Tarek Heiba

TBY talks to Tarek Heiba, Senior Director and Country General Manager of Dell Technologies in Egypt and Libya, about digital transformation, priorities for Egypt, and the state of the ICT sector in the region.

Dell Technologies is the leader in digital transformation, providing digital technology solutions, products, and services to drive business success. Could you give us an overview of the company’s history and what have some major milestones in recent years in Egypt?

Dell Technologies creates integrated solutions to help customers modernize their IT infrastructure, manage and operate in a multi-cloud world, address workforce transformation, and provide critical solutions that keep people and organizations connected. Dell Technologies seeks to address our customers’ evolving needs and their broader digital transformation objectives as they embrace today’s hybrid multi-cloud environment. ​Across META, we seek to become the trusted technology partner of choice to governments, businesses and communities as they harness the power of technology to drive transformation and progress. In Egypt, despite the uncertainties of the last two years, the country has steadily progressed on its digital transformation journey by leveraging technology to tackle the pandemic and enable business continuity. As part of Egypt’s ICT 2030 strategy which is led by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), the nation aims to transform into a globally competitive ICT hub with modern technologies and an empowered information society. As Dell Technologies, we remain committed to Egypt and to working closely with the government to continue supporting the transformation agenda. Our center of excellence (CoE) has been opened since 2009 and consists of an expert network of resources, who bring their knowledge and expertise in enabling businesses achieve their digital goals. In addition, the CoE leads several initiatives around bridging the digital divide in Egypt with youth skills development training programs and partnerships with academic institutions that enable students to develop highly marketable knowledge and skills, allowing them to be part of the workforce of the future. There are various forms of cooperation between Dell Technologies and the Egyptian government. For instance, Digital Egypt Cubs initiative (DECI), which was launched by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, targeting upskilling top-performing students to use future and modern technologies in various IT fields. Such initiatives seek to qualify young people to be part of the digital workforce of the future. Also, a cooperation agreement with the Ministry of Communications and Dell Technologies has been signed to organize an Artificial Intelligence (AI) hackathon. The hackathon focuses on building an educational model that contributes to solving one of the real-world problems in the society, capitalizing on AI. Moreover, Dell cooperated with MCIT to launch Digital Egypt Builders Initiative (DEBI), It targets training university students, majoring in engineering and computer science, and many other fields. We’d also like to thank the IT Development Agency (ITIDA), the IT executive arm of the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, which has been a strategic advisor to Dell Technologies as we have a shared vision to support Egypt’s digital transformation agenda.

What has Dell Egypt recently been focused on as a company? What is it in most demand?

We focus on two overarching strategic priorities: ​to grow and modernize our core offerings in the markets in which we predominantly compete including our PC, storage, compute, and networking businesses​; and to pursue attractive new growth opportunities such as Edge, Telecom, data management, and as-a-service consumption models. We believe that we are uniquely positioned in the data and multi-cloud era and that our customers will benefit from our competitive advantages. ​We leverage insights from all areas of our business to cultivate innovation deep into our portfolio. We focus on customer outcomes and are constantly trailblazing new solutions to meet our customers’ complex IT needs.

What would you consider to be Dell’s added value in comparison to other players in the market?

The Dell Technologies portfolio includes a wide range of comprehensive and integrated solutions across our Client Solutions Group (CSG) and Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG). We engineer innovative solutions that incorporate hardware, software, and services designed to meet customer needs. Dell Technologies holds number one positions across many critical IT infrastructure categories. Our computing devices are designed with our commercial and consumer customers’ needs in mind, and we seek to optimize performance, reliability, manageability, design, and security. Dell PC as-a-Service offers an all-encompassing solution that provides predictable costs and simplifies client lifecycle management. Our CSG Portfolio includes:
Branded hardware such as desktops, workstations and notebooks

• Branded peripherals such as displays and projectors
• Third party software and peripherals
• Infrastructure Solutions Group

ISG enables our customers’ digital transformation through our trusted multicloud and big data solutions, which are built upon modern data center infrastructure. ISG solutions are built for multicloud environments and are optimized to run cloud native workloads in both public and private clouds, as well as traditional on-premise workloads.

What is your perception of the current state of the ICT sector in Egypt?

As 2023 progresses, transformative technologies such as cloud, AI, IoT and 5G will remain key drivers of progress. The adoption of these technologies and drive for digital inclusion being pushed forward by the government will continue to offer effective solutions and benefits to businesses, citizens and the economy, while preparing them for the digital future. When we look at Egypt specifically, emerging technologies are being adopted across businesses in all sectors, disrupting industries and presenting both new opportunities and challenges. Thanks to Egypt’s strong digital transformation agenda driven by the Ministry of ICT and is aligned with Egypt Vision 2030 – there is a lot of emphasis being placed on strengthening and diversifying the economy through advanced technology infrastructure, skills development and innovation/R&D. Egypt also benefits from a highly active government sector that has great partnerships with its private sector, and that collaboration has tremendous potential to propel economic growth, power long-term development, and enhance the lives of Egyptian citizens. With strong infrastructure and innovative projects in the country, the opportunities for digital transformation are significant – there is a lot being done around strengthening and diversifying the economy through advanced technology infrastructure, skills development and innovation/R&D. One example is Artificial Intelligence that’s expected to be a major contributor to Egypt’s digital GDP, as it seeks to establish AI as a driving force behind the development of many of the country’s key sectors. It is expected that many industries, from healthcare to manufacturing, will adopt some level of AI to increase efficiency and automation, while encouraging growth towards the future needs of the market.

There is obviously a huge change in the IT industry that occurred over time, what are some of the recent changes that you found exciting/positive?

More businesses than ever are recognizing the need to modernize and upgrade from legacy systems towards integrated multicloud architectures and data solutions. We are seeing this trend even in industries which have traditionally been slower adopters of technology change. This is an encouraging sign because it shows that even entrenched incumbents understand the need to adapt and evolve in the modern landscape which ultimately results in better experiences for the end customer. We are also seeing a greater focus on IT governance where senior management teams are actively working to increase the agility and velocity of key decisions that drive value. While organizations have naturally become more judicious with their spending in this environment, they are ensuring that this does not come at the cost of sound governance, compliance and security.

What are your expectations and priorities for Dell in the short term? What kind of performance are you expecting in Egypt in comparison to 2022?

We’ll continue our strong presence in Egypt and the wider region, as a highly trusted, reliable provider of enterprise technology solutions and a key partner for the growth ambitions of our clients. We have industry-leading talent and capabilities on the ground, and I’m confident that our next few years will reflect that. If 2020 was a year of unprecedented changes and 2021 a year of recovery and resilience, then 2022 proved to be everyone’s favorite. This was especially true the region as we broke new grounds to foster various innovative dialogs. Emerging technologies underscored these monumental accomplishments, giving wings to human aspirations and bringing in renewed focus and vigor to economies, businesses and day-to-day lives. 2023 promises to be equally remarkable. Advanced technologies will shape our economies and drive us as a region to advance our economic, scientific and creative contributions on the global arena. Most importantly, we will continue to further build out our data and multicloud product suite, and consistently be the industry trailblazer that our customers can rely on – regardless of size.