April 18, 2014
I was in Riyadh this week to meet with library directors from some of the largest universities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to tell them about the Innovative/Naseej partnership which offers our products in Arabic backed by Naseej s local support and service.
Thanks to Naseej and CEO Abduljabbar Al-Abduljabbar for giving me and my Innovative colleague Doug Kaplan, who leads the Innovative partnership team, such a warm welcome and for introducing us to some of the country s leading academic librarians.
I was impressed with the passion and excitement in the audience. This was a group of librarians committed to bringing the latest in library technology to their institutions and helping propel their students to the next level. It s clear that this is a library community looking for cutting edge solutions that will help position Saudi universities as among the best in the world.
We had a lively question and answer period, as the directors asked great questions about the partnership and how Naseej and Innovative would collaborate and bring products to market. There seems to be a lot of interest in the capabilities of INN-Reach, which could offer the Saudi libraries a vehicle for resource sharing that they haven t had before.
It s clear from the response we received that the directors view the partnership as a winning proposition and that Sierra is viewed as the next generation library platform of choice. We had one library commit to Sierra during the meeting and expect there will be many more to come. Thanks again to our partner Naseej for their hospitality and for all they re doing to strengthen Innovative’s presence in the region.
Wrote by Kima Massana, CEO, Innovative