In the face of difficult trading conditions in the IT industry at a worldwide level, IT investment in the Middle East region maintained solid growth according to IDC. Gulf Business Machines (GBM) has subsequently reported that in 2002, business grew 11 percent over 2001 with revenues totaling around $130 million.
While growth came across the board, GBM reported a 21 percent growth from servers on total revenue of $26 million. The best performer in this category was the Unix server, which grew 34 percent year-on-year while Intel based servers, grew by 51 percent year-on-year.
Enterprise Storage systems also expanded showing a 75 percent increase on the previous year and revenue of seven million dollars. GBM added 62 new customers to the extensive blue chip client list in 2002. These contributed to a 14 percent increase over 2001 and $25 million to the total software revenue figure.
“We moved our operational headquarters from Sharjah to Dubai in the early part of last year. Further we have significantly strengthened our human resources. By January 2003 we had 380 staff an increase of just over five percent on the previous year,” explained Chief Executive Officer of GBM, Cesare Cardone.
GBM is the largest locally situated IT solutions and service provider in the region. It satisfies the technology requirements of local, regional and international businesses and governments in the Middle East. — (menareport.com)
© 2003 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
