GEC NEWS WIREThe IT industry is shifting from products to solutions but Midis Group was already prepared to face the challenge.
“Our role is not to be the cloud service provider; our role is to enable our customers to be that. This is the difference.”
Midis (MDS) Group, an IT group of companies was founded in 1981 and became one of the first IT companies to be established in the UAE. MDS is not only a System Integrator but has a lot in its portfolio. It is into Software Solutions, Data Centre infrastructure and site preparation, cloud infrastructure solutions, and managed services. “We also resell hardware from different vendors. We are active in all IT fields and sectors,” says Sami Abi Esber, President, Board Member, Midis Group.
In the Gulf region, the company is present in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ras al-Khaimah, Qatar, Oman, and Kuwait. MDS works with vendors like HP, EMC, Microsoft, Avaya, Oracle, Lenovo, Dell, IBM etc.
As it is known, the IT industry is witnessing a shift towards solutions and services from hardware. MDS is prepared for this next wave of technology. The company has consolidated its data centre and cloud credentials by launching Cloud Centre of Excellence in the UAE. “Here you can come and experience what is cloud, how it will work and everything you want to deploy as services it can be deployed here in our data centre. You can try it before taking any decision. It is a converged system, which is now available in one rack and has provision for any services from networking, infrastructure, and database,” explains Esber.
By working with so many vendors, MDS is not tied to one single brand. It delivers end-to-end solutions and integrating the best of the products to offer the best solution. “We are providing infrastructure solutions to all cloud providers. We are not offering XaaS but we are helping our customers to offer private cloud or public cloud. Our role is not to be the cloud service provider; our role is to enable our customers to be that. This is the difference,” elaborates Esber.
MDS is also well-positioned to provide security and mobility solutions. There is a separate entity within MDS group that focused on security. It is called Netcure and is specialized in providing security for data center infrastructure and different types of IT security. BYOD is gaining traction so MDS offers manageability of devices along with security.
Esber says that there are a lot of reasons why MDS is the most reliable partner in the country. One of them is the naming of MDS by IDC as the topmost IT service provider in the UAE from last nine years without interruption. “We are in the business since 1981. So many companies came and disappeared. MDS is here and growing. We add value to the business of our vendors and we have a long standing relationship with the vendors. We are financially strong and have the strongest coverage. We have the highest certification from vendors and direct relationship with them. That’s why we have a better engagement with the customer from commercial and technical point of view,” says Esber.
The customers of MDS include majority of oil companies. The focus is on enterprise business and not SMB.
Finally…
Esber accepts that the reselling part is coming down and data centre and software business is coming up. The revenue of MDS Gulf is USD 750 mn. “Half of this is reselling or hardware business. Software business is going up and hardware business is shrinking because of virtualization and cloud,” he adds.
As informed, MDS has been enjoying a combined average growth ratio of almost 15% from last five years. “As a company which is committed to the Gulf market, we are expanding year after year to offer our customers better services and better solutions,” concludes Esber.
