Sahara Net Explained

Native Name:صحارى نت
Native Name Lang:ar
Former Name:Sahara Net
Type:JSC
Founders:Kais Al-Essa & Haitham Bu-Aisha
Key People:Haitham Bu-Aisha (CEO)
Hq Location City:Dammam
Hq Location Country:Saudi Arabia
Num Employees:500+ (2023)
Website:http://www.sahara.com

Sahara Net is an information and communications technology provider (ICT) serving the Saudi market, the company has rapidly grown since 1989 to offer various complementary services such as connectivity, internet, hosting, cloud, optimization, cyber security, and managed services.[1]

History

Sahara Net is a Saudi Joint Stock Company (JSC) and its history goes back to 1989 when Sahara Net established the 1st Saudi Bulletin Board Service (BBS) in the Kingdom. During this period, it operated as a hub for email exchange in the FidoNet network. And in 1994 Sahara Net started offering Internet connectivity and other related services like internet email, web design, web hosting, and Domain name registry services. These services made the first ISP in Saudi Arabia before the official licensing in 1998, when the Saudi Internet market was regulated and Sahara Net received Internet Service Provider (ISP)[2] license and was appointed as the official Local Internet Registry (LIR) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.[3]

Today

The company grew over these years to become one of the main ICTs in the Saudi Arabian market, extending network coverage to all major cities in Saudi Arabia, and offering various connectivity options to business as well as home users. In 2009, the company was partially acquired by Telindus (the ICT investment arm of Belgacom), the famous telecom operator in Belgium and Europe. Then, in 2014, the company was fully acquired by its original founders. Recently, Sahara Net was converted from an LLC to a JSC with over 1200 shareholders by a capital raise (original founders still control 70% of the shares).

Certifications

Another achievement is when Sahara Net received the following certifications:

Solutions & Products

Solutions & Products
Solution Product
Dedicated Fiber Link Microsoft Azure Stack Hub
Dedicated Leased Line MS Azure Global
Dedicated Wireless Link MS Exchange As A Service
Broadband ADSL Microsoft 365
VSAT VPS On VMware
VPN - Virtual Private Network Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud
MPLS - Multi-Protocol Label Switching Windows Virtual Desktop
SD-WAN - Software-Defined Wide Area Network Microsoft Teams
Co-Location Cloud Hosting Crises Control
Dedicated Cloud Hosting Power BI
Shared Hosting MS SharePoint
E-Schools MS Dynamics
Visual Soft ERP
Arabic Domains Elastic Cloud
Firewall (Hardware & Software) Fortinet
Anti Virus Solutions Odyssey CyberSecurity
Network Bandwidth Management CISCO
Network Control and Security Kaspersky
Penetration Testing ZeroFox
Cloud Vulnerability Assessment Trend Micro
eMail Migration F5
eMail Server
eMail Remote Security KnowBe4
eMail Security Policy Manage Engine

References

  1. Web site: 2022-08-04 . Home - Sahara Net . 2023-04-14 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220804142023/https://sahara.com/ . 2022-08-04 .
  2. Web site: List of Service Providers — internet.sa. December 3, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20131203000956/http://www.internet.gov.sa/learn-the-web/guides/list-of-service-providers/view?set_language=en . August 8, 2024. 2013-12-03 .
  3. Web site: 2021-10-22 . 2023-04-14 . https://web.archive.org/web/20211022115247/https://sahara.com/eprofile/saharaprofile.pdf . 2021-10-22 .