Dubai Internet City Business Partners Sweep Seven TECOM Pearl Awards

Dubai Internet City’s business partners swept seven of the 10 categories at the TECOM Pearl Awards 2009.

Business partners at the ICT cluster who won the awards included MasterCard Worldwide in the Globalisation and Diversification category, Marketboomer Middle East FZ LLC for Innovation of the Year, and 3i Infotech FZ LLC as Employer of Choice.

Metadata was recognized for its exemplary Customer Service, while Oman Insurance Company took away the honours in the CSR Achievement of the Year. Ivan Fernandes, Managing Director for DUCONT FZ LLC received the Entrepreneur of the Year award, and Bayt.com won honours as the Company of the Year.

In his acceptance speech, Denzil Lawson, Managing Director of MasterCard Worldwide, said: “We are delighted to be awarded the inaugural TECOM Investments Pearl Award, in the category of Diversity and Globalization and congratulate TECOM for creating a robust platform for recognizing and encouraging corporate excellence.

“At MasterCard we believe that diversity is an enabler that helps us deliver business results, drive innovation and deliver customized solutions in a global marketplace. These values permeate all our activities, from the products and services we offer, to our diverse workforce, and have contributed significantly to our success across the varied countries we manage here in the Middle East and Levant.”

The Pearl Awards were presented to winners in 10 categories for their outstanding contribution to organizational excellence within TECOM's nine business clusters. The awards were aimed at showcasing Dubai as a destination for leading corporations that adopt global best practices as a fundamental business philosophy.

Launched in 2008, the Pearl Awards invited the participation of all licensed Business Partners that have been operating for at least 12 months within TECOM Investments' free zones, including Dubai Internet City, Dubai Media City, Dubai Knowledge Village, Dubai International Academic City, eHosting DataFort, International Media Production Zone, Dubai Outsource Zone, Dubai Studio City, DuBiotech and ENPARK.

IDC IT Managers Forum & Expo 2009

IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey's pioneering IT Managers Forum and Expo is currently halfway through its inaugural tour of the region which rolled into Dubai's iconic Altantis Hotel in June.

Starting in Abu Dhabi in early May, the event traveled to Istanbul, Doha, Riyadh, Casablanca, and Ankara, and is scheduled for stop in Cairo, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Lagos, Tunis, and Kuwait later in the year, and is expected to attract over 3,000 professionals.

IDC's IT Managers Forum and Expo 2009 underscores the vital importance of managing the forces of rapid technology change and business disruption, especially during these uncertain economic times. The full-day conferences features high-impact presentations from some of the region’s most influential ICT thought leaders, as well as insightful end user case studies detailing implementations of the very latest technology in real-life situations.

To ensure the series covers all of the very latest technology trends, IDC has teamed up with a host of leading vendors, including Dubai Internet City as ICT Partner and HP, EMC, MEEZA, and MATCO as Forum Partners. FVC, Polycom, EMC, and ITS are Platinum Partners, while the Gold Partners are APC, Trend Micro, MEEZA, HP, Toshiba, TTS, CA, Comsec, Checkpoint, Gulf Commercial Group, Epicor Software, Symantec, Lenovo, Intel, eHosting DataFort, Eaton, and IBM. The Lunch Partner is TTS and the Exhibit Partners are Palazzo and Toshiba, with Brother and Eaton featuring as Raffle Partners and CPI and AME Info acting as Media Partners.

For more information about the events and available partnership opportunities, please visit www.idc-cema.com/events/itmf2009.

Global technology giant IBM has relocated to Dubai the regional headquarters for its business in Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa.

IBM had previously based these operations in Zurich, Switzerland, but said that having its new hub in the UAE would enable it to shift skills and decision-making closer to the heart of an emerging marketplace of 100 countries.

The strategy behind the move was to focus on the developing and under-developed markets “that are very different from established markets in terms of growth and skills,” said Steve Cowley, general manager for Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, known also as the Ceemea region.

“Customers in this territory are very ambitious and look for leading-edge skills. They really want to leap-frog in terms of technology. IBM decided it could no longer do work on a global scale from its US corporate headquarters and cater to their needs and realised it needed a dynamic and flexible organisation to cope with the dynamism of the growth markets. So we set up the Ceemea Growth Market Team in June 2008,” Cowley said.

Aside from the emirate’s advantageous location near the center of all these emerging markets, he said that IBM chose Dubai “because of the city’s ability to attract talented people. It’s a vibrant place to live and work.”

Cowley oversees 15,000 employees across the region, plus another 12,000 employees based in global delivery centres that serve customers around the world. In the overall Ceemea region, IBM plans to invest heavily in building data centres and software development centres. Within GCC countries, it plans further expansion in Abu Dhabi and Qatar.

Cowley told Khaleej Times that 18 per cent of IBM’s $100 billion revenue in 2008 came from growth markets that included Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region as well as Ceemea. Together they posted a 10 per cent revenue growth year on year and contributed 60 per cent of IBM’s world’s business growth today. IBM’s growth markets represented 17 per cent of its revenue in the first quarter 2009, he said.

IBM is on track to deliver against its 2010 roadmap of $10 per share, Cowley added.

“We have repositioned from a predominantly hardware business to software. While, we continue to divest from hardware, we are keen to bring the most advanced skills by working closely with regional universities.

IBM announced projects in January to advance research through cloud computing – the use of virtual servers — at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, Qatar University and Texas A&M University at Qatar.

Get your Business Noticed with Ducont’s NOTIS

Ducont Founder and Managing Director Ivan Fernandes has been honoured with the 'Entrepreneur of the Year’ award at the inaugural TECOM Investments Pearl Awards, in large part due to Ducont’s NOTIS service which is widely used by corporations to target existing or potential customers or communicate with their employees using SMS technology.

In Dubai, NOTIS is used by the E-government departments to interact with residents by providing useful information such as traffic congestion, SALIK Alerts, Immigration alerts, information on various violations etc on SMS. A large conglomerate like Saudi Aramco uses NOTIS integrated with its SAP environment to send out messages to its internal staff, customers and vendors alike. In addition to ERP, NOTIS integrates with Exchange and provides an easy to use mechanism to send SMSes via Outlook.

NOTIS provides a powerful gateway, for E-mail, SMS, MMS and Fax communications. Designed for use with enterprise, financial and business applications, it is built on a reliable, secure and scalable platform ideal for corporates of any size. NOTIS is developed by Ducont, whose core focus is on the Middle East markets and its business requirements. Customers of NOTIS include Le Meridian Hotels, SS Lootah Group, Dubai Police, Dubai Naturalisation and Residency Department, Dubai E-Government, Dubai Health Department, Al Ain Hospital, Tawam Hospital, Dubai Economic Department, Amiri Guards Qatar, Qatar Telecom, Bahrain Telecom, Saudi Aramco , Dubai Public Prosecution, Multi choice, Dubai Real Estate (WASL), Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in Qatar, to name a few.

Holiday Inn Express in Dubai Internet City catches the MENA Travel Awards

At the recent Middle East North Africa (MENA) Travel Awards, InterContinental Hotels Group's (IHG) limited service hotel brand Holiday Inn Express was honored with two awards. Holiday Inn Express Safa Park and Holiday Inn Express Dubai Internet City captured the Gold and Silver award under the category of ‘Best Price Value Hotel’. The Holiday Inn Express brand was first launched in the region by Ishraq Gulf Real Estate, in July 2007, opening a 244 bedroom property in Dubai Internet City.

Bridging the GCC Technology Gap through Next-Generation ICT Parks
ICT parks enable a concerted leap into the digital age through incubation and growth of ICT talent

Dubai, UAE, March 2009 - As GCC countries seek ways to diversify their economies, information and communications technology parks (ICT parks) will continue to play a central role in helping to nurture fledgling technology industries by building pools of talent, finds a new report by Booz & Company. Existing GCC ICT parks focus on either achieving commercial success or fostering development of local talent, but not both together.

“To be effective, next-generation ICT parks will need to create stronger links between government, education, and industry in the ICT arena,” explained Karim Sabbagh, a partner at Booz & Company and global lead of the firm’s communications, media and technology globally. “Furthermore, to attract and retain talent, these parks will need well-appointed offices, desirable living amenities and other consumer services.”. Structured correctly, they will operate along the full ICT value chain, from ideation to commercialization, and will be positioned to help fulfill the economic missions of the GCC.

ICT parks play a significant role in enabling nascent technology industries
The countries of the GCC are full of economic potential, but need more mature technology industries to thrive. Because the region relies on imported skilled labor, most technology projects go to foreign contractors - who are not typically committed to the long-term growth of a grass-roots technology industry.

To change this, and to organically grow and enhance technology skills and knowledge, the GCC is turning to ICT parks. They allow a leap into the digital age by creating a dynamic environment to incubate, cultivate, and share talent. Next-generation ICT parks will thus serve as prime drivers in economic diversification efforts and transition towards a knowledge-based society.

Growing need for local ICT talent
GCC oil revenues over the past five years have allowed the development of a number of large projects - spurring growth in non-oil sectors to diversify economies and lessen dependence on hydrocarbons. “These projects have multiplier effects: they provide opportunities to grow secondary sectors and services and inject liquidity into the market, which serve to create a more sustainable socioeconomic environment,” commented Ramez Shehadi, a partner at Booz & Company, who leads the information technology practice in the Middle East.

Non-oil sector growth creates increasing demand for expertise in the GCC, which relies on foreign skilled labor to fulfill this need. Many expatriate workers however do not stay long, meaning GCC countries depend on a cycle of ‘knowledge through acquisition’ - not ideal for establishing a knowledge-based society. As GCC countries move toward economic diversification and become knowledge economies, investment in local talent is key and ICT needs to be a primary focus.

ICT outlook in the GCC

ICT spending in the GCC grew to $33 billion in 2007 – over twice the average of OECD countries and 50 percent higher than the global average, with spending expected to continue growing. “This is driven by increased demand for ICT in telecommunications, oil and gas, construction, healthcare, and public institutions,” commented Sabbagh.

That regional ICT efforts are mostly led by international companies brings challenges of inconsistent quality of service and a lack of responsiveness in the region’s most important development projects. This is exacerbated by the immaturity of national ICT agendas to develop capabilities, limiting the positive role educational institutions might play. The region also generally lacks copyright protection and transparent policies and regulations on intellectual property (IP) and a mature venture capital infrastructure. These make the environment for startups suboptimal.

To promote the development of ICT, GCC countries are directing investments toward state-of-the-art ICT Research & Development and are forging partnerships with world-class technology universities. They set up Special Economic Zones (SEZs) to create favorable economic and regulatory climates for ICT companies and also aim to improve availability of ICT services and capabilities: Dubai Internet City and Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP), for example, encourage the development of local ICT resources and cater to their countries’ fast-changing ICT needs.

The main business models of GCC ICT parks
The GCC has more than a half dozen parks that focus on ICT and follow one of two basic business models: commercial ICT parks or incubator ICT parks.

“Commercial ICT parks attract multi-national companies (MNCS) that focus on the latter stages of the ICT value chain: sales, implementation, and operations. These are success­ful where demand is high for ICT services and the supply of office space is tight,” said Shehadi. The main objec­tives are to offer the best commer­cial environment, attract the largest number of tenants, and maximize financial returns from leasing or sell­ing land or buildings.

Incubator ICT parks are built around R&D and are less focused on financial results. They often house satellite campuses of renowned technical universities – as academic influence generally leads to innovation and entrepreneur­ship and provides technical expertise. The primary purpose of ICT parks is to develop local ICT talent and create greater socioeconomic development. These ICT parks can play a pivotal role in integrating government, industry, and educational institutions.

Incubator ICT parks focus on creating broader economic value, but the path is more challeng­ing. To develop a grassroots ICT industry, the GCC needs self-sustaining ICT parks combining the characteristics of both commercial and incubator ICT parks. Next-generation ICT parks will create value through research and incubation of ICT projects, and will capture value by commercializing ICT products and services. “They will have facilities that help them attract and retain the companies and talent whose early-stage develop­ment they are helping. In providing such benefits, ICT parks will create self-sustaining eco­systems for an indigenous ICT industry in the GCC and help the countries transform into knowledge-based societies,” Sabbagh explained.

Value propositions that set apart ICT parks of the future
To create self-sustaining ICT parks, countries must put in place a hierarchy of value propositions. It starts with a set of value propositions that are relatively basic and that gives park tenants the “right to compete.” It then graduates to value propositions that are critical for transition to a knowledge-based society, followed by value propositions that give ICT parks sustainable ecosystems for long-term viability.

Basic value propositions, enabling the right to compete
Four basic value propositions are essential to ICT parks to compete:

1) Cost Advantage. ICT parks can attract companies by offering financial incentives including tax benefits, full foreign ownership, and repatriation. Many have moved beyond being tax havens and offer advanced incentives on real estate costs, employee salaries, and business support services.

2) World-class Business Infrastructure. Most ICT parks offer infrastructure making it easy for tenants to set up, including customizable office spaces, conference facilities, high-speed telecommunications and IT networks and convenient access to transportation hubs. Dubai Internet City has an advanced Metro Ethernet broadband infrastruc­ture and the world’s largest com­mercial IP telephony network for example. Newer ICT parks benefit from smart-city technologies and advanced business infrastructure improves the efficiency, creativity, and productivity of tenants.

3) Holistic Business Support. Modern ICT parks support their world-class infrastructure by providing value-added services. These essential services are especially important for startups and smaller enterprises that lack the scale to run a full-fledged support division. The fact that the services are available through a single point of contact is a major benefit.

4) Market Insights and Opportunities. ICT parks play an important role in identifying business opportunities for tenants by providing insights on, and entry into, local and regional markets. These again are especially important for startups and smaller enterprises.

Next tier value propositions transitioning to a knowledge society
After establishing basic value propositions, ICT parks can begin to implement three value propositions that are critical to transition towards a knowledge-based society:

5) Advanced ICT Education and Research. “Links to universities allow ICT parks to help host countries transition to knowledge-based societies. Some have set up their own universities, offering IT, media, and telecommunications courses,” Shehadi commented. ICT parks are also an integral part of the research infrastructure in most countries. The Centre of Excellence for Applied Research & Training (CERT) in Abu Dhabi, for example, was set up as the commercial arm of the UAE’s Higher Colleges of Technology. The organization sup­ports technology development through the CERT Centre for Supercomputing, the Embedded Systems Application Development Center, and other units. QSTP, for example, liaises closely with a number of world-renowned engineering institutions that have established satellite campuses in Qatar.

6) Assistance with Transforming Ideas into Businesses. Incubation services and business accelerators are important catalysts of innovation, providing business advice and mentorship to companies that need them. For example, The Knowledge Mine, a business incubator facility at Knowledge Oasis Muscat in Oman, supports and encourages the creation of knowledge-based and technology-based startups, providing an affordable working environment and a host of other services.

Funding for startups is also a key enabler of innovation. Dubai TechnoPark (DTP) set up a $300 million venture capital fund to attract early-stage tenants with viable commercial projects. The Dhahran Techno-Valley Business Incubation Services, linked to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Science Park (KASP), has established a proof-of-concept fund for its startups.

7) Integration of Government, Industry, and Education. Next-generation ICT parks should provide access to government ICT initiatives, help drive the enhancement of the ICT curriculum in universities, and serve as a liaison between industry and education. In some developing countries, government-led policy reform is such a core part of the ICT park agenda that government agencies set up satellite offices inside. In Oman, the government IT authority is an anchor tenant of Knowledge Oasis Muscat.

Advanced tier value propositions, creating sustainable ICT ecosystems
The two final and most advanced tier of value propositions makes it possible for an ICT park to ensure its own long-term viability. This is achieved via a long-term commitment to ICT development and a sustainable lifestyle for workers.

8) Long-term Commitment to ICT Development. Next-generation ICT parks must focus on long-term partnerships that attract and retain strategic tenants. The factors that help with this include the availability of capital and the promotion of innovation. “Other factors include an unwavering respect for intellectual property and copyright protection laws, and proven processes to attract quality ICT companies and workforces needed to staff them,” stated Sabbagh. Dubai TechnoPark has promised to fund R&D projects that address major socioeconomic chal­lenges in the region.

9) Sustainable Lifestyle for Workers. The GCC’s ICT parks must provide facilities that make life easier and more interesting, such as recreational facilities, green spaces, and retail and entertainment complexes. Dubai Internet City provides a strategic geographical location: although it doesn’t offer residential/ entertainment facilities on its grounds, it was built near Dubai Marina, which has high-rise residential areas, entertainment, shopping centers, restaurants and beaches. “When ICT parks are farther from major international cities or recreational areas, they need to encourage the growth of these types of amenities and services in their neighborhoods—if not directly on their grounds,” Sabbagh commented. “These are key to attract talent to relocate to these parks.”

Three imperatives: clear focus, long-term commitment, and prime location and layout
As GCC policymakers plan ICT parks that could move their countries towards knowledge societies, they should integrate three ele­ments in their plans:

1) A clear direction for individual ICT parks. Next-generation ICT parks should have dedicated clusters incentivizing industry, government and other institutions to interact in new ways, and selected to meet market demand. ICT parks must integrate their mission with those of their host countries, as economic benefits of zone development are reduced when zones function in isolation from larger national objectives. Benefits are multiplied when ICT parks conform to national economic policies and help increase the competitiveness of domestic enterprises. “They are even greater when integration includes government and education institutions. Such efforts can be pivotal in moving host countries towards knowledge-based economies,” said Shehadi.

2) A focus on long-term commitment rather than short-term profitability. Creating an indigenous ICT industry requires long-term commitment. Decision makers should complement current short-term financial measures of success with longer-term measures, such as the number of new tenants joining the ICT park, the number of local startups, the number of patents awarded, and the number of local ICT university graduates.

Financial support should be secured early on and support from senior government officials is critical. Long-term success will also be determined by the strength of the ICT park’s manage­ment team. “This team should have expertise in both business and techni­cal areas, with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, and supported by a Board of Directors that helps steer the ICT park towards its vision and objectives,” Sabbagh said.

3) Selection of prime location and layout. A convenient location can be important in letting ICT park tenants connect with their sup­pliers and customers, and thus keep labor and materials costs under control. The ICT park’s building should be entrusted to a world-class master planner knowledgeable about smart-city technologies and urban-planning, to ensure a state-of-the-art development. The ICT park layout should be campus-like, focusing on “groundscrapers” - low or medium rise buildings. “Such architecture fosters communica­tion and collaboration: it is essential for innovation and helps integrate the different businesses in the ICT park,” explained Shehadi.

The ICT park operator should accurately gauge future demand—how quickly the ICT park is likely to grow and the infrastruc­ture and services that will be required. A phased growth plan offers the best chance to avoid overcrowding or empty spaces.