GEC NEWS WIRESoftware AG has revealed its preliminary figures for the second quarter and the first half of 2016. The growth in the region has been 30-40% compared to last year. The fiscal year for the company, the projects on the pipeline, new partnerships, regional insights and the trending technologies…Rami Kichli, VP, Gulf & Levant MET, Software AG gets candid about the company and how he aims to help it excel with innovation and deeper penetration in the market in an exclusive interview with us.
It’s all about ‘Digitalization’
Rami Kichli sees a very obvious shift in the adoption of digital platform in the global world which includes the GCC region as well, businesses want to transform themselves digitally. He sees the world as fundamentally different today and there is a lot of focus to come up with different business models. He says, “Large organizations are scared of digital disruptions that’s why there is a firm acceptance that organizations need to transform, part of this transformation is adopting a digital business platform. The region has always been active in adopting whatever is adopted in the modern world, however it differs drastically over the region’s geographies. Digital platform has been adopted across the governments in Dubai with the process of elevating service platforms.” According to Rami the region has a lot of appetite in adopting digitalization, some of it not by choice but some out of compulsion to not be lagging behind in the market. Commenting on the challenges Rami said, “Human Resource is a critical challenge in this equation. In this digital business platform every company becomes an IT company. Organizations need to have a deep rooted understanding for human resources. Talent shortage and competition is the number one challenge for this region. There is a need for brainstorming between vendors, consultants, customers, stakeholders in order to uncover the problem that can be solved by this digital business platform.”
Big Data Analytic solutions
“Big data streaming analytics is all about use case, the technology itself means nothing in isolation of what the value use case brings. There are a number of use cases that are more or less accepted,” said Rami. In his view he feels that what is done so far is just like touching the tip of the iceberg in terms of covering and identifying use case that can be materialized by using big data solution, it is just the start of it. He also sees it as a classic example of big data being a platform and not an application and requires a lot of imagination in order to come up with these ideas or use cases that can solve tomorrow’s problems. “From a technology perspective big data streaming analytic solution is all about utilizing and co-relating different sources of data. In this domain the analytical power is the real time part of it. It is a window of opportunity where you can reap this data and make decision within a certain window of time.” Talking about the region he mentioned that there are discussions around the topic however less adoption is seen in the region. He also mentioned about the recent Gartner survey on top 100 CIOs and their priorities and big data was amongst top 3 priorities however project adoption percentage and future adoption percentage remained low.
In store for 2017
- A new certified training center for Software AG to be opened in Dubai for the entire region’s customer training needs.
- Building the capacity for Software AG resources in the region.
- Partnerships with local educational institutions/universities by providing softwares and training of these softwares for free.
- Embarking on a 9-month program by partnering with a leading charity to develop a set of activities as part of CSR.
- Hiring new employees.
- Building a right eco-system and recruiting new partners.
