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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 June 2000 Issue No. 484 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 June 2000 Issue No. 484
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Features Heritage Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Arabising Cyberspace
By Shaimaa LabibThis week, Egypt hosted the third annual regional COMDEX information technology (IT) exhibition. The four-day event, which ended yesterday, was held at the Cairo International Conference Centre in Nasr City. The exhibition was part of a high-powered series of annual events held in Europe, Asia, North America and South America. In total, the regional conferences host more than 7000 companies and attract over one million visitors. The first Middle East COMDEX exhibition, held in 1998, attracted approximately 15,000 visitors. In last year's show, attendance rose to 60,000. Organisers expect attendance this year to be at least as strong. Minister of Telecommunications and Information Technology Ahmed Nazif, who inaugurated the exhibition, said "Information Technology is vital to the future of Egypt. It will bring the international market to us, and it will integrate Egypt into the international market. The Egyptian information technology sector is growing at a fast rate, accompanied by an annual increase of 30 per cent in computer sales." Nazif said that the Egyptian government strongly supports investment by foreign IT companies in joint ventures with local companies. The minister said, "Egypt has the infrastructure and the human resources that the IT industry needs." Egypt currently has about 40,000 Internet subscribers and 160,000 computer users. The number of Internet subscribers is increasing by 30 per cent annually.
Over 200 companies, from 11 countries all over the world, participated in the trade show, displaying products ranging from the state of the art to the latest computer magazines. Leading business sponsors this year included Microsoft Egypt, IBM, Sun Microsystems, MobiNil, Xerox, and the Egyptian Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology. The COMDEX exhibition, along with the COMDEX Shopper, a separate event for consumers held parallel to the exhibition, were organised under the auspices of Prime Minister Atef Ebeid. The organisers, IIR Exhibitions of Dubai, said an agreement pledging support and participation has been made for the next five years between COMDEX Egypt and the Egyptian Software and Hardware Associations.
The dynamics of conducting business electronically within the Middle East was the dominant theme of the conference. Electronic commerce was in the spotlight at a full-day session devoted to e-business under the title of "The soul of e-business." Sponsored by IBM, the seminar allowed participants to explore such issues as e-commerce security and the latest solutions for a safe transition into an e-business environment.
At COMDEX, Novell, the world leading supplier of Internet infrastructure software, announced the introduction of its new Arabic version of GroupWise 5.5. According to Gavin Struthers, regional general manager for Novel Middle East, "We encourage those companies interested in e-business opportunities to fully explore all the elements involved in investing in secure, reliable and manageable networks as the foundation of their e-business strategy." First launched in Arabic in 1995, GroupWise was the only Arabic software package to offer users e-mail scheduling, calendars and task management via a single interface. "The availability of Arabic GroupWise 5.5 illustrates our commitment to the region, and is part of our efforts to provide our customers with the most advanced tools and the greatest amount of flexibility in how they implement and use them," Struthers said.
The effort to Arabise the Internet showed much progress at the COMDEX exhibition. A new company, Internationalised Domain Name System (IDNS), a US-based provider of multilingual Internet solutions, announced its latest Internet solution for Arabic-based web sites. Lo Pang Hee, chief operating officer of IDNS, stated, "For the first time in Egypt, and soon in the Arab world, companies and interested individuals will be able to create their web sites using domain names written in Arab characters." He added that his company has chosen Egypt as its launch platform to the Middle East because of its strategic position. "For too long, the Internet has been the domain of English speakers, thus, limiting the Internet usage for Arab users. Now, with new technology provided by IDNS, the Internet can be used in as many as 55 languages as well," Hee said. Recently, IDNS entered a commercial relationship with Link Egypt and Internet Egypt.
During the exhibition, Egypt's first on-line recruiters, CareerEgypt.com, displayed their services to job seekers and employers. Ayman Malak, senior recruitment consultant at the company, said, "Job seekers log into our Internet site where they will be required to submit their resumes by filling our on-line application free of charge. As for employers, they can access our site to add their job listings and then search for prospective employees in our resume database after they have subscribed for a minimal quarterly, semi-annual or annual fee." The company launched its www.careeregypt.com site earlier this year with the aim of ameliorating the unemployment problem using the latest in information technology.
Enhancing the skill level of the local market was the main concern of Microsoft. During COMDEX, Microsoft provided 16 training sessions to those interested in pursuing technical careers. Karim Ramadan, a Microsoft manager, said, "Our objective is to raise the technical skills of those working in the Egyptian IT field to increase their competitiveness in the global market."
Although the main focus of COMDEX was Arabising e-business, the religious possibilities of the brave new technological world did not escape the attention of many visitors. The booths housing Arabic software did a brisk business in the latest electronic version of the Qur'an, Hadith (Prophet Mohamed's pronouncements) and religious interpretations. Thus the promotion of Arabic within cyberspace will ensure that the process of globalisation is not synonymous with cultural homogenisation.
