-        " GBM " reviews its technology platform and strategy to enhance the management of digital infrastructure

The interview by: Khaled Hassan

Prepared for publication: Pakinam Khaled - Muhammad Al-Attar

GMB, a regional company specialized in providing information technology solutions for business enterprises, participated in the activities of the second session of the IDC CIO Summit Egypt 2022, which was held in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, in the presence of Dr. Amr Talaat, Minister of Communications and Technology Information under the banner of accelerating the digitization journey for enterprises, the summit serves as an excellent platform to discuss our vision with CIOs in various industries in Egypt.

“ Alam Rakamy “  had this meeting with Eng. Amr Refaat, CEO of Gulf Computers Company “GMB” to get acquainted closely with the company’s strategy for presence in the Egyptian market, and he confirmed that with this distinguished participation, we are pleased to announce that we will open our office in Egypt and seize this opportunity To share our vision and how we can support Egyptian companies in their digital transformation journey. Clients in Egypt will have access to more than 1,500 skilled professionals who have worked closely with clients across the Middle East on digital transformation.

 What are the most important goals of the company from participating in the activities of the "IDC" conference?

This event is an excellent platform to discussion our vision with CIO’s across the different industries in Egypt.

This participation is special as we are pleased to announce that we are opening our office in Egypt and are taking this opportunity to share our vision and how we can support Egyptian companies on their journey for Digital Transformation. Clients in Egypt will have access to over 1500 professionals who have the skills and have worked closely with clients across the Middle East in their Digital Transformation.

 With the expectation that more than 60% of the global economy will be digitized in 2022, what is the company's vision to enhance the digital transformation process for business institutions in the region?

Digital Transformation is essential in today’s world.Covid has shown us that you cannot survive globally or locally if you are not able to move quickly along your digital transformation journey.

The good news is that the Egyptian government has a clear vision to provide digital services to Egyptians, and to build a talent pool to support the market to transform.

GBM has a clear strategy and have helped companies in their digital transformation journey GBM Designs, Builds and Manages digital infrastructure to help your organization accelerate Digital Transformation  , GBM Enables your organization to transform data into actionable insights and business value and GBM Enables your organization to optimize, automate and re-design business processes

We are looking forward to work closely with organizations here in Egypt and support them and the market in this transformation.

§  how the company plan to help governments implement their plans for digital transformation and smart government?

The Egyptian Government is focusing on the ICT sector and is making huge investments in multiple fronts Attracting Foreign Direct Investments  , Ease of doing business , Supporting Talent , Programs for Startups and In addition to providing digital services for citizens

All these are important factors that is encouraging us both to invest, to support large and medium companies in their journey and to align to the government’s National Agenda.

GBM has been serving governments across the region for the past 32 years with most of the major entities in the countries GBM operate in depend on our technology, services and professional services and support that we provide to them to sustain their core operations and develop new services and digitize their environment.

 What is the company's strategy to provide integrated solutions for infrastructure technology to its customers in Egypt and the Middle East characterized by flexible, secure and scalable technology?

GBM delivers end to end scalable, agile and secure infrastructure solutions, all the way from private on-premise infrastructure to public cloud models and finally the hybrid-multicloud model that is currently adopted by almost 50% of surveyed customers.

GBM help customers build their state of the art infrastructure that is both scalable and secure in many segments like Government, Banking, Telecommuncation, Transportation, Oil & Gas, Retail.

We are looking forward to work with the Egyptian market in availing these capabilities in building their infrastructure supporting  their digital transformation journey,

 What is the impact of the current economic crisis on the demand for technological solutions, and what are the offers offered by the company to meet these challenges?

Companies are being majorly disrupted even before the pandemic, new digitally born organizations have been shaking long established industries by their speed in developing and lauching competitive and innovative products. Companies have realized the need to become operationally resilient and that the only way to achieve such resilience is to digitize their operations to become more agile, scalable, gaining speed to market. This has boosted the need for technology from infrastructure to data to process automation to AI to be embedded in the decision making apparatus of these organizations.

what about the company's plans to enhance after-sales services, technical support for its customers, especially online support?

GBM is currently supporting well over 1000 customers with our capabilities to deliver Level1 and Level2 supports for a multitude of technology vendors that are strategic partners to GBM. Our 24x7 support capabilities have delivered unmatched value to our customers and as we develop our presence in Egypt this will become a key value to our Egyptian customers.

 What is the company's interest in preparing and qualifying human cadres for its clients on the latest solutions it offers?

Egypt is a huge talent pool that is very skilled in technology, language, services. This is a major attraction for regional and international companies.

We heard from His Excellency Minister of ICT and from ITIDA yesterday that this is a major focus of the government: building deep talent in areas that the market needs.

In GBM, we believe in helping our team build and grow their skills and look forward to continuing this in Egypt.

 How does the company view the need to provide data security solutions to protect the technological infrastructure of enterprises?

IT security is critical to the success of any digital transformation project whether is it in the public sector or the private sector. This is particularly important when governments, banks, telco’s etc provide online services and start their digital journey. We have heard of so many examples of data breaches and this is a concern of many companies and individuals all over the world.

One of the critical success factors is to put a security plan in place that governs the whole organization (both from an IT and from a planning standpoint)

GBM has the skills and offerings to help companies build their security plans and implementations. We have partnered with companies that have unique hardware and software solutions that provide IT security offerings and look forward to work with organizations here to help them build secure platforms and implementations

 Who are the most important global partners of the company?

GBM have many big international partners IBM and Cisco

We have many more specific partners like Redhat, VMware, SAP, AWS, Microsoft, among others.

 What are the most important economic sectors that the company focuses on?

We are proud that we have worked with entities across different sectors in the Middle East like: Government, Banking, Telecommuncation, Transportation, Oil & Gas, Retail.

 What is the increasing reliance of institutions on software solutions, mobile devices and artificial intelligence solutions? What is your vision for the absence of these trends?

The journey to Digital Transformation has to start with the business need, and we currently see companies making major strides in this journey all the way to embedding AI solutions into their decision making process. While the world is figuring out how to monetize such capabilities we believe it will be an evidence in the short term that AI will shift economies and will impact many jobs and organizations in the positive sense.

At GBM we delivery a complete framework to help our customer understand and make use of such technologies to enhance their business outcome.

 What is your interest in providing special solutions for small and medium enterprises?

Small and Medium sized companies are the cornerstone of any countries economy. In many cases they are the companies able to transform to the digital world faster to address their customer needs. We have solutions to help medium sized companies build their digital infrastructure and in helping them in their digital journey. In Egypt we see a major potential in digitizing such organization to raise their global standardization and therefore competitive level. We also see many startups created in Egypt (born in the cloud companies) or innovative applications that can potential leap from the SMB space to global power houses and achieve major economical breakthrough