Axios Systems is changing how ITSM is viewed in the Middle East, providing a unique and flexible service for its customers.
CREATING EXPERTS
Formed in 1988 by the co-founders Ailsa and Tasos Symeonides – the latter an initial contributor to the foundation of Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) – Axios Systems has consistently remained at the forefront of service management technology.
In the present day it is predominantly recognised by many analysts as one of the leading vendors, including a top ranking from Info-Tech, and has been included in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for the past 15 years.
“One of our first customers in the region was a major Oil & Gas organisation, which proved to be a very large project and provided a foundation to access the potential of the market space in the Middle East,” begins Glyn Yates, Regional Director for Middle East at Axios Systems. “From there we were able to truly open up our corporation in the region and our customer base has been growing year-on-year, which is a wonderfully positive validation of what we are trying to achieve.”
ENHANCED COVERAGE
The Company’s success in the region can be demonstrated by its ever-growing market share, building new customer relationships gained from both legacy and emerging players within the Middle East due to its innovative approach.
“We are still relatively young in this market and therefore are continuing to enhance our coverage and capabilities,” explains Yates. “At present the Company is still on a strong growth plan and trajectory and we hope to remain this way for many years to come.”
For Axios, technology is only half of the proposition that it provides to customers and it strives to maintain this innovative approach within the market.
“It took some time for the market to adopt this new kind of industry method as they aren’t used to companies coming in and saying we won’t show you anything first,” continues Yates. “Instead we choose to get an in-depth understanding of customers’ business requirements and how we can build a solution package around that.
“We could have come into the market and delivered the standard functionality demonstrations, but instead we decided to try and mature both the market and our customers to more of a business and outcome discussion first.”
In order to achieve this change, the Company has optimised its people and technology to be able to handle the demands placed upon them. This approach to the market and its company ethos has enabled Axios to work with entities such as Dubai Police, aiding them in their duty to remain at the forefront of citizen services.
“Dubai Police are incredibly forward thinking and we are now heavily involved with the Department of Artificial Intelligence,” affirms Yates. “Using this approach, many of the partnerships being forged in Dubai are in support of this thinking, be that in their approach to technology or ethos and thinking.”
INDUSTRY LEADER
Axios is ahead of the curve in terms of its vision for the future of IT service management and is gaining momentum and support with each passing day; however, it is still encountering hesitancy as some customers are not ready for such a change in thinking.
Axios is regarded as one of the leading vendors currently operating in the service management space, and this is predominantly due to its incredible ability to form these strong partnerships with customers to both educate them and ultimately help them achieve their vision.
“An example of this is through the deployment of a customer success programme, which provides a constant engagement between Axios and our customers in the pursuit of their strategy achievement,” explains Yates. “We also allow our customer input to help us enhance the assyst solution. A recent example is the ability to provide local language services, which is important for a global solution that can be utilised in multilingual regions.
“Then of course there is our key differentiator. As a principle vendor – we scope, design, optimise, support and manage any deployment. One point of contact across the entire engagement.”
The Company uses its industry experience to really understand what an organisation is trying to achieve, and the needs that they require. Axios aims to map out how its technology can enable customers and advance companies forward to a greater IT maturity level.
ORGANIC GROWTH
To this day the business still remains 100 percent family owned, providing the various sections of the Company with great flexibility in strategy and innovation investment.
Yates adds: “This has enabled us over the years to take more of a holistic approach in terms of the way in which we present ourselves in a market, and the way in which we are able to support our customers moving forward.
“assyst has been under continual development for the past 30 years and has adapted to the many challenges of the industry in that time,” Yates describes in reference to one such solution. “We haven’t had to go out and acquire technology, nor have we had to bolt anything on to our platform. Instead we listened to our customers and implemented new features as required. Throughout this upgrade cycle, assyst has always maintained stability and compatibility across the solution.”
Alongside the organic growth of its portfolio, the Company has expanded the capabilities of its ITAM (IT Asset Management) which has been integrated with both operations and service management in a move to match the natural progression of the market.
“We have a fully developed our delivery model with both an On-Premise and SAAS offering to ensure that when our customers are ready for migration, we will be able to meet any of their unique requirements,” concludes Yates. “At present in this region there is still a little scepticism about moving to cloud – predominantly for data sovereignty reasons – and we are working tirelessly to offer the capabilities that mean we can support our clients as and when they are ready.”
