Egyptian Minister of Communications and Information Technology Yasser El-Kady has inaugurated on Thursday a new office and a developed centre in Maadi Technology Park for BARQ Systems Company, a leading regional provider of ICT solutions. The inauguration is part of the company's 2020 strategy to expand its business into new markets, promote ICT services and employ latest technologies and technological trends, to be one of the key pioneers of technology platforms in the region. The opening ceremony was attended by Amr Abdullah Al-Dabbagh, the CEO and Chairman of Al-Dabbagh Group, a Saudi Arabia-based company and the parent company of BARQ Systems, Juniper Networks CEO Rami Rahim and ITIDA CEO Asmaa Hosni. This is in addition to an elite of senior customer representatives of BARQ Systems in Egypt. In his speech delivered on this occasion, El-Kady ascertained that the Egyptian market in the ICT field is a promising one and has all the elements of growth, adding that Egypt is doing its utmost in order to regain its advanced position in this area, and set itself a distinct imprint on the technology world map. Egypt aims to enhance exporting services using IT outsourcing system, increase Egyptian software export rates and provide excellent job opportunities for young people in this industry in which Egypt's youth have proven their real capabilities and high skills. He added that attracting investments to the sector is one of the most prominent areas of work contained in the strategic plan of the Ministry communications and Information Technology (MCIT), to provide more jobs, and benefit from the natural factors that Egypt enjoys and the stability it witnesses currently. For his part, Al-Dabbagh said that the opening of this new office in Egypt is a key step under the general strategy of the company targeting through which investing about 90 million dollars by 2020 in order to establish its presence and strengthen its offerings in the ICT field, providing more than 1,000 additional jobs, and evaluating a number of acquisition opportunities in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa with a focus on IT services. BARQ Systems CEO Mahmoud Soliman, stated that the new office of the company in Maadi would provide around 300 direct job opportunities and 400 indirect ones this year. He added that the human capital is one of the company's key assets and Egypt has immense potential for future growth. In the meanwhile, the company possesses all the qualifications necessary to seize fully these opportunities, a matter which led the company to open this new office in Egypt, to provide comfortable environment, thus improve capabilities. He also added that Cairo, Maadi in particular, was selected to incubate the new office and be the new starting point for the company operations in the Middle East and Africa region, for the global class facilities it offers, along with the availability of talents and vast experience in the ICT sector in Egypt. BARQ Systems operates in Egypt for 17 years under the name of "Salec Egypt". It is keen to expand it business into new areas and achieve growth in key areas of work to become one of the fastest growing ICT platforms in the region. The company practices its activities in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates and seeks to expand its presence in the East and West regions of the African continent. From the company's perspective, Cairo is a rich source of talents and skills, providing all the necessary factors to drive growth ahead for the company throughout various parts of the region. BARQ Systems is specialized in the ICT Egyptian market since 1999, focusing in particular on cooperation with telecom service providers and large corporations. The company targets 400 million Egyptian pounds (US $ 45 million) as returns in 2016. The company's customers list in Egypt entails Telecom Egypt, TE Data, Vodafone, Orange, Etisalat Egypt, Arab African International Bank (AAIB), and Commercial International Bank (CIB), alongside many other prominent clients. BARQ Systems is considered a business unit for Al-Dabbagh Group, and its executive IT arm. BARQ Systems intends to open the first data center in the region within its new office as part of a long-term strategic relationship with California-based Juniper Networks, a leading company in the field of secure and scalable networks. The company aims, via this step, to showcase the two companies potentials in the areas of cloud computing, virtualization solutions, big data analysis, Internet of things (IoT), Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) techniques. It targets, through this collaboration, to create a huge market estimated at 3 billion US dollars from IT markets in Egypt by 2020.
