IT’S AN AVERAGE DAY AT THE office. You’re sitting at your desk chatting on the phone with a client. Your mobile phone beeps. It’s an SMS from your wife reminding you to pick up milk on your way home. Moments later, your secretary brings you a faxed press release for an event you’d like to attend. So, you turn to your computer and add it in your outlook calendar. Your computer then automatically updates your palm pilot.

All the while, your inbox is piling up with e-mails; your MP3 player is charging so that you’ll have it up and running later at the gym. Scheduled shortly is a meeting with a partner in London to be conducted via voice chat and web cam.

You’ve just had a brush with nearly a dozen modes of information technology, (IT), in just a matter of minutes. As we kick off 2005, the broad range of IT is leaving open countless avenues for companies around the world to conduct business.

“The future will be totally wireless,” says Dr. Amir Zeid, assistant professor of computer science at the American University in Cairo (AUC). “Everything is being integrated into one piece. We are all moving toward a digital age. Digital in everything. So the future to be expected is that everybody can be hooked to the internet easily where ever they may be.”

Egypt is no different. And it is easy to forecast the future. When measuring information technology on a global scale, is Egypt prepared to implement all the knowledge to get up to speed with countries like the United States and India? The country’s most knowledgeable IT leaders say we’re on the right track, but we’ve got a long way to go.

“We are far, far away from where we should be,” insists Karim Ramadan, general manager of Microsoft Egypt. “It’s a tricky situation because you can take the optimistic or the pessimistic side of it. I’m an optimist. I think that we are turning along at a fast rate and in the right direction. Are we where we should be? Not yet. That’s our goal, that’s where we need to reach.”

“I think Egypt has done well to support an IT industry,” explains Dave Dyas, director of Xerox Egypt. “It is not seen regionally yet as an IT powerhouse, as an IT knowledge base. It has lost the trading base regionally to Dubai. It will be hard to win that position back because of the facilities they provide. But one thing Dubai doesn’t have is a large pool of labor.”

“The strong point is that we have good people. The bad point is good people leave Egypt,” Zeid says.

Industry analysts say India should be our model. Last year alone, the country exported $16 billion alone on IT. That is in comparison to Egypt, which has sent out $500 million. It’s a figure, experts say, which needs to be much higher.

The 1990s saw the emergence of software as a vibrant export sector. Economies that seized the moment and invested in the booming sector are prospering today. In 1999, 203 out of the Fortune 1000 companies outsourced their software requirements from Indian companies. At the turn of the century, India’s software industry employed some 250,000 people.

“I think we can be very similar to India,” Ramadan says. “I don’t think we can be on the same scale because India is much bigger than us, and India is now number two after the US. What I would like to do is reach 10 percent of India.”

Quality is undoubtedly the main objective for any nation looking to export at a competitive global level. This raises concern among local industry analysts who say quality, where Egypt is concerned, is often compromised.

“The difference between India and Egypt to sell a piece of software to America, it has to be a certain quality,” Zeid says. “If you are not trained to produce a certain quality of software, you will not be able to compete. The bottom line for the [United] States is high quality for the optimum price. So, if you exceed in the quality, they might be willing to pay more. But if you produce just any quality why bother?”

It’s a good question, Sherif Enayed of International Information and Communication Technology Center (IICTC) says of vision, strategy and system. “If we are serious about going global, we have to develop these new visions. [We should] promote the industry itself and develop the competence and skills of the people.”

“Everybody now is touching IT,” explains Dyas. “Whether you are at home, whether the kids are at school, whether you go to the hospital, whether you’re in a bank, whether you’re in insurance whatever industry you’re in now, IT is very, very dominant.”

Arabization

“The internet itself is like inventing electricity,” Zeid says. “It changed everything. It changed how people think. It changed how people shop. It changed how people travel.”

Iran is a perfect example. Since the introduction of internet, censorship has become a major concern, due to an explosive response from a population to a large extent isolated from the outside world. Particularly for women, IT has opened doors providing a portal to which they can escape and discuss certain private matters freely.

There are 300 million Arabic speakers in the Middle East. This year, according to online marketing company, Klipmart, the number of internet users in the region is set to reach 25 million. With such a response, both IT companies and academics are now proposing the Arabization of software language, aimed at adapting content and applications to the specific language, local market and culture.

“The internet was an English internet for a long time until we started to see how it can be turned into Arabic,” Zeid explains. “At the very beginning they were using Arabic as images, not text. And then it picked up and now we have an Arabic set and you can type in Arabic on the internet. The problem is we have a lot of people in the Arab world who don’t know English.”

Egypt possesses a strong and well-established institutional structure in education. Despite the relatively low adult literacy rate, the country ironically possesses a solid workforce and a young one at that.

Arabization is not limited to just the internet. Mobile phone companies have teamed up with software companies, such as IMAGiNET, equipping mobile phones with Arabic text for reading instructions or SMS’s.

Content service providers have also gotten into the act and experts agree, it’s only logical that it starts in Egypt.

“Arabic internet culture is coming out of Egypt,” Ramadan admits. “That is very much our history. We are the first people that came out with newspapers, books, movies and the soap operas. This is our natural leading position as far as entertainment, media and overall culture. I would expect that we would be leading with that when it goes into the next channel, which is the technology channel, whether it’s internet or mobile IT.”

Arabic offers a challenge to software makers who cater to the fact that Arabic is written from right to left, and mixed Arabic/Latin strings include text in both directions presented on the same line. Likewise, since the common way to read a document is to start from the top-right corner, all menus, pick lists, edit boxes, etc., should be mirrored with the right to left orientation.

Beyond Arabization of software, many centers now propose the Arabization of computer education. But in an expanding global market, is it wise to limit users to Arabic language terminologies when so much of the world’s IT market is English-driven?

Zeid says definitely not. “Arabization to the software is fine, but Arabization to the education meaning I go teach a class and translate all the terms to Arabic first, it will be impossible. Second, it will not mean anything,” he says. “If it’s done, the domain cannot go to the States and be presented in a paper at a conference. They won’t be able to read a reference.”

Show Me The Money

Technology, experts agree, has been focused very much on the high end, in terms of big companies in Egypt. With approximately 1 million personal computers and applications in the business sector of Egypt, statistics reveal that a majority of them are used by the nation’s top 1000 companies.

When measuring information technology on a global scale, is Egypt prepared to implement all the knowledge to get up to speed with countries like the United States and India? The country’s most knowledgeable IT leaders say we’re on the right track, but we’ve got a long way to go.

“When we look at the number of business entities we have in Egypt, we probably have something like 2 million business entities. The majority of them being small businesses, not even medium businesses,” Ramadan says. “You’d say the top 1000 large companies are where most of the PC’s and the applications are. We use ‘PC’ to measure it, but ‘PC’ means PC’s, servers and applications, just a general use of technology. Under it there’s maybe another two to three thousand medium-sized companies. So let’s say there is 5000 in the medium space. The rest is primarily small businesses.”

Small businesses, software makers say, are the target customers. With more small businesses investing in technology for their companies, more jobs will open, adding manpower and increasing the nation’s competitive edge in the global market.

“Egyptian young people are very eager to use these things and they are clever about using it,” insists Enayed. “[The difference] is the hands on and the experience transferring knowledge and know-how.”

“My graduates from here are starting to find jobs [more easily],” Zeid proudly admits. “About a year ago we had a problem finding jobs, but this year we are getting more. The cycle is moving again. For IT, in general, and for software industry in Egypt, it is growing.”

So then the next obstacle to overcome is clears and simple money even with the help of outside organizations such as USAID and the European Commission. However, Egypt continues to change its rules and regulations on import tariffs with the hope of welcoming more financial assistance to the technology sector.

In 2000, Egypt joined the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), which first eliminated tariffs, duties and other import charges on information technology products traded between ITA members.

Computers and computer equipment, semiconductors and integrated circuits, computer software products, telecommunications equipment, semiconductor manufacturing equipment and scientific instruments all fit into the agreement’s domain.

Egypt has since reduced its tariffs significantly, and this month is scheduled to totally do away with the tariff. The move, experts agree, will spur growth in Egypt’s promising IT sector and will augment Egypt’s advantages such as the abundance of highly skilled IT engineers and entrepreneurs, proximity to rapidly growing export markets and low fixed costs.

Now, with a new minister of communications and information technology in place, and the former minister in the prime minister’s seat, there is a realization about how a strong IT sector will contribute to high and sustainable economic growth for the Egyptian economy Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif himself calling it a national priority.

Egypt is geographically situated in a very strategic location. Aside from being a gateway to the Middle East and African markets, its time zone can add an additional work shift to North America and its proximity to Europe is an asset.

“The point is in the computer industry we are not inventing anything,” insists Zeid. “We are either just putting the things together in a box, or maybe manufacturing a little piece of the computer itself. We don’t make a new processor to compete with Intel, for example. The money is not there. Do you know how much money is spent in these companies. Microsoft hires people just to imagine the future!”

Ramadan says a cost-efficient business is a smart business. “On the cost side, I think the biggest cost barrier is the communication cost. So am I using the phone too much to contact people when I can use things like e-mail? Instead of faxing things, using a lot of paper and so on, why can’t I also do a lot of marketing using e-mail?”

Then there’s the revenue-generating side of things. “It’s all about better ways of marketing using technology, maybe giving off a better image in terms of the ways I have my brochures or my proposals, giving a much more professional image,” Ramadan continues. “Also, maybe automating some of the sales processes, so basically having an order form and that order form having specific codes and the codes are then linked to my products. Those kinds of things.”

Hands-on Education

There are two reasons for using most information technology work and play.

“I think now, people at home on a personal level are using IT in the way they’re communicating to people personally in an amazing way. Whether it’s e-mail, messenger, those kinds of things they provide a much richer experience in terms of how IT benefits people’s lives,” Ramadan says.”

“Until people receive things instantaneously, they will never be happy, because they don’t like waiting,” Dyas jokes. “IT is all about speed, it’s all around efficiency and productivity. IT can be regarded as one of the world’s biggest failures because it was there to make white collar workers more productive, but the reality is it’s made them less productive.”

“I don’t think we’re at speed yet. I think it’s more about organizing things,” Ramadan clarifies. “It’s very important for me, for example, because my workload is so hectic. I’m running all over the place and I have a lot of meetings. It’s very important for me the night before to be able to say what am I going to do tomorrow. I usually put seven tasks that I try to finish that day. I put them on Outlook.”

Still, not everyone is as organized [technologically] as Karim Ramadan. It’s not because they don’t want to be, but because they don’t know how to be. As we kick off 2005, a countless number of applications means more to learn. In order for us, as a population, to truly advance in the IT sector, hands-on exposure is essential.

“We want to promote the nontraditional areas of information communication technology training,” insists Enayed. “I would claim that we do understand the proper meaning of training and the difference between training and education. Education is different, it [gives] you an academic infrastructure. Training gives you skills of doing how can you do it in a real-life situation. It’s very important in Egypt because academic education is lacking a lot of hands-on experience.”

Applications such as e-mails, chatting, SMS, online games all of these things, Zeid believes has taken away from the intended function of information technology. “My students are assigned to build a web application, maybe a website for an organization, whatever. You go get the requirements from the people, they develop it, we criticize it for class. We are teaching people how to use the internet again,” he says.

Even past technologies we have become accustomed to such as the fax machine or printers are now being integrated into the digital age. For example, Xerox has not developed a copy machine in over five years. The strategy is to get IT users into a two-way information exchange.

“The technology that we are developing is what we regard as tools to transfer between those two mediums from the hard copy to the soft copy and vice versa so that people can use the document interactively, continuously,” says Dyas. “So the tools that we are providing now are everything, they are a five-way communication, they are fax machines, scanners, printers, copiers, they’re color, they’re black and white. The software that is on board is on board and it allows people to transfer documents straight to their desktop.”

Really, the spectrum of businesses already relying on IT is endless. Online banking, once an added convenience, has become a way of managing money. Everything from security and privacy, electronic payments, online loan and mortgage originations, and financial planning can all be done with a few simple clicks and codes.

E-commerce and internet security are now multi-billion dollar industries, touching everything from online shopping to corporate tampering and hacking.

Here in Egypt, the issue of color printing is making corporate giants see red. The Egyptian government licenses colored products, something unique to Egypt. It has naturally caused a major slowdown in the importing of colored printers. This year, the government is actually considering the removal of this license.

Governments worldwide are taking their ‘business’ online, and Egypt is no exception. Public records and general information is increasingly being made available for viewing online.

Experts suggest that Egypt adopts certain strategies to ensure success. First, by developing the region domestically, Egypt can ensure outside investment. Also, the current administration must make their economic policies and regulations more business friendly as in the case of color printing, for example.

More training centers in Egypt will ensure more well-trained IT professionals. Also an increase in capital investment and financing should be encouraged through outside support, such as USAID, as well as local donations and investment. Finally, IT infrastructure must constantly be improved.

Since the explosive popularity of the satellite dish across the Middle East, information technology has had a fast and phenomenal impact on the region economically, politically and socially.