Ministry of Education in Qatar did a very large roll out and that too of Windows tablets.
On big deals, you will get the product licenses for $2 to 3 per copy and the small school licenses are priced at $10 to 15 per copy. Our partners get healthy margin on these prices.
Q. How many partners do you have in this region?
In this region, our primary partner is Bulwark Technologies for Dubai and we have one partner in Kuwait. We try to have at least one partner in each region unlike many companies who have multiple partners. We often feel that there is time and investment required to develop a market and it is only fair to give that partner an opportunity to deliver. Besides, we also work with manufacturers along with following the reseller and distributor model.
We have about 7 products, out of which there are 4 in the education domain. In the education space, we offer one solution called classroom management for schools and another solution is for desktop alerting and notification, which is a communication system that works across a school campus and was developed keeping in mind shoot-outs that took place in some of the schools of the US. Nonetheless, our focus in this region is on both corporate and education sectors. Probably, it is more the education business that we have done in this region. But certainly our focus in on both product lines in this region.
In Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Education, we probably have 300,000 to 400,000 licenses. Similarly, we have sold licenses in Yemen, Kuwait, Oman, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Qatar, Bahrain, and Lebanon’s Ministry of Education. We have presence in all these places but we also face the challenge of finding the right partners who could cater to the education vertical. Finding the right delivery mechanism for channel is very important for us.
Q. You don’t have a direct presence in this region and you are dependent on partner resources. How do you ensure quality support to your customers?
Our local partners tend to provide first line support to the customers in terms of dealing with initial enquiries from the customers. They will then escalate the second line to NetSupport with our offices in the UK, the US, and Germany. We offer about 19 hours a day live support online (live chat) and since we are also a remote control company, we also provide live remote control support to our customers. So, we provide second and third line support. And since we have a network of partners across the region, we can deploy resources whenever and wherever needed.
The key aspect about our technology and the reason why we have so many users (close to 12 million users globally) is that our products are recognized and respected wherein customers can download and try themselves. Also, our tools are designed to be remotely managed and allow users to effectively manage the implementation. We have developed a product called NetSupoort 24×7, which is a 24-hour live support tool, wherein you can visit our website and chat live with the technician, who in turn, will assist you and give advices. And since it has been set up looking at different time zones, it gives us broader flexibility.
