Gulf cities in conjunction with Gulf Business Maschines

The roadshow visited Dubai, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar during April.

One of the main objectives of the event was to raise awareness of IBM's total software strategy and demonstrate how its Rational, WebSphere, Lotus, DB2 and Tivoli software brands - available through GBM - can be leveraged to gain competitive business advantages in an increasingly difficult economic environment.

The audiences comprised Chief Information Officers and other technology executives as well as IBM/GBM business partners, analysts, consultants and media. The roadshow portrayed 'IBM's Software Story' as told by visiting IBM professional, Douglas W Spencer, Worldwide Program Director, e-business Live, IBM; and Walid Gomaa, Manager of WebSphere & Rational, Gulf Region, GBM.

"The 'IBM Software Story' uses live business application demonstrations to communicate the value of the breadth, depth and integration of IBM's software solutions," said Mr Spencer. "It reviews IBM's software strategy and all five IBM software brands in the context of implementing e-business infrastructures and it addresses application foundations, content and information, integration, user experience, security and IT management (automation) and development."

"IBM's software is key to effecting true e-business on demand, which means having technology when and where it is needed with performance that grows with business requirements, having self-healing hardware and software to cope with variable system capacity, and having the right amount of power to accomplish given tasks," said Mr Gomaa, who added that the agenda for the event also included discussions on On Demand Business Transformation and on demand e-business infrastructures using IBM software products.

"This roadshow was particularly important as it highlighted the significant features and benefits of how IBM enables businesses to thrive in an on demand environment through software that - whether in the Gulf or anywhere else in the world - is used to build reliable, scalable, flexible, integrated, user friendly, manageable, secure and rapidly deployable e-business infrastructures and applications," added Mohammed Abdelhak, Software Manager, Gulf Region, GBM.