The first-ever Digital Business Channel connects MEA's top corporate channel

World leading vendors supporting the event include AMD, Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, APC, Brother, Sun Microsystems, Acer, NEC, 3Com, Avocent, Sony Storage and over 20 others.

Held at Le Meridien Al Aqah in Fujairah (Dubai) on 28th November to 1st December 2005, DBC MEA hosted over 140 senior executives representing corporate resellers, VARs, system & software houses and other channel partners from 30 countries. According to DISTREE EVENTS, the organisers of DBC-MEA, the business partners at the event represent about $3 billion of annual turnover; 86% sell to large corporate accounts, 82% to mid-sized enterprises and 72% to small businesses.

DBC MEA comes at a critical moment, as double-digit growth shifts more business attention to the region. The value of hardware sales alone is $12 billion, according to DBC MEA keynote speaker and research partner, IDC. The market research firm sees increasing demand for PCs (currently valued at $7 billion) and server hardware ($8.5 billion).

Blazing IT market growth is seen across the region this year — 21.7% in UAE, 16.9% in Saudi Arabia. While growing demands in MEA focus business I.T. on government, infrastructure and large enterprises, recently medium and small enterprises (as well as consumers) have added to the uplift in I.T. sales.

"For a first ever 100% B2B (business to business) channel event in MEA, we were quite pleasantly surprised with the level of support from both vendors and business partners," said Farouk Hemraj, CEO for DISTREE EVENTS. "We are very pleased that our formula has worked to bring together two vital elements necessary for promoting the technology infrastructure in this region - the international vendors and the local solution providers."

DBC-MEA follows the special DISTREE formula — a high-level, full service event in the comfort of a world-class venue. It is a full service event, providing a well balanced combination of boardroom meetings presented by vendors, prescheduled one-on-one meetings, high-level content from industry experts and networking opportunities.

DBC's business partners honoured participating vendors in the following best-in-class categories:
Best Vendor: AMD
Best Product: HEWLETT-PACKARD
Best Boardroom Presentation: EPSON / SUN MICROSYSTEMS
Best Marketing Campaign: HEWLETT-PACKARD
Best Premier Presentation: AMD
Next year's event, scheduled to be held on 18 -21 September at Le Meridien Al Aqah Beach, has already attracted the interests of several new vendors as well as this year's vendors who have expressed an interest in returning to the event.