Al Alamiah Group announces a strategic collaboration with HP

This high-profile collaboration includes liaising the businesses and projects administered by the Al Alamiah Group in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait & other GCC countries, with a view to enhancing the Group's position as the largest IT & communications contractor in the region.

This announcement is a confirmation of the new overall strategic direction Al Alamiah Group has embraced for the long term. It is a well studied, well planned, strategy adopted over the past two years, in liaison with the Group's largest clients. The "multi-vendor" strategy is a direct outcome of Al Alamiah's closely knit ties with major IT giants such as Dell, Cisco & Acer for hardware; Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and Sakhr for systems & applications; in addition to the company's strong bond with well established high-profile clients in Saudi Arabia & Kuwait.

It is also noteworthy that Al Alamiah Group is the only company in the region that has been awarded the DASP certificate, making it the only Dell Authorized Service Provider in Kuwait & Saudi Arabia.

"Al Alamiah's strategy is the natural upshot of our main goal of establishing our company as the pioneer in the field of comprehensive IT solutions. To this end we have poured all our efforts & investments towards supplying our clients with whatever they need; from hardware, to software, networks, implementation, training & support, all of which is part of Al Alamiah's well studied plan," stated Hamed Al-Sharekh, Vice President Al Alamiah Group, President Al Alamiah Group KSA. He added, "Because we are fully aware of the needs & demands of the region, and because we fully understand its nuances & culture, international IT giants give us their utmost support in order that we may work together to serve the region's markets."

Al Alamiah Group KSA was ranked 61 in Saudi Arabia's list of the 100 largest companies in the kingdom for 2002. This places Al Alamiah at the top of IT specialized GGC companies. The Group's list of clients includes some of the largest organizations in the region from the oil, banking & industrial sectors, as well as governmental institutions in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia & others in the GCC. During 2003, the Group's business in the equipment & IT solutions sectors exceeded US$220 million.

"We have carefully mapped out our new "multi-vendor" marketing strategy, and we have organized our clients in Kuwait & Saudi Arabia into several groups," Al Sharekh explained, adding, "This means that Al Alamiah will have enough flexibility to enable us to offer our clients the solutions that best meet their requirements from a large selection of products provided by our authorized suppliers. This in turn will ensure that our clients get additional benefits, a better return on their investment & the best support, services, maintenance & after sales services. Our latest projects with the Saudi National Guard and Kuwait's Social Security are the first fruits of our collaboration efforts with HP."

"This strategic collaboration will benefit Al Alamiah's clients in Saudi Arabia & Kuwait in particular. To begin with, our collaboration with HP will concentrate on the company's specialty products from servers, to work stations, printers, and other products which are in demand by small to medium sized companies," Abdulaziz Al Gharabally said, commenting on the expected effects of this agreement on Al Alamiah's clients.

Hewlett Packard was named American's best company in the area of Customer Relationships. HP continues to produce modern innovations & continues to provide its clients with products, services & solutions as recent reports issued by the ADC Research Organization indicated HP as leading the market with its servers & workstations. HP was also named the company with fastest growth rate worldwide in the field of handheld Palm equipment.