ShareKUWAIT: Ooredoo Kuwait, the first to launch innovated digital services in Kuwait, organized the "Business to Digital" conference in its second year yesterday, under the Patronage of Minister Khaled Al-Roudhan and with the attendance of Deputy Director-General of the Central Agency for Information Technology, Dr Ammar Al-Hussaini. This event was held under the supervision of Ooredoo Business and FASTtelco Business, a subsidiary of Ooredoo Kuwait.
This event comes in tandem with Ooredoo's strategy of being a leader in the market in terms of Digital Transformation. In the evening, the conference witnessed a special event with the launch of the Kuwait App Market in its second year. The market embraced the creativity of a large number of young Kuwaiti's who have designed unique, successful applications which included the most prominent local applications such as TAPCOM, Daresni, Alhesba, Careem, Mashkor, Paydo, Collab,Sakan and Hesabi Pay.
The one-day event took place at the Al-Raya Hall, attended by the country's most prominent guests and attendees from the leading IoT/ICT companies such as Huawei, Hewlett Packard, Fortinet, Dell EMC, Cisco, and Ericsson.. The "Business to Digital" conference discussed ICT and Security solutions and offered a unique opportunity to exchange knowledge and expertise about the latest business technologies under one roof.
During his speech, Deputy Director-General of the Central Agency for Information Technology, Dr. Ammar Al-Hussaini, said: "We witness today a rapid development and great challenges in technology field which require to keep up with the change and overcome the challenges."
"We are keen to develop the capabilities and skills of information technology workers in government agencies to support the process of digital transformation in Kuwait," he noted, adding "The results of this joint initiative recently announced in cooperation with Microsoft where Government employees will be able to enhance their digital and technical skills related to cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and develop modern and intelligent applications that have become essential to our daily lives."Dr. Hussaini praised Ooredoo's efforts in embracing young founders of the Kuwaiti applications.
Chief Business Officer at Ooredoo Kuwait, Abdulaziz Al-Babtain, said that Ooredoo believes in the importance of keeping up with the latest developments in the telecommunications technology sector, which is the key to supporting many vital sectors "We are witnessing a change in the living style and the big shift in the completion of our daily change through digital transactions by applications in our smartphones."
He affirmed that the success of Ooredoo results from providing all the latest in the field of information technology to support companies and individuals, adding "Today, Ooredoo is the first international hosting center in Kuwait to host several government companies and institutions in all sectors. The company is unique in providing advanced security systems and in adopting global communication services in Qatar, which is witnessing rapid developments in this sector as the main provider of the 2022 World Cup."
In his turn, Corporate Communications Senior Director at Ooredoo Kuwait, Mijbil Al-Ayoub stated that the Business to Digital Conference in its second year in a row confirms Ooredoo's commitment to provide full support to all parties and sectors related to the development of new systems and support young people towards more success in innovations.
Al-Ayoub added, "Ooredoo is working to enrich it by providing the best solutions and communications infrastructure and security systems and to offer new solutions to support His Highness Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah in the vision of new Kuwait 2035 and transforming it into a financial and commercial center," Said Ayoub.
Bilal Agha, Marketing Director- B2B at Ooredoo Kuwait presented Ooredooo Kuwait's Ooredoo Kuwait's Business to Digital Transformation Strategy and discussed Ooredoo Kuwait's different business products and smart solutions. He added "We at Ooredoo are providing the pillars to support businesses in their digital journey which are the infrastructure, security, and connectivity".
In the session, Alain Sanchez, Fortinet, EMEA CISO, talked about the future of Managed Security Services and how the evolution of the Cyber Security landscape calls for the next generation of Managed Network Services.He stressed the importance of digital innovation and how it is creating increased risk and disruption infrastructure to support digital changing rapidly in expanding attack surface, advanced threats using AI& ML, and Eco-system complexity.
"We believe Ooredoo has what it takes to deliver the next generation of Managed Network Services, where Ooredoo Kuwait captured growth in a highly penetrated market and in choosing quality over quantity and targeting the high-end segment of Digital Kuwait. Also, Ooredoo has a deep knowledge of Kuwait business and people and was awarded the Communications Department of the Year, Best digital service award, and the best 4G-LTE Internet. Ooredoo puts security at the center and investing and enabling great security solutions and innovations to be at the service of Kuwait innovative clients," said Sanchez.
Rafat N Tashman, Huawei, Chief Business Solution Director discussed the 5G Motivating Enterprise Solutions saying that 5G presents a 10-year Cumulative Revenue Opportunity of USD 30 Billion in Kuwait (2020-2030).He explained that the 5G Value Proposition for Businesses Built Around has four themes. "First: IoT Support where 5G will unleash a host of new experiences based on IoT across thousands of connections.
Second, Dedicated Bandwidth, which allows 5G to enable real high speeds with, dedicated bandwidth access that can enable real-time solutions and transactions. Third, the digital Services that the real taste of 5G could only be experienced with genuine digital services that help make businesses more agile and "on the go".
For his part, Sandeep Pezhery, Hewlett Packard Enterprise- Aruba, Golden Senior SE, said that category leaders are taking advantage of the experience and digital era…delivering smart experiences by blending mobile, cloud, and IoT. "We pride ourselves on organic development led by icons of the industry. And over the years, we've complimented our innovation with several strategic acquisitions including joining forces with our parent company, HPE.
These moves gave us the ability to extend our edge architecture to deliver a breadth of solutions from the edge to the cloud, for wireless and wired. Now we are designing for the complexities of IoT."He added that Hewlett Packard Enterprise has become a go-to brand for networking and network engineers across the globe, noting, "The edge is the future! From our proven heritage in mobile-first networking, we are leading the innovation at this re-defined edge.
We are working towards an Intelligent Edge, where the experience economy will become a mainstream movement across industries and where fully converged systems will be able to deliver on the complete needs for networking, computer storage, and cloud-connectivity. We are investing $4B over the next 4 years to deliver on this vision."
Meanwhile, Ahmed Al Shinnawy, CISCO, Consulting System Engineer, discussed Cisco Meraki- Cloud Managed network solutions saying that it is a complete cloud-managed IT solution that includes wireless, switching, security, SD-WAN, intelligent network insights, endpoint management, and security cameras. Also, integrated hardware, software, and cloud services.
Per Uppstrom, Head of Sales Engagement IoT, Middle East & Africa at Ericsson, OoredooIoT Connect enables the growth of IoT by lowering the barriers of cellular connectivity. "Cellular connectivity is the key to success where it optimizes for long battery life, high bandwidth, high device density, and use case. Global coverage lets you tap into existing global network infrastructure covering 95% of the population and the use case flexibility can handle more diverse use cases than any competing wireless technologies. As for security and reliability, it provides reliable, secure and resilient connectivity for all types of IoT devices and the standardized works the same way all across the world," he added. He noted that OoredooIoT Connect is making cellular IoT easy to adopt, to use and to scale, where the IoT Connect creates ecosystem value, easily turn all connected concepts into reality for Enterprise, scale IoT revenue locally and globally for service providers, and can gain speed and scale through ecosystem collaboration for partners.
The conference was concluded with a raffle draw which took place by Ooredoo for the audience where they had the chance to win iPhone 11 smartphone devices. In addition to an exhibition that was held at the forum in which Ooredoo's main partners participated to showcase their latest products and services. Ooredoo Kuwait also held the Kuwait App Market in its second year, on the sidelines of the "Business to Digital Forum". The Kuwait App Marketcomes in line with the company's strategy to support the creativity of young Kuwaitis who have design unique and successful applications.
Sulaiman Al-Homoud, Marketing Manager-B2B at Ooredoo Kuwait, said that seven Kuwaiti applications took part in Kuwait App Market. "Ooredoo aims to support the youth through the organization of the Kuwait App Market which includes the most prominent local applications that expanded in the Gulf and the Arab region," he added. Al-Homoud revealed that Ooredoo Offered to Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to be in Nojoom Kuwait's Largest loyalty program to earn points and enjoy its exclusive benefits, noting that Ooredoo believes in SME's to be the future of Kuwait.
During the event, Faisal Al-Mahmeed, Sales Consultant and Coach at Prime Sales, discussed the importance of sales strategy which is fundamentally the most vital requirement of an organization in order to sell its products and gain profits. He explained how to achieve the best results and the best effectiveness in the sale after applying all the sale strategies and steps, adding "Prime Sales is training and providing solutions to achieve the best results and to have insights and essentially indulge in the activity."
In his turn, Khaled Nuseibeh, General Manager GCC at Careem, started his presentation with the beginning of Careem app and how it participates in the Kuwaiti market, saying "We have been able to expand our services in the Kuwaiti market by providing high-quality services and facilitating the lives of people by booking a taxi and pay for it with one click." Nuseibeh revealed that Careem added additional services to the Middle East, such as Careem Bus service, a 13-seat minibus that was launched in Cairo to ease congestion and soon this service will be launched in other cities near the future.
"Careem also launched Careem now, for food delivery and Careem Pay that allows subscribers to transfer credits from one to another to be used for more rides. At the end of the event, a panel discussion was held to share the expertise of the success of Kuwaiti apps. Khaled Al-Otaibi, Founder of Talabat.com, One of the founders of Al-Hisba App, shared his success story with his Talabat App that sold for 51 million Kuwaiti Dinar.
In addition to his application "Al-Hisba" offers users easier ways for property evaluation depending on size and location. The app also can collect data on all the auctions in Kuwait. For PayDo, Saad Al-Khattaf, PayDo Co-founder, said that PayDo helps businesses transform into online commerce with a global reach, where they specialize in a variety of online marketing services, including paid advertising, mobile advertising, display advertising, and Video Advertising.
