Detasad emerges as a top-ranked IT company in Gulf

RIYADH: Detecon Al-Saudia (Detasad), a major player in the Saudi ICT market, has emerged as the top-notch telecom turnkey services company in Saudi Arabia, said Adel M. Al-Giddawi Hasan, Detasad chief executive officer.

In an interview with Arab News on the occasion of German National Day, Adel said, Detasad has strongly positioned itself as a focused telecommunications network solutions provider offering a wide range of ICT services and has set a benchmark in the telecommunications and ICT infrastructure services in the Kingdom.

Here are the excerpts from the interview:

Q: Please tell us about Detasad and its activities in the fields of telecommunications, planning, design, operation and maintenance.
A. Detasad was established at the beginning of the eighties as a Saudi-German company and has been serving many governmental organizations and companies, the industrial sector and the financial sector. Our services are delivered by more than 30 management centers in the Kingdom. Since 2004, Detasad is a licensed VSAT provider. In 2007, we expanded the product portfolio to Data Center Services and IT Managed Services with Certification of the German auditing body TUEV-IT Level 3 extended, which is renewed every two years. With our very experienced Data Center team, we can design, plan and operate Data Centers.

Q: What are the future plans for the Saudi ICT market? Is it true that there is a transition from traditional IT infrastructure to cloud-based solutions?
A: The days when cloud computing seemed scary are over. Businesses are embracing the technology and migrating their infrastructure either fully or partly to cloud-based infrastructures. As a result, many IT service providers are scaling their operations to deliver infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) to customers that are keen to take advantage of the new IT model.

Q: Does it mean Detasad is also taking part in this development?
A. Detasad is one such service provider that wanted to scale its operation and increase its offering of cloud services. The company, which has more than 30 years’ experience delivering IT services to the local market, had successfully offered software-as-a-service (SaaS) for some years. However, with many companies, particularly enterprises, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia looking to go beyond SaaS to IaaS solutions, Detasad wanted to take a major part in this development and created Sahaba.

Q: Which market segment is Detasad targeting with Sahaba? Aren’t there several providers of cloud solutions?
A: We are providing a cloud solution to meet the needs of the enterprise segment. We already had a reputation as a leading provider of SaaS and data center services across Saudi Arabia. Our data center, which is classified Level 3 extended, is used by leading financial companies and government ministries. They know their data is highly available and secure at all our sites. However, we realized it was time to develop our cloud services proposition. One key customer, Wa’ed, which had used our SaaS solution for many years, signed an agreement with us to support its adoption of further cloud services.

Q: Moreover, was this when Sahaba was born?
A: Practically yes. Detasad began looking for a solution to build a cloud-based infrastructure as well as a security center to provide managed services to customers. Of the many vendors in the market, the company honed in on solutions from Hitachi, Cisco, and Dell. We had many conversations with the vendors but found that the Dell team of consultants demonstrated the greatest understanding of where Detasad wanted to go. Furthermore, the team brought in quickly expertise from other areas of the Dell business to advise on developing a cloud solution. In our opinion this partnership offered the best and most complete end-to-end offer, meeting our German and international quality standards.

Q: What makes Sahaba special or different from other cloud products in the market?
A: We have achieved our goal of becoming a top-tier cloud-service provider. We can offer customers the scalability and stability they need from an IaaS solution.
The massive difference compared to other providers is, that we are offering our cloud services along with the security through our relationship with SecureWorks. This is 24x7 managed security, with “human brains” behind it and not just security hard- and software. This philosophy of security will for sure attract most of the big players in Saudi Arabia who are security sensitive. We are targeting to have 50 enterprises in the next 18 to 24 months, and I think this number is achievable.

Q: Doesn't this sound quite costly to implement managed security in a product?
A: The cloud services market in Saudi Arabia is extremely price competitive; we know that. The drop in oil prices have affected all companies operating in the Kingdom’s petrochemical industry, and these and other affected companies are looking carefully at their budgets. For Detasad, the good news is that we have been able to secure a highly cost-effective cloud infrastructure. The satisfaction of our customers is our most important target. Not only regarding highly sophisticated technical solutions but also regarding extremely competitively priced services.

Q: In addition to Sahaba, what other technical solutions or services does Detasad provide?
A: Bandwidth demanding services, such as cloud, have been enabled by the unprecedented expansion of transmission capacity enabled through the deployment of fiber optical networks. Starting with the first implementations of the fiber optical technology in the ‘90s, Detasad has successfully taken part in the development of this type of communications in Saudi Arabia, undertaking major projects in this area. Our customers currently benefit from our expertise in a wide range of optical network related services, from fiber cable installations to complex managed services for the operation and maintenance of entire networks.

Q: Detasad has a long presence in the Saudi market. What are the key factors for this performance?
A: We constantly invest in maintaining a high-quality level for our services, while offering competitive prices and fast deployment. International certifications and awards substantiate our commitment to providing best in class services to our customers. For example, Detasad runs a TL9000 certified network operation center which is one of the only eleven centers worldwide with such certification. In 2015, Detasad was awarded the “Telecom Deployment of the Year” at the ICT Achievement Awards in Dubai.

Q: What role Detecon intends to play or is playing within the framework of the Saudi Vision 2030?
A: Our technologies and solutions increase efficiency and help companies to reduce their expenses. Furthermore, we are striving to develop our portfolio of managed services, enabling our customers to outsource cost-intensive services to us and to fortify their economic situation. Working together with Saudi Universities, we plan to establish a post-graduate further education facility enabling a faster integration of IT engineers in the business world.

Q: How is Detasad planning to strive or pass through the current economic situation, as the recession is also hitting the Gulf states including the Kingdom?
A: Detasad has a solid financial foundation to go also through economically stressed periods. We are prepared for coming commercial, technical and work force challenges for the benefit of the Saudi economy and society and of the further positive development in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.