The Saudi Telecom Company (STC), represented by its enterprise unit STC Business, stole the show at GITEX 2017 in Dubai last week by unveiling a variety of ICT digitization enabling platforms - essential to achieving the Kingdom's Vision 2030 transformation objectives. The leading operator signed a Cloud Service Provider agreement with Thales Group at the event, and also signed mega deals with Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei.
Digitization in the public and private sector has increased the efficiency of the way government services are delivered to the public, with almost all services available online and the way retailers engage consumers in Saudi Arabia, with almost anything available for online delivery. Digitization is at the heart of achieving the Kingdom's Vision 2030 objectives, a key component of which is increasing the contribution of small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) from 20 percent to 35 percent.
"Digitization is essential to the scalability and management of any expansion activity in the public or private sector," said Dr. Tarig M. Enaya, STC Senior Vice President of Enterprise. "Well constructed online services or e-commerce services become popular very quickly. So that they stay popular, you need to match your ICT requirements so that you continue to provide a secure and responsive online experience, in a trusted and highly available manner."
"The STC cloud, its portfolio of managed services and its state of the art Internet of Things (IoT) platforms provides the agility needed for a scalable expansion, increases the reach of any online experience and allows organizations to manage that growth by always having the right information at the right moment," he added.
STC Business, the national operator's enterprise focused business unit, delivers ICT solutions and services tailored towards the needs and requirements of government agencies and small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs), and large corporations through a series of the largest data centers in Saudi Arabia and a variety of digital, managed and cloud services.
STC's enterprise focus aims to leverage the company's huge infrastructure and take it to the next level by offering different kinds of ICT services that cater to the kingdom's growing digital demand.
STC Key Accounts VP Riyadh Muawad told Telecom Review: "We leverage STC's huge infrastructure and rely on our local and international partners, to offer what we call managed services. We are seeing lots of demand for this - our managed services approach - which is different to our approach to customers. Through our managed services we can manage the whole infrastructure for our clients."
STC's enterprise unit STC Business signed a Cloud Service Provider agreement at GITEX 2017 with Thales Group, a leader in the fields of Security, Defense, Transportation, Aerospace, and Space, as part of its drive to enable enterprise digitization. The agreement follows an MoU signed by both parties last year to develop business in the ICT domain in Saudi Arabia, and based on it will have Thales provide data encryption solutions through the STC Cloud platform.
Thales data encryption solutions ensure that customer's data is secured and trusted in STC Public Cloud environment by delivering high performance encryption, access control, and strong key management. This allows STC Cloud's users to establish strong safeguards around sensitive data and applications in the cloud, satisfying local compliance requirements and providing greater control and flexibility.
At GITEX 2017, STC also signed mega deals with a number of international companies including Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei. The first agreement was signed with Nokia to boost mobile broadband capacity and coverage in Saudi Arabia using Nokia's 4.5G-Pro technology.
The enhanced network will meet the ever-increasing demands of end customers, including the millions of visitors who travel to the cities of Mecca and Medina each year, particularly during the Hajj and Ramadan seasons. Furthermore, the NB-IoT will enable STC network infrastructure to evolve into the new era of digitization, which is a solid step towards the new programmable world.
The second agreement was signed with Huawei for a 5G-Ready network to support STC's 5G strategy, satisfy subscribers' ever-increasing demands, drive Saudi ICT industry development, and to support the Kingdom's 2030 Vision and the National Transformation 2020 Plan.
The third agreement was signed with Ericsson, upon which Ericsson provides STC with managed services to enhance customer experience, network performance and process quality, as well as passive managed infrastructure services, electro-mechanical equipment for mobile access sites, facility management during crises and electromechanical management of technical sites.
These partnerships STC announced at GITEX 2017 showed audiences how the company is striving to meet the requirements of Saudi Vision 2030 to promote digital transformation in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
