By Mariam Nihal
Citrix, the American multinational software company is ready to establish itself in the Kingdom to better manage the mobility needs for businesses in the country. 400,000 organizations and over 100 million users reportedly use Citrix solutions globally. “Citrix helps government entities address their growing security concerns, budgetary constraints, and evolving regulations, by building a comprehensive strategy to solve these challenges with a combination of Citrix solutions,” Samer Malak, Country Head at Citrix KSA told Saudi Gazette.
With two-thirds of the Kingdom’s population under the age of 29, Malak said Citrix is committed to growing IT skills and nurturing the next generation. “As part of its local growth plan, Citrix will work to utilize local talent, further strengthening its dedication to the local market.” We caught up with him in an in-depth interview.
Citrix And Vision 2030
The Kingdom has been pioneering new technologies for over a decade, but 2016 will mark a turning point in its adoption and take-up of new solutions to strengthen and diversify its economy. IDC predicted ICT spending in Saudi Arabia to top the $36 billion mark in 2015, as organizations gear up for a new era of enterprise computing.
Our goal is to support The Kingdom’s newly defined Economic Vision 2030 and to help organizations in KSA overcome their business mobility challenges associated with workspace transformation. In addition, as trends such as mobile workspaces and 'consumerization' of IT continue to reach a tipping point in KSA, we believe there is significant opportunity for Citrix to influence workspace transformation and to help companies create more agile IT environments. This will make it easier for companies to decentralize their business across the Kingdom, and help them be present in new and remote areas more efficiently and securely. It will also allow remote employees to have access to all the tools they need to operate efficiently and effectively.
With two-thirds of the Kingdom’s population under 29 years old, Citrix is committed to growing IT skills and fostering the next wave of talent in the Kingdom. As part of its local growth plan, Citrix will work to utilize local talent, further strengthening its dedication to the local market. We aim to measure the value of our technology by how it benefits people and enables them to realize new ambitions and aspirations for the business. This mantra perfectly complements the recently-announced vision and goals of the Saudi government as they look to create a thriving economy in an ambitious nation with a vibrant society.
Saudi Arabia Is The 'Single Largest Mobility Market In META'
As mobility continues to take the region by storm, it has become more of a requirement than a privilege for businesses. This is especially true for Saudi Arabia as it is the single largest mobility market in META. Hence why were are witnessing a change in how the technology is perceived. The scenario of an employee bringing in their personal device into the workplace and pleading with IT to get them connected or struggling to access work email and files is no longer the case. More employees now expect their employers to be more flexible in this regard, and perhaps even request they be allowed to use their own devices for office matters.
There has been a ‘mobility-first’ mind-set shift amongst CIOs in the region and government bodies are increasing their efforts to transform IT systems for integrating mobility solutions. Advantages for businesses vary but if you take productivity for example, Citrix’s enterprise mobility solutions allow employees to access apps and data from any device or location, resulting in enhanced employee productivity, which promotes business agility and growth. This lets them work as per their convenience and fosters optimum performance. Mobility also enables appropriate resource management of inventory data, customer information and many more. Further benefits includes better coordination through easy exchange of mails and reports to facilitate effective decision making, and stronger business operational control for senior decision makers.
Mobility Challenges And Cloud Technology
Businesses are moving to cloud technologies as it offers multiple attractive benefits for companies of any size, such as:
Flexibility - Cloud-based services are ideal for businesses with fluctuating bandwidth demands. It makes it easy to scale up capacity, drawing on the remote servers. Likewise, if there is a need to minimize, you are able to since such flexibility is inherent.
Disaster recovery – Whether it be a data security breach or a natural disaster companies must have a plan in place in the event of a catastrophe that wipes out business critical data. Not having a disaster recovery plan in place can put the organization at risk of high financial costs, reputation loss and even greater risks for its clients and customers. By using cloud technology, all assets are backed up frequently, meaning organizations can retrieve their IT systems quicker, without having to bear the expense of building and maintaining a physical site.
Simplified updates – Many businesses prefer to have their servers’ offsite as this saves space and the costly utility bills required to operate one. The added plus point with having a cloud server, is that third party vendors ensure that software updates are carried out as soon as they are available. This provides for peace of mind, not to mention the added security that comes with automatic patching.
Enhanced collaboration – Organizations rely heavily on teamwork to complete tasks, cloud technology promotes this further by allowing teams to access, edit and share any type of file anytime, from anywhere, giving them the power to work better with full visibility of their collaboration efforts.
