Dirk de De Waegeneire

'Our goal is to be in the top five suppliers by the end of March 2002,' says vice president Dirk de De Waegeneire on one of his frequent visits to Dubai. 'We are targeting the small and medium sized business'.

Fujitsu Siemens has already come along way since its creation in October 1999 as a merger of the computer divisions of these two great global corporations into one unit.

'It is a true 50:50 joint venture and even half of the board directors come from each company,' explains De Waegeneire. 'We have been through the difficult process of integration, and even in the Middle East there were changes on both sides, particularly in channel partners. But we now have that behind us.

'We do not just want to be known as a supplier of high-end PCs at reasonable price,' he adds. 'Our USPs are our technical features, security, manageability and reliability of the made-in-Germany type, as well as good price performance'.

The group has also made serious in roads into the server market over the past year, and has a client list that includes buyers as diverse as the US Navy in Bahrain and Adnoc in Abu Dhabi. 'We have the full range of servers and more typical clients are the regional telcos and banks,' says De Waegeneire. 'We are not just a PC and lap top manufacturer, far from it. Servers are a major part of our business'.

All the same, the small and medium sized business community is sure to like the new Dhs6,995 Jetson professional computer to be launched in late May in the UAE. It features a flat screen and 933MHz processor, and DVD.

'The trend in the business market is definitely towards the flat screen model with DVD,' says De Wageneire. 'Meanwhile, the four-year old trend towards lap top ownership continues. We can only speculate why, but part of the reason must be that companies find that their employees do more work away from the office if they have a lap top. It is a small extra cost for the gain in productivity'.

Out soon will be the new Amilo notebook from Fujitsu Siemens with 700MHz, a Pentium III processor and 14-inch screen, plus the normal Germanic styling and build quality.

Fujitsu Siemens also builds child security software into all its PCs and lap tops for sale to consumers. This neat and simple device prevents children from accessing unsuitable material through a password system.

'We have come a long way in the past two years at Fujitsu Siemens,' says De Waegeneire. 'But we have a lot further to go, particularly in the Middle East where we are not yet among the major players really'. That is something Fujitsu Siemens clearly intends to change.