First win in Kingdom

Norkom Technologies has signed a deal with NCB Capital (NCBC), marking its entry into Saudi Arabia and supporting its continued expansion in the Middle East. The announcement was made during the Enterprise Ireland Trade Mission to Saudi Arabia led by the Tanaiste (Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister) Mary Coughlan.

NCBC is the investment banking arm of The National Commercial Bank Group, the largest bank in the Arab world in terms of market capitalization. NCBC has about $13 billion in assets under management and one million clients. It is the Kingdom’s largest manager of wealth for high net worth individuals. NCBC will commence immediate implementation of Norkom’s suite of financial crime solutions across its operations in the Middle East, starting with its Saudi Arabian headquarters. With Norkom, NCBC will achieve full compliance with escalating local and international regulations. Norkom’s solutions will help NCBC to identify and investigate suspicious or criminal behavior quickly and efficiently by:

• Monitoring and analyzing all transactions and customer interactions across NCBC’s entire client base.

• Alerting NCBC when any individual or entity attempting to transact with it is included on any of the industry’s numerous watch lists, protecting them from inadvertently conducting business with known or suspected criminals.

• Enabling NCBC to assign risk ratings to customers at point of account opening and continually re-assessing their behavior over time, ensuring they are automatically and immediately alerted if unusual or suspicious behavior is identified.

Zamil Industrial selects 3Com

3Com Corporation has won a major contract to provide Zamil Industrial Investment Company (Zamil Industrial), with a complete core-to-edge network infrastructure that will cost-effectively support its rapidly growing business. Zamil Industrial is a leading manufacturing and fabrication group that provides products, engineering systems and services for the construction industry, and employs more than 10,000 people in 55 countries, with annual revenue of more than $1.2 billion.

The 3Com solution replaces the existing network in Zamil’s Saudi Arabian headquarters. The 3Com core-to-edge network provides increased reliability and centralized manageability. Based on high-performance multi-layer 10-Gigabit 3Com Switch S7900Es at the core, the network has an access layer of stackable 3Com Switch 5500s, and 3Com Switch 4800s at the edge. The whole infrastructure is managed by 3Com Intelligent Management Center (IMC), which centralizes and simplifies network management, reducing administration costs and increasing business efficiency.

“We were impressed, not only by the industry-leading price/performance of 3Com’s solution, but by 3Com’s responsiveness during the tendering process, as well as their ability to demonstrate the superiority of their products and services compared to the competition,” said Zaki Sabbagh, CIO, Zamil Industrial. “In today’s global economic environment, we felt the need to re-evaluate our supplier relationship with an eye toward lowering our total cost of ownership and increasing our network performance and reliability. The 3Com solution proved that they really could help us reach that goal.”

Zain restructures for growth

At a strategic meeting with senior Zain executives from all 22 African and Middle East operations, Zain Group CEO Dr. Saad Al-Barrak announced a new program to propel the company toward its 2011 target of being a top ten global mobile telecommunications operator. ‘Drive2011’ will focus on customer facing services and commercial activities while centralizing or outsourcing some back office/non-core functions to strategic partners.

This program, which comes at a vital stage of the company’s 3x3x3 vision that commenced in 2003, will maximize economies of scale and realize significant efficiencies, allowing Zain to provide communication services such as voice, SMS and data at an optimum cost structure. Drive2011 is expected to improve Zain’s operating margin by five percent within 12 months and provide the company the necessary thrust to capture the future growth potential of the markets in which it operates.

The Zain Group will align its head office and operations structures in accordance with the new operating model. This will result in Zain reducing its current 15,500 global work force by 2,000 — a 13 percent reduction across the board. Zain operations in Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Malawi and Sierra Leone have already begun the process.

“Drive2011 is a natural consequence of Zain’s evolutionary journey. It was planned soon after the launch of our ACE strategy in 2007 and is a structured and timetabled approach to maximizing efficiency,” declared Al-Barrak. “We will create genuine market differentiation through our services and deliver on our Zain brand promise of ‘A wonderful world.’ This will be achieved through a combination of managed outsourcing, centralization and leveraging capabilities, as well as training and development for our personnel, all of which will improve our operating efficiencies.”

In a move aimed at tackling the challenges ahead and attaining other 2011 targets of 150 million customers and a $6 billion EBITDA, Al-Barrak also announced several senior management changes at both Group and country operation level. It was also noted that new services will soon be rolling out across Zain’s entire network. The mobile commerce solution Zain launched in East Africa in February, has already attracted several hundred thousand customers. The service is operational in Kenya and Tanzania and will shortly be launched in Uganda before being rolled out across all Zain operations. The service is the most comprehensive mobile banking solution in the world, offering among other things, access to full banking services, the ability to pay utility bills, including electricity, money transfer services and the facility to buy airtime top -up. It has also proved popular with major international companies drawn to its cost-effective and efficient way of paying vendors across countries. Additionally, Zain Create, the popular music and video download service, launched in partnership with Rotana, has proved an instant hit among the youth segment. Currently available to Zain customers in Kuwait and Sudan, it will eventually be rolled out across all operations.