Ghada Philip El Rassi (left), MEEZA Expansion Chief Executive Officer; and Ahmad Al Kuwari, MEEZA Chief Executive Officer, during the media briefing held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, in Doha yesterday. Pic: Salim Matramkot/The Peninsula
MEEZA Expansion, the international arm of Qatar’s prominent end-to-end Managed IT Services & Solutions Provider, is set to enter and gain market share in potential target markets in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (EMEA), its CEO Ghada Philip El Rassi said at a media briefing yesterday.
Building upon the success of designing, deploying and operating multiple Tier III data centres in Qatar, which offer a guaranteed uptime of 99.98 percent, the company’s next step is to expand the data centre coverage into EMEA. The initial expansion journey will start in Turkey during 2020 and then move into Europe and beyond, said El Rassi.
“With the successful platform launches carried out during 2018-2019, a comprehensive Product Portfolio Roadmap will be introduced to international markets. This portfolio will encompass a wide range of products ranging from Software-as-a-Service offerings to Cloud-based Infrastructure Services like Virtual Data Centre, Disaster Recovery, Elastic Computing, Storage, Archiving on Demand, and Backup Solutions. These services are tailored for public, private and hybrid cloud scenarios. Each service offering will be fully supported by the Qatar-based engineering and support teams providing turnkey managed services solutions as needed by our clients,” she added.
In Qatar, MEEZA, which is a Qatar Foundation joint venture and one of the only four organisations worldwide which attained a Data Centre LEED Platinum Certification, is working heavily with the government, particularly with the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC), in addition to its partnerships with the business sector.
“Since the beginning, we have been working hand-in-hand with the MoTC in implementing the National ICT Strategy to enhance the digital transformation in Qatar as well as build the SME platforms,” said MEEZA CEO Ahmad Al Kuwari.
He added that MEEZA is part of the consortium that will deliver the Tasmu Smart Qatar, a flagship project by the MoTC which aims to transform Qatar into a smart country.
“Tasmu is going to be kicked off very soon as an initiative to be rolled out with the government in partnership with service providers. We are part of the consortium that is going to deliver this initiative. And we are proud to always be the preferred partner of the government and MoTC. Tasmu is not just about digitalising one sector, it includes the whole nation and the whole industries. It is a very big national project. We are taking this very seriously and we are going to be one of the partners involved,” Al Kuwari added.
Tasmu is Qatar’s national digital transformation programme which seeks to revolutionise the way transportation, logistics, healthcare, environment, and sports projects are implemented. This will include making digital innovations such as autonomous driving, digital workplace, drone product delivery services, virtual health consultations, smart buildings, and augmented game experience projects among many others a reality in Qatar.
MEEZA is also heavily involved with the Msheireb Downtown Doha project, which promises to be the world’s first smart and sustainable downtown regeneration project, embedding smart city technology and connectivity.
