Expanding the value

Spiros Rafailovits, General Manager for UAE & Gulf at Logicom Distribution speaks to CXO DX about the expansion of their partnership with Dell Technologies to now cover the UAE along with other Gulf markets as well as about their focus on evolving market trends

 Elaborate about the recent sign up with Dell Technologies for the UAE market?

We are traditionally a distributor for Dell Technologies in Europe. We always aspire for more growth and look at expanding our relationships with our vendors to enhance the business we do. In the region, we started working with Dell Technologies almost three years ago for the Gulf, both on the client solutions portfolio as well as on the server and storage front. This was initially for the markets of Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. Recently we expanded this partnership to cover the UAE as well. The channel event recently done was to announce this strategic partnership for the UAE.

For the UAE, we will primarily focus on servers, storage and networking. Although we have very good solutions with other vendors, Dell is complementing our portfolio because Dell is a company that is investing in new solutions, is investing to make their footprint in the market even bigger all the time. Having Dell as part of our portfolio adds a lot of value and we further look forward to adding Dell EMC as well as help enhance the Dell networking business.

 What is the investment on the resources responsible for the Dell business in the UAE at Logicom?

We have invested considerably in our team that is focusing on the Dell business.  Following Dell’s strategy, we have 1 pre sales specialist or engineer for every Account Manager. So we have a 7 member team in the UAE.  We have a Product Manager, one Account Manager for the enterprise, one Account Manager for the SMB and one for the Stock and sell segment. For each of these Account Managers, there is a pre-sales engineer as support. They work together to further promote Dell solutions.

We provide the solutions the very next day to our partners. By providing solutions in a very short turnaround, we add more value to our partners compared to our competitors.

 Discuss the demand for cloud solutions visa-a-vis on premise solutions?

Being a CSP partner and a distributor of cloud solutions, we have noticed a spike in demand for cloud solutions. There is however an increase in demand for on premise solutions as well. Going forward, we expect to see a hybrid model in terms of demand for both on- premise and cloud-based solutions.

How do you see demand in the market growing for the solutions you offer?

With the additional technologies and additional financing models available today, we are widening our customer reach. It would be fair to say that an end customer that was four or five years ago not having the capacity to invest in a server or storage solution today can do that due to the fact that either the pricing options have become more attractive or is easier to procure through financing.

The upper SMB space is where more demand is coming from and that is because enterprises in comparison have already invested in many solutions and they may be doing a refresh or upgrade. The upper SMB space however is where you see a lot of new investments on the datacentre front.

 How have Remote work and cloud adoption trends impacted your business?

We have had our own digital transformation journey that started 6-7 years ago. We invested heavily in having our own cloud marketplace where we are an indirect cloud provider and where our partners can come and purchase any cloud solution per consumption. So we are addressing the demand for cloud solutions through our marketplace.

There is no turning back. The cloud is here to stay and we will see much more investments in cloud solutions. At the same time, there is more need for networking and server solutions to support the demand of people working from a distance.

There is also a need for more security at the edge. Before the pandemic, the office was the edge. Today every household is the edge and every computer that is being worked on and accesing the company data from outside the premises has become the edge. There is thus a need for more security software and hardware investments at the remote edge.

We are here to help our partners deliver these hybrid solutions to meet the requirements from their end customers.