Bahram Mohazzebi

Leading the Microsoft team from its new Middle East base in the Dubai Internet City is general manager Bahram Mohazzebi. He spoke to AMEInfo.com on the eve of Gitex, the biggest annual computer show in the region.

First, how was Microsoft coping with the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11? Surely this was a difficult time for such a high profile US corporate in this region?

'Well, it has had no effect on our business,' says Mr Mohazzebi. 'We are not cancelling our participation in any events, and went ahead with the opening of our Muscat office last week and will be at Gitex. It is business as usual as far as we can, whatever our personal feelings'.

This is a big autumn for Microsoft team in the Middle East which serves a client base of around two million with a staff of barely 300. So how significant is the launch of the MSNArabia portal? And why does the Middle East needs another portal?

'MSNArabia is far more than just another portal,' explains Mr Mohazzebi. 'This is about bringing together many services and content modules on to one website, so that users really do not need to go anywhere else. For example, there will be Expedia to handle all their travel requirements. And the content will be very rich with the best local providers from the region.

'And MSNArabia will also integrate into the Microsoft .Net strategy of moving businesses from having websites to being fully operational as web services and then integrating them. MSN is the portal to access everything from one key point. And Microsoft will be investing heavily in this portal'.

The other key event of this fall will be the unveiling of Windows XP on October 25, a date seen by many in the PC industry as their salvation from falling sales. For Windows XP is seen as the main driver for higher PC sales around the globe with buyers scrambling to get the latest system. So what is so magical about this operating system, surely everyone already has Windows?

'This is quite simply the best-ever version of Windows. It is faster, more reliable and has lots of functionality to enable the user to be more productive. That is the wonderful thing, it's a self-trainer that educates you in how to be more productive', explains Mr Mohazzebi.

'I have been using it for sometime, and my personal favourite is being able to read to my PC rather than to have to type. I am a slow typist and this feature saves me around an hour a day and is 96-97% accurate. Our feedback is that XP Windows is a great product and we are very confident about its success'.

In his eight years with Microsoft in the Middle East, Mr Mohazzebi is most proud of his company's investment in Arabic language applications, and indeed Arabic software is now always launched simultaneously with the English language versions.

'In Microsoft's 10 and a half years in the Middle East, this has been by far our biggest investment,' he says. 'At the moment Arabic-enabled software is more popular than fully Arabic versions, as people seem to like being able to shift back and forth between languages'.

The most serious problem for Microsoft is piracy with pirated software running on about 80% of PCs. And the Microsoft chief argues that the users of pirated software are often the losers. 'Our software package may cost no more than a pair of sneakers, and yet people deny themselves the back-up of Microsoft support staff by operating pirated systems. What happens if something goes wrong, and they don't know what to do, who do they call?'

This is also a matter of education, another sector where Microsoft is investing heavily in the Middle East, supporting many educational IT projects. The US software giant knows that the best clients are often caught young and that education will speed up the introduction of IT systems around the region.

'It is still patchy in the Middle East with places like Dubai out front and some other considerably less well advanced in IT,' notes Mr Mohazzebi. But this year he expects another 500,000 PCs to be sold in the region which makes IT the Middle East's fastest growing industry. And Microsoft is still working hard to ensure that PC penetration levels grow further.

In the United States Microsoft's original aim was to put a PC in every home and business, and it has someway to go before meeting such a target in the Middle East. But this autumn will be another notable landmark along that particular road.