“Connecting the world. As the UK expands its investment in STEM sectors, these firms are developing cutting-edge technology and building new ways to stay connected.”
This text is taken from a post by Business Insider / Insider Studios, which lists Digis Squared, what3words, CommAgility, pureLiFi and Speechmatics as five of the most innovative UK telecoms and technology firms. Read their full article here.
The telecoms and technology industries are likely to keep up their rapid rate of expansion over the next decade. This presents an opportunity for investment and development in the companies that are driving progress forward.
These 5 UK-based firms are highly innovative in their fields, from using light to enable wireless internet, to deploying artificial intelligence (AI), to removing bias in speech recognition. These are the companies whose pioneering technology will capitalize on an increasingly connected world.
Digis Squared
Digis Squared enables telecom operators and communications service providers to optimize, upgrade, manage, and enhance their networks. Its clients include the likes of Vodafone, Telefónica, and Telecom Egypt, and it has offices in the UK, Egypt, and Dubai — as well as a new site in Luanda, Angola, which opened in October.
“Our new office in Luanda will on-board a team of over 40 engineers providing managed services for the entire Africell Angola network,” Mohamed Hamdy, the company’s chief commercial officer, said. The new office will also support “the commercial launch of [Africell Angola’s] new network to the public in 2022.”
Africa is a huge market for the firm, which also plans to open a new facility in Saudi Arabia in 2022. Key priorities for the year include expanding its footprint in its target markets and doubling its revenue. The rollout of 5G — and planning for 6G deployment — means the need for communication technology is likely to dramatically increase in both scale and complexity. This will lead to increased demand for Digis Squared’s services over the next five to 10 years, according to CEO Ziad Khalil.
“The ability for our business to work internationally is vital — communication is both constrained and unlimited by boundaries,” Hamdy added. “Digis Squared was set up as a multi-country operation and international trade has been at the heart of our approach right from the start. Working with DIT has been a key pillar of this.”
As new technology and demand for innovation leap forward, new ways to communicate will also need to accelerate. An international approach for telecoms and tech companies is crucial, and with support from the public sector to build relationships and provide investment, there is a bright future ahead.
Differentiation through operational excellence. ◦ Ahmed Zein, Digis Squared Co-Founder and Chief Operations & Delivery Officer, shares his experience and thoughts on the vital role the Operations function plays in differentiating your business. Plus, as his new Managed Services team gets ready for the commercial launch of a network, he shares insights into key areas of current focus.
Differentiation and success
What differentiates leading organizations from their less successful rivals? More often than not, it comes down to how they manage their Operations. No matter how great the business strategy, or how large the investment, the Operations Team, the efficiency and customer experience they can achieve, can ultimately determine which business wins and who is left behind.
A workplace philosophy where problem-solving, teamwork, and leadership are core to the way people work together and collaborate, results in the continuous improvement of an organization,” shared Ahmed. “Focusing consistently on the customers’ needs, keeping employees positive and empowered, and continually improving the current activities in the workplace to deliver a better outcome in the future – all of this requires energy and commitment. However, this is a virtuous circle of improvement – keep doing it, and you’ll keep improving, the more energy and commitment you put in, the bigger the improvement you’ll get out.
There are five key areas I’ll be focussing on with the Digis Squared team during this phase. Working together, the team in the Digis Squared Delivery and Operations Centre in Luanda, backed up with staff in our Technology and Customer Support Centre in Cairo, will ensure an on-schedule, optimised network launch, and maintain smooth operational performance throughout.
One: Preparing the Squad
As with any project we work on, preparing the squad for this mission is our top priority. Designing a complete program, and establishing a high achieving attitude and sports-behaviour in the team and its structure, help us all to succeed. The squad needs a dynamic attitude to problem-solving, and an ambitious target to achieve success together.
With all our projects, we carefully consider the specific skills, experience and expertise we need. In recruiting the squad it’s also critical to our success together that we have a strong and aligned sense of purpose, and a strong fit with the Digis Squared culture and sports-team ethos. It’s vitally important to the way in which we operate that we work together as a squad – we help each other, we share knowledge, we learn from and help each other. It’s about both leadership and personal accountability, as well as knowledge sharing. In an area as complex as network technology, almost all issues can only be solved by working together, asking questions, and listening to the experience and ideas of others. We achieve and learn more together.
And this is one of the key differences between Operational Efficiency and Operational Excellence. Efficiency focuses only on how things are done, and doing them better – faster, cheaper, fewer errors, continuous improvement. These are the basics. But Operational Excellence is far wider, it aims to create a culture within the team and company that is conducive to efficient and sustainable long-term growth. The strongly aligned sense of purpose, solving problems and succeeding together as a squad, that is vital to achieving Operational Excellence.
Some of the Digis Squared Luanda Squad, February 2022
Two: Multi-Vendor Management
Vendor management is not as simple as monitoring a mathematical set of KPIs, and a lengthy document filled with SLA words. As a team, we know that the success of any operations is reliant on sound relationships, and clear communications. The Digis Squared way is to always try and bridge the gaps in understanding, to clarify discussions, to identify a mis-fit in technologies, or a gap within a contract and resolve misunderstandings before they become problematic – and critically, to propose a solution.
Yes, of course we report on KPIs, and when an SLA isn’t being hit,but we also work hard to bridge that gap between the vendor and the operator. We work hard to build connections with the vendor’s teams, and work collaboratively together, running user acceptance tests and handovers across all domains.
Three: Performance & Field Management through NOC
Digis Squared’s Managed Services will ensure we achieve full monitoring of the network, corrective and preventive maintenance, network configuration and change management. All of this will be accomplished with operational excellence strategies by improving network availability, maintaining all network KPIs, enhancing quality of service to end customers, improving customer experience and reducing operating cost, as well as capitalizing on network automation and automating all automatable network procedures, across both front and back-office activities.
Read more about INOS here – and the bottom of that page also has links to using INOS in LTE 450 or 600MHz network, 5G and customer case studies.
One of the most important KPIs in Managed Services contracts is the focus on Network Performance KPIs as one of the most important goals. Digis Squared’s cognitive tools are used to provide active monitoring of the network. We use INOS for drive testing, and there are plenty of recent blogs about that! [See list at end of blog.]
Digis-One is a key tool for any Operations team. We typically passively monitor the network performance using Digis-One, our cognitive, multi-vendor, multi-technology Unified Fault Management (UFM) solution delivering centralized dashboard and alarming monitoring system for the Front and Back Office Teams. Digis-One facilitates all systems/interfaces monitoring, in addition to automating the most time-critical manual work, including automated generation and assignment of Trouble Tickets to the team responsible for solving the network issue. Digis-One delivers a significant impact on SLAs and Mean Time to Repair.
Generally, when undertaking a Managed Services contract, field maintenance is one of the top priorities. Responsive teams on the ground undertake corrective and preventive actions across the network, fixing issues before they become a problem. The Operations Squad assess KPIs, and proactively lead the way to ensuring improved customer experience. Working together, this delivers efficiency, expansion and business success.
The field maintenance service will utilise available data (network, environment, events etc.) and our cognitive tools to schedule preventive maintenance plans and optimise resource utilisation. Mindful of the various contractual SLAs and targets, together, I field maintenance and NOC teams will ensure complete coordination and alignment for all field and site access activities.
Four: Clear Change Management
A newly launched network encounters a lot of dynamic changes and interactions across all domains. I’ve experienced the dynamic situations new network deployments encounter many times before, and know that creative thinking, sound analytical practices and strong teamwork can together solve the issues which will arise. Actively managing and considering the sequence of changes require deep consideration and experience. Careful planning is needed to consider how unforeseen risks or incidents will be handled, what processes will be followed, and how unplanned changes will be addressed.
We’re at a really exciting stage of this project. Combining the skills, expertise and experience of our staff, and our AI-led tools and processes, we’re confident the squad we are building will deliver differentiation through operational excellence.
Five: Application Development Management
As a greenfield mobile network, benefits from the high demands and expectations of the commercial teams to launch ambitious, state of the art products & services to the market, pushing at the competitive and technological edge of possibilities.
With this in mind, the Digis Squared team believe it is important to bring the concept of Application Development Management, ADM, with a DevOps flavour to this Managed Service contract. Merging the development and IT/BSS operations, the goal of our ADM team is to reduce the time between a system needed development or change and its deployment into the production environments. In turn, this reflects on and enhances the time to market to materialize a commercial requirement into a real technical output, deployed on the product IT/VAS nodes. To put that another way, we’ll be using ADM techniques to develop, test and deploy rapid, noticeable improvements in an ongoing continuous loop, perhaps even before the end customer notices there was ever an issue.
Working in this way, as a DevOps team, both the development staff, and the staff in charge of operations, are in deep communication with each other – they are ONE team! There is enhanced cross-knowledge and collaboration between the developers and IT operations, assessing and solving issues together, and a more seamless workflow that eliminates sizeable knowledge silo’s which are found in traditional models. The result is the smooth deployment of technology, such as software and updates in the safest, most reliable way possible.
Differentiation through operational excellence
It’s an exciting time for the Digis Squared team globally, and we’re ready for this. It’s great to work with clients with clear ambitions, and high targets for excellence. Sharing knowledge, ensuring utilisation of cognitive systems and clear processes, building a superb team. We’re working closely with our client and the other partners to ensure this new network achieves commercial success, and one of the secrets in how we will achieve that together is with differentiation through operational excellence.
In conversation with Ahmed Zein, Digis Squared Co-Founder and Chief Operations & Delivery Officer.
If you or your team would like to discover more about our capabilities, please get in touch: use this link or email sales@DigisSquared.com .
In this blog post, Ahmed AboulGheit, Head of Sourcing at Digis Squared, shares his insights into the Strategic Sourcing Consultancy we deliver. This capability is just part of the Consultancy work we undertake, and this blog provides an insight into how we help our clients bridge the gaps between service providers and new technologies, and enable smarter networks.
What is Strategic Sourcing Consultancy?
“An efficient and capable multi-purpose multi-tool in your toolkit!,” explains Ahmed.
The Strategic Sourcing Consultancy we deliver covers six key areas,
Spend optimisation planning – using different scenarios to forecast and plan.
Communication and alignment across departments and multiple operating businesses.
End to end Sourcing process review and tuning.
Scope formalisation, to ensure end-to-end coverage, and eliminate gaps in delivery and support.
Terms and Conditions review and validation, ensuring appropriate vendor liability is defined and avoiding any risks to the client.
Tender process validation and governance: everything from process definition to tender documentation writing and issuance, selection processes and assessments, regulatory obligations, and all aspects of governance.
Total spend optimisation, it’s not all about direct price
You might be surprised to read that, but it’s true! Often, there are times when gaps in the contract reveal themselves partway through project delivery, meaning that extra budget needs to be granted for the project to be successfully completed. To mitigate this, your Sourcing Team need to have a deep understanding of the technical requirements, as well as their commercial implications and the contractual liabilities that have to be set on vendors. Achieving a good contracted price on the front page of the contract is often defined as success, but Strategic Sourcing looks at the optimisation of total spend, across the entire project lifecycle.
This blog focuses on scope formalisation, as that is a hot topic with many of our clients currently.
Scope formalisation
This subject is critical to ensuring robust, practical and well drafted contracts. No-one wants to work within a contract framework that is full of gaps, ambiguity and misunderstanding – relationships will quickly unravel, co-operation become strained, and ultimately customer experience will be impacted and extra budget needs will pop up. This is particularly true within telecoms infrastructure projects, where different generations of technologies from multiple vendors are sitting alongside each other, and technical interoperability problems are a normal part of the scope of all projects. Additionally, internal and external scope responsibilities intersect, and compromise and priorities need to be balanced.
To avoid this, scope formalisation plays a vital part of the development of the contract framework. Identifying the correct stakeholders and setting the project lifecycle helps manage expectations and boundaries. Defining the requirements with all stakeholders, while challenging them to ensure there are no gaps is vital to ensuring a successful project. Keep an open mind, be curious and explore ambiguity: what if this happens?, what about that situation? Revealing uncertainty in the scope, and clarifying or mitigating for it is an important component of scope formalisation.
Methodically classifying the scope into internal and external responsibilities helps reveal a clearer understanding of the stakeholders’ interests and priorities. The detailed work of translating their requirements into meaningful contractual conditions, while retaining clear engineering objectives is critical to scope formalisation. All of these elements are key aspects to consider and take care of, and the skill and expertise of Strategic Sourcing staff are vital to help you to best design and achieve them.
Scope formalisation requires a deep understanding of both Engineering and Contractual languages. Strategic Sourcing staff in the Telecom industry provide the vital role in understanding, challenging, clarifying and formalising the translation. A sound knowledge of Engineering language is needed to understand the end-to-end scenario from the technical guys in the team, and then translate it into contractual conditions that would make the vendors fully liable on the targeted scope with full protection to the client if not fulfilled.
Addressing unforeseen issues
Having done all of that work, we should also be realistic – we are usually dealing with new systems and technologies being integrated into unique and complex telecoms ecosystems. As the project progresses, there will be issues that even the best brains cannot imagine in advance! So how to solve this and ensure there are no gaps in delivery or support?
It is vital to define an issue resolution path from the beginning. Good Project Governance, alongside an issue resolution process, goes hand in hand with project KPIs and milestones, and helps ensure that the total cost of the project is managed. These pragmatic steps are a core part of scope formalisation, and together ensure that excellent working relationships are achieved throughout this project, so that the next project becomes even easier!
Strategic Sourcing Model
The total spend optimisation activity I’ve shared here is just a part of the work undertaken within Strategic Sourcing; the model below illustrates other typical components. However, this type of model is simply a starting point, as sourcing and vendor management should ideally be seen as an ongoing relationship, in which there are sometimes discrete projects and activities, which form a part of a bigger picture.
At Digis Squared, some of the work we undertake for clients helps to bridge the gaps which can arise when a project is defined too narrowly. In these situations, the rush to optimise a price can cause friction and misunderstanding within the project team; gaps in scope definition and project requirements can lead to project delays and increased costs further down the line. Our deep undertaking of multi-vendor systems and technologies, and our ability to understand both the technical and commercial language of contracts helps ensure that our clients avoid these gaps, or resolve them if we are brought in later.
Use our expertise to assist your team
The team here at Digis Squared have significant experience and expertise in strategic sourcing, vendor management and project commercial governance. Indeed, the executive team which founded the Digis Squared business almost 5 years ago, all felt passionately that addressing these gaps between vendors and network operators, was vital to ensuring improved customer experience and efficient business operations. I really enjoy being part of this team, and working with clients so that together we can optimise their contracts and processes.
AI enhancement of capacity management: what’s next?
Today, we use an open-loop control system to apply our AI methods. However, as predictive model accuracy improves, we anticipate transitioning to a fully automated Self-Organized Network (SON) – enabling closed-loop network management with self-planning, self-configuration, self-optimization, and self-healing – system in the near future.
In conversation with Ahmed AboulGheit, Head of Sourcing at Digis Squared.
Ahmed has worked in and led international procurement teams in the telecoms sector since 2005 working alongside major consultancy firms, within multidisciplinary, agile teams. At Digis Squared he manages our contracts, sourcing, partner management and pricing activities, and supports our teams with consultancy in this field.
If you or your team would like to discover more about our capabilities, please get in touch: use this link or email sales@DigisSquared.com .
“2021 has been a year of significant milestones for the Digis Squared team,” shared Ziad Khalil, Digis Squared’s Co-Founder and CEO. “As the end of the year approaches, we send our gratitude and thanks to our customers and partners for their continued collaboration, and trust in us. As our business continues to grow, we know that our people, and the people we work with are absolutely vital to our success. We succeed together!”
+3 New Cloud-based AI-assisted tools launched.
To enhance our existing suite of cloud-based, AI-led, and vendor-independent tools – INOS suite for drive testing and field optimization, and IPM cloud-based performance management solution – in 2021 we developed and launched Digis-One, a cloud-native Unified Fault Management platform, UCM an AI-assisted cloud solution for Unified Configuration Management, and Digis-Capacity, our ML & AI capacity management tool. Further new tools and enhancements are planned in early 2022, as we continue to invest in our market-leading multi-vendor, multi-technology solutions.
+10 Significant new customers and contracts.
Most notable public announcements included a very significant new end to end Managed Services and In-Building Coverage contracts for Africell Group’s new network in Angola.
x2 New regional offices.
We increased the number of global Digis Squared offices, and doubled the number of regional offices with the addition of a new facility in Luanda. Digis Squared now have offices in UK, Cairo, UAE and Angola.
+3 New strategic partnerships.
As a part of our technology-oriented System Integration, and through new strategic partnerships, we are now ready to introduce to our telco customers E2E use cases covering 5G standalone, private networks, Open RAN, IOT & support for public cloud adoption. Public partnership announcements: We have been recognized by Intel Corporation and awarded Intel Winner’s Circle Membership.
+44 Increased our global team.
With recruitment to support new contracts in the Middle East in our Dubai office at the start of the year, and significant recruitment in our new offices in Angola in the last quarter, in addition to growth in the teams in the Technology & Support Centre in Cairo, it has been an immensely busy year for the HR team and everyone involved in recruiting and onboarding new staff. (If you’re interested in working with us, all our current roles are here.)
#WeAre5
CEO Ziad Khalil says, “As a relatively young company, reaching the Year 5 milestone is an immense achievement, and something to celebrate. As a fully self-funded, profitable business, the founders are proud and thankful to have achieved this success. We know this is only possible because of the hard work and dedication of the entire team, and the trust our clients and partners continue to place in us. As a leadership team, we are mindful that the growth we are experiencing now is also an ambitious time for any business to navigate – we are working carefully to ensure our systems and processes scale, and our culture remains strong. We work flexibly and with care, always looking to improve, and acting with integrity. We can be counted on to deliver what we promised, and always focussing on delivering commercial value to our clients.”
Looking ahead to 2022
CTO AbdelRahman Fady shared, “All our state of the art software and solutions are future proof, cognitive, cloud-native, and with 5G support, ensuring that we provide independent, vendor-agnostic solutions for our clients. Our 2022 development schedule is ambitious, and there will be drops of new capabilities delivered as part of our agile development process. A number of our clients have early access already to some of our new capabilities, and their feedback is helping us refine further enhancements before we push them out on general availability. This development work is vital to keep pace with the constantly evolving issues we see as network interactions become more complex.”
CCO Mohamed Hamdy said, “2022 is already looking like a big commercial year for us. We have new clients coming on board, and extensions to existing contracts – a great mix! And, fingers crossed, at the end of February, we will get the chance to meet in real life at GSMA Mobile World Congress, where our exhibition stand will have live connectivity to our AI-led tools. If you want to see a live demo of network optimisation whilst you’re in Barcelona, drop by or get in touch to book a dedicated meeting!”
“I am very proud of the team and solutions we have built, and the difference we are making to the people and networks we manage and enhance,” CEO Ziad concluded. “To everyone who has contributed to Digis Squared’s significant milestones and projects this year, thank you! To the team, partners and clients we work with in the year ahead, we are ready, let’s help make your mobile network work, better.”
Managed Services from Digis Squared will maximise mobile network efficiency and give Africell’s customers in Angola an outstanding user experience.
November 2021: Africell Angola has awarded Digis Squared a multi-year contract to provide end to end Managed Services to support the launch of Africell’s new network in Angola. In this article, Africell Angola CEO Christopher Lundh and CTIO Faissal Abdallah discuss the partnership with Digis Squared’s CCO, Mohamed Hamdy, and explain why it will contribute to the success of Africell’s launch in Angola.
Optimising digital connectivity
The multi-year contract will see Africell Angola benefiting from Digis Squared’s end to end Managed Services capabilities, covering Radio, Core, BSS, VAS and Field.
“Digis Squared’s tools will help our systems work smartly and efficiently”, says Christopher Lundh, CEO of Africell Angola. “We have been impressed by Digis Squared’s commitment to transferring skills to local staff, a goal which aligns with our own, and we are confident in their experience of multi-vendor systems. It is exciting to have Digis Squared join our new network team.”
“We thank Africell Angola for the trust they have invested in us with this significant commitment”, said Mohamed Hamdy, CCO of Digis Squared. “The contract for Managed Services will enable the new Africell Angola network to launch smoothly and undertake a successful rollout of solutions to customers. Digis Squared’s resources, AI assisted tools, and processes will ensure Africell Angola’s end-to-end services perform at their peak. With our support, Africell’s customers in Angola will be able to experience a revolution in network excellence and performance.”
Supporting Africell’s mission in Angola
Africell Angola’s mission is simple: to help Angola grow by providing innovative, affordable and reliable mobile services.
“The telecoms sector is key to the future success of Angola,” explains Christopher Lundh, “and we will play a big part in this success. Our team of staff and suppliers is tasked with building a network that excites customers, keeps pace with new technologies, and fulfils our vision of leading a digital transformation in Angola.”
Africell Angola’s CTIO Faissal Abdallah added, “The technical solutions we deploy now will form the backbone of the systems we use for decades ahead. Making sure that the complex web of systems deployed can work together seamlessly and resiliently is vital if Africell Angola is to be a network which delivers innovation, affordability and reliability over the long term – working in this new partnership with Digis Squared will enable us to achieve that.”
Africell Angola selects Digis Squared for in-building coverage optimisation
Digis Squared have also been entrusted with an additional contract for Africell in Angola, handling in-building coverage optimisation. In this workstream, Digis Squared will utilise their AI assisted tools including Digis One, INOS, and iPM solutions. Developed in-house by Digis Squared, these tools deliver intelligent, automated testing, benchmarking and analysis platform for network operators and service providers, delivering drive testing (DT), in-building solution (IBS) capability, end to end IoT system testing, as well as Unified Performance and Fault Management and much more, whilst decreasing both the time taken to complete the work and OpEx cost. These AI-led tools are ideally suited to analysing and optimising multi-vendor, multi-technology network implementations, including 5G.
“The contract for in-building coverage optimisation is significant to Digis Squared. When considered alongside our Managed Services contract, it shows that there is real momentum in our southern Africa business operations,” said Mohamed Hamdy. “It’s an exciting time for Digis Squared, and we are grateful to all our clients for the faith they have shown in selecting us. The team are excited to apply their skills, tools and experience to benefit Africell Angola and their clients.”
In partnership with Africell, Digis Squared aims to develop and enhance the capability of local engineers and other technical professionals, increasing their skills and experience. The target is to create a significant number of skilled jobs in the local Angola telecoms market. Says Mohamed Hamdy: “This is a key part of how we work. Digis Squared is committed to developing local employees who can benefit from our international multi-technology and multi-vendor experience and form a vibrant and capable cohort of local engineers in Luanda”.
About Africell: a fast-growing mobile operator with a pan-African footprint Africell provides mobile network coverage and related technology services to more than 12 million subscribers in sub-Saharan Africa. In January 2021 Africell won a competitive international tender process for a telecommunications license in Angola. Africell will launch mobile network services in Angola 2022.
These two new contracts between Africell Angola and Digis Squared follow the recent Digis Squared announcement of new offices in Luanda. With business continuing to expand across central and southern Africa, the new Digis Squared office space in Luanda will serve as a regional hub and give the growing Digis Squared team a Covid-19 secure space to meet clients and collaborate with colleagues.
Members of the Digis Squared team, Key Account Manager Ahmed Ma’moon, CCO Mohamed Hamdy, and Co-Founder and Chief Business Development Officer Yasser Elsabrouty outside the new offices in Luanda, Angola.
Yasser ElSabrouty shares the latest news from the team: Digis Squared awarded Intel Winner’s Circle Membership.
“We’re very excited to confirm that Intel Corporation have selected Digis Squared to join their Winners Circle,” Yasser ElSabrouty, Digis Squared Co-Founder and System Integration Business Unit Director announced.
The Intel Winners’ Circle program rewards the most innovative solutions in the ecosystem, in alignment with Intel’s technologies and strategic objectives. Intel is committed to driving advancement in the networking landscape, and the Intel® Network Builders Winners’ Circle seeks to further align the industry in order to accelerate network innovation. The program drives greater technical enablement in the form of testing and benchmarking of solutions, and it helps strengthen the industry’s relationship with end users.
Ongoing collaboration
This announcement demonstrates the growing collaboration and partnership between Digis Squared and Intel. In February this year, Digis Squared joined the Intel Network Builders ecosystem program, and brought with it the deep experience and expertise of the Digis Squared team in ultra-reliable network configuration and optimisation.
A joint case study with Intel published in May, utilising Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, described substantial enhancements to Video and TCP optimisation achieved utilising Digis Squared’s System Integration capabilities to deliver 30% down link throughput enhancement, thanks to the data traffic optimisation capabilities of INOS.
“The optimisation described in that Intel case study was tested, and customer experience verified, using INOS, Digis Squared’s radio testing and network optimisation solution. INOS works over all data network technologies, including 5G and Open RAN,” Yasser explained. “All our ongoing commercial deployments of INOS utilise Intel technology, as their processing capabilities meet our demanding performance requirements.”
“As part of our partnership with Intel, we’ve also been working within the Intel Lab to characterise the behaviour of INOS with the latest generation of Intel processors, and plan to undertake further work in this facility focussed on Open RAN.”
Thank you
Yasser added, “Thank you to the team at Intel Network Builders and the Intel Lab for their ongoing support and collaboration as we work together to deliver optimised world-class telecom network solutions, and enter the next phase together as a Member of the Winner’s Circle.”
Link to the official announcement on the Intel website.
In conversation with Yasser ElSabrouty, Digis Squared Co-Founder and System Integration Business Unit Director.
If you or your team would like to discover more about our System Integration capability, video and TCP optimisation, or other elements of mobile network optimisation, please get in touch: use this link or email sales@DigisSquared.com .
Keep up to speed with company updates, product launches and our quarterly newsletter, sign up here.
Digis Squared, independent telecoms expertise.
About Intel® Network Builders
The Intel® Network Builders ecosystem program accelerates network transformation by connecting all of the players that are driving new solutions to the market, including service providers, end users, infrastructure, software and technology vendor.
The ecosystem offers members technical support technology training, technology matchmaking, co-marketing opportunities and more. These programs help companies to optimally utilize Intel technologies in their solutions, and facilitate joint collaboration.
In conversation with CEO and Founder Ziad Khalil, we discuss how Digis Squared’s new office in Angola supports business expansion across southern Africa.
Digis Squared Ltd, the UK-based managed services, system integration and telecoms consulting specialists, continues the expansion of its global footprint with the opening of new offices in Luanda, Angola this month. This latest announcement builds on solid business growth at Digis Squared, and enhances support to clients in the southern region of Africa.
Digis Squared’s London HQ, and Technology & Customer Support Centre in Cairo now have over 180 staff, an increasing team in the Dubai office opened in December, plus additional staff in-country embedded in clients’ offices in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The announcement today builds on the celebrations of Digis Squared’s fifth year in business, and their #WeAre5 campaign.
Ziad Khalil, CEO and Founder at Digis Squared, shared his insights into why the business is investing here in Angola, now,
“Our clients and partners have demonstrated their trust in the Digis Squared team and our capabilities, and as our commitment in the region continues to expand, this is reflected in our new investment in Angola. With increasing numbers of significant engagements locally, and across Africa, now is the time for Digis Squared to invest and open a new office in Luanda.”
With business continuing to expand across central and southern Africa, the new office space in Luanda will provide a regional hub, and ensure that the growing Digis Squared team has a Covid-19 secure space to meet clients, and collaborate in-person safely.
“2021 continues to be another year of significant success and growth for the Digis Squared team. The work we undertook for clients in 2020 addressed massive changes in mobile network demand caused by the pandemic, re-dimensioning and optimising network performance,” commented Ziad.
“This significant investment in new offices in Luanda, strengthens our commitment to clients in Angola and across the southern Africa region. The facilities will enable our local team to provide enhanced support to new and extended contracts, as our business continues to expand.”
“As 2022 approaches, and new technology deployments continue at pace, this location is ideally situated to deliver further business expansion and enhanced presence in the region for Digis Squared,” Ziad added. “This investment strengthens the local support and capabilities we can deliver to our clients and staff, and demonstrates our commitment to them.”
In conversation with Ziad Khalil, Digis Squared CEO and Founder.
If you or your team would like to discover more about our capabilities, please get in touch: use this link or email sales@DigisSquared.com .
Keep up to speed with company updates, product launches and our quarterly newsletter, sign up here.
Digis Squared team Key Account Manager Ahmed Ma’moon, CCO Mohamed Hamdy, and Co-Founder and Chief Business Development Officer Yasser Elsabrouty outside the new offices in Luanda, Angola, here on LinkedIn
Image credits
Digis Squared social media and blog banner image: Mohamed Hamdy
“This is a proud moment for the Digis Squared team! In July 2016, five years ago, we founded the business with offices in London and Cairo. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of our journey so far. So many tech start-ups struggle in their early years. We are fortunate to have a solid team, growing together in strength and capability, with clients and partners whose trust we’ve earned. As our global footprint expands, the teams we work with inspire us to achieve even more. Today we have 3 offices and staff across 4 continents, serving even more customers across the globe. We look forward to working together and delivering even more successful projects in the years ahead!”
Digis Squared CEO and Co-Founder, Ziad Khalil
on behalf of the Executive Team, Abdulrahman Fady, Ahmed AboulGheit, Ahmed Zein, Amr Maged, Mohamed Hamdy, Reda Abd El-Hadi, and Yasser Elsabrouty.
Yasser Elsabrouty, Digis Squared Co-Founder and System Integration Business Unit Director announced, “We are delighted to collaborate with Intel, and become a Partner within the Intel Network Builders ecosystem program, as we work together to deliver optimised world-class telecom network solutions.”
“Digis Squared joins Intel Network Builders ecosystem program and brings with it the deep experience and expertise of the Digis Squared team in ultra-reliable network configuration and optimisation. In addition to our commercial work on virtual network enhancements, our system integration capabilities are a great fit with Intel’s objective to create world-changing technology that enriches the lives of every person on earth. As the pandemic has brought into sharp focus, our ability to collaborate internationally, and nurture the health and well-being of colleagues, friends and family, relies on strong and reliable mobile network communications.”
To learn more about how the Digis Squared team can help you with multi-vendor network optimisation, reliable infrastructure configuration and more, please use this link or email sales@DigisSquared.com.
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Digis Squared, independent telecoms expertise.
About Intel® Network Builders
The Intel® Network Builders ecosystem program accelerates network transformation by connecting all of the players that are driving new solutions to the market, including service providers, end users, infrastructure, software and technology vendor.
The ecosystem offers members technical support technology training, technology matchmaking, co-marketing opportunities and more. These programs help companies to optimally utilize Intel technologies in their solutions, and facilitate joint collaboration.
In conversation with CEO Ziad Khalil, and CCO Mohamed Hamdy, we discuss the new Dubai office.
This latest expansion comes as part of a year of solid business growth at Digis Squared, despite the difficult circumstances 2020 has brought with it. Digis Squared’s London HQ, and Technology & Customer Support Centre in Cairo now have over 150 staff, with additional staff in-country working alongside clients in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Ziad and Mohamed share insights into this new investment, and how this milestone fits into our business expansion plans.
“Thanks to the confidence clients in the Middle East have shown in us, we are pleased to announce that we have opened offices in Dubai.”
Ziad Khalil, Digis Squared Co-Founder & CEO
With business continuing to expand in the Middle East, the new office space in Dubai will be a regional hub, and ensure that the growing Digis Squared UAE team has a Covid-19 secure space to meet clients, and collaborate in-person safely.
“2020 has been a very busy year for the Digis Squared team,” Ziad explains. “We have worked with our clients to address massive changes in mobile network demand caused by the pandemic, re-dimensioning and optimising network performance. Our staff have worked incredibly flexibly, adapting swiftly to remote working and finding new ways to collaborate virtually with our clients. Now our teams are increasingly addressing 5G technology deployment projects, vendor changes and O-RAN introductions, particularly in the Middle East.”
“This has been a tough year – difficult, busy, but for our business, ultimately successful”, Mohamed shared with us. “Our team has restlessly supported customers during this difficult time to ensure the demand for mobile communications could be met. In parallel, we have invested heavily in our in-house AI tools and new innovations this year, especially in 5G and VoLTE, and extended the expertise we have in these fields. Now, here comes the harvest, with more clients entrusting us to be their telecom services partner of choice, resulting in the opening of our new Regional Office in Dubai.”
“With this investment in our new office in Dubai, Digis Squared is reinforcing its commitments to clients in the city and across the region. It will ensure excellent facilities for our local team who are busy supporting new and extended contracts, particularly in the Gulf Region,” Ziad added. “Looking forward to 2021, this location is well situated to support our business expansion and growing presence in the region. This investment strengthens the local support and capabilities we can deliver to our clients and staff, and demonstrates our commitment to them.”
“2020 has reinforced for all of us the value of communication and collaboration. Thank you to our customers and partners, for the trust you have placed in us, from all at the Digis Squared team.”
