RIYADH, 24 September 2007 -- Advanced Electronics Co. (AEC) has launched an Environmental Monitoring System (EMS) for monitoring the working environment or sending out alarms in hazardous areas.
"The EMS is a plug-and-play system that enables monitoring the environmental condition of a facility. It is only a click away," Dr. Ghassan A. Al-Shibl, president & CEO of AEC, told Arab News.
He said the device works either as a stand-alone unit or as part of an integrated system. It is easy to install and communicates through the client's local area network (LAN).
Another advantage is its ability to conduct remote monitoring of the client's working environment and issue hazard alarm, if necessary.
Referring to AEC's participation in the recent Gitex held in Dubai, Al-Shibl said they displayed a wide range of their IT and industrial products concerning industrial automation, telemetry systems, machine-to-machine (M2M) systems, security solutions, assets tracking and management and fleet management solutions, automatic meter reading systems, EMS and real-time systems. He described the response to the roadshow as positive.
As for the market potential, the CEO said "Saudi Arabia is a very important market and in coming years we expect to play a major role in the IT sector."
He pointed out that AEC delivers cost-effective machine-to-machine (M2M) solutions in different fields. Where vending machines are concerned, a company could remotely find out using M2M, if a vending machine is empty and needs service. In the health care sector, M2M devices can be interfaced to medical equipment, such as a patient's chair, doctor's tablet PCs, ECG machines and treadmills.
Another promising area for the AEC, according to Al-Shibl, is the industrial sector, for which the company has launched SER (Sequence of Events Recorder) for accurately recording the events and storing them in a database for future retrieval. In view of its usefulness in the industrial field, it has a huge market potential in factories where SER devices are being increasingly used. According to a report published by the Saudi Industrial Development Fund (SIDF), the sector contributed 13 percent to the Kingdom's GDP by the end of last year.
Meanwhile, the Kingdom's non-oil manufacturing sector grew by 10.1 percent in real terms, creating a huge market potential for such recording devices.
AEC also sees immense opportunities for MADAR (total fleet management systems) -- a computer-based tracking system that allows the fleet operators to monitor vehicles from a remote location using GPS satellite technology.
The 9/11 events and global security concerns have prompted the Kingdom to lay more emphasis on internal security. Against this background, the security/safety equipment and technology market is likely to give a boost to the security equipment imports by approximately 11-13 percent over the next few years. The Kingdom has become the world's fastest growing single market for security equipment and technology, which AEC hopes to tap as a leading electronic company.
By Javid Hassan
© Arab News 2007
