Shane Heraty
Country Director, Cisco
Digital economies are developing to address personalized experiences. The main themes in focus, especially at QITCOM, are centered on smart living and smart cities. New initiatives from TASMU are related to smart living, smart cities, and smart citizens; however, many companies in Qatar still run in a traditional outdated way. This is why SAP is focusing on the private sector. Many of these companies realize they can become more efficient and less vulnerable to market trends and changes when they centralize, standardize, and run shared services within their groups, pay more attention to data management, properly price products, and manage customer experience. SAP was the first to launch its private cloud operations based in Qatar. We have been established for more than five years already. We were the first to have a local data center for private cloud services. We are also in close discussions with Microsoft, because we are partners globally. Microsoft opening its Azure platform in country would help us to consider an in-country partnership eventually.
Soubhi Chebib
General Manager, GBM
Cisco solves customers’ biggest business problems and drives positive outcomes by connecting different products and services together. We help our customers accelerate innovation in a multi-cloud world, freeing them to develop and deploy applications anywhere, and simplifying how they connect, protect, and consume clouds. We are today the largest security vendor in the world. We detect and block 20 billion security attacks every day. We have been in Qatar since 2006, working strategically along with our channel partners to develop a secure, automated, and intelligent network for Qatar’s evolving digital landscape. We operate primarily with a sales force and a deep engineering capacity that allows us to partner with our customers and offer them the skills and capabilities on the ground to meet their technology needs. Our customers appreciate having Cisco expertise locally. This is especially true in the area of cybersecurity. We have a sophisticated cybersecurity team, and it is heavily engaged with companies and the government in supporting the country’s strategy of creating a secure nation.
Wissam Costandi
Managing Director, Wissam Costandi
We merge construction infrastructure with IT. A building can no longer be completed without it. Our key strength is system integration. We focus on complex projects. It’s a great honor for us to be involved with three of the FIFA stadiums for the upcoming World Cup, namely Lusail Stadium, Ras Abu Aboud Stadium, and Al Rayyan Stadium. Our scope of work ranges from datacenter and network infrastructure design compliant to FIFA standards to systems and security integration, giant screens, and sounds systems, for example. One of our greatest advantages is that our core engineering team is based in Doha. My base will remain in Qatar, but my focus is to start exporting our software all over the world, especially to Europe and the US. It is difficult to replicate what we have done. Airports in the US are set for renovation, and we have the right skills and experience to help with this. Not many companies can say that they have worked at the fourth-best airport in the world.
Mazen Jabri
Managing Director, SAP Qatar
GBM has evolved a lot in the last 10 years, from a company with a focus on infrastructure to a leader in digital transformation. This is in line with the Qatari government’s strategy to redesign citizen, resident, and tourist experiences and modernize current systems as part of the country’s smart city initiatives. GBM is proud to be the pioneer and the first company to plant the seed of digital transformation in 2001 through Qatar e-government project. We have more than 200 customers across a wide range of verticals such as government, oil and gas, public security and defense, banking, health, education, media, and trading. We have a long-standing partnership with IBM and Cisco, and we have also nurtured strategic partnerships with other leading technology innovators such as Aruba and Microsoft. We are building an app to facilitate the movement of people within Qatar using public transportation. We are also doing a number of other projects to facilitate integration between government services and other projects that aim to facilitate investment and promote Qatar as the best place to do business.
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