Experts during the online event ' Digitization of SMEs: An Alternative To Survive'.
Cloud computing is a key enabler for SMEs, and it is growing rapidly in the public and private sector. It is already getting popular in Qatar, said an expert in cloud computing. Companies need to develop skills and know-how in understanding virtualization and distributed computing.
The Ministry of Transport & Communications (MoTC) and Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) yesterday organised a virtual forum entitled ‘Digitization of SMEs: An Alternative To Survive’. The event introduced SMEs in Qatar to the era of digital transformation. Shifting from decision-based traditional models to data-driven models, the world of business needs to adapt to the new practices to increase its efficiency in a rapidly changing economy. The forum featured speakers from HBKU, and MoTC. It reviewed best international and regional practices in digital transformation using cloud services in the business and introduced a success story from Qatar and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) challenges and dealing with recent trends in digitization and automation.
Speaking during the forum, Dr. Yazen Al Safi, Digital Industry Development Director, MoTC said, “The focus of the forum is to offer Qatar’s SMEs the opportunity to expand their knowledge and learn from experts to use emerging technology concepts and digital transformation journey. Last year was a challenging year because of COVID-19 pandemic and created a lot of strain on our society and economy. On the contrary it demonstrated there is always a room in the way we work, live, and connect with each other. Since the beginning of pandemic technology has given ability to be agile, to continue working and find solutions for most pressing issues and hope for returning to normalcy.”
“To have SMEs tackle the impact of the pandemic, MoTC organized a series of interactives lectures with 67 multinational, regional, and local ICT service providers to deliver services over the Internet virtually and effectively with the help of ICT technology. In this period 3895 SMEs attended and about 1600 acquired new technology solutions to start or continue with digital transformation roadmap,” he added.
“In 2021 we will continue using digital forums as a platform for helping SMEs in COVID-19 post-recovery by supporting them in building resilience."
This will be done through raising awareness on the latest technology trends and concepts and engaging the various digital industry stakeholders including policy makers, large, medium, and small businesses, and academia with aim of accelerating in digital transformation of the SMEs sector,” he said.
Dr. Mounir Hamdi, Dean of College and Science at HBKU welcomed participants to the event. He said, “Now a days we are witnessing industrial revolution which is surrounded by data analytics. So, the topics of cloud computing and Blockchain are very important which will be discussed in these two days for SMEs and big companies to survive and they have to be at the forefront of these latest technologies.”
Aiman Erbad, Associate Professor at the College of Science and Engineering at HBKU, talked about digital transformation through cloud and edge computing. He explained about cloud, how adoption is happening and shared a story of medium size company that has attempted a cloud first approach and explored the notion of age computing.
He said, “Between the year 2013 and 2018 there was a huge annual year on year growth of 30 percent which has been seen in last five years. The pace has accelerated due to the pandemic as a lot of companies and governments are moving to cloud as a platform as there are so many services that are provided.”
“The adoption was small in 2018 but it is accelerating now especially with Qatari government having a deal with a cloud provider Microsoft Azure to have a data center in Qatar and providing this as a service to government and private sector,” he added.
He discussed about the interoperability issues that have paved the way for cloud solutions, cloud computing structure, and implementation challenges. And shared the basics of the cloud mode, services and shared resources and the use of containers and virtual machines.
AlHasan Al Sammarraie, Founding Partner and General Manager, AppLab talked about Advancement in Technology and Impact on Business Growth: Cloud Computing and Data Driven Intelligence. He introduced AppLab which is a software development company.
According to Al Sammarraie cloud and data driven intelligence are the most enabler technologies that will drive all other technologies and advancements in industries for years to come. “We are in era of industrial revolution that is mainly around smart systems and technologies such as IoT, cloud computing, data, business process automation etc,” he added.
