REGIONAL CHANNELS
CSC
Ready to enable digital transformation for enterprises
For five years CSC has been embedding digital transformation technologies internally and is now in a position to help enterprises make the change .
Over the last two years there has been a significant change in the macroeconomic fundamentals and geopolitical balance in the region . As a result , CSC has seen a shift in the spending behavior of its customer base across the region . The IT purchasing process has become increasingly driven around business use cases , with expectations of tangible return on investment , and request for additional details across the purchase process .
On one hand , spending decisions are being revisited and business heads are being pressured to look for new revenue streams using innovation . Even spending patterns are changing , moving away from upfront capital asset investments to consumption based payments . On the other hand , executives are increasingly engaging with CSC on how to move forward from here .
“ While spending has been tightened , this has opened up interesting conversations on changing business
SNAPSHOT
Alok Bapna is Managing Director Middle East and Africa at CSC
models , operating models , outsourcing , cloud , big data and finding new ways to monetise existing assets ,” says Alok Bapna , Managing Director , Middle East and Africa , CSC .
CSC first entered the Middle East region in 1978 , initially starting in Saudi Arabia . In 2004 Covansys , which was later to be acquired by CSC in 2007 , started engagement with Emirates . In 2004 Covansys also started SAP implementation in the region . At the time of Covansys acquisition in 2007 , project engagements with Emirates had clocked 200 + man years . In 2009 , CSC on-boarded Qatar Airways and started its first Oracle services engagement .
In 2012 , CSC opened Abu Dhabi and Qatar offices and reached the milestone of 50 customer accounts . In 2013 , the Middle East and Africa regional offices were merged . At present the , consolidated CSC Middle East and Africa operations include 750 + employees , 100 + customer accounts , and six operational offices . CSC operates in UAE , Qatar , Saudi Arabia , Kuwait , Oman , South Africa .
For the regional operations of the $ 8 billion global system integrator , these are not unfamiliar expectations coming from its customer base .
Globally CSC has strategic vendor partnerships with Amazon Web Services , AT & T , Dell EMC , HCL , Hitachi , IBM , Lenovo , Microsoft , Oracle , Salesforce , SAP , Workday , ServiceNow . CSC also maintains alliances with 100 + other vendors in 25 countries .
On the technology platform side , offerings from CSC include workplace , cloud , cyber security , mobility , social , application services , next gen networks , storage , consulting , big data , analytics . The vertical markets include banking , healthcare , insurance , manufacturing , retail , energy , transportation , public sector .
“ Doing more with less is always an interesting conversation and one that CSC is particularly quite good at ,” continues Bapna . Being agnostic to any one vendor , CSC is regionally leveraging its broad platform of vendor alliances and technology competencies to offer what works best for the customer . “ This enables us to really put the customer in the centre and design solutions that cater just for that .”
CSC is also able to leverage business expectations and decisions to move from capital expenditure to operational expenditure spending . Its key partnerships with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure enable CSC to meet these expectations .
“ Capex to opex shifts and the interest in the cloud is also an interesting move that we look to capitalise further ,” adds
26 Issue 02 INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS