Page 51 - SAMENA Trends - September 2021

IN FOCUS SAMENA TRENDS

costs a lot of money and requires full- just a nominal fee. education can provide. For students, we
fledged maintenance, upgrades, updates, offer flexible plans at single-digit dollars
software, and hardware compatibility How has the pandemic affected the cloud per month, for access to all their online
issues and upgrading systems after every computing industry? course materials from K1 to K12, which is
two or three years result in very high capital The pandemic brought about the age of helping governments and schools move
expenditure. If you were a big organisation, innovation. UAE has adapted rapidly to the their entire offering online. We have created
you ended up with armies of technology new work-from-home environment and credits, with some education ministries
people to help you do your business. the cloud computing world is blos¬soming in the Middle East, where OmniClouds is
Now we have moved to the cloud, which because of it. The Covid-19 pandemic partnering to transform education from
can be leased. All you need to do is pay a sent many OmniClouds customers into certificate oriented only to knowledge-
monthly recurring cost for the services you a spin, including a global contact centre based with access to thousands of library
consume, which is a subscription fee to be operator, whose agents were locked out and approved curriculums along with
able to use these services. of office by stay-at-home orders. An accelerated access to top online games
OmniClouds device called OmniRemote at a record low latency. We added this as
What does OmniClouds offer to strengthen saved this company from potential part of our solution, communities loved
the SME sector? collapse. The OmniRemote connects it, governments loved it, we have people
The GCC, especially the UAE, takes through an ADSL line and a SIM card, asking if they can use our service. To that
great efforts to encourage homegrown which enabled employees to connect to our answer is always yes because they can
businesses. For SMEs, it will be no their contact centre and continue making use the service for one month and decide
less than 40-50 per cent in terms of calls. “Eventually, this business eliminated after that if they wish to terminate it.”
transforming Capex required into Opex. its office space by moving call centre
More importantly, it is the safety of the operations to its home-based workforce, Finally, how has 2020 shaped your thinking
spend since you have not invested in while expanding their agent number by 50 and influenced your plans for 2021?
routers, switches or servers. Tomorrow if per cent,” says Shaista. The first thing we’ve learnt in 2020 is
your business slows down, for example, that we will not go back to what it used
because of a lockdown, you can reduce Another customer in the banking sector to be before the pandemic. Similarly, the
your ICT spends accordingly. OmniClouds’ is in beta testing for an encrypted virtual economy of sharing is here to stay and you
services have also made it possible for desktop, where the bank officer will be will share everything — a ride, a residential
everyone — from global contact centers able to work from home at the same level place, the workplace, computing
to retail chains — to have their employees of cybersecurity as if he were sitting in the resources. Besides, the world has become
working from home. office. With technologies built for the new a place where remote interaction is a must.
way of working, OmniClouds is expanding Cloud is the future and the present in the IT
What strategies is OmniClouds adopting fast. world. We can’t downplay the importance
to address the growing concern of security of cloud solutions. Our respective
and data privacy? What products and services does governments are adopting cloud solutions.
Yes, it differs from one industry to another OmniClouds offer its customers? No one can stay away from the cloud.
industry. There are two important things We provide a range of services ca¬tered The people will definitely adopt this
I would like to mention here, the first one towards SMEs, bigger cor¬porations technology, when they realise that it is
is regulations and the second is all of as well as industries such as retail, safe, cost-effective and easier to operate.
the technology that accompanies cloud automobile, educa¬tion, finance, contact We are helping organisations in these
access and it must provide secured center and more. We also offer our areas to transform and economise their
connectivity to these applications and services — OmniBranch to connect your business. OmniClouds are also working
information. In a nutshell, we do ensure branches, OmniConnect to link you to on the next generation of AI technologies,
that the users’ information and access to the cloud, OmniRemote to enable remote from software that lets banks identify
the clouds are highly secured. Our cloud working, and OmniSec to take care of your customers on the end of a video call using
partners like Microsoft, AWS, ensure that security needs. By combining our products facial recognition technology, to mesh
the application itself and access to the and services, we support businesses and networking that can route around physical
data are entirely safe within their premises. companies to scale their operations and Internet infrastructure in an emergency
Our cybersecurity gurus ensure your reach new markets. or the developing world. They have ideas
network is equipped to respond rapidly to for temporary buildings that could be
any threats. We have launched the Secure Why is the education sector a key market classrooms by day and libraries by night,
Access Service Edge (SASE) with which for OmniClouds and what type of services filled with digital books and learning
users at home can use an agent to connect do you offer in this sector? materials. They will continue to push the
to a domain controller, cloud or office with Education is a key market for Omni Clouds, boundaries and will be expanding into
full network control without any hardware with both public and private providers in several more countries this year.
deployed. Customers get the best range of the region quick to jump in with the unique
firewalls right at their home or office, for structures that cloud computing and remote Definitely, a business to watch in 2021 !

51 SEPTEMBER 2021