HP, together with International Data Corporation (IDC), have discussed the implications of the enormous growth that the IT industry is facing in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. IDC revealed that the MENA region is set to grow from $6.9 billion in 2003 to around $13.4 billion by 2008 with all countries’ expenditure on IT growing significantly but with a particularly marked increase in both Saudi Arabia and the Maghreb.
The MENA region, which IDC defines as the Arab Middle East and North Africa, is currently the third fastest growing IT market in the world after India and China.
Joseph Hanania, Managing Director of HP Middle East, responding to the findings, said that HP is well positioned to capitalise on the rapid expansion in the regional IT market. “We have the right strategy, the right solutions and the right people,” he said, “so we provide each of our three key markets – enterprise, small to medium business and consumer with a series of compelling propositions. That is why in virtually all of our key solutions areas we are the number one vendor in the region and also why we are the leading IT company in the Middle East with more than three times the revenues of our nearest competitor. The findings from IDC underscore the dynamism of the regional market and represent both an opportunity and a challenge to HP. We need to build on our leadership position while anticipating the challenges that inevitably result from operating in such a fast-changing market.”
The MENA region, according to IDC, is currently growing at around 15 percent, a figure that has remained reasonably stable over the last three years. Among the key trends that IDC is witnessing in the region is consolidation of servers in the enterprise. “The strategy being adopted by many large organisations in the region is to operate on one large mainframe supported by four to five mid-range servers,” said Jyoti Lalchandani, Regional Director, IDC, Middle East and North Africa. “In the SMB space, however, we are seeing the opposite effect. We believe that the rapid emergence of this particular sector as a significant investor in technology in the region has led to a large number of vendors focusing a great deal of attention on this sector.” (menareport.com)
© 2004 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
