Dell EMC has experienced double digit growth in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa in 2018 and expects to see similar levels of growth in 2019, according to the firm’s regional senior vice president, Mohammed Amin. The firm also plans to expand its regional operations and hire a significant number of people in the coming year. “We recruited over 700 people in just 24 months across the META region and we plan to grow with such strength and stability in 2019 as well,” Amin said.

Much of the growth experienced by Dell EMC has been driven by the government sector, particularly from Gulf countries that are seeking to diversify their economies. “The government sector across the Middle East, Turkey and Africa performed significantly well in 2018,” Amin said. “With all the countries moving steadily towards achieving their national agendas, we will continue to see the state and local governments invest heavily in technology to embrace, adapt and adopt digitization.”

The government sector in the Gulf has proved especially strong. In 2018 Dell EMC collaborated with Abu Dhabi Monitoring and Control Centre (ADMCC) to build an advanced control center and manage mission critical applications, which can monitor and analyze video streams from surveillance cameras. The firm also worked with Dubai Municipality to create an agile platform for smart services. More recently Dell EMC signed an agreement with the UAE’s Ministry of Artificial Intelligence (MoAI) to help Emirati youth develop new skillsets associated with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. In Kuwait, the company implemented its Data Protection Solution for Kuwait Finance House (KFH) to create a highly scalable infrastructure to support rapid data growth.

Amin added that the cloud computing market also performed well in 2018 as organizations started to understand that cloud opens up revenue generating business models. “Our customers have been moving towards adopting multi-cloud solutions and don’t just see cloud as a ‘destination’ any more,” Amin said.

While many governments in the region are investing it digital solutions, other organizations feel like they’re struggling to keep pace. Research commissioned by Dell Technologies, which included a survey with 4000 businesses globally, revealed that 90% of organizations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia are facing major barriers to digital transformation. According to the research, 42% of organizations have data privacy and cybersecurity concerns, 26% said they lack the budget and resources and 30% said they lack the right in-house skill sets and expertise. In addition to this, 28% believe regulation or legislative changes to be a barrier and 24% said lack of the right technologies to work at the speed of business is an obstacle.

The findings represent further opportunities for Dell EMC, which opened a customer solution center in Dubai in 2018 to showcase a broad range of technologies to public and private organizations.