After 30 years of being active in the Middle East, Syska Hennessy opened a dedicated office for the region in Dubai. The US-based consulting and engineering firm made the announcement in October.

To do so, the company teamed up with a local partner, LZ Technologies Middle East, launching the new Middle East entity as a joint venture. Greg Jasmin, co-managing director of the new company, called Syska Hennessy Group MENA (Middle East/North Africa), said the company chose to take on a local partner for their expertise in the market. “We really wanted to understand the lay of the land,”Jasmin said.

“Have someone who understands the needs and wants of the clients in a region that's a bit different from what we're used to in the States.” The major difference, he explained, was the proper way of communicating with clients in the region. Majority of Syska Hennessy’s clients in the US “already know what they want”, while Middle Eastern clients “need you to guide them through the process of deciding what they want. The guys in LZ had a pulse of how to do that in the region.”

Thus, LZ’s part of the job in the new venture is to take on a consulting and project-management roles, while Syska Hennessy will provide technical expertise. Since the US is a much more mature market, “people have been through the [data center construction] cycle two or three times, and also there are some good folks in the industry who are pushing the envelope,” Jasmin said. “The knowledge base here [in the Middle East] is a bit dated. There are a lot of key folks on the client side that are looking for the right people to help them bring their operations to the … level of companies in the US.”

The opportunity The region’s public sector is a major opportunity vertical. Nearly every government entity has some kind of a program that creates demand for more data center capacity. There is a strong and growing financial sector and, of course, a bustling oil industry. An important market still in the early growth stages is wholesale and retail colocation. In Jasmin’s opinion, players with Western technical expertise, such as Syska Hennessy, will not see much of a competition from the local companies. “There are some local players,” he says. “But … I don’t think they’re on the same playing field as us or some of the other players in the US.” He said many local players in the data center space were designing the same data centers they designed five years ago, while “clients are hungry for innovation.”

Syska Hennessy has been building in the region since the 1970s. Its past projects there include the King Saud University in Saudi Arabia and other projects in Kuwait. A short but fruitful relationship The company began collaborating with LZ about one year ago, but formally created a joint entity in early October. Within the short period of time the companies have been working together, they’ve had a number of projects on the consulting, feasibility and design sides.

Projects they’ve done together include a feasibility study for a major telecommunications company in the United Arab Emirates, where the partners helped the client determine the right configuration and size of its future data center and chose the right infrastructure solutions. The partners have also done an assessment project for Saudi Aramco, helping the oil company find “gaps” in data center facilities and operation standpoint. Syska Hennessy and LZ have multiple on-going data center design projects for a government entity in Oman. They are also designing a new data center for the National Bank of Abu Dhabi.

Consultants first, engineers second Since the approach to dealing with clientele is different in the region, Syska Hennessy plays a slightly different role than it is used to playing back home, Jasmin said. “In the US, we're considered engineers first, consultants second. Typically [when] we're in a room, we're getting deep into technical discussions on the engineering side. Over here, it's a little bit in reverse: I'm a consultant first, engineer second.” In his opinion, Western companies that will be successful in the Middle East will be ones that understand that dynamic and really make the effort to walk clients through the process step by step, analysing the potential return on investment for the options they have and “helping them understand the effects of their decisions.”

“Those are the folks that I see doing very well here in the region.” Correction: An earlier version of the article erroneously said that one of Syska Hennessy's past projects included the King Abdullah University. The university's name was King Saud University. DatacenterDynamics regrets the error. Related Stories Syska Hennessy sells construction arm to California firm gkkworks