“Microsoft is crucial for Qatar since the country is going through a transformational journey over the past and next few years to come, as they are trying to diversify their hydro-carbon economy into a technology-based economy. Basically, diversifying the economy to depend more on SMEs, stressing on education and healthcare to name a few, and all those areas are strategic ones for us,” says Naim Yazbeck, General Manager of Microsoft Qatar. Microsoft Qatar first opened in Doha more than a decade ago in partnership with Qatar Foundation. In 2008, Microsoft was one of the first tenants to move to the Qatar Science and Technology Park, and it is the largest multinational technology company in the Arabian Peninsula. Yazbeck adds that the Qatari market is one of a kind, since the country has a clear 2030 National Vision highlighting a well-defined execution plan in order to accomplish the vision. “This makes it pretty interesting
for us, because we can clearly focus on the vision, and be able to leverage our valuable position to try to intact the execution of this vision.” On another note, last year, Microsoft unveiled Windows 8.1, an upgrade for Windows 8. It was released as a part of a shift by Microsoft towards regular, yearly major updates for its platforms and services. Among some of the visible enhancements include an improved start screen, additional snaps views, and more bundled applications. “Windows 8.1 definitely has been a success for us. It brings together a mobile and a desktop platform along with a lot of applications. Since it came one year after Windows 8, it just proves that we are pushing the boundary in new versions. When normally we use to put versions every three years. We have changed the modem that we are going to deliver a version every year now. We have definitely with 8.1, made a major step towards mobility, and towards playing a bigger role into mobility and this is also a strategic transformation for us on the way– having products on the consumer and commercial markets as well.” According to Yazbeck, Microsoft is also shifting into being a cloud and service company. “The big focus is on the cloud and innovations in that area. There are a lot of innovations coming [soon] on mobile devices, mobile operation systems and definitely for instance enterprise social – which is also taking a lot of focus in terms of innovation because it is becoming the trend especially in enterprise. Adding to this what we call big data and how we do leverage and all of this data that is around us. For instance, to be able to a make a decision that helps our business. So, those are the areas where you are going to see a lot of innovations coming from Microsoft over the next months and years and we are pretty excited on the road map that its existing.” He further underlines how the SME market in Qatar is unquestionably leveraging all the innovations that are coming to the market, specifically around the cloud. “One of the big issues in SMEs was that it was fairly difficult for them to make initial investments into technology, which was expensive. With the cloud – it is giving them enterprise class services at very affordable prices. SMEs now can leverage those technologies in order to make them more compatible, allow them to grow faster beyond the geography of Qatar and go global. Therefore, there is a lot of value of the cloud, enterprise social, and mobility innovation that is coming to Qatar.” As a result, the cloud is going to be the key area of Microsoft’s strategy, in other words, Microsoft is going to build software and hardware, and provide consumers and commercial customers a variety of options. “The combination of devices and services is going to give our consumers and commercial customers the ability to enjoy the product technology in order to move forward and get things done in a much better way than it is getting done today. In Qatar specifically, there is a lot of focus around education in general.” Simultaneously, Microsoft has multiple programs, which are already launched in Qatar to support entrepreneurs. This year, Microsoft signed an agreement with Silatech called the Employability Portal, in order to assist the youth and entrepreneurs in their respective career paths. The portal provides available courses to develop professional skills, a job search function in addition to youth mentoring by professionals and social networking. Silatech is a dynamic social initiative that works to create jobs and expand economic opportunities for young people throughout the Arab world, founded in 2008 by Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser. “[The Employability Portal] has been launched in five, six countries now. It is going through all the Arab countries and its success has been tremendous around it. Other few programs include the YouthSpark, which allows young people to have access to software and expertise in order to build their businesses. We have around 20,000 people in Qatar enrolled in this program and 22 startups,” adds Yazbeck. MicrosoftEqually important is the Imagine Cup Pan Arab 2014, a global student technology program and competition, which provides opportunities for pupils across all disciplines to team up and use their knowledge of technology to create applications, games and integrated solutions that can change the way we live, work and play. The Imagine Cup Pan Arab Semi Finals event will take place in June of this year with the participation of 24 teams representing 12 Arab countries, and the finals will be held in July in Seattle. “They will compete with each other but also to learn from each other, share information with each other and try to use technology to take out all of those boundaries we have today in the Arab world. There is a lot of excitement around it and the outcome that is going to achieve due to the support that Qatar as a country is giving to the youth and entrepreneurs in general,” says Yazbeck. He also believes that the region is undoubtedly lacking the innovation and entrepreneurship way of thinking- adding that the idea of the Imagine Cup leverages technology in order to solve any problem. “Programs such as the Imagine Cup focuses on Arab students and motivates them to think more about innovation and entrepreneurship on top of promoting education, and developing technology into education.” Consequently, he highlights the importance of such initiatives for Qatar since the tiny Gulf state is trying to positively impact on education, sup- port youth in the Arab world, and entrepreneurship. “SMEs is such an important topic in Qatar and in the Gulf region and we will continue to focus on education on programs such as Imagine Cup because we think successful entrepreneurship strategy starts from strong education, and today education without technology is honestly useless. We are going to continue to support education, continue to provide cloud services that allow SMEs to leverage technology at a very competitive price– at the same time allow them to grow and expand and be more competitive,” continues Yazbeck, “We are going to continue to provide free class services to students at university for them to think and leverage technology in a different perspective, and to think the entrepreneurship way– not only to get a job. Therefore, putting all this together and we will continue our focus on this area being such an important area for the government.” Microsoft Surface ProIn conjunction with the National Vision 2030, Microsoft Qatar’s strategy will also assist the government into gradually leaning towards e-learning to enhance the education outcome. “We will continue to focus on the economic pillar of the strategy by supporting SMEs, and putting a lot of program initiatives to develop an SME industry that can leverage technology. And we are going to continue to help the social pillar by assisting the government use technology to deliver better services to Qataris and expatriates. Our strategy is going to be very much aligned with the National Vision over the next years, and we are pretty confident that we will play a role and technology will play a big role in impacting the execution of the strategy.” While Yazbeck admits that Microsoft was undeniably behind on the mobile platform in comparison to Apple and Android, he says that the company is certainly advancing with the competition. “We are definitely now at a strong number three ahead of BlackBerry. In Italy, France, Brazil and Mexico, we have more than 10% of the market share and growing faster than Apple for example. We are catching up very quickly and I believe the success of Windows 8.1 is going to help us push forward. We respect Android and Apple and we believe they are strong competitors but we think that we are on the right track to also challenge the mobile platform industry and be definitely a strong third platform available.”
