Joseph Hanania

'We have not seen it,' says Mr Hanania. 'The Middle East's IT industry is growing at 20-22 per cent per annum, and we continue to remain on track. The market has not over-estimated itself like the US or Europe, and so we have not seen the situation of excess supply over demand'.

Mr Hanania was speaking in the week after Compaq opened its new Global Services office in Abu Dhabi, which will provide advanced services to customers with mission critical e-business and IT infrastructures.

'But it is true that around the world Compaq is seeing slower demand for its products', he says. 'And a new business model is now in place to realign our workforce due to the slowdown. We have been merging our consumer and commercial divisions and that has already resulted in some job losses'.

Like most IT companies Compaq has been re-inventing itself in recent years, and now focuses its business into three core areas.

'First, we are an access device manufacturer, offering a range of products from traditional PCs to handheld devices to access the Internet,' explains Mr Hanania. 'All of them use the same Microsoft applications, and we are seeing huge demand for our handheld devices which offer the same Microsoft Explorer as a PC but with a smaller font'.

'Secondly, Compaq is deploying servers that need to be available 99 per cent of the time. We have had market leadership in this segment for ten years, and again work in partnership with Microsoft'.

'And finally we are providing servers for mission critical applications which can never go down, such as ATMs for banks. Here we run Oracle based applications, and our main clients are the telecommunications companies and financial community'.

Compaq has also been very active in promoting e-business and the development of e-commerce in the region. Mr Hanania is keen to stress that Compaq has developed its own web site from being just an online catalogue to being a full e-store where customers can order a new PC, and then pick it up from a local partner's outlet.

'There is no turning back in the Internet revolution,' he says. 'The benefits for all companies are there to see, and everyone will go through the different transition phases to becoming an e-business. The market here is behind the US and Europe but I am amazed at how fast things are progressing now.

'I am very optimistic about the future. All we are seeing in the US and Europe is a traditional business cycle, and none of the fundamental advantages of e-business have changed at all.

'A lot of our business is now in integrating Internet transaction systems into clients' legacy systems, and we have Compaq Global Services that specialises in this work. Fortunately, we have not seen a dot-com crash in the Middle East, and it is more a matter of existing businesses adapting to the Internet. And Compaq is working from a very strong position in helping them to do this'.