Jordanian ICT firms eye GCC

Jordanian information and communication technology (ICT) firms expect to see 15 to 20 per cent growth in demand for technology products and services from the GCC markets, an industry association said yesterday.

A group of nine member companies from the Information Technology Association of Jordan (Int@j) revealed positive expectations for the year to come, in light of a growing demand for outsourced services during the financial crisis. These companies have set expansion plans in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait for the coming year.

"The demand for IT in the Gulf markets is continuing to grow, especially as organisations recognise the benefits of services such as contact centre outsourcing as a more cost-effective method of communicating with customers during the global financial crisis," said Rami Sweis, Chief Executive Officer, CrysTelCall, Jordan's first independent multilingual contact centre. It provides a full range of inbound and outbound contact services, consultancy and business process outsourcing (BPO).

Dr Bashar Hawamdeh, CEO, Middle East & North Africa Internet Technologies (MenaITech), first software firm in the Arab region specialised in the development and distribution of human capital solutions, said: "We identified around 60 solid business opportunities in the region, mainly in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman.

"Today we're still experiencing a keen interest from these companies to invest in Human Resources Management Systems, as they move towards reorganising and restructuring their organisations to manage their HR needs more efficiently over 2009.

"We have a local presence across the GCC and although earlier we predicted growth of up to 45 per cent, we can confidently say it may drop slightly, but not by a landslide."

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