EVOTEQ is a renowned digital transformation catalyst that provides unique solutions to both the public and private sectors to make their transformation journeys easier. The company’s presence at GITEX comprised of a series of launches and some state-of-the-art technologies.
At GITEX technology Week 2019, Telecom Review sat down with EVOTEQ CEO, Jihad Tayara who offered us some insight into the work they have been doing across an array of industries through their digital transformation-enabling offerings.
Could you tell us about EVOTEQ’s presence at GITEX this year and the kinds of solutions you’re showcasing this year?
If you’re involved in this industry or in digital transformation and smart city projects, attending GITEX is a must. It’s not only about showcasing your latest offerings as a company, it is about the dialogue which takes place between government entities, technology companies and solution providers. This is very important and healthy.
This year, we showcased some of our most successful projects to date, notably the work we have been doing in digital transformation over the past year and how we have been able to provide solutions to support government entities and large organizations in their transformation journey. It is a long process and we are there to support them through it.
We recently announced the launch of one of our major projects which we are particularly proud of delivering as it is the first Tier 3 data center in Sharjah. The announcement has been extremely important to us and we feel that it has been vital for the city of Sharjah itself.
We are working with Khazna, our partner in building the data center. In my honest opinion, you cannot imagine a digital transformation story or a smart city without a proper Tier 3 data center.
A great deal of data gets generated from all these smart city transactions, IoT services and the transactions done on your mobile. Every single touch-point we make generates data and that data needs to sit somewhere. What better place for it to sit than a data center that will host that data in Sharjah. That’s really a major enabler that we are investing in to help the transformation in Sharjah.
Tell us about some of your latest projects here in the UAE.
Other than the project I previously mentioned, one of the other major projects we are delivering is the large-scale digital transformation of the Sharjah City Municipality (SCM).
Through this project, we plan to transform SCM’s services which accounts for 600 processes and over 200 online services. We are in fact proud to have completed the first phase of the project and are now moving onto Phase Two.
This is a very ambitious project and SCM has been such a great partner throughout the project.
In addition to this, we have also been working on the digital transformation of other government entities, the Sharjah Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Sharjah Expo Convention Centre. We are very excited about this project as it is a new journey for us to embark on and hopefully, we will deliver and help our customers through supporting them to deliver better services to their tenants.
Then there’s also our award winning ‘Office of the Future’ that we are implementing at the futuristic new headquarters of Bee’ah, which is scheduled to open next year. We are actually showcasing some of our innovations from that range at our stand during GITEX technology week such as our VR view of all the guest and visitor journeys as well as the employees and the executive operators of the building and how they will be able to interact with the building itself.
I think that this is an amazing way to show how this smart building will work, how AI-powered the building really is and how easy it will be to navigate. For example, you could walk into the building and ask it to book a meeting room for you or to get you a coffee and it will know your preferences for things like temperature and lighting. You could ask the building to do many things that we are used to seeing in sci-fi movies. You can even ask the building to take minutes of your meeting!
All of these use cases will be available and we are currently working on developing more functions. We have been using the Bee’ah headquarters as a showcase in an effort to expand this offering to the rest of the region.
We are also going to be announcing the transformation of one of the region’s important government buildings.
What are some of EVOTEQ’s key verticals and what are the challenges you have come across when dealing with them?
Apart from the data center announcement and Office of the Future, we are also working on a lot of other projects and propositions in the market. We have developed a SmartTrack, which is essentially a track-and-trace solution that has the ability to support a variety of industries.
For instance, this platform enables you to track and trace auto parts from the time they are manufactured, all the way to the time they are bought. It is very important to make sure that those auto parts are genuine, available and traceable through their value chain.
A very important implementation of that platform is in the healthcare sector especially because it would have an impact on saving lives. We are now in the final stage with the Ministry of Health in a smart track-and-trace project in the pharmaceutical industry. More than 14,000 types of medicines come into the UAE and the platform we are providing will enable us to track them from the time they enter the country, to know where they are, and if they are actually good for specific cases. Most importantly, the data and analytics that will be generated from it will give us greater insight into how to further improve processes or to eliminate certain products which are not suitable for the respective customer.