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Mahmoud El Kordy, Chief Executive Officer of GBM Oman

OMAN - Telecoms & IT

Mahmoud El Kordy

Chief Executive Officer, GBM Oman

Bio

As CEO at GBM Oman, Mahmoud El Kordy leads the digital transformation journey to help corporates overcome their challenges. Mr. El Kordy is a prominent leader with extensive 30 years’ experience providing visionary executive and sales leadership across technology industry. He excels in driving significant operational improvements that deliver sustainable results through leading, enabling, and coaching others to reach and maintain peak performance. During his tenure in IBM, he has achieved multiple milestones e.g. He was on an international assignment to Paris, IBM France, where he led the infrastructure services of IBM South Europe then this was followed by his success as Linux Sales Leader in IBM CEEMEA HQ in Vienna, Austria. His upbringing and his international experience made him remarkable public speaker with natural storytelling skills. He holds a master’s degree from Maastricht school of management in the Netherlands and bachelor’s degree in Engineering. He joined GBM from IBM Middle East and Africa where he held several sales and leadership positions across systems, Big Data & Analytics. Prior to that, Mr. El Kordy was in IBM Europe for several years leading services sales.

“GBM Oman is a 100% Omani-owned company with over 30 years of experience.”

TBY talks to Mahmoud El Kordy, Chief Executive Officer of GBM Oman, about recent successes, competitive advantages, and AI.

Could you give us an overview of the company and the major highlights of the past year?

GBM Oman is a 100% Omani-owned company with over 30 years of experience. The company consists of over 110 highly skilled professionals from 13 countries, of which 48% are Omanis. As an end-to-end digital transformation system integrator, GBM Oman offers industry-leading solutions addressing market needs, state-of-art smart hybrid cloud infrastructure, digital business solutions, security, and managed services. Our strategy is to be essential to our clients by providing the best in market services and solutions. GBM Oman nurtures partnerships with the world’s leading technology companies while investing in a local talented, skilled workforce with exceptional depth of experience in managing Enterprise & Mission Critical systems. Today, GBM Oman has over 250 customers in public and private domains and across a range of verticals. GBM Oman is in the lead position to support Oman vision 2040 and enable the market’s digital transformation. GBM Oman is developing its expertise to accelerate an organization’s migration to the cloud, through our comprehensive hybrid cloud solutions, helping clients to leverage their data for better competitive advantage utilizing AI in tandem with a zero-trust cyber security model. In terms of our highlights from the past year, we have had an in depth focus on several industries. This included the Banking industry, energy, utilities, government, logistics, and travel and transport. Our work in the banking and financial sector assists banks thrive in the new economy, and we have provided them with the right resources to accelerate digital transformation through experiential, collaborative, and automated banking paradigms built on a cloud-based IT foundation. An example would be of our work with one of the fast-growing banks in Oman where we automated and digitized their banking processes to significantly reduce the time taken for processes such as account opening, loan issuance, and remittances, among others. Regarding the energy sector, there was clear demand to allow users to work remotely with the same security posture and virtually identical performance as they experienced at the office. GBM worked closely with one of the major oil and gas entities to enhance and secure their ‘remote working’ approach during the pandemic. The solution improved the customer-edge network to withstand the increased demand for remote working. That in addition to security measures such as VPN, and network access controls to securely connect remote users to organization’s infrastructure. GBM has supported many government entities on their digital transformation without impacting citizens’ services support. For example, one major government entity wanted to increase client satisfaction by ensuring secure system availability around the clock. Our solution included a comprehensive network and security infrastructure that delivers near perfect availability and provides the highest level of security to protect all services and users within the organization. The solution is built with software-defined architecture to ensure swift service setup and GO-LIVE, minimizing operational complexity and expenditure. When Cyclone Shaheen made landfall in Oman, flooding the streets, our customers suffered from flooded Data Centers, and electrical and services interruption. GBM ensured that customers received the right support by providing the experienced engineers to address issues and maintain their business operability.

What competitive advantages does GBM offer within the sector?
GBM’s local knowledge and experience of three decades in Oman has been a defining factor in our efforts toward digitalization, and as such we have been able to quickly develop and implement tailored solutions for organizations across diverse industries. Over 110 local technology and industry solutions experts and top certified engineers have extend the network across many other countries through our strong vendor network. Our support center works 24hrs 7 days a week with excellent response times and SLA. Meanwhile, GBM assets, Ips, and best practices help our clients to be more flexible, innovative, and secured. Our clients’ stamp of satisfaction is our strongest competitive advantage. They value our quality of service, advanced skillset, and global reach for top-notch technology and innovations. Much of GBM’s ongoing discussions with organizations in Oman is focused on helping them transform their operations by implementing end-to-end digital solutions, while also ensuring their systems are secure and can withstand cyber threats. Our digital business and infrastructure solutions coupled with our broadly skilled experts and effective planning and implementation, can help businesses deliver on their digital transformation vision for the future. We have nurtured partnerships with the world’s leading technology companies and invested in the local talented and skilled workforce to implement solutions that cater to customers’ specific, complex, and diverse business needs. Our expertise in accelerating an organization’s journey to cloud, through our comprehensive software solutions, is supporting the development and continual refinement of resilient digital services and digital experiences in various industries.

Security accounts for many of today’s biggest organizational challenges. What instruments does GBM offer to address this?

Increased use of technology creates a rich playground for cybercrime. With sophisticated and powerful cyberattacks compromising businesses at an unprecedented rate, there is a growing urgency for trust to take center stage in the digital architecture of tomorrow’s economy. At GBM, we understand the various challenges faced by CISOs and have a robust solutions and services framework to protect organizations with industry best practices and enhanced risk mitigation. The framework addresses traditional and emerging challenges faced by organizations and leverages best-of-breed solutions from partners with proven security expertise. In order to mitigate the rising risks businesses face today, GBM has a framework focused on people, processes, and technology to provide a holistic approach to mitigation efforts. That starts by giving the proper consultancy to establish a zero-trust model and ends by plugging fully managed services into security operations. It effectively safeguards brand name, reputation, and assets. In addition, it offers comprehensive, end-to-end strategies that protect against external and internal threats, and may include solutions for endpoint security, applications, database, people, and regulatory compliance. GBM utilizes cutting-edge technologies, from AI and cognitive to threat hunting and deception, to protect companies from data loss and online fraud. Some of its tailored solutions include: GBM’s Security Intelligence which includes integrated intelligence solutions to detect and manage the most dangerous threats. Threat Hunting is a specialized AI offering that can learn from changing trends and outsmart the most complex attacks. GBM Incident Response offers comprehensive response solutions in the event of a cybersecurity breach. Deception Technology traps cybercriminals even before they can attack. Online Fraud Management protects customers and businesses against fraud quickly and efficiently. According to the GBM Cybersecurity report, which canvassed security executives and professionals from a range of industries in Oman, the UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait, fostering trust will be key to safeguarding business in a digital-first economy. Re-designing security for the digital-first world and protecting it from external and internal threats has become a key priority for organizations. We are honoured to be supporting Omani organizations tackle the challenges of the cybersecurity landscape. In fact, in order to enhance awareness and educate our customers we have some exciting events coming up this year tailored specifically for the local and regional security industry. In the same context, GBM has completed the acquisition of the majority stake in the Coordinates, Detection & Response service provider. Through this acquisition, we will further enhance our suite of cybersecurity services to include Coordinates’ innovative technology-agnostic platform that enables integration, automation, and orchestration across detection, response, and remediation to achieve cyber resilience.

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