Mohamed Talaat, Vice President at EMC, Saudi Arabia (Left), Habib Mahakian, Vice President for Gulf and Pakistan.

LAS VEGAS: During the EMC World Summit in Las Vegas, Kuwait Times spoke to Habib Mahakian, Vice President for Gulf and Pakistan.

Kuwait Times: The drop in oil prices has affected everything in Kuwait. Has this impacted any EMC projects in Kuwait?

Habib Mahakian: Most companies’ budgets are shrinking, but operational budgets are increasing, and maintenance contracts help us and our customers to renew and change solutions with good financial facilities from us. Most customers cannot purchase complete solutions and do not have the budget for this, but they are buying cloud servers (cloud solution) and the company buys the servers they require with the budget they have. Today, all companies are heading to the cloud to cut operational costs and maintenance contracts, so cloud solutions are the best for our customers.

Kuwait Times: What will be the effect of the merger between Dell and EMC in the Kuwait market? Will it be good for EMC?

Mahakian: For sure it will be very good for us. Dell has the SMP market and EMC has the enterprise market, so the two of us will cover most of the market in the region.