Bawazir has raised ProCurve's game in Saudi

Touted by HP executives as the second largest switch vendor in the world, behind only Cisco, ProCurve has enjoyed stunning year on year growth in Saudi Arabia. According to unit numbers shipments have jumped 250 percent this year, making Saudi Arabia the fastest growing territory in the whole of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. But that doesn’t surprise Bawazir, who believes that the networking arm of HP can achieve much, much more if given the right resources.

“You look at the amount of projects coming up, the likes of Medina’s Knowledge City and King Abdullah Economic City, and you know that this growth spurt will go on for a number of years. What’s good for us is that these are all Greenfield sites, which need full infrastructure solutions. Being part of HP, we can leverage off the strengths of the largest IT company in the world whilst providing solutions that are more cost effective than anything else in the switch market today,” explains Bawazir.

Comparisons with market leader Cisco are inevitable. While Cisco is choosing to invest significantly in Saudi Arabia – with the firm’s PR claiming that the giant will spend over one billion Riyals over the coming few years – HP ProCurve has yet to match Cisco’s local investment. Naturally, both Bawazir and Gauthreaux would like more people on the ground, but their numbers are made up for by a strong channel play.

“How do we play on Cisco’s weaknesses? The big thing for ProCurve is that we push the total cost of ownership. It’s not just the acquisition cost, the price of the hardware; it’s everything around it including the support, the services, the lifetime warranty, and free firmware upgrades. We work on educating customers on the full lifecycle and the full cost of ownership rather than the acquisition cost. And we try to establish in the market that we are hassle free and easy to work with [unlike competitors],” notes Gauthreaux.

Gauthreaux has been impressed by the firm's Saudi growth

“The channel is our success, it’s the reason why we do so well. Our expertise is everything around the switch, and we don’t do anything else. We develop our programmes to actually enhance the portfolio of what the channel can sell or deliver, so they can partner with best of breed vendors such as Juniper, Avaya, or Mitel to offer a complete, open solution. We are not out there trying to take the service business from the channel – we leave that for them. They can take our products, work with our solution partners and offer customers an end to end solution including installation and design. Choice is a strong incentive when you look at both the enterprise and the small to medium business market,” he adds.

Despite being enveloped in the HP brand, ProCurve’s successes have not gone unnoticed by both the channel and its competitors. HP ProCurve’s latest success in the Kingdom was an installation at Public Security of the Ministry of the Interior for the newly launched network under the leadership of Dr. Abdulrahman Al Shenaifi, senior advisor on technology and security at the Ministry of the Interior. HP ProCurve’s Adaptive Edge networking technology, which adapts to users, applications and an organization’s needs, has enabled the Public Security to utilize HP ProCurve’s ProActive Defense, including automated threat detection and response, to combat criminals.

“HP ProCurve was the only choice for us. Its state of the art networking solutions have given us an edge in fighting these crimes, and their support has been outstanding; they have put the human touch back into technology,” explains Dr. Al Shenaifi.

HP ProCurve has extended its customer base to include hospitals, medical institutions, and governmental bodies. The IT system running Riyadh’s Kingdom Hospital is based on HP ProCurve architecture, which has provided the leading medical provider with the assurance that no matter what happens its ProCurve network will be always performing.

“We are a hospital, and as such our systems need to be always running. Our people need access to applications and data; without this, their decisions could be the wrong one. As such, we need five nines reliability, and HP ProCurve has given us this. We have more performance over the network, our systems are more secure, and we have the reliability that we’ve been seeking for a long time,” notes Abdulraheem Syed, IT manager, Kingdom Hospital.

ProCurve hosted a number of end user events this summer

As Saudi Arabia’s national infrastructure is being upgraded to offer higher bandwidth speeds, companies are turning to HP ProCurve to ensure that their IT structures are future-proof. One famous name which has turned to HP ProCurve is the World Trade Center. Based in Riyadh, the World Trade Center depends on offering the best services, including high speed networking, to attract new clients and keep its present clientele happy.

“Services at WTC-Saudi depend on its quality, networking and high speed, for the assurance of today’s accelerating business requirements, we understand the needs and we are determined to furnish them. HP ProCurve has fulfilled our exacting demands, and we know that whatever our customers ask of us in terms of connectivity we can deliver. Why would we choose any other networking vendor,” says Ibrahim Al-Rubaian, CEO, World Trade Center Saudi Arabia.

ProCurve’s user base has grown across the board, especially in Jeddah. One of the leading organizations in the Kingdom comprising the poultry and entertainment industries, manufacturing, and real estate, the Fakieh Group selected HP ProCurve technology for its current infrastructure and future requirements. “The Fakieh Group is one of the largest corporations in the Western region, and to keep pace with our growth we will adopt the highest technology in managing data cross all Fakieh Group activities by implementing Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP). Our data requirements are such that only the best networking equipment will do, and that’s why we have chosen HP ProCurve,” explains Ibrahim Albow, organization development and application manager to the Fakieh Group.

“Their exceptional service levels, their lifelong warranty, and their Saudi-based staff ensure that whatever the circumstances our network will be up and running. We have found that HP ProCurve offers the highest technology with lowest total cost of ownership in the networking industry and ingoing support. For us, we had no other choice but HP ProCurve,” he adds.

But what of the channel? What’s their response been to a vendor that promises to offer them healthier margins than their major rival? Does Cisco’s services policy rankle with local solution providers? One distributor approached by IT Saudi declined to go on the record, but did maintain that ProCurve does enjoy one advantage – HP.

“People know the HP brand, they trust it and they have bought from HP over the past decades. That is HP’s gift to ProCurve and that’s why they can sell despite not having the numbers of people on the ground in Saudi Arabia,” explained the distributor.

Channel interest in ProCurve has certainly peaked over the last year. Supported by distribution powerhouses Aptec KSA, Redington, and recent entrant Almasa, ProCurve has built up a strong two-tier channel with solution integrators based all over the Kingdom and not just in the three main metropolitan areas of Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam. ProCurve’s reputation has even spread across the Kingdom’s borders to the south; an event in Yemen’s capital Sanaa drew in a record 238 attendees this month. However, Bawazir and Gauthreaux are realistic that they will need more feet on the street to meet the Kingdom’s growing demand for infrastructure solutions. ProCurve’s emerging markets boss was amazed by what he saw during his first visit to the Kingdom in June.

“After meeting with customers here I do believe the opportunities are enormous. Even though we have come off significant growth over the last year on year, I do not see why any reason why in terms of the emerging markets Saudi cannot be for the next three to five years the country that experiences the top growth for ProCurve. Saudi will be predominantly the highest growth engine for us in the region. The business and growth is coming from Saudi, and it’s not just talk like in other markets in the region. People are not just talking about projects here, but they’re bringing them to life,” notes Gauthreaux.

What he refers to as mirroring ProCurve’s strategy of placing the intelligence at the edge of the network, Gauthreaux is looking forward to bringing on board more staff to support Bawazir and his local team. “Internally we are developing a three year business plan which will require deployment of additional resources in the region, particularly in Saudi Arabia. For us the growth will come out of these additional resources, by putting feet on the street in Saudi Arabia. That is the only way we will grow the market, by deploying additional people locally to drive the business,” he adds.

Looking forward, ProCurve will be rolling out a suite of new products at Gitex. While the wraps are still on these new designs, ProCurve’s pricing strategy will ‘shake up’ the industry according to one executive in the firm. Balancing out the growth in both the small to medium business space and the enterprise arena, Gauthreaux claims that the latter holds the key for the vendor’s future growth.

“We have split ProCurve into two distinct design centres – one for the enterprise, and one for the SMB space. What we are working on is enhancing our portfolio to serve the enterprise market. In terms of budget spent and increasing demands on the network because of workforce mobility, video surveillance security, the amount of traffic that will be generated will be generated primarily by the enterprise. We are putting a lot of emphasis and design onto the enterprise part of the business. We are going to also concentrate a lot of our staffing on sales representatives rather than marketing and channel people. We are going to increase our high touch sales force. It doesn’t mean we are selling direct; our model is two-tier. We engage with customers, we sell to them and create that pull but the fulfillment is done by the channel. We’ll continue to sell through the channel,” he explains.

For the time being, if Gauthreaux, Bawazir and co are to be believed – their enthusiasm and drive speaks volumes of ProCurve’s local and international growth prospects – then Cisco won’t have it easy over the coming months. As ProCurve looks to ramp up numbers on the ground in Saudi, ProCurve’s emerging markets chief insists that once clients understand the value they can derive from ProCurve then they’ll never look anywhere else.

“I mentioned earlier that we have one competitor and that is Cisco. They know it, we know it. We battle on a daily basis to win projects. Part of it is price, but it is not just about price. When we go back to the total cost of ownership, when customers understand that it’s not just the acquisition price, but the free lifetime warranty, support, maintenance then they understand it’s not just a box to box model. That is one of the ways we are working on educating customers and being a little bit more profitable. We truly believe that we have hit new pricing points in the industry with these products that will come out this fall and they will allow us to be a bit more profitable,” notes Gauthreaux.

More resources, more choices, and lower costs? Is Bawazir looking forward to 2008 to replicate, if not exceed, his growth for 2008? The answer is a resounding yes. “One thing I would like to emphasize is that we are experts in the switch space. We have been doing this for decades. Combine that with the people we have locally, our local touch resources, and you have a winning combination. We are trying to make it easy for people to deal with us, to cut the red tape and empower the decisions to be made locally by the customer. All of that is about ease of doing business with ProCurve,” concludes Bawazir.