I grow up in Cairo, Egypt., and lived there till end of my twenties before moving to Dubai, as many of middle-class families they raise their kids to be self-dependent and that was the case, in every school break I used to work, that really helped me to gain many experience early in my life, my two brothers used to play chess and that became a hobby for me since 5 years old beside football which is the favorite sport for almost all the kids and every Egyptian man, as I am the youngest, my older brother used to read me novels at bedtime which something I really enjoyed and tricked him many times acting awake so he continues reading while I was half or full-sleep :) reading became a hobby I cannot stop as well and I am very proud that I raised up reading Nabil Farouk’s and Ahmed Khaled Tawfik’s novels, that shaped big part of my character and still influencing me till today and I am really grateful to that!

While I am in high school, my brother opened an internet café and software and hardware company (which called now IT) towards the end of the nineties – at that time that was a new thing, I still remember the sound of the internet modem ticking dialing the number for the internet connection and I used to MIRC and having that UNIX bots running doing for me interesting stuff even while I am not connected or asleep, I used to help him on daily basis in that internet café and that exposed me early to the information technology field.

By my second year in Computer Science College, I self-studied many courses, and got certified on all Microsoft Certificates as one of the youngest to get certified in Egypt and in the region of Middle East at that time, by fourth year studied Linux courses and got certified on RedHat Enterprise Linux and became the youngest certified RHCE in Egypt and the region which was ranked number 2 certificate world-wide after Cisco’s CCIE, as a result I was one of the few who has heterogenous experience in Microsoft, Linux and UNIX and implementing heterogenous projects which helped me to start my IT career quickly in one of the key IT companies in Egypt at that time – ValueSYS.

After starting my professional career, I got picked up to do the mandatory military service for a year and 3 months, an experience that paused my career for few months but helped me to learn the reality in the world quickly – before joining the military I really thought the world is mine but the service brought me down to earth :) for some time and till I finished my service, I was doing my military service and got the chance to continue my professional career in parallel as military leaders allowed so due to the experience I had and the help I was doing.

In ValueSYS, it was quiet a journey, quickly the CEO of ValueSYS – Wael Hosny realized I can do more and he started to supervise me closely, I started as a Linux Technical Consultant, then shifted to presales, then he tricked me nicely to get into business development and sales where I learnt a lot from him and I am still grateful for the experience I got learning from him, a department that started with me for Linux and Kaspersky End Point Protection and by the time I left ValueSYS in 2011 it was a department of 18 people and great revenue and I was managing sales and presales activities in nine countries in North East Africa with many awards, achievements and special moments that going to stay forever with me. 

Then I got picked by Gareth Morgan - The Sales Director of Computerlinks one of the leading IT Distribution companies in Middle East based out of Dubai due to the strong technical and sales mix in my background and I moved to Dubai to manage RSA Security Products and Solutions in Middle East and Africa.

In Computerlinks, it was really interesting times with Tim Martin, Lee Reynolds, Gareth Morgan and Kieran Hernon my direct manager, we achieved everything, never missed a target, team grow and we became the defacto standard for RSA for managing business and QBRs across EMEA as Steve Wheeler – EMEA Distribution Director mentioned.

Then Kaspersky came into the picture, my home that I spend a lot of time with during my time at ValueSYS, Kaspersky was launching their Enterprise Portfolio and they needed an enterprise team to manage the business in Middle East, I got appointed as Director of Enterprise Solution, built a team of 7 amazing professionals in a month time, and we started to book all the firsts for Kaspersky Enterprise Solutions across the globe and as a result I got the award of the best new comer for Kaspersky – a global individual award that really close to my heart!

In Kaspersky, we grow the business organically, established a solid business plan with local presence and solid business for the enterprise solutions till IBM came into the picture in 2016.

In IBM, I got hired to manage the business of Resilient SOAR technology across MEA, a leading and new technology that IBM acquired in 2016, in the first quarter we booked the first 4 orders for Resilient in MEA with millions in revenue and fired up the business, and the next year we booked the highest number of orders globally across all the regions and we got the awards of the most new logos globally and the highest growth product for IBM Security. Then I got promoted to manage all the threat management portfolio in MEA for IBM Security and I am still in post to date. 

I really enjoy my work, still the techie inside me helps a lot in sales, business development, channel management and presales activities and doing my work is a passion that gives me happiness and helps not only in my career growth and development but also in dark moments when I need to get a gateway.

Work is taking big portion in my life but by time I learned to focus on what’s matter, so same as I invest in my work with passion, I do many personal activities with my family and lovely kid with great interest and passion.

One of our top hobbies is road trips across countries, with my partner in crimes we usually land in a country with unplanned route, rent a car and go on a road trip for 10+ days across countries where we discover hidden gems, really see the country/place with a different eye till we reach a destination we use to take off and go back home!

Of course all of that beside writings, I LOVE to write about every experience I do, and that’s what I am doing here, as being a big fan of Open Source, Linux and Open Source made learn very valuable things in my life and one of them that human knowledge belongs to the world .. and that has to be shared and not being locked in a mind or a desk! 

Hope such writings and knowledge becomes of use and benefit for the readers, and I am really looking forward to keep that going as much as I can ..