Stragetic partnership formed between Gulf Business Machines and PeopleSoft

Under the terms of the arrangement, GBM, which provides services and support to IBM Distributors in the Gulf countries excluding Saudi Arabia, becomes a regional distributor of PeopleSoft's enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

ERP solutions enable the integration of business processes organisation-wide and GBM will work with companies in the region to help them realise the benefits of implementing these types of solutions as part of a transition towards becoming on demand businesses.

"Customers in the region will be able to realise a number of benefits from deploying PeopleSoft ERP solutions from organisation-wide business process integration to an ultimately faster return-on-investment, a swifter time to market, an infrastructure that is scalable, improved throughput, reduced cycle time, and a lower total cost of ownership," said Jim Massey, Director of Professional Services, GBM.

"The PeopleSoft solutions will be offered with value-added implementation and support services from GBM, including business consultancy, integration, deployment and support, including educational and organisation and business process improvement services," added Massey.

"The provision of these business transformation services along with superior and flexible ERP packages by GBM adds yet another dimension to our leading position in the IT industry in the Gulf region and these benefits will be particularly appropriate to on demand businesses in the banking and finance and telecommunications sectors, among others," he concluded.

This agreement with GBM is part of PeopleSoft's plans to significantly expand its base of local, industry-aligned channel partners who will support its fully-Arabized industry leading software solution, PeopleSoft Enterprise One in the region.

"Flexibility is a critical success factor for Middle East companies that want to grow business both domestically and globally," said Jeffrey Reed, Managing Director and Vice President, PeopleSoft Distribution Group, EMEA. "Our alliance with GBM brings together the right combination of in-depth industry understanding and on the ground local specialist support to enable organizations to be flexible on how they modernise operations."

"Access to PeopleSoft's leading sales and marketing tools and our proven implementation methodologies, tools and templates are just some of the benefits that GBM will derive from this partnership as well as support from our local Middle East Office," concluded Read.

A singing ceremony marking the announcement was held at the Dubai Internet City Community pavilion during GITEX 2004.