Nour Communications is firmly on the road to success as the diversified conglomerate continues to grow in every direction.
The success story began in 1989 when the well-known Arab Supply & Trading Corporation (ASTRA Group) - a Saudi super conglomerate – decided to enter the telecommunications market by adding Nour Communications to it many other fruitful ventures.
Mohammed Rousan, Business Development Director at Nour Communications, said: “Since Nour Communications’ establishment in 1989, we blazed our success in Saudi Arabia by being recognised by our clients as one of the largest Arab telecommunication contracting and system integration companies in the Middle East. Ever since then, there has been no looking back.
“In the early days we were mainly sub-contracting. Later on we started taking subcontracts with government institutions in the telecoms business. We kept expanding horizons, then in 1998 opened an IT subsidiary called NourNet; this has been a fantastic high growth area for us and we have been a Class One telecoms contractor since 2004. “Today the different company divisions are: NourNet, Nour Fibre Optic Networks, Nour Telecom, Nour Energy, Nour Industries, Nour Civil & Engineering. We are continuing to build our standing in every one of these divisions.
Investment and strategy
Perhaps one of the most prominent arms of Nour Communications at the moment in NourNet, simply because the rate of technological development in the modern world means there is a continuing and open-ended necessity for first class IT infrastructure and capability in every business imaginable.
Rousan said: “The IT business is booming and we are maintaining a great position in the market. We are really standing out as a Class One contractor in IT. One of the key strengths in NourNet is that it can be easily integrated to any of the access networks in Saudi Arabia and other regions as it operates through a fully redundant, multi-operator network, both at its core and outside.
“We won a Cisco award for our managed service. It is one of the best managed services companies for IT and connectivity. We talk to all the big players because of the consistent quality of our service. We opened subsidiaries of NourNet in Dubai, Singapore and London to serve customers so we have a little interest outside of the country but we don’t actively target sub-contracting work outside of Saudi.
Nour Communications is investing to achieve its targets with a brand new data centre currently being built in Riyadh, expected to be operational in December 2015. There will also be a manufacturing facility with a company owned low and medium voltage production line on recently purchased industrial land.
“Reliability and service quality will be continue to be our main aim and we are upgrading ourselves every passing day to maintain that, meaning Nour will be one of the bright stars of the Middle East when it comes to unified communications.” added Rousan.
NourNet has grown both horizontally and vertically; horizontally by expansion of its local network to cover all tier1 and tier2 cities in Saudi Arabia and it regional network by covering the whole Widdle East, while vertically with its expanded its services portfolio that covers all managed services including: Managed infrastructure services; managed IT service, Managed Hosting and colocation, managed VC and collaboration service, Public and private cloud services.
Nour’s cable link wireless service is in partnership with Mobily, the infrastructure work is carried out with STC.
Ubiquitous future
Rousan also recognises the power of Nour Communications as a diversified conglomerate, and explained how many components of a large scale telecoms project do not have much relation with actual telecoms.
He concluded: “Due to the high level of competition in telecoms, we decided to diversify with the energy, industrial and fibre optic network subsidiaries so we were able to offer a full suite of services on a project.
“Sometimes we used to sub-contract 80 percent of a project out but we stopped that and now we are one of the best Saudi companies for turnkey solutions. We can provide steel structures to serve a room with some connectivity, like we have done with Saudi Aramco, and can offer the civil infrastructure, power generator, fuel tanks, solar panels and more.
“We are very proud of our civil engineering department, they have developed software in-house and they design unique steel structures which are tailored to a particular project. This expertise has helped us in building pharmaceutical factories, and also when we did a major signalling and telecommunications project.”
With so much talent inside the company, Nour is well placed continue providing a high-class, ubiquitous service and looks set for another exciting growth phase.