Dubai eGovernment to support first Middle Eastern Summit on handheld computing devices

The summit, which is organized by the Arabcom Group and HiTEK, will highlight the importance of mobility in business scenarios and bring into focus futuristic mobile technologies that have the potential of raising return on investment (ROI) through the adoption of Enterprise Mobility and wireless connectivity.

Dubai eGovernment's participation in the summit was announced at a press conference organized by the Arabcom Group and held today, Tuesday November 18, 2003. The summit will feature an exhibition of mobile computing products, as well as host a series of workshop sessions that will cover every aspect of business mobility.

"One of the principal objectives of Dubai eGovernment has been to create scenarios that encourage market growth in every sector of commercial enterprise. The procedures of eGovernance put into motion have been an important step in this direction. However, this step must go hand-in-hand with a consistent effort to educate the society on innovative technologies that can boost individual success ratios and in this way contribute to the flourishing national economy," said Salem Al Shair, Director eServices, Dubai eGovernment. "It is with this objective in mind that the eGovernment has extended support to the summit on mobile computing."

"The government's effort has always been to increase the levels of enterprise mobility amongst its staff, as we have discovered that this provides real-time advantages in situations requiring immediate access to governmental databases or where immediate response can avert possible disaster situations," added Al Shair. "With a target audience of enterprises, governmental departments, developers, distributors, resellers and individual end-users, the summit will provide an opportunity for dialogue among those wishing to be informed, whether it is the end-user exploring new technologies or the developers investigating market needs. Such an event will ultimately provide the means of ensuring that the region stays at the cutting-edge of global technology evolution, instead of borrowing from the so-called advanced markets."

Katia Tayar, President and CEO, Arabcom Group stated: "Our world is evolving into a Knowledge economy. The ability of a society to acquire knowledge helps drive the competitiveness of a country's economy and can mean the difference between growth and stagnation. The utility of a "Mobile Office" surpasses expectations in a multitude of ways for both the public and the private sectors".

The summit workshops will cover a wide variety of topics, including "mobilizing field service teams in the real world", " the future of enterprise mobility", "developing mobile point of sale applications", "increase ROI by adopting enterprise mobility" and "the management solution: maximizing wireless employee productivity in an era of limited IT resources". The sessions, addressed by experts from across the globe and belonging to technology leaders such as Intel, Oracle and Microsoft, will be open for the public. The exhibition will showcase the latest technology launches in the fields of Handhelds, Software and Customized Solutions, as well Service Solutions for the end-users.

The summit is co-sponsored by HP, PalmOne, ADB, Captaris and AME Info.