Onyxes, a market leader in information technology and managed services provider space in Iraq was established in 2011 as a part of March Holding Group. Onyxes is headquartered in Baghdad and has offices in the UAE, Egypt, and Pakistan serving the MENA region. Over the years, the company has been at the forefront in embracing new technologies and helping organizations innovate, grow and stay ahead of the competition in today’s digital world.
Over the past 10 years, Onyxes has provided end-to-end solutions to their clients across different sectors empowering customers to unlock new perspectives, distill actionable insights and make more data-driven decisions. Some of their work entails:
The first successful implementation of a big data solution in the Middle East for a telecom client driving real insight on customer behavior
Implementation of the first security operation center (SOC) in Iraq
The first partner to deploy a deep packet inspection (DPI) project in collaboration with Sandvine for a telecommunication firm
The first and only DELL Titanium Partner in Iraq
Onyxes is playing a pivotal role in the transformation of the digital landscape across Iraq through its compelling offerings for clients across multiple sectors. Their services drive efficiencies and allow customers to get the highest value out of their technology investments.
Onyxes has provided end-to-end data center solutions for banks and other financial services players. This has helped in boosting financial inclusion in Iraq and enabled people to access basic financial services. They have also closely worked with the government to drive the digitization agenda by designing and implementing the national data center and launching e-governments services with GSCOM (The General Secretariat For The Council of Ministers).
Onyxes provides modular, secured, and scalable cloud solutions to accelerate business initiatives and get to market faster by reducing the time and energy consumed in devoting the infrastructure components required to support IT requirements of businesses.
One important consideration in Onyxes Managed Service product is bundling the software, hardware and BPM services with its IT solutions. This pillar focuses on improving the customer experience when it comes to solution customization and technology modernization.
Today, Onyxes has a team of over 160 professionals, from 9 nationalities with diverse backgrounds. It is led by a collective of industry experts bringing a range of experience and expertise to their clients each day.
Also, Onyxes is certified ISO 9001 ( Quality Management System), ISO 45001( Occupation Health and Safety) and ISO 20000 ( Structured Management System).
Why start your IT journey from Onyxes?
With a wealth of expertise, they have successfully completed over 300 projects spanning across multiple dimensions in the Middle East. The company derives its strength from the methodology of bundling solutions with services mixing that with the flavors of the team experience to support their customers at all positions. Onyxes has teamed up with world’s top technology innovators which unlock its capabilities to design and deliver powerful solutions on both software platforms and infrastructure technologies levels which also includes cloud services, AI applications, and block-chain.
They work with different sectors; governments, oil and gas corporations, financial services and telecoms, supporting them in driving performance and elevating consumer engagement. Onyxes being an agile company, is able to address clients’ specific requirements quickly and develop tailored and unique solutions.
Onyxes is a one-stop-shop for businesses to receive cutting-edge digital solutions, together with other IT services. The company has executed multiple unique projects, each different in terms of industry segment and geography, serving both public and private sector. Some of Onyxes’ clients include:
LUKOIL, Eni, and Petrochina (Petroleum)
Zain Iraq, AsiaCell, and Awal Telecom (Telcoms)
Sumerbank, Trade Bank of Baghdad, Bank of Baghdad, Al Mansour Bank, and the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) (Banking)
Switch, ZainCash, Amwal, and Arab Payment System (Financial – payment gateways and wallet applications)
Government Sector: State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO), Prime Minister’s office, Ministry of Interior and Council of ministers.
How company provides answers to client’s problems
Telecom: Onyxes has been managing the IT operation services for Zain Iraq since 2014, encompassing the IT network, BSS (Business Support Solutions) and OSS (Operation Support System). It has transformed the user experience for 16 million subscribers across Iraq.
Oodi: Onyxes contributed to the first digital mobile services in Iraq through infrastructure platforms implementation and completed the integration with the BSS stack. This achievement was a major key player in the customer’s digital experience journey.
Asiacell: Onyxes team supported Asiacell with their journey in a couple of projects such as infrastructure modernization that led to impact and improve millions of subscriber’s experiences.
Also their team is handling the support of the infrastructure covering the L2 and L3 of the operations.
Financial Sector: Onyxes always strive to improve the customer experience and touch people’s lives through its innovative solutions. Onyxes had supported Iraq wallet (ZainCash) to adopt the latest data center technologies that enabled the customers to use their mobile payments solutions and facilitate the means of payment with no need of cash.
Their focus on the payment industry continued when they collaborated with Switch (E-Gate). Onyxes worked side by side with Switch to provide infrastructure, security and software to enable them to cater the best services to their huge number of card holders.
They have worked with the largest banks in Iraq, building powerful software platforms and world-class data centers complying with PCI DSS requirements all the way through to application licensing and SLAs (Service level agreements).
Public Sector: They built the national data center for the Iraq government (The Council of Ministers) and are the key partner in the Government’s journey of driving digital transformation to help them deliver services and programmes more efficiently and transparently.
Top partners in the business of transformation
Onyxes Technologies strives for excellence and continuously certifies its people to ensure that they are equipped with the latest technical skills and tools.
They are the first and only certified DELL EMC Titanium Partner in Iraq. As an advanced Services Delivery Partner, they are authorized to support the full portfolio of computer platforms and systems that help organisations store, manage, protect and analyse data providing better outcomes.
In addition to that, Onyxes is one of the leading Microsoft Gold Technology partners in Iraq and a Microsoft Large Account Reseller (LAR).
They are also a Fortinet Advanced partner in Iraq providing fraud and cybersecurity solutions for their customers.
In addition, Onyxes has a partnership with Oracle, Cisco, Splunk , TrendMicro, MongoDB APC and many other technology firms. This makes them a one-stop shop for all types of customers.
Expert certified team
Onyxes is ensuring having the right people for the right tasks in all domains, their teams are highly classified through the 300 delivered projects and running operations. Such achievements could not have been accomplished unless they have a highly skilled and certified team. Their team of experts are certified with the leading technology providers on the various specialties of IT such as:
Network and Security technology providers (Cisco, Fortinet , Splunk ,TrendMicro, Paloalto, Aruba, Juniper).
Servers and storage technology providers (DellEMC, HPE, Cisco, IBM , Huawei).
Operating system technology providers (Microsoft, Oracle, Redhat, VMware, Cetrix)
Business support systems such as CRM, charging & billing systems, Mediation, PRM.OSS tools for infrastructure and applications monitoring, Core Banking ( Temenos ) T24, Activation and Registration modules.
Their team expertise is extended to the management domain as they run operations through a battalion of expertise armored with high level certification such as ITIL, CISSP, CISA, CISM, CAIS.
As a mature player in the managed services provider space, Onyxes is carving its own place in Iraq and parts of the Middle East. As the company embarks on its journey in the post-pandemic era, International Finance Magazine spoke to the CEO of the company, Ameen Al-Sabbagh in an exclusive interview. Excerpts from the interview:
What makes Onyxes different from other players in the market?
The workforce is the key differentiator which keeps us ahead of our peers. We have a highly professional and agile team, with well-rounded competencies. A diverse workforce with people from different backgrounds also helps us to understand the world around us better and gives us a diverse lens to our approach to challenges.
Having the right partnerships with domain leaders is also central to our success and robustness. And last but not least, we have been fortunate enough to work with clients across industries, who are all pioneers, and working with them has kept us inspired.
What has been the most successful solution provided by Onyxes till now? Cite examples of unique problems faced by a client at a critical juncture that was solved by the company?
Onyxes became the first Big Data implementer in the Middle East. This was a project for a Telecom company based in Iraq that required technical aid to enhance its customer service, make data-driven decisions, and test a new product. As a result, the Onyxes team helped to:
Test the market
Assess the viability of the new product offerings
Improve customer experience
Provide more accurate forecasts of the upcoming network demands
Where do you see Onyxes 10 years from now?
Ten years seems to be a good time horizon for us and we are confident of reaching the zenith within this timeframe by a decade from now. We see ourselves as the top provider of managed services across industries not only in Iraq but also in the entire Middle East. We believe that the world of the future will benefit a lot from security, AI, IoT, and cloud technologies. Here is why they are the primary focus of our team today.
Tell us more about the core philosophy of the company which separates Onyxes from other players in the market?
It is very simple. Onyxes’ mission is to bridge the gap between businesses and technology. We are following the principle of gap analysis. Our goal is to be the most efficient and deliver business growth and success to the client and get them their maximum outcome out of their capital investment.
Is there any plan to expand the company’s footprint in other geographies?
We are already on firm ground in Iraq. Onyxes also has an office in Dubai, UAE. We have two operations offices in Egypt and Pakistan. Over the next decade, we want to be a significant player in the entire Middle East region.
What has been the most significant achievement of the company in recent days?
Onyxes Team enabled the infrastructure technology in the launch of DARI platform that the Iraqi government published to secure lands and houses for the citizens of Iraq which has a great impact on solving one of Iraq main social problem. The efforts of the team concentrated to design, implement and overcome the technology challenges for this platform to fulfil the needed capacity and ensure the services availability.
CEO Quote:
Delivering superiority has always been the top priority at Onyxes Technologies. We have designed Onyxes as a fully-fledged platform providing an end-to-end solution from consulting, professional services, infrastructure to business application and managed services.
We enable our clients, across different verticals, to reach new standards of excellence and performance which provide their customers with a new and richer experience. We are also redefining the way governments connect with their citizens to enhance their lives through introducing new e-citizen services.
Through the power of technology, your wins are our wins.