EC News DeskAli Kaddoura will be Country Manager for the United Arab Emirates and Feras Bilto will be Country Manager for Saudi Arabia. The appointments follow the opening of ServiceNow’s offices in Dubai, UAE, last year and reflect the company’s view of the MEA region as a key territory for expansion. Over the past year, ServiceNow has seen tremendous growth. Global subscription revenue for the fiscal year was $ 5.57 billion. This brings the company closer to its goal of becoming the leading enterprise software company of the 21st century, with more than $ 15 billion in annual revenue.
In his role as country manager for the UAE, Ali Kaddoura will build and drive ServiceNow’s go-to-market strategy, working with customers and partners on solving extant business issues with the power of ServiceNow solutions. Key industries for Kaddoura will be energy and utilities, financial services, government, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, hospitality, telecoms, media, and technology.
Prior to joining ServiceNow, Kaddoura was Regional Director, Emerging Markets, for EEC Services, a rising cloud services and virtualization start-up. He successfully designed and executed the company’s regional GTM strategy, built a sales team from the ground up, and led expansions into the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
He was also previously Country Manager for Citrix in the UAE, where he specialized in digital-workspace initiatives in the oil and gas, banking, and telecommunication sectors. Kaddoura also held multiple sales and leadership roles with Symantec, CA Technologies, and other major systems integrators in the UAE.
Feras Bilto will step into the role of Country Manager for Saudi Arabia, building the ServiceNow brand across Saudi Arabia’s business community by creating awareness among CxO decision-makers. He will work closely with the company’s Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) team, as well as local and international partners, to expand the ServiceNow footprint in the country.
Bilto comes to ServiceNow from global technology solutions company Crayon, where he helped build the company’s Saudi Arabia presence and delivered 100% year-on-year growth, two years in a row. He led on strategy and accelerated partnerships while growing the national team by 40%. Before Crayon, he led the growth story at VMWare, increasing channel focus and expanding the team from six to 45 during his five-year tenure.
“Today’s enterprises are pursuing digital transformation at scale, and they are doing so at previously unseen speeds,” said Mark Ackerman, Area Vice President for the Middle East and Africa at ServiceNow. “Across the world, IT stakeholders want to reduce complexity, empower employees and increase organizational agility. Governance and compliance are also a concern, especially in sectors such as FSI. When you put all of this together with the hybrid architectures unleashed by the cloud, you begin to see the need for what ServiceNow brings to the table – slick, automated digital workflows that support the business by greatly enhancing customer and employee experiences, as well as reducing costs.”
“Our goal will be to accelerate enterprises’ digital transformation journeys towards a new era of enhancement of experiences for their employees and customers,” Kaddoura said. “ServiceNow’s Now Platform is the platform of platforms for the digital workflow revolution. Fortune magazine named us one of the world’s most admired companies for 2021, and I am proud to join a diverse, creative, fast-growing team that is changing how the world works.”
“When you consider the challenges our customers face in their digital transformation journeys, you can see that their KPIs are under threat without a unified platform that allows them to have all their metrics in a single pane,” said Bilto. “ServiceNow’s platform of platforms enables the right decisions to be made at the right time for optimal business impact. This is our unique value proposition, and this is what has positioned us for significant regional growth. It is how we will empower our customers to turn today’s challenges into yesterday’s stories.”
“ServiceNow’s commitment to the digital transformation of the MEA region is absolute,” Ackerman added. “But we know that leaders are the ones who make things happen. The right leaders bring true change, which is why I am very excited about Ali and Feras joining the ServiceNow MEA team. Their proven ability to grow brands, inspire workforces and craft strategy will propel ServiceNow’s platform of platforms into the regional consciousness and allow us to bring our unique value proposition to more companies and industries.”
