Axelerated Solutions, Comstor drive data centre growth with cloud, AI innovation
Axelerated Solutions, in strategic alliance with Cisco and distribution partner Comstor, is playing a central role in enabling this shift. Through intelligent networking, hybrid cloud capabilities, and advanced automation, they are helping enterprises across the Kingdom build resilient and future-ready digital ecosystems.
In this exclusive interview, Mohamed Shehata (Head of Network Services, Axelerated Solutions), Mahmoud Abu Herra (Pre-Sales Manager, Axelerated Solutions), and Siva Kumar (Architecture Lead – Security | Cloud & AI | Managed Services, Comstor) share their insights on data centre trends, technology differentiation, sustainability goals, and the road ahead for digital transformation in Saudi Arabia.
Interview Excerpts:
How do you perceive the current state of the Data Centre market in your region? What are the key trends you're observing?
Mohamed Shehata: The data center market in Saudi Arabia is currently undergoing significant and rapid growth. This expansion is primarily driven by the ambitious Vision 2030 initiative, which aims to transform the Kingdom into a digital economy and a regional technology hub.
Here's how the market state and key trends are generally perceived, aligning with areas where a company like Cisco plays a major role:
Current State of the Data Center Market in Saudi Arabia:
High Growth Trajectory
: The market is witnessing substantial investment and expansion, attracting both local players and major international hyperscalers establishing or expanding their cloud regions. Market reports consistently project a strong CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) over the next few years. Driven by Digital Transformation
: Government entities and enterprises across various sectors (finance, healthcare, education, energy) are accelerating their digital transformation journeys, transitioning workloads to the cloud (hybrid and multi-cloud models) and requiring robust local data center infrastructure. Increasing Demand
: The demand for data center capacity is surpassing supply in some areas, particularly for high-quality, carrier-neutral, and hyper-scale-ready facilities.
How do you see Cisco Data Centre offering compared to competitors in the market? Any key differentiators to be highlighted?
Mohamed Shehata: Cisco is a major player in the data centre technology market and offers a comprehensive portfolio that spans networking, compute, storage networking, security, and management/automation. When looking at how their offering compares and identifying key differentiators, several areas typically stand out:
Integrated Architecture:
A core strength is the focus on an integrated architecture, particularly through their Unified Computing System (UCS), which converges compute, networking, and storage access into a single system, and their Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) which integrates networking with security and application policy.
Comprehensive Portfolio:
Cisco offers a broad suite of data centre technologies from networking and compute (UCS servers optimised for various workloads) to storage networking (MDS Fibre Channel) and security.
Unified Cloud Management (Intersight):
Their cloud-based management platform, Intersight, provides a unified view and management plane across Cisco's data centre portfolio (UCS, Nexus, etc.) and can extend to manage hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
What are the biggest challenges and opportunities you see for your business in the coming years, and how does our Cisco Data Centre partnership support these?
Mohamed Shehata: Keeping Pace with Rapid Technological Advancement: The speed at which technologies like AI/ML, high-speed networking, and complex hybrid/multi-cloud environments are evolving is immense.
How Cisco Partnership Supports:
Cisco is at the forefront of developing these technologies. Our partnership provides access to their latest innovations, roadmaps, and expertise, helping us stay ahead of the curve and integrate cutting-edge capabilities into our offerings or internal infrastructure.
How Cisco Partnership Supports:
Cisco's focus on automation through platforms like ACI and Intersight is key. These solutions enable policy-based management, unified visibility, and automation of routine tasks across diverse environments, allowing you to scale operations more efficiently without proportionally increasing headcount and reducing the risk of configuration errors.
How has Comstor partnership contributed to your business growth and success? Would you like to quantify this in any way?
Mahmoud Abu Herra: Our partnership with Comstor plays a truly vital role in the growth and success of our business, particularly as we navigate the dynamic Data Centre market in Saudi Arabia. They are far more than just a logistics provider; they act as a critical extension of both Cisco and our own team.
Supply Chain and Logistics Efficiency: Managing inventory, procurement, and timely delivery in a rapidly expanding market like KSA can be complex. Comstor's advanced logistics and supply chain capabilities are crucial.
How do you see the role of sustainability and green initiatives impacting the data center industry and our partnership?
Mahmoud Abu Herra: stainability and green initiatives are having a profound and increasing impact on the Data Centre industry in Saudi Arabia, deeply influencing both market demand and operational requirements. This is closely tied to the national Vision 2030 and the Saudi Green Initiative, which place significant emphasis on reducing carbon emissions, increasing reliance on renewable energy, and promoting energy efficiency across all sectors.
What is your long-term vision for your customers' Data Centre needs, and how shall we align our strategies to support this?
Mahmoud Abu Herra: Our long-term vision for our customers' Data Centre needs in Saudi Arabia is centered around enabling them to thrive in a digital-first future driven by Vision 2030.
Specifically, this means customers will need:
Hyper-Scalability and Agility:
The ability to rapidly scale infrastructure resources up or down based on unpredictable demand, especially with the growth of AI and new digital services.
Seamless Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Connectivity:
Infrastructure that effortlessly connects on-premises data centres, edge locations, and multiple public cloud environments with consistent policy and management.
AI-Optimised Infrastructure:
Data Centres purpose-built or easily adaptable to support high-performance AI/ML workloads requiring high-density computing and ultra-low latency networking.
How does Comstor's value proposition on partner engagement and its key approach towards simplified operations help scale edge infrastructure for greater agility, efficiency, and resiliency with Cisco Cloud-ready computing?
Siva Kumar: 79% of IT organisations operate using a hybrid cloud model. Cisco's cloud-driven automation journey rapidly increases business agility. Our hybrid cloud operations platform is simple, scalable, and extensible. At Comstor, we are fully aligned with our cloud- and AI-focused partners to increase automation, offer cloud-ready solutions, and help organisations adopt a cloud-agnostic strategy.
Comstor's engagement model is refined, enabling our partners to support organisations in building cloud-ready environments, operating cloud-smart, and optimising everywhere to deliver better outcomes by leveraging their IT infrastructure resources and tools.
Cisco's focus on a unified experience and cloud-managed operations platforms empowers diverse users to manage hybrid operations across both cloud and on-premises infrastructure. For example, Cisco Intersight provides intelligent visualisation, optimisation, and orchestration to bring IT teams, tools, infrastructure, and applications together. Cisco Nexus Cloud simplifies the management of your hybrid cloud NetOps, while Cisco CX Cloud allows you to view your entire IT environment and receive guidance for predictive analysis.
Comstor's Partner Success Journey is dedicated to enabling our partners with Cisco's hybrid cloud solutions. Our goal is to help partners make clients aware of interoperability, flexibility across diverse environments with personalised consumption models, and the ease of cloud-managed administration.
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