Egypt in talks with U.S. Arista to develop big data centres

Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology Yasser El-Kady is holding talks with local and foreign firms in a bid to establish big data centres in the country.

The Egyptian minister met Saturday with Guenther Brand, VP EMEA at U.S.-based Arista Networks, an international company specialised in developing and establishing the infrastructure of massive data centres.

The meeting was attended by Tarek Shabaka, the Chairman of MCS, and Amr Farouk, Managing Director at MCS. MCS is a local partner of Arista in Egypt and will be located in Silicon Waha in Borg El Arab Technology Park.

The meeting tackled Arista’s expansion plans in the Egyptian market and cooperation aspects which could enable the company to increase its investments in the Egyptian ICT sector.

The officials discussed possibility of taking part in the programmes of raising the capabilities of specialised calibers to support the Egyptian ministry’s development plans in technology parks, electronics industry and the establishment of national data centre network.

El-Kady has reviewed a number of development and investment projects implemented by his ministry and programmes supervised by the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) to attract foreign direct investment that realise returns for the two parties.

Arista wishes to expand its business in Egypt, considering the Egyptian market share in the Middle East and its growing business, especially with the current boom in roads and facilities infrastructure projects that will guarantee the stability of investments for a long time, Guenther Brand said.

Brand added that his company would cooperate with Egyptian ministry, along with ITIDA, to develop an integrated action plan, in the short and medium-term, for the national project that aims to create a national data centres network in technology parks. This is in addition to transferring technical expertise from the parent company to Egypt.