F5 today announced that Mideast Communication Systems (MCS) will operate as its new value-added distributor in Egypt.MCS is now part of F5’s Unity+ Partner Program, which has been specifically designed to address the evolution of the market, F5, and partner business models. The program gives a clear path to success for serving customers with F5’s best in class portfolio of products.

Significantly, the onboarding of MCS markedly enhances F5’s ability to deliver its services and solutions across Egypt, which is one of its most strategically important regional markets.The union will be particularly beneficial for F5 and MCS’ continued support of the government’s transformational Digital Egypt plan, which is a key component of its  ICT Strategy and 2030 Vision. F5 is already delivering a wide range of services under the Digital Egypt umbrella, including project work related to modernizing digital infrastructures and processes across the government, telecoms, military, education, energy, finance, and government sectors.

“MCS is focused on delivering comprehensive information security solutions and professional consultation services for all business sectors in Egypt,” said Tarek Shabaka, CEO, MCS.
“We welcome the new partnership with F5 and look forward to a fruitful collaboration. Together, we have the potential to transform the application landscape through the delivery of integrated solutions. We are also extremely well positioned to help Egypt meet its wider ICT transformation targets through our work across all sectors.”
Established in 2006, MCS has emerged as one of the leading, and most innovative, distributors in the Middle East. Its strong in-country presence and extensive channel network in Egypt will enable the sale, deployment and support of F5’s entire service portfolio, with a strong focus on multi-cloud and modern application-related services.

“MCS joins us as a value-added distributor at an important time for F5 in Egypt,” said Nasser El Abdouli, Director of Channel Sales for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa at F5.
“More than ever, our customers are demanding seamless, rapid, secure and personalized experiences. At F5, we empower organizations to get their apps to market faster, protect their business from existing and emerging threats, adapt quickly to changing conditions, and harness the power of AI to make better business decisions. MCS will be central to delivering our solutions and services at scale in Egypt.”

F5 and MCS’ partnership is well timed.  Last month, Egypt’s Finance Minister announced that the government has allocated EGP12.7 billion ($797 million) for digital transformation in its 2020/2021 budget. The government is also aiming to digitalize the management of about 90% of imports and exports by the end of December 2020. In other related developments, Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology recently outlined steps the country is taking to implement a national strategy for Artificial Intelligence (AI). This includes establishing a National AI Council to oversee the implementation of the national strategy in all sectors.
“MCS has both the track record and expertise to powerfully enhance our go-to-market strength in Egypt, which is an increasingly important part of F5’s regional plans,” said Mamduh Allam, Regional Director for Saudi Arabia and North Africa at F5.
“F5, with the addition of NGINX and Shape Security, now has the most comprehensive set of application services in the industry. Importantly, we can flex to whatever cloud is needed for the job, including virtual machines, container-native, SaaS, and purpose-built hardware. Moving ahead, MCS will be an important ally as we seek to realise a future where applications, like a living organism, can naturally adapt based on environment. It will grow, shrink, defend, and heal itself as needed. In other words, the combination of application services, telemetry and automation will enable it to become a truly adaptive application.”