GEC NEWS WIREIn the MEA region the need for IT security solution and IT in general is still evolving. Hence, there is a lot of potential for both technology vendors as well as service providers to tap the underlying opportunities.
Q. What’s your perception of overall IT security market in the Middle East?
What we are noticing in the Middle East region today is that IT security market is booming and so are the threat vectors. And that’s the reason why our market is growing as well. We are expecting around 30% growth of the business in IT security and IT in general in the year 2014.
Q. What are the strategies being followed to match the market growth number of 30%?
Recently, we have increased our focus towards IT enterprise security solutions. It is because this domain is growing much faster than the commodity space. We believe that in the enterprise segment, security has become more critical than just being a luxury tool; whereas, in the commodity space, security is not given that prominence. On the other hand, we are witnessing different types of solutions in IT security environment. Previously, only virus or malware protection was being considered by the organizations but now, these companies are talking about data leakage prevention, vulnerabilities, etc. In such a scenario, the enterprise security market will grow even further.
Q. Currently, you are a small company, but you want to make EMT one of the top five companies soon. How are you pacing up your activities to make it happen?
Today, we might be a small company in terms of people but when you look at the background of the whole group in terms of worldwide presence, history in this region, and management expertise, we don’t really judge ourselves as a small company. While we don’t have a huge number of people, we do have experience and skilled manpower. Moreover, we are not only relying on Dubai operation but we also have offices in Asia Pacific and Europe and these offices are supporting Dubai operations as well. We have on board engineers, business developers, and project managers who often travel to these regions and support the big projects that we engaged to. Our presence worldwide is supporting our Middle East and Africa operations.
We are growing very fast here with limited resources. At the same time, we are also focusing very well on enterprise solutions that may not necessarily require too many resources. Here, we are working more closely with channel partners. We are enabling the partners and resellers to be able to deliver the solutions properly to the customers.
Q. Would you like to add other products to your portfolio or want to remain in the security space?
We are not just into the security space. Our offerings also include application delivery, desktop management, and cloud solutions that are not limited to security side but we also take care of monitoring and infrastructure aspects as well. Gradually, we are trying to adapt ourselves to the market changes. For example, today cloud computing is booming and we are preparing more and more on the daily basis to deliver the services to the customers. For instance, we are looking at providing services around cloud backup solutions.
Hence, our services will not just be limited to security. We are also focusing on virtualization and cloud – be it infrastructure-as-a-service, software-as-a-service, monitoring-as-a-service, and then security-as-a-service.
Q. Any brand name you have in mind currently for cloud backup solution?
At this point of time, we can’t disclose the brand names as we are talking to 3-4 vendors. And we are not sure which one we are going to finalize. But we are signing up with new vendors in the security space wherein we have entered into the field of log management and event management solutions.
Q. What is your strength in terms of back-end support?
First of all, vendors won’t sign up with any distributor without doing the background check and making sure that their back-end support is strong enough to handle any type of customer queries. Since EMT has 15 years of experience in the distribution space, our back-end is very strong. In terms of automation, we have using ERP application for many years; ITIL supported help desk for partners; and training schedules for partners and customers. With such a vast experience and presence worldwide, we are replicating the same thing in this region as well. You must have also noticed that in the Middle East, we have signed up with in-country distributors as well. So, there’s no doubt that our infrastructure is very strong along with our finances.
Q. What services offerings you offer as a VAD?
Right now, we are focusing on trainings and we are soon going to come up with EMT Academy. Here, we are going to sign a new agreement as a training center with some of the vendors. We will be also providing vendor neutral training as well. This is going to be one of the most important services that we will be offering to our channel partners. Besides, the other area of focus would be providing technical support, pre-sales support, RFQ preparation support and so on. We will also be giving project specific support and training and post-sales support.
Q. How has been your journey of strengthening resources, partners, etc. since October 2013?
We are expecting a good number of partners to sign with us. In fact, it’s almost double of what we had expected. Today, we have a very good presence in Saudi Arabia signing up with more and more partners. Similarly inOman, Qatar, UAE as well as Kuwait, we have signed up with good partners and these partnerships will be announced very soon. Egypt is another country where we have signed up with big system integrators. The solutions, services, and partner programs that we have help us to sign with best of the partners in the region. We have forayed in most of the Gulf countries and Egypt and the next phase would be making presence in Africa and Levant region.
Q. Do you have offices there?
We don’t have offices as of today. In some countries, we have own resources but we don’t have physical offices.
Q. So, they must be working from home?
Yes, they are working from home. It’s a very popular concept in West countries like the US and Europe. But in countries like Saudi Arabia, we will soon start our own offices and then gradually, other countries as well.
Q. How do you deal with challenges of retaining skilled manpower?
From the very beginning when we are expanding our presence worldwide, we left 10% of share for local offices to give it to the top managers or senior managers in the company. This is one way of retaining people until they believe that this is their own company. We try to create the family environment within the group. Today, we have people working from different parts of the world and around 15 languages are spoken. And all of them work very closely with each other and as a team. Secondly, most of the senior managers in each of the branches are one of the share holders. And we try to remove any headache from their regular life challenges so that they can easily work and perform. For me, one of the most valuable assets in any company is human resource and nobody can grow alone. You should have team members to support you.
Q. What is your top line expectation by the end of 2014?
We have set big goals for us wherein we are looking to achieve figures of $10 million by the end of this year based on the solutions and number of customers that we have. We closed the year 2013 with profit and our target is to reach the above-mentioned figures in 2014 for Gulf region, Egypt and parts of Africa. And we might over achieve our target figures if we approach the whole Middle East and Africa market properly.
Q. What is your long term goal?
We are trying to acquire a few countries in some parts of the Europe and probably in the month of March this year, we are going to make announcements. Apparently, we are acquiring a UK-based distributor and we are trying to do one acquisition in Germany as well. This is really the bigger picture in the group. With regards to the MEA region, we want to be amongst the top 5 companies.
Q. Are you happy with the progress? Do you find any gap that needs to be bridged?
We are very happy but at the same time, very conscious. Whatever steps we are taking, we are doing very carefully. I am not in a favor of having too many employees but quality people. The gap in the region is of good manpower. We also feel the same. And we have already hired quality people and looking for more. It is very difficult to find experienced people. The other challenge we as a distributor are facing is the credit issues while dealing with resellers. We really want to monitor it properly.
Q. Any channel programs are you launching?
We are soon launching our Partner Advantage Program, which is going to be very interesting for our partners. It is going to be a two-tier program. It’s just not the money part they gain in terms of margins or discounts but they will gain more benefits in terms of education and other facilities that we are going to give. This program will be launched in Q1 only.
