UAE Leads Middle East Push for Self-Driving Cars to Boost Safety

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UAE accelerates self-
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CWMiddleEastMiddleEastJANUARY-MARCH 2017The quarterly magazine from Computer Weekly, focusing on business IT in the Middle East
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Drive for safety
UAE takes lead in autonomous car trials

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Making driving safer – without drivers
Self-driving cars are one of the most exciting developments in technology, and they are being pioneered by companies such as
Google and Tesla. But it might be countries in the Middle East, that have the poorest road safety records in the world, that could
benefit most from autonomous vehicles.
The UAE still has 12.7 road deaths per 100,000 people. That is high, but not as high as some of its neighbours. For example, in Oman
the figure is 30.4 deaths per 100,000 people, and it is 24.8 in Saudi Arabia.
In this quarter’s CW Middle East, we analyse why the Dubai government, for example, wants one in four UAE residents to be using
a driverless vehicle by 2030. In September 2016, Dubai’s Road and
Transport Authority trialled a public driverless vehicle in the city’s
downtown area, running along a 700m trial route.
But smart thinking in the region doesn’t end with cars. The UAE has
extensive smart government plans and is upgrading its IT infrastruc-
ture to support these. Read how the UAE Ministry of Infrastructure
Developmenthasoverhauleditsdatacentreandnetworkinfrastructure.
With the UAE investing heavily in smart city technologies and
encouraging citizens to use smart services, it is vital that the IT infra-
structure underpinning it all purrs away unnoticed. The ministry began
its transformation by consolidating servers through virtualisation, and
it is now 90% virtualised. This has reduced the organisation’s data-
centre footprint, as well as power and cooling requirements.
Also read in this issue how the Bahrain government is supporting IT companies. Multinational IT firms are being drawn to Bahrain,
which is part of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s political and economic group, as a gateway to the Middle East market, while small local
startups are being supported on the path to go global. n
Karl Flinders, editor
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UAE accelerates self-driving cars on road
to safety and less traffic in Middle East
Driverless vehicles could help the Middle East improve its poor record on road safety, writes Alicia Buller
Self-driving vehicles could help improve road safety in the
Middle East – and the United Arab Emirates is one country
that is trialling their use.
The Gulf region holds the dubious accolade of being the
world’s most unsafe place to drive, according the World Health
Organisation. Despite significant regional spending on safety
campaigns, the UAE still clocks up an average of 12.7 road deaths
per 100,000 people, with 30.4 in Oman, 24.8 in Saudi Arabia,
16.5 in Kuwait, 14 in Egypt and 13.2 in Qatar.
Reducing road deaths
In recent months, the UAE has turned to trialling self-driving
technology with the aim of reducing road deaths and easing
traffic congestion. The Dubai government recently announced a
city target for “one in four UAE residents to be using a driverless
vehicle by 2030”.
The emirate has injected millions of dollars into creating Dubai
Future Accelerators (DFA), the world’s largest government-
supported accelerator, with the aim of nurturing breakthrough
technologies, such as self-driving cars and 3D printing. The DFA’s
mission is “to turn the future, which was once a theoretical con-
cept, into a reality in which Dubai can act as a global leader”.
Saif Al Aleeli, CEO of the Dubai Future Foundation, said more
and more companies were investing in autonomous vehicles glob-
ally and Dubai intended to lead the way. “With this level of invest-
ment, and the appetite for innovation in the automotive industry,
we are likely to see big leaps forward in software and hardware in
the next five years,” he said.
Self-driving taxi fleet
Al Aleeli said that in the coming decades, self-driving technol-
ogy would be used for local taxis, personal cars, ride sharing,
cargo, goods delivery and public transport.
“Studies show that a city the size of Dubai could provide all its
trips with 90% fewer cars, as long as those cars were used like a
self-driving taxi fleet,” he said. “Self-driving vehicles will help make
the roads safer, more efficient and more enjoyable. They also ena-
ble us to think differently about how the transport system operates:
AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

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couldweendupwithautonomousbusesthattraveladifferentroute
every time and pick up and drop off as many people as possible?”
Al Aleeli said the UAE was also set to utilise fast transport sys-
tems, such as the Hyperloop, to provide rapid journeys between
large cities. “This will have tremendous value for a city like Dubai,”
he said. “We wouldn’t need to build so many roads to accommo-
date the growth we have planned in the near future.”
In a preliminary test in September 2016, Dubai’s Road and
Transport Authority (RTA) trialled a public driverless vehicle in
the city’s downtown area. Running along a 700m trial route, the
driverlessvehicleprovidedfreeridestoallcommuters.Builtjointly
by Omnix International and Easy Mile, the autonomous shuttle,
dubbed EZ10, is an electric vehicle that can run in either direction
as it has no specific front or rear.
RTA CEO Ahmed Hashem Bahrozyan said the successful trial
of the smart vehicle was the first phase of many to come. “The
passengers showed high levels of satisfaction and we received a
lot of positive feedback,” he said. “The RTA is currently finalising a
AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES
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detailed roadmap of the driverless vehicles in Dubai and an over-
all plan to implement this technology in the city.”
Bahrozyan said reducing traffic jams was considered one of
the main benefits of driverless vehicles because much of Dubai’s
congestion is caused by accidents and reckless driving. “In the
UAE, we hope to use driverless technology to increase over-
all safety, reduce traffic congestion, increase vehicle utilisation,
increase accessibility, and show the world that Dubai is a truly
smart city,” he added.
Hazem Allahham, director of government and general busi-
ness at Omnix International, agreed that the UAE trial had been
a success, noting that the EZ10 could have many uses across the
Middle East. “For now, the vehicles that we provide are ‘last mile’
vehicles,” he said. “They are designed to drive at low speeds to
transport passengers on the last leg of their destination, either to
or from a public network point.”
Self-driving electric pods
Although Allahham said he was pleased with the trial run, he
said the vehicles “are not to be run on main roads or even resi-
dential roads for now” and should be confined to specific routes
in campus, or within specific boundaries.
In another move towards automated transport in the region,
local app-based taxi booking service Careem has teamed up
with Next Future Transportation to bring “battery-powered, self-
driving electric pods” to the Middle East and North Africa.
Next’s pods are described as a modular transport system and
can drive individually or attached to others to form a bus-like
structure, allowing passengers to move between the linked vehi-
cles. Careem said the pods would be safer, more efficient and
more environmentally friendly than today’s vehicles and would
reduce congestion.
They were primarily designed for mass transportation from
door to door and would mean quicker and more efficient daily
commuting in the UAE, he added.
Camil Tahan, principal with Strategy& (formerly Booz &
Company), said that as self-driving technology continued to
develop across the Middle East, regional transport bodies should
preparetodrawupregulationsforautonomousdrivingtechnology.
“The technology still needs to evolve and requires further test-
ing for it to be fully approved by regulators,” he said. “Transport
authorities can help to expedite the progress by piloting self-
driving technologies and incentivising the private sector to help
test them as well. This will promote understanding of the benefits
and drawbacks of the technology, and will significantly help to
improve the technology over time.” n
“We hope to use driverless
technology to show the world
that Dubai is a truly smart city”
Ahmed Hashem Bahrozyan, RTA
AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES
❯Autonomous vehicle startup nuTonomy launches self-driving taxis in Singapore.

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UAE ministry upgrades IT to get smart
Ministry of Infrastructure Development transforms its previously inflexible IT infrastructure to support
mission to achieve sustainable development in the United Arab Emirates. Edward Banda reports
The UAE Ministry of Infrastructure Development (MoID)
has overhauled its datacentre and network infrastructure
to support the country’s shift towards smart government.
The ministry plays a crucial role in the UAE’s urban develop-
ment by completing national infrastructure projects, including
government housing, and building for sectors such as healthcare,
education and justice, as well as road networks linking the emir-
ates to each other.
Sustainable development
The ministry’s mission is to achieve sustainable development in
planning, establishing and maintaining infrastructure projects
and organising the national housing sector.
When Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, vice-
president and prime minister of the UAE and ruler of Dubai,
launched the Dubai smart city programme, urban planning was
one of its key pillars. The country’s leadership gave clear support
to the MoID’s IT organisation, but it faced a challenge: it had an
inflexible IT infrastructure that was unable to keep up with the
demand for new applications and services.
In June 2016, Smart Dubai Government (SDG) revealed that
shared smart services had enabled the Dubai government to save
AED4.3bn ($1.17bn) since 2003. SDG is the technology arm of
Smart Dubai, a city-wide initiative.
Wesam Lootah, CEO of SDG, said: “Since 2003, we have been
committed to delivering impactful smart services for the govern-
ment in line with the vision to make Dubai a global benchmark for
smart government. For the first time, we can quantify the benefits
we are delivering to the government due to enhanced efficiency,
greater agility and higher responsiveness in government services.”
Last year, analyst IDC forecast that ICT spending in the Middle
East, Turkey and Africa (META) would top $260bn as organisa-
tions in the region embraced digital transformation initiatives to
streamline their costs and bolster flexibility.
According to IDC, a key facet of the digital transformation revo-
lution in the region is the emergence of the internet of things (IoT)
ecosystem. IDC said IoT-related investments in META would cre-
ate a market opportunity worth $7.03bn.
For the MoID, the datacentre and network infrastructure
revamp was needed to deal with the challenges of a lack of good
IT TRANSFORMATION

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redundancy and high-availability clusters, which are often used
for load balancing, backup and failover purposes.
Hessa al Suwaidi, IT director at MoID, said: “Our datacentre
infrastructure was in silos and our network in segments. We had
no high-redundancy and high-availability clustering. Our data-
base and applications were hosted on the same server, which
posed issues related to security, scalability and performance.
“We were looking to transform our datacentre into a strate-
gic business asset and move to smart services in line with the
country’s vision.”
The MoID engaged systems integrator Think Software Services
to support the datacentre project. After a detailed evaluation of
the ministry’s IT infrastructure, Think Software was joined by
Dell to create a roadmap to a more stable, reliable and highly
available datacentre to cater for existing and future demands.
Extensive virtualisation
The first step was to consolidate servers through extensive vir-
tualisation. “Now our datacentre environment is 90% virtual-
ised, which helped us gain efficiencies and capabilities that
were not possible with the physical-only world,” said Shamsa
Abdulla Hussain Ibrahim, network manager at the MoID. “We
have not only been able to reduce the datacentre footprint, but
also reduce power and cooling requirements.”
In addition to more uptime, consolidating servers down to a
few physical machines through virtualisation has also helped the
MoID to build a disaster recovery system and extend the life of
older applications.
IT TRANSFORMATION
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When an organisation embarks on virtualisation, the datacen-
tre’s bandwidth requirements also increase. Although virtuali-
sation has an immediate impact in terms of overall efficiency, it
requires an extensive upgrade to the underlying network infra-
structure for it to work well.
The MoID’s IT team understood this and overhauled the min-
istry’s network to address bandwidth bottlenecks. Keeping in
mind that growing businesses will require more bandwidth and
a stable network to cope with increased traffic, the organisation
redesigned its network infrastructure by upgrading its switches to
avoid a single point of failure and to achieve high availability.
The MoID has also implemented a network monitoring tool
from SolarWinds to analyse traffic and bandwidth usage. This
gives the IT team better visibility inside the network infrastruc-
ture and components, as well as centralised management and an
alerting system if any of the nodes malfunction.
Another issue the MoID’s IT team had to tackle was storage,
which was in multiple pools. “Our data volumes were growing in
size and storage utilisation was rather high,” said MoID IT director
al Suwaidi. “Because we are involved in construction, we have to
deal with data-intensive files such as GIS drawings, which signifi-
cantly increase storage requirements.”
Storage area network
After analysing the ministry’s data usage patterns and require-
ments, Think Software proposed a new storage area network
(SAN) to support future growth. Today it uses Dell’s EqualLogic
SAN, which provides a shared pool of virtual storage that can
adjust dynamically according to application needs. “Now we
don’t worry about storage limitations,” said al Suwaidi. “This
gives us a platform to move to business intelligence and analyt-
ics in the near future as well.
“Thanks to a brand-new network and highly virtualised data-
centre, the ministry is all geared up to move to the next phase of
IT transformation, which will enable it to cater to the speeds and
needs of the business.
“As a result of this project, we have also been able to bring our
e-services back in-house, which were earlier hosted at a third-
party datacentre. Now, all 23 services are available through our
website and can be paid for through e-dirhams or credit card.
“Wehadthesupportofhighermanagement,especiallyAbdullah
Belhaif al Nuaimi, minister of public works, in achieving our goal
of 100% small governance.”
The MoID’s datacentre and network upgrade project has won
multiple independent awards and is held up as an example of how
to harness the power of technology to improve customer service,
enhance employee collaboration and keep costs in line. n
“The ministry is all geared up to
move to the next phase of
IT transformation”
Hessa al Suwaidi, UAE MoID
IT TRANSFORMATION
❯Kanoo Group IT director explains the company’s IT transformation.

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Bahrain beckons overseas companies and
local startups to join growing IT industry
Bahrain is a gateway to the Middle East for multinationals, and to the world for local IT startups, writes Karl Flinders
Bahrain is investing in its IT industry in a bid to emulate its
success in the financial services and manufacturing sec-
tors. And while its government invests in creating an envi-
ronment for overseas IT firms, there is also a growing local IT
startup community.
The Bahrain Economic Development Board is looking to attract
overseas companies to set up shop on its shores. “We have good
financial services and manufacturing sectors, but IT is a sector
that has not seen the same growth,” said John Kilmartin, head of
ICT at the Board.
“Given Bahrain’s geographical limitations in terms of land size,
IT is an obvious sector for it to develop and the government wants
to grow it.”
Attract foreign companies
The organisation is seeking to attract foreign companies that
want to trade across the Middle East. Bahrain gives companies
access to the Gulf Cooperation Council’s political and economic
group, which comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. “From a market perspective,
Saudi Arabia would probably be the big one for us,” said Kilmartin.
Companies in the region buy their IT from similar sources to
Western enterprises, but with India playing a bigger part, said
Kilmartin. “The number of Indian companies active in the GCC is
huge,” he added. “We want foreign IT companies to set up here,
and we are also working with local and regional startups to build
our own companies.”
Selling across the GCC
About 12,000 of Bahrain’s 1.3 million population are employed in
the IT sector. Financial services and manufacturing are currently
Bahrain’s biggest sectors in terms of selling across the GCC.
IT companies based in Bahrain will have the advantage of selling
to other GCC countries over companies that are based outside
the region, said Kilmartin.
Analyst firm Gartner said IT spending across the Middle East
was expected to reach $212.9bn in 2016 – a 3.7% increase on the
previous year.
BAHRAIN GATEWAY

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The region’s cultural and language differences make it even
more of an advantage to have a local presence. “If you are selling
to consumers or a government in the GCC, you have to be sure to
get the dialect right, but that is probably not so critical if you are
selling to business,” said Kilmartin.
It is a very brand-conscious place and people are happy to buy
from the multinationals, but local companies have an advantage
in their ability to communicate in local dialects and an under-
standing of local culture.
“As a company, you have to remember that the countries in the
GCC are all different,” said Kilmartin.
Huawei is one multinational IT firm that has based its Middle
East operation in Bahrain, where it has about 500 staff. The
Chinese networking company has some flagship contracts in
the region, including a deal to transform Dubai into a smart city,
which is managed from Bahrain.
Kilmartin also identified a local startup scene as an important
incentive for large firms to move to Bahrain. The situation was
BAHRAIN GATEWAY
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the opposite in the West, where large IT firms attract startups,
he said. Benefits for startups in Bahrain include lower costs to set
up, access to talent, good connectivity and a large trading group.
Zaman Zaman, CEO at Bahrain-based IT company and app
developer Level Z, said the organisation, which launched in
August 2016, was now developing its first app – a cloud-based
intelligent queue management system.
Level Z takes ideas for apps and turns them into reality if it
believes they have good commercial prospects.
Zaman, who has worked in the startup sector all his career, said
Bahrain was a good place to begin an IT business. “The amount of
IT talent in Bahrain is growing, we have a young population, high
mobile penetration, high-speed internet and it is tax free,” he said.
ItwasalsoeasyforLevelZtogainalicencetooperateinBahrain,
said Zaman. He added that the trade agreement between GCC
countries was also attracting companies to set up in the region.
CIOsacrosstheGCCaretakingnoticeofthelocalstartupscene,
said Zaman. “CIOs are now looking at startups as free research
and development,” he added. n
“We have a young population,
high mobile penetration, high-
speed internet and it is tax free”
Zaman Zaman, Level Z
BAHRAIN GATEWAY
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Dubai leads push to put Middle East at
cutting edge of 3D printing technology
The United Arab Emirates is using 3D printing in a number of industries, and is becoming a regional
hub for a technology that could help rebuild war-torn parts of the Middle East, writes Alicia Buller
The Middle East’s intellectual – and physical – landscape is
set to change shape in the coming years, with the advent
of 3D printing technologies.
With fast-evolving techniques, applications and printed materi-
als, including metals, the emerging sector is becoming a critical
tool, from prototyping to final production across global industries.
In April 2016, Dubai announced an ambitious plan to become
an international leader in 3D printing, transforming not only the
city itself, but surrounding regions and the world.
The country’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, has com-
mitted the city to printing 25% of all buildings using 3D printing
technology by 2030.
The emirate has also unveiled the International Centre for 3D
Printing, a hub for design and technology suppliers, and facto-
ries. Targeted mainly at the construction, medical and consumer
products sectors, it includes research and development centres
and laboratories for testing materials used in 3D-printed prod-
ucts. “The future will depend on 3D printing technologies in all
aspects of our lives – the houses we live in, the streets we use,
the cars we drive, the clothes we wear and the food we eat,” said
Sheikh Mohammed.
Key to the incubation of the emirate’s fledgling 3D printing
industry is the newly established Dubai Future Foundation, a
strategy unit tasked with developing a futuristic roadmap of key
sectors for Dubai and facilitating public-private partnerships for
design, innovation and entrepreneurship.
Complicated objects
Saif Al Aleeli, CEO of the Dubai Future Foundation, said 3D
printing was already used in the production of large and compli-
cated objects, such as aircraft engines and furniture. “These are
complicated objects that require precise specifications and lots
of customisation,” he said. “That’s why 3D printing makes sense
for medicine, printing custom casts of bones, joints and teeth.
“There is also a rapid and ambitious growth of its use in con-
struction. 3D printing can be used to make bespoke parts for
3D PRINTING

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buildings, ranging from doorknobs to custom structures that
either look amazing or function better for some specific task.”
Despite its relative youth, Dubai’s International Centre for 3D
Printing has already produced the world’s first 3D-printed office.
Layer by layer, a 3D printer was used to print the building in a spe-
cial cement mixture. It took 17 days to print the building, at a cost
of about $140,000, after which the interior and exterior design
details were added. “It’s a great example of how you can create a
building that exactly fits your purpose,” said Al Aleeli.
Dubai is also incorporating 3D printing technology into its
transportation sector, employing 3D-printed components across
its buses, rail and civic infrastructure. Abdulredha Abu Hassan,
director, building and facilities management at UAE rail author-
ity RTA, said 3D-printed bus stations, street furniture, complex
buildings and bridges would become the norm in the next few
years. “3D printing allows ideas to develop faster and more cost-
effectively than ever,” he said. “We can also personalise and tweak
parts to uniquely fit different needs.”
Wide impact across sectors
Raghu Mandagolathur, senior vice-president and head of
research at the Kuwait Financial Centre, believes the develop-
ment of Dubai’s 3D printing knowledge could benefit the wider
Middle East. “3D printing could have the most impact on afford-
able real estate, healthcare, and the oil and gas industry,” he
said. “There are numerous applications in biotech and health-
care that may require specific tools based on the application.
The regional adoption rate of 3D printing technology, especially
3D PRINTING
NICOTOMBO/FOTOLIA
There are plans to use 3D printing for design
and construction in the housebuilding industry

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in sectors such as manufacturing, is above average compared to
the global adoption rate. Initiatives taken by the regional govern-
ments to set up 3D manufacturing labs, along with the growing
awareness of cost savings, have led to a promising emergence of
new 3D printing startups.”
But perhaps the biggest hope for the region’s developing 3D
printing industry lies in its ability to rebuild infrastructure in war-
torn cities. Iraq, Sudan and Syria are already looking into 3D print-
ing innovation to restore damaged buildings and monuments. A
delegation of Iraqi ministry officials travelled to Suzhou, China,
recently to visit WinSun, a world leader in 3D printing construc-
tion, to look at its home reconstruction technology.
Mandagolathur said 3D-printed housing using bioplas-
tics and other recycled materials could soon transform
disaster reconstruction and help homeless people as the technol-
ogy becomes more affordable.
Sevag Papazian, principal with Strategy& (formerly Booz &
Company), agreed that 3D printing technologies would be criti-
cal in helping rebuild war-ravaged cities. “In addition to a faster
construction process, original building designs could be redrawn
using advanced imaging techniques and passed to 3D printers for
implementation,” he said.
“There is an opportunity to keep the spirit of original designs,
while using new types of material to ensure more robust and envi-
ronmentally friendly structures.”
Potential job losses
But despite the many clear advantages of 3D printing, the
advancing technology could potentially lead to job losses for
a large number of low-skilled workers. “At present, the size of
objects created by 3D printers is limited,” said Mandagolathur.
“However, in the near future, larger items could potentially be
created using 3D printing technology.”
Mandagolathur also warned that 3D printing could violate
copyrights and encourage large-scale counterfeiting. “This could
lead to loss of incentive to innovate and create products, as they
could be copied easily,” he said.
So, in the coming years, as Dubai chases its dream of becoming
an international 3D printing pioneer, its government will be tasked
with managing the loss of low-skilled jobs and creating more jobs
in the growing 3D printing sector, while implementing copyright
laws to protect and incentivise innovation. n
“There is an opportunity to keep
the spirit of original designs
while using new types
of material to ensure more
robust and environmentally
friendly structures”
Sevag Papazian, Strategy&
3D PRINTING
❯3D printing technology is helping startups model prototypes and inventory suppliers.

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Zahid uses ERP to drive business forward
As Saudi Arabia sets out to diversify its economy away from the oil industry, established
companies in the kingdom are undergoing rapid IT transformation, writes Alicia Buller
Amid the liberalisation of the private sector, Saudi Arabia’s
oldest and largest family businesses face increased com-
petition and are turning to large IT projects to boost their
performance and productivity.
One such company is the Zahid Group, a diversified business
with 4,000 employees and interests that include machinery leas-
ing, construction, mining and agriculture. It began implementing
a multimillion-dollar enterprise resource planning (ERP) project
for its Zahid Tractor and Heavy Machinery division in 2013 – its
biggest technology investment yet.
Long modernisation process
Barig Siraj, director of IT and ERP for the Zahid Group, told
Computer Weekly that the company’s installation of Infor’s M3
for Equipment was the start of a long modernisation process for
the business. “For the next five years, our focus will be on replac-
ing our legacy systems, and M3 is a big part of that,” he said.
The M3 system, composed of scalable applications critical to
the equipment industry, including supply chain execution, ware-
house mobility, sales management and financial accounting, is
expected to help Zahid increase visibility of critical business infor-
mation, support the smooth flow of data between departments,
and streamline business processes across 40 sites.
As national dealer for Caterpillar, Volvo and Renault Trucks,
Zahid Tractor and Heavy Machinery faces pressure to modernise
its systems to ease doing business with its partners and suppliers.
Siraj added: “IT is becoming ingrained with operations as we
need to keep up with the vendors and franchise needs. The fran-
chises we represent are demanding more from us. That’s one rea-
son we moved from the legacy system to M3 – our legacy applica-
tions were not responsive enough to what our franchises wanted.”
Respond positively
He said suppliers often had their own technology initiatives and
the business needed to be able to respond positively. “For exam-
ple, Caterpillar is revising its digital strategy for rentals and we
are looking at how this coincides with our own digital plans.”
Siraj said the first phase of the M3 system went live in 2014 with
few hitches. “We performed that implementation in less than nine
months and are happy with the results,” he said.
ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING

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But subsequent roll-out stages were less breezy and involved a
few “corrections”, he said. With 50 people working on the project
over two years, Siraj said he discovered some users were resist-
ant to change and attempted to use legacy systems as well as the
new application.
“This discovery meant we made major changes to the leader-
ship of the project. We also chose to augment our staff with more
open-minded, adaptive and knowledgeable employees. We let
the director of the ERP project go and I stepped in.”
The IT director now plans to roll out the firm’s ERP system for
rentals in early 2017. “We have an ERP community that is 80%
users and 20% IT staff and Six Sigma trained, so with that team
we’ve gone through the phases with Infor and we are progressing
very nicely,” said Siraj.
“When we mapped our new processes against what vendors
did, we found ourselves aligning with 70% of the systems, on
average. We are on a low modification implementation that is
within the benchmarks of international standards.”
ZAHIDGROUP
Zahid Tractor and Heavy
Machinery is under pressure
to modernise its IT systems

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Three and a half years into the job, former IT venture capital-
ist Siraj described his current role as “never boring”, and added:
“There are a lot of complex challenges, which can stem from the
users, the suppliers or from the technology itself. I seldom come
to the office when everything is going normally. And when it’s
calm, I actually start to wonder whether I’ve missed something.”
As director of 50 IT staff, Siraj said his main focus is to maintain
and build a technology ecosystem that meets the needs of the
business and customers without hindering company operations.
As the Zahid Group makes the transition from legacy systems to
app-based technology and cloud computing in the coming years,
Siraj predicted that “community change management issues”
would rise up the agenda.
He also pointed out that his role is becoming ever more com-
plex and ad-hoc. “The IT department is driving business perfor-
mance,” he said. “It is becoming a regular occurrence that I get a
call from operations saying ‘the vendors are demanding IT solu-
tions and e-readiness. How do we respond to this e-initiative?’ I
need to keep a very close ear to the heartbeat of the business.”
Security focus
Siraj cited security as his most important challenge. “For the
next five years, our main focus will be on building up our security
level to the extent that it’s giving us the protection we need with-
out hindering operations,” he said.
Siraj is looking at cloud security systems, but for now the com-
pany has installed robust on-premise security measures to com-
bat the growing issue of data leakage.
The Zahid Group recently installed encryption software for
notebooks in case of theft. The company also uses Seclore for file
encryption and Sophos for media encryption, so all Zahid external
drives and USBs are fully encrypted.
Siraj said the company’s data leakage challenge stems from
two distinct groups: naïve corporate users who inadvertently leak
confidential information, and malicious employees or partners
who deliberately leak information.
“To combat the naiveté, we have introduced education aware-
ness campaigns,” he said. “We also believe that encryption is the
answer – the files can’t be opened outside the company.
“It’s not easy, but we’ve started with that. It’s going to take a
long time, but we’re trying to implement it in a way that will not
impede operations and stop staff from doing their day jobs.”
Tarik Taman, general manager for Infor’s India, Middle East and
Africa division, said: “In both a cultural and economic sense, Saudi
Arabia is ready for transformation.
“The Zahid Group is a great example of a forward-thinking com-
pany. It is very progressive.” n
“For the next five years, our
main focus will be on building
up our security level”
Barig Siraj, Zahid Group
❯The essential guide to ERP for small and medium-sized businesses.

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Saudi Arabia turns to big data analytics to
boost business innovation and diversity
Big data technologies, driven by the need for better business insight, will play a key role in diversifying
Saudi Arabia’s economy as the country’s IT investment reaches record levels, writes Alicia Buller
As Saudi Arabia gears up to diversify its economy away
from oil, local businesses are turning to big data analytics.
TheSaudiVision2030,announcedinAugust2016,aims
to increase the country’s non-oil revenue sixfold from $43.5bn to
$267bn a year by liberalising business policies and introducing
entrepreneurship initiatives.
This turning point in Saudi Arabia’s economic history is driving
IT investment to record levels. According to IDC, tech spending
in the kingdom was expected to pass $35bn last year as organi-
sations embraced digital transformation initiatives to optimise
costs and improve business process efficiencies.
Saudi Arabia’s big data analytics market is expected to reach
$1.85bn in 2018, up from $920m in 2013, to according to
Micromarketmonitor.
The country’s big data market, like the rest of the world, is being
driven by the need for business insight to guide better business
decisions and performance in an increasingly competitive and
globalised market.
Aongus Hegarty, president for Europe, Middle East and Africa
at Dell EMC, told Computer Weekly he had seen an uptick in big
data interest among Saudi Arabia’s biggest companies.
“Dell EMC is very involved in the country’s 2030 plan and is
helping businesses and the government to achieve their objec-
tives,” he said. “The Saudi plan is heavily focused around how
technology can be an enabler for SMEs, more private sector com-
panies and entrepreneurship.”
Big data focus
Hegarty said big data analytics would be an integral part of the
nation’s plan, pointing out that Dell EMC was a partner for big
data projects with the nation’s top oil producers and govern-
ment organisations.
“But the national vision wants to create a much broader set of
expertise and deeper sets of companies of all sizes in all areas,” he
added. “The current environment of low oil prices is making them
think in a very strategic and innovative way.”
BIG DATA

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Hegarty pinpointed manufacturing companies and conglomer-
ates as potential areas for a big data focus. “Analytics can assist
process manufacturing and bring together data from all differ-
ent aspects into one place to understand an end-to-end process,
rather than just elements of it,” he said.
Saudi firms and SMEs were increasingly focused on using big
data to identify new customers, or insights around consumer
behaviours to identify new products or services to develop, he
said. “Ultimately, if companies don’t take up big data, their com-
petitors will get a leap on them as they will not gain the insights to
support businesses,” he added.
“When you are only focusing on your strategy, you can miss
significant changes in the business model of your industry and
suddenly a new competitor is on your doorstep. This is why Saudi
CIOs are becoming more anchored in their business strategy.”
Globalised business
Barig Siraj, director of IT and ERP at Zahid Group, one of the
region’s biggest conglomerates, agreed that big data strategy
would loom large as his business becomes more globalised.
Although Zahid is not currently undertaking big data initiatives,
Siraj said global partners of Zahid Tractor, such as Caterpillar and
Volvo Trucks, were asking for data exchange and analytics to gain
global information insights.
“Our legacy system and new ERP system have multiple inter-
faces with our partners’ systems, similar to other dealers around
theworld,”saidSiraj.“Ourpartnerswanttocollectglobaldataand
perform big data analysis to provide insights that are fed back into
BIG DATA
SWISSHIPPO/FOTOLIA
Saudi Arabia’s big data
analytics market is expected
to grow from $920m in 2013
to $1.85bn in 2018

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our systems also using the interfaces. This will empower Zahid
with analysis for data collected in Saudi Arabia, but it can also be
augmented with worldwide data from other dealers.”
Jonas Zelba, industry analyst, digital transformation, at research
firm Frost & Sullivan, said: “Around 90% of CIOs in the GCC
region would like to invest in, and implement, big data solutions in
organisations in the next three years – and the growth opportuni-
ties are across all sectors.”
But despite the rapid growth of big data analytics in Saudi
Arabia, there are several sticking points for CIOs that are consid-
ering implementing big data strategy, said Megha Kumar, senior
research manager, software at IDC MEA.
“Data quality and validity are concerns,” she said. “If not prop-
erly defined or managed, data quality and validity can negatively
affect the outcome of big data projects. Organisations will need to
assess this before undertaking a project.”
Demand for knowledge
A wider issue is the demand for more big data knowledge in the
Middle East, said Kumar. “There needs to be more awareness
about big data technologies to pave the way for wider adoption,”
she added. “The kingdom needs to nurture special job roles,
such as data analysts and scientists, who can understand and
make decisions based on the analysis of big data.
“Lack of skills is a continuing inhibitor for engaging in projects.
An organisation may need to seek support from its supplier part-
ners, engage in automation or consider reskilling existing employ-
ees to support these projects.”
Zelba predicted that, in coming years, Saudi companies would
add senior leadership positions with responsibility for overall
strategy around big data and analytics. “We have already seen
new titles, such as chief analytics officer, chief data officer and
chief strategy officer come up in the last few years,” he said.
“Businesses will align their management to streamline processes
around analytics to facilitate better decision-making.”
The Saudi government will also play a role in supporting the
development of the big data industry by implementing data gov-
ernance and data security policies.
Zelba said the scale of big data flowing into systems had made
IT organisations turn to data governance. “Organisations need
to be able to verify the authenticity of incoming data, who is
accountable, how to protect the information derived from big
data, and who is allowed to share it with whom inside and outside
the organisation,” he said. “Policies set by the government could
support this in the private and public sectors.” n
“There needs to be more
awareness about big data
technologies to pave the way
for wider adoption”
Megha Kumar, IDC MEA
BIG DATA
❯Saudi Telecom Company supports Saudi Arabia’s drive into digital public services.

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