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By Mohamed Alaa
The US-based IT company, TeamQuest, provides technological services for optimisation and efficiency to companies seeking to minimise infrastructural costs. Using an array of programmes that help companies make better use of their technology, TeamQuest aims to help companies improve efficiency and productivity. In an interview with Daily News Egypt, Alf Benson, TeamQuest’s Regional Sales Director, talked of the company’s services and technological solutions.
What are the technological solutions TeamQuest is offering Egyptian and Middle East markets?
TeamQuest offers a wide range of information technology (IT) solutions that optimise the resources and operations of our diverse clientele throughout the region. We are committed to offering the best software and services to make a positive contribution in building the state-of-the-art IT infrastructure in the MENA region, by helping businesses and organisations with their IT Optimisation and/or Capacity Management (CM) needs. We offer software and services that can be tailored according to a customer’s unique requirements. TeamQuest Performance Software is a suite of four integrated products that help organisations optimise IT services from Performance Management and Reporting to Event Monitoring and Capacity Planning. The suite includes TeamQuest Analyzer, TeamQuest Surveyor, TeamQuest Predictor and TeamQuest Capacity Management Information System (CMIS). The solution is a good fit for the modern complex enterprise that requires a holistic view across all layers spanning from Applications to Server to Storage. In addition, we have implemented additional improvements to our software suite to further help businesses enhance performance, efficiency and productivity.
What is TeamQuest’s most in-demand solution in Arab markets?
Our IT Service Optimization (ITSO) solution, which can be used to determine the maturity of an organisation’s IT operations and efficiency, is in high demand. It is used to perform gap analysis, enabling us to advice about the actions needed to move an IT organisation up the maturity scale in order to provide world-class IT services. The scope of assignments depends on the client’s needs. For instance, some companies engage us to help them build the entire CM discipline from scratch, while others use TeamQuest as an insurance policy to make sure that the terms of the service level agreements are met. Likewise, IT-savvy clients leverage our ‘What-If’ capabilities to understand the impact of a change in their IT infrastructure.
How is TeamQuest planning to provide ICT solutions to markets in Egypt and the Middle East?
We are very optimistic about the current growth and direction taken by Egypt’s economy. We believe that in the process of developing its economic infrastructure, there will be many opportunities to penetrate the market to provide key services that could support local businesses’ strategic goals. With Mobinil as our flagship client in Egypt, we continue to strengthen our foothold in the local market. In the Middle East, we are currently in partnership with four major telecommunications companies. These are just the beginning of what we hope to be more lucrative and fruitful collaboration in the future as we try to enhance the position of the Middle Eastern market in the international arena. In Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, we work in partnership with Egabi Solutions.
Can you give us an idea regarding TeamQuest’s growth rates in the MENA region? How much has the company grown globally?
In the Middle East, we are happy to report that we have been recording double-digit growth. We hope to continue this positive trend by ensuring that all our endeavours measure up to our standard of excellence, not only in the region but also beyond. With such strong numbers, we believe that the second quarter will also provide us with good news, as we are actively making an effort to reach an international market.
How is TeamQuest approaching Egypt’s IT sector to ensure maximum return on investments?
TeamQuest has marked its presence across various industry verticals and is working in partnership with like-minded companies in the region, demonstrating our commitment to high quality standards and world-class services.
How and why do you plan to expand to the Egyptian and Middle East markets?
Ongoing positive economic developments in Egypt and across the Middle East have led to a corresponding upsurge in their respective Information and Communication Technology (ICT) markets. In fact, International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region’s investments on ICT products will cross the $270bn mark this year. The region features the second-fastest growing IT market worldwide which is poised to grow by 9% in the next few years. These are few statistics have further reinforced TeamQuest’s decision to be part of this dynamic and vibrant sector. We aim to provide ample support for other businesses in other industries as well by offering customised and efficient ITSO solutions and services, which will help companies meet their respective objectives. Our performance and capacity software suite is especially suitable to address today’s complex enterprise, including Apps to Server to Storage, Multi-Vendor, Cloud, and Virtualized environments.
Do you have any plans to work with the Egyptian Government?
TeamQuest takes pride in its ability to customise services and adapt to our client’s unique demands, which has always provided us with a strong competitive advantage. We have a wide presence in Telecommunications and Financial Services, since IT supports business critical processes; however our solutions are adaptable to all industries including the public sector.
How do you view TeamQuest’s financial performance during 2015?
Our current projects in the region have generated around seven-digits in revenue, and we are happy to say that such positive indications make us very optimistic about the second half of 2015.
What are the new products TeamQuest will be introducing to the MENA market?
In our never-ending quest to create new benchmarks for service excellence, we have augmented our IT services to include additional features that could further benefit businesses by optimising their IT performance and efficiency. We are looking forward to implementing these new enhancements to the Middle Eastern market, which we believe features one of the most dynamic and rapidly expanding economic landscapes in the world. As the MENA region is an open and progressive market, we believe that these improvements will be particularly suitable here. New features integrate valuable automation and predictive capabilities, as well as comprehensive analytics that can be applied to the virtual environment across all infrastructure layers. The software is now better suited to address complex IT environments made from diverse technologies as well as a number of hardware and software vendors. These new updates will further maximise IT efficiency by focusing on the analysis of storage capacity, including VMware guest disk space, Advanced Interactive eXecutive (AIX) physical space, Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) disk space, and AIX logical partition (LPAR) disk space (virtual Host Bus Adapter).
Globally, where is your market now? Do you have plans for expansion into new territories?
We have established a strong presence in the international market by providing robust and reliable services through our company’s regional headquarters in a number of strategic locations. We have also aligned ourselves with distinguished companies that reinforce our goal of providing superior service. In addition, we have also carved a reputation for being a diverse service provider because of our broad portfolio that features clients from a wide range of industries. Right now, we are entering the Asia Pacific market, specifically Hong Kong and Singapore, to address the region’s growing demand for IT optimisation platforms. Hong Kong and Singapore will serve as our main entry points as both forecast a 73.25% boost in revenue growth from 2014 to 2018 for Availability and Performance tools. This indicates a stronger market in comparison to projections for Western Europe recorded at 34.67% and 47.6% for the USA. Having forged strong business foundations in North America and Europe, we aim to enhance our position as a global technology software and service provider by offering our superior solutions to organisations in Asia. We believe that the region is ripe for an IT revolution and we support Asian countries’ efforts to foster innovative and pioneering infrastructure projects. We believe that we can positively contribute to the region’s economic growth with our wide range of capacity planning and management solutions, which will help businesses maximise their IT’s return on investment (ROI), improve efficiency, minimise risk, and meet their objectives.
