China's Bespin Global acquires UAE's Falcon 9 to boost the Middle East's cloud industry
UAE's visit to China 2 weeks ago led to a number of partnerships and agreements being signed. Amongst the most prominent alliances were in the tech sphere, where we saw China's Didi Chuxing agreement to expand to the Middle East through setting up base in UAE, as well as noon’s partnership with Neolix to bring driverless delivery cars for its e-commerce platform.
The latest to join that line is an acquisition — specifically that of Falcon 9, UAE's leading cloud consultancy — by Bespin Global, Chinese and Korean pioneers of cloud management.
The new company will launch this month under the name of Bespin Global MEA, to immediately gain access to the Middle East cloud market estimated to reach USD 4 billion by 2022 according to Gartner.
This news comes just a few days after Amazon Web Services announced the launch of its data centre in Bahrain — the first in the Middle East — and a month after Microsoft launched its own data centre in the UAE to tap into the growing cloud market. Even Alibaba Cloud in the UAE is investing heavily in the MEA region.
Falcon 9 is one of the Middle East’s leading cloud consultants and integrators, providing innovative applications development. They helped regional businesses migrate to the cloud from their UAE offices.
In comparison, Bespin Global brings a worldwide perspective with its 850 global experts providing multi-cloud management services to those enterprises wishing to adopt cloud technologies. They will assist businesses in the region — a growing number of which are looking towards digital transformation to the cloud — to seamlessly transition their businesses eco-systems to the above mentioned global cloud providers.
“As the largest cloud force in East Asia, Bespin Global is now expanding into the MEA market through the acquisition of Falcon 9. We will not only help our MEA customers adopt the Cloud, but also support them to harness the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Bespin Global MEA will provide end-to-end cloud services to accelerate the region’s digital transformation.”John HanJoo Lee, CEO and Co-Founder of Bespin Global
Speaking about the relationship, Mr. Mouteih Chaghlil, Founder of Falcon 9 said “Falcon 9 and Bespin Global share the same DNA, and aligning our cultures and inspirations accelerates our global growth. Falcon 9’s local market presence and Bespin Global's worldwide resources will create synergies to match the region's growing technology demand.”
Chaghlil added that “The new company focus will be to enable customers on their journeys to building data-driven organisations through the Cloud, DevOps, Big Data and AI technologies.”
Bespin Global MEA will build significantly upon the original Falcon 9 team and expand existentially in the UAE, KSA and Bahrain.
Adoption of cloud technologies is increasingly rapidly in the region. Large enterprises such as Dubai Airports, Careem and Majid Al Futtaim embracing the cloud is setting an example for the SMBs to follow. This interest has not gone unnoticed, evidently with Microsoft and AWS setting up in the region, and the entry by Bespin into the Middle East to take its share of the growing market.
