Fady Richmany, Senior Director & General Manager for UAE, Dell Technologies • Interview

Dell Technologies seeks to build strategic and trusted alliances with customers to drive their digital transformation agendas forward and compete successfully in a new digital era.

How did you ensure the company remained resilient during the pandemic?

When the pandemic hit, our transition to remote working was effortless as we were already in the process of transformation. This was part of the essence of Dell acquiring EMC four years ago: to accelerate its digital transformation. The resilience to face the challenges that came with the pandemic came to us as a natural response and made it easy for us to help our customers and partners prepare for it. When it comes to working from home, we started this 10 years ago. We have had a connected workplace for the last decade, and our Connected Workplace 1.0 program has been very successful, where at any given time 30% of our workforce works remotely. Now, we have announced Connected Workplace 2.0, where we give employees the option to come into the office one or two days a week. We also support them with incentives to work from home, such as purchasing a desk and so on. We have also seen that among our customers in the UAE, the transition was not as difficult, as many of them had already embarked on the digital transformation journey.

What characteristics made your clients resilient?

During the pandemic, the UAE government provided strong support to businesses to navigate these challenging times. For example, it launched a stimulus packages to help SMEs with deferred payments and so on. At Dell Technologies, we launched a USD9-billion fund to help our partners and customers in terms of payment deferrals and, in some cases, convert their service into a consumption model wherever CAPEX could be turned into an OPEX. It was important to us that we stand by our customers and partners during the pandemic and help them out.

In addition, we launched Dell Financial Services in three of our key regional markets, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, and in the process, signed an agreement with Abu Dhabi Financial Global Market for an existing license that is registered and supported by our bank in Ireland. This allows us to move up another level and truly support customers that need technology and security but have limited budgets.

How is the role of technology different now after the disruption of the pandemic?

The pandemic has created momentum when it comes to digital transformation. For example, our own progress in the last five to six months would have taken five or six years normally. The most important role of technology is business continuity, and the pandemic has proven that one cannot continue to run their business without technology infrastructure. Since I joined the company 15 years ago, the number one aim has been business continuity. When we pitch to customers, we ask if they are ready for an unforeseen disaster. At Dell Technologies, we offer end-to-end transformation and can tailor our offerings to the needs of our customers. This includes edge computing, IoT, cybersecurity, AI, and blockchain. We have a nice digital footprint when it comes to technology with our customers across the MERAT region.

What is your perspective on cybersecurity, and what does Dell do to protect itself?

Within Dell Technologies, one of the key pillars is security where we help customers transform digitally in a safe manner.

We have two companies that support our security offerings, the first being Secure Works for managed services that has an end-to-end offering with penetration testing, patching, etc. to act as the eyes and ears of our end customers. One can have the best technology in the world but without the right people to run it, it is useless; this is where Secure Works comes in to assist customers that have limited bandwidth and cannot monitor the data environment all the time. When it comes to security, we come from multiple dimensions with managed security services and point technology with RSA depending on the environment. With VMWare today, we are changing the whole security concept by making it intrinsic to the individual machine on the network side with the virtual firewall.