Hilal Nasser Al-Habsy

How would you assess the evolution of Globcom as an IT services provider in Oman and its achievements in the local market over its 25 years of operations?

The company is the brainchild of two individuals: Ahmed Al Naamany, currently holding the position of managing director; and Saleh Al Shanfari, serving as chairman of the board. They identified a need in Oman and merged Al Shanfari’s dream of establishing a Microsoft-like entity in the country with Al Naamany’s background in technology. They successfully persuaded other businesses to invest capital to start the company, which initially began on a small scale, mainly focusing on the hardware side of the business; however, significant growth occurred when the company decided to shift its focus primarily toward providing services rather than solely selling products.

Can you provide further details on the new IT training center and how it will support companies in their digitalization journeys?

Training is an integral part of Globcom’s overall journey. One notable example is our contract with PDO. One contract requirement was Omanization, stipulating that 50% of the staff working on the contract should be Omani within one year and 100% by the second year. As the government is a major shareholder, PDO insisted that Omanization should also apply to contracted services. However, we faced challenges due to limited local talent and had to embark on a journey of training our own people, successfully achieving 100% Omanization within PDO in less than two years. We approached PDO and proposed participating in its training programs, even if the trainees eventually went on to work elsewhere. This collaboration served as part of PDO’s CSR initiative, and certain individuals who led the project at PDO later joined the government, approaching us with the idea of extending this training initiative to the entire country. The government agreed to this arrangement, particularly through the involvement of the National Training Fund (NTF) at that time. Initially, we started with a batch of 50 individuals, and when it proved highly successful, we were assigned another batch of 140 participants. We are currently working on the third and fourth batches, totaling 450 individuals.