Felix Wass, President & CEO, DETASAD • Interview
DETASAD is a pioneering cloud services company in Saudi Arabia, and the first and only Saudi firm to export such products.
DETASAD is the first and only Saudi Arabian company to export cloud services. What does that mean for the company at a time when the government is working to promote Saudi companies?
We are doing it because it makes business sense and we really believe that we have a unique offering. We get amazing support from the government, the Ministry of Telecommunications (MCIT), Yesser, and from other partners helping us to achieve our objectives. We were the first Saudi company to export technology internationally in 2020 as part of the Saudi Vision 2030. In many cases, government facilities here are more advanced than in Europe or other places. You really feel that the entire country is standing behind Vision 2030 to make Saudi a technology hub in this digital era we live in. Everything is pushing in one direction, and there is a clear way forward. That is why we are optimistic that Saudi Arabia and DETASAD will come out of this crisis stronger than before. Technology will emerge as an accelerator that will help the country and economy emerge from the COVID-19 recession. Being positive about the future is key; if a leader doesn’t believe that their organization can survive, they may as well close-up shop. This crisis is a huge opportunity for digital companies that are being forced to become more efficient in terms of cash management, resource management, and processes. If you build relationships now, your company will have a reputation that will draw business in for years to come. We offer our customers to work together in terms of cash management, commercial management, services, and payment services, for example.
The pandemic has pushed the entire economy online, creating new challenges but also new opportunities. How has your business changed in the past year?
We see that in order to be prepared for the current and coming crisis, we need to focus on the automation side of remote work and remote access. We needed to increase our cybersecurity investments and cyber knowledge as millions of people switched almost their entire activities to the virtual world and, therefore, we launched DETASAD Ultimate SOC Solutions, hosted locally in Riyadh to maintain and keep our businesses and economy secured, protected 24/7, and disruption free. No company in Saudi Arabia that I have spoken with was truly prepared to send everyone to work from home. No technology company was set up that way, much less a construction or facility management company. The smart city platform and block chain technology will support people to be better prepared the next time. The integration of drone management technology, digital train technology, and remote metering and remote management technology are some of the innovations that we are focusing on. That is what we see as key drivers for our customers, aside from traditional cloud services. Being able to offer a full clone of our customers’ environment in a secure way will be a key differentiator for everyone. It has to be done by a joint exercise, building partnerships that transcend even traditional competitive environments. Nearly all the companies in Saudi Arabia will have to work together to build this kind of ecosystem. One of our key partners in this aspect is Saudi Electric, which also gave us the go-ahead to be part of their health initiative and fund, which has distributed significant amounts of money to health workers in the Kingdom. These kinds of partnerships allow you to build a framework that makes us much more resilient as a society. I don’t think anyone as a company or individual will be returning to the status quo. Things are about to change forever.