Page 46 - March 2022 Issue 604

Sherry Zameer
(Senior Vice President CISMEA IoT, MSI Solutions ME- Thales):
We contribute in every little touchpoint of one’s lifestyle
Thales’s rich history goes back well over a century. Built slowly and with care-
ful planning, the Group boasts remarkable cohesion and strength, and has
often proven its ability to adapt its structures to prevailing conditions. As a global
technology leader with more than 80,000 employees on five continents,
Thales designs and builds electrical systems and provides services for
the aerospace, defense, transportation and security markets. Thales’s high-tech
solutions, services and products help companies, organizations and governments
to achieve their goals and ambitions. Because of what it does and the markets it
serves, the company plays a central role in the systems that make societies function
and through its investments in research and development, Thales helps to invent
the technologies that shape its common future.
Al Bayan Magazine met Sherry Zameer, Senior Vice President CISMEA IoT, MSI
Solutions ME at Thales on the sidelines of MWC 2022 and conducted the
following interview.
“ Innovation in the Middle East solves real life problems & delivers value back to citizens ”
* What is the purpose behind your participation in MWC 2022?
- I think the importance of the congress this year is probably more important
than any other year because we’ve had kind of a two year break due to the
pandemic so it is a great opportunity and platform to come and talk to people
about technology, advancements in our industry, the latest trends and strate-
gies that have been deployed, and to listen to a lot of very clever people talk-
ing about where we are going especially that we are all in an industry which
must move together to survive in many ways and there are a lot of challenges
that are on our industry just like any other industry. The Mobile World Congress
is a great platform to come together with a lot of very good like-minded intelli-
gent friends to talk about the challenges of the day and the future and to look
at solutions on how to overcome them and for our industry to grow as a whole
and to adopt new ideas, processes, programs and technologies to help push
connectivity as the very core center of what digital transformation is about, what
enterprise B2B innovation is about, what it means to move from a products
based company to a services based company, how to engage with consumers
in the digital ecosystem and how to bring additional value added services to the
individual.
* What are the recent innovations that Thales is providing?
- In the last two years, we were pushed to use Zoom, Skype, etc.. not just for
personal needs but also for business needs. A lot of people like to do shopping
and a lot of the shopping done has been online and for that we need to have a
wallet and a digital account. For children, a lot of the education and online
learning has been through portals and tablets with an online connection. The
whole digital transformation from a consumer standpoint has been accelerated
because of the pandemic and i think as we go back into some sort of normal
way of living after the pandemic is over, we will probably not get back to the
same levels as before in terms of consumer to human interactions. We have all
become comfortable with that point and in our digital lifestyle as we start engag-
ing more and more online. This will bring on a lot of challenges and in those we
do need to have solutions to resolve some of those challenges to make sure
that we effectively, securely and responsibly deliver services to the individual.
One of the things that we work on is digital identifications, our ability to recog-
nize someone on the digital ecosystem and this requires the ability to do bio-
metric identification and then be able to create information responsively about
the person in terms of his profile, likes and dislikes so that we can effectively
deliver services to him whether in the banking services, telecom services, gov-
ernment services or e-commerce. As more and more connections go online,
more and more threat to the individual in terms of security and fraud so we pro-
vide cybersecurity solutions. The two of the biggest things that we talk about in
this show is about biometric digital identification and cybersecurity because
they will be the cornerstone of a digital lifestyle enabler for that individual in the the citizens. That’s what makes it unique and different.
future.
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* What are the solutions that you are providing to the GCC region?
- We provide solutions that go everywhere from the depth of the ocean right to
the outer reaches of space and in between everything we have a touchpoint
and contribution in some form or shape whether in telecom, aerospace,
defense or cybersecurity so it is very hard to put my finger on exactly what it is
we provide. Therefore, in every little touchpoint of one’s lifestyle, we have some
contribution. We are enabling that lifestyle responsibly. We give technology to
the consumer that is easy to use and one that the consumers can trust and use
comfortably and securely in the digital world.
* What are the main challenges facing you?
- Regulation is always good because it protects the consumers and the ecosys-
tem as well. Regulation is not necessarily a bad thing but I think when you look
at digital services coming into your markets, they come from unregulated or
lowly regulated markets. These bug hyperscales have the ability to disrupt the
markets as well. Middle East is no different to the rest of the world. It is a mar-
ket where there is a high level of adoption of technology, more of a billion peo-
ple live there and there are some idiosyncrasies specific about the Middle East
Market which are part cultural & heritage and it is the adaptation of those tech-
nologies to make sure that you are working in the local context. We have been
in the region for over 40 years and we have been working with governments,
banks, enterprises, mobile operators, satellite operators and different service
providers to make sure that we are able to deliver the solutions that are going
to allow the end customer to trust the technology that is delivered by those ser-
vice providers and more importantly to localize and make sure the user expe-
rience is personal. Technology must be adaptable to solve local problems for
local needs so from that perspective the Middle East is not different from the
rest of the world. But in many ways in the past, the Middle East has not been
an early adopter of technology. It always comes in after it had been tried and
tested in other markets. The fastest 5G network in the world is in the Middle
East, driverless trains are in the Middle East and you can’t see them in Europe.
Our ability to accelerate the adoption of new technologies is much faster in the
Middle East than the rest of the world because there is no legacy infrastructure
to work with, it is not a transformation, it is starting and creating a new frame-
work. From that perspective, the pace of which technology is adopted and
delivered is very fast. Also, in many markets around the world, there is heavy
regulation and a lot more competition and this means that the pace at which we
bring solutions to market is a lot longer whereas in the Middle East it is not as
heavy regulated, so deploying solutions is much faster because companies
only engage with one entity. Moreover, innovation in the Middle East is driven
from the field, it is solving real life problems that people are facing, it is not cre-
ating innovation for future potential growth. It is about delivering value back to
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