Aptec Holdings unveils ATS

The new venture, which will be based at Dubai Internet City (DIC), will also boast points of presence in Saudi Arabia and Egypt with the possibility of a further office in Turkey already under consideration. The new company will operate as a totally separate entity from Aptec Holdings' existing distribution business in the Middle East.

Dr Ali Baghdadi, Chief Executive Officer of the Aptec Group, also announced the appointment of Mr Gerald (Jed) Isbell as the General Manager to the new company. He went on to add that Jed brings to ATS an extensive global and operational experience in supporting and delivering high quality service to customers in the IT/Telecoms industry, where he has worked for over 30 years. He has held various senior management posts with companies such as BT, Concert and UPC. Most recently, he was Senior Vice President - Operations/Technology for UPC (Europe's largest cable service provider), where he was responsible for their Strategic Programmes. Prior to this, Jed served as Director EMEA Customer Assurance for Concert, where he held a lead executive responsibility for the companies Global IP network (peering, security) and services (Firewall Mgmt, ISP Servers). Jed's previous roles include building various 24/7 support centres and managing large technical teams of operational support staff spread across numerous countries.

By offering professional services of the highest standard at reasonable rates, ATS is positioned to take advantage of the growing demand for professional IT services and consultancy from businesses in the Middle East.

Dr Ali added,

"Users have often relied on unqualified resources or have a level of service thrown in with the hardware or software that they purchase, which is nominally at the expense of their IT security and reliability, alternatively, they had to employ expensive international IT services companies. We anticipate that the percentage of spend on Services in relation to the overall IT spend will significantly increase within the Middle East region and it is a great opportunity for us to launch ATS now."

ATS is a service and consultancy provider offering a comprehensive range of Security services including strategic consultancy, security audits, implementation, assessments and outsourcing. The company will be capable of working on behalf of vendors, and its channel partners. As such, ATS will during the course of 2006 build a team of 20-plus consultants skilled at the highest level of knowledge and certification, through internationally acknowledged training programs. In addition, the company is looking to establish a list of 'Associate Consultants', which will compliment its highly qualified core team hence, ensuring the right level of skill-set availability and rapid deployment of resources.

Offices are now established in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and eventually Turkey with the immediate focus being on the UAE and Saudi Arabia, where ATS believe that these markets already appreciate the need for independent professional IT services.