Yasser Zeineldin (page 1 of 3)

Meeting one of Bill Gates' principal representatives in the Middle East is rather a daunting prospect. For Yasser Zeineldin is regional marketing manager for the world's best-known marketing brand - Microsoft over took Coca-Cola two months ago. And conversations with leading figures in the IT industry can be linguistically challenging, as this is an industry with a private language all of its own.

But Mr Zeineldin knows this fact only too well, and fortunately adopted a more relaxed style for dinner in the elegant surroundings of the Vivaldi Restaurant overlooking the Dubai Creek from the Sheraton Hotel. He arrived at 8.30pm, wearing the Microsoft chairman's trademark open shirt, and having only just logged off in the office as the final preparations are made for the launch of the Microsoft Office XP system at the end of this month.

'Microsoft is a company that is constantly re-organising itself. It happens every six or nine months, we organize to meet the customer needs and to address the challenges by the ever changing IT industry. It is the great strength of our company that it has never forgotten its roots as a start-up. Bill Gates tells us to constantly monitor what the smaller companies are doing and we react very fast.

'A typical example was our move into the server market with Windows NT , Windows 2000 and the Server Products. People said why are you bothering to do that when you have a major share of the PC market? But we are always moving forward to offer a broader and more comprehensive set of products and services to our customers. Similarly, the enormous success of MSN and the WEB properties that Microsoft offers today was basically all in the making in the last couple of years'.

Mr Zeineldin has a passion for software, and joined Microsoft four years' ago from AT&T. His background as an electronics engineer coupled with his international experience, have prepared this Alexandria-born executive for the top IT marketing role in the Middle East. He clearly relishes the challenge, and exudes enormous energy and enthusiasm for the new vision and strategy for Microsoft, namely .NET and some of the products which are to hit the market soon like the latest release of Microsoft Office, the Office XP.

It is rather hard to sum up his exact statements, as some of the detail is inevitably too technical for a general audience. But suffice to say that Office XP is designed to make document handling and data organisation much easier, dramatically improves workgroup collaboration and effectiveness and makes far more use of the Internet than its predecessor. It also offers new voice and handwriting recognition capabilities in addition to the traditional keyboard.

At this point, the excellent first course arrived. A generous mixed salad for Mr Zeineldin and an asparagus dish for his interviewer. For a restaurant that is barely six months old, the Vivaldi has a confidence and panache that sets it apart from the many other Italian restaurants in Dubai. Mr Zeineldin declared himself very impressed with his first visit.

But what about the bigger picture? Where is Microsoft heading in the Middle East?

'Last year we grew at 60 per cent,' says Mr Zeineldin. 'This year it will be more like 30 per cent. Some of our markets in the Middle East are becoming mature, and our growth rates in such markets are thus smaller. However, many countries are still emerging as new IT forces in the region and in these places we still enjoy 40-50% growth, but it averages out overall to about 30%.