Swiss IT Firm Nexthink Gets $14.5m Funding From Qatar’s Al Mannai

Swiss IT analytics firm Nexthink has secured $14.5 million in a round of funding from investors including Auriga Partners, VI Partners and Qatar’s Al Mannai Corporation, it annoucned this week.

The funding will be used for additional investment in its existing territories including the UAE and Saudi Arabia, expansion and future product developments in the cloud and mobility spaces, Pedro Bados, the company’s CEO, president and co-founder said.

“We are definitely investing in the GCC, including hiring additional sales and technical resources and recruiting new partners and training existing partners in the region to better support our growing customer base,” Bados told Gulf Business.

“We are strengthening our operations in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and expanding to new countries such as Egypt and Kuwait.”

Currently Nexthink has around 100 customers in the Middle East, including Saudi Electricity Company, Riyadh Bank, the Abu Dhabi Ministry of Finance and Gulftainer.

“We added more than 20 new customers in 2014. We are already working in the banking, telecom, oil & gas and government sectors and we are now enforcing our collaboration with organisations in the education sector, which is critical and strategic in the region,” said Bados.

According to him, there is a “tremendous” shift to the cloud by organisations of all sizes, which has many benefits, but also presents IT professionals with significant problems and risks.

“When it comes to mobility (BYOD), these initiatives introduce new risks in the form of IT governance and compliance, mobile device management, and security.”

According to a new report from Forrester Research, 90 per cent of IT executives say their end-users struggle with business technology problems that they have no way to detect.

“With the challenges brought by the cloud and mobility, complexity is increasing within organisations, while visibility is declining. There is a tremendous opportunity for us to address these challenges, as real-time IT analytics provide organisations with essential visibility.

“This will help in reduced complexity, increased efficiency and improved end-user experience for customers,” he added.