A Qatari joint venture company is leading the nation's IT revolution
Located in the Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP) - a sector-specific park in Doha - is a Company which claims to be helping redefine Qatar's IT landscape.
MEEZA, a Qatar Foundation joint venture, is one of the organisations, charged with spearheading the creation of a knowledge economy in the country, and has every reason to be optimistic.
A February 2012 report by Business Monitor International (BMI) reckoned IT services would be Qatar's fastest-growing IT market segment up to 2016, by which time IT services spending would top QR1 billion ($274 million), a 15 per cent compound annual growth rate from this year.
The Qatari government, meanwhile, has stated it would invest QR6 billion on information technology and IT services as part of its ICT-2015 strategy.
"MEEZA is investing in the overall development of this nation," Ghada P El Rassi, MEEZA's deputy chief executive officer, tells The Gulf. "We seek to accelerate IT sector competition and support Qatar's economic growth through world-class IT solutions and outsourcing to the market," she adds.
The Company finds itself at the nexus of national IT infrastructure creation, and has built a diverse stable of customers representing some of Qatar's fastest-growing sectors: agribusiness, science and research, telecoms, education, government, healthcare, real estate and transport. The Qatar National Convention Centre is also on its books.
El Rassi suggests keeping pace with Qatar's rapid economic growth and almost limitless ambitions to become an IT-driven knowledge hub, keeps the Company on its toes. "The local market is still growing. Adopting technological innovation into infrastructure development remains a major challenge," she explains. This is especially true of cloud computing, she says.
MEEZA, which was named best cloud services provider in the Middle East and North Africa in 2010 and 2011 having launched 'pay-per-use' cloud services in 2010, plans to build on its capabilities in this area.
"MEEZA was created in line with Qatar Foundation's mission to develop a knowledge-based economy," el Rassi remarks. To meet its goals, the Company opened two new data centres in Qatar at the beginning of this year, complementing an existing data centre set up at its QSTP headquarters in 2008.
Secure facilities where local public and private sector organisations protect their IT assets and run critical applications without needing their own IT systems, they add a new dimension to Qatar's native IT capabilities.
"The data centres are internationally accredited, so why go out of the country?" el Rassi asks. "Data is protected under the same regulations and legislation as the Qatari client. For redundancy purposes, we have three interconnected data centres in geographically diverse locations within Qatar," she explains. "This offers highly available, yet highly secure environments compared to data centres out of the country."
The Company has come a long way since it was set up to service a QR125 million contract with Vodafone Qatar in late 2008.
At its Command and Control Centre in Doha, MEEZA engineers scrutinise a video wall which displays real time information about the availability, performance and security of client IT systems. The first and still only facility of its type in Qatar, it enables any issues to be addressed as they occur. Recently, the Company introduced for the first time a range of disaster recovery solutions to reinforce the security of its clients' data assets.
Given projected market growth, and the expectation among most industry watchers that the years leading up to the 2022 World Cup will fuel a "wave of investments" in IT products and services, the scope of business is set to expand commensurately.
Emboldened by its track record in Qatar, MEEZA now seeks to replicate its success regionally, according to El Rassi. Few would bet against it doing so.
© The Gulf 2012
