Saudi Fawaz Alhokair moves to AWS to accelerate digital transformation

RIYADH — Fawaz Abdulaziz Alhokair & Co., one of the largest franchise retailers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, MENA, Central Asia and Caucasus regions, announced that it is moving the vast majority of its technology infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to empower the company with the most advanced cloud technologies to serve the customers better.

This cloud transformation will observe the company moving its last on-premises data center to the AWS Cloud by the end of this year 2019 to accelerate its overall digital transformation strategy. Alhokair is working with AWS Advanced Consulting Partner Computer World International to support the migration and continued adoption of AWS services.

Earlier this year, Alhokair, whose brand portfolio includes over 75+ brands , developed an IT infrastructure and cloud strategy, and Marwan Makarzel, CEO of the company said that this strategy is focused on helping the business adapt to the fast changing retail industry that today is omni channel and catering to a digitally connected consumer base. The company chose AWS as its preferred cloud provider because of its agility and breadth of services.

In its first phase of cloud adoption, Alhokair moved its core line-of-business applications to AWS, which have seen significant improvement in scalability, availability and performance. As Alhokair continues its cloud adoption, the company will be building its ecommerce and Business Intelligence (BI) platforms on AWS as it develops its omni channel strategy.

The ecommerce platforms will be supported by analytics, prediction and recommendation engines that leverage machine learning services such as Amazon Sagemaker and Amazon Forecast to provide a personalized shopping experience.

Alhokair is looking forward to take advantages of its large retail data sets with data analytics services such as Amazon Redshift to acquire better business and customer insights. The adoption of AWS will also enable the company to enhance warehouse management systems operations with the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions to reduce costs and bring greater efficiencies.

Commenting on the collaboration with AWS, Mohammed Alenazi CIO of information technology in Fawaz Abdulaziz Alhokair & Co., said: “Cloud adoption is a significant step in our digital transformation journey and we are excited by the innovation opportunities we are building on AWS. We have been able to make this incredible shift within a 60-day timeframe only. In today’s fast changing retail landscape, we recognize the importance of being agile, scalable, speed and availability, and the AWS Cloud is the perfect solution for us to do that. As a customer centric company, we are now in a position to pilot and innovate rapidly in order to satisfy our customers and bring them the best shopping experiences.”

Vinod Krishnan, head of Middle East, AWS, said: “The retail industry is going through significant changes with companies needing to adapt quickly to changing consumer behavior who are increasingly shopping online. We are excited to work with Alhokair’s forward-thinking approach to digital transformation with cloud adoption, driven by its focus on catering to customer needs. Building its infrastructure on AWS will enable the company to be innovative in ways never possible before, and we look forward to support in their continued growth.”