This year's GITEX event in Dubai had something to prove. Spending on technology is often one of the first things to suffer in an economic downturn, as companies postpone infrastructure upgrades and managers have to make do with existing assets. This hurts an industry with a short lifecycle, especially so in the Middle East, where the ownership cycles for technology are some of the lowest in the world. So when spending falls off a cliff, as happened in 2008/9, the hi-tech industry feels it quickly and painfully.
Although GITEX continued to book out the whole of the iconic Dubai World Trade Centre, and GITEX Shopper was as chaotic and wonderful as ever, the last two events have been less flamboyant than before. So all eyes were on GITEX this year to discover if the industry, and indeed the region, have recovered from the economic doldrums. The answer speaks for itself with a record 4,000 exhibitors and an expected 150,000 visitors to the 80,000m2 facility over the five days of the event. In a huge statement of intent, one of the biggest areas of the entire show was taken over by the Dubai e-Government project, with 26 government entities sharing the stand. Abu Dhabi government agencies were also there in number. The message is clear, the UAE is continuing to invest in technology, to establish and maintain a leadership position. With a young country about to celebrate it's 40th National Day, a well educated population and little legacy infrastructure to replace, there is every reason to believe the UAE will leap-frog more established countries into the world techno-elite. Projects such as the National ID card, linking to the delivery of many e-government services, give the UAE the mechanism to secure participation of it's population, both local and expat, in the march to a streamlined, automated future.
The big industry players were there too, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, each along with their constellation of supporting local partners. It was a very unfortunate time for the Blackberry service to become unavailable, especially ironic as the CEO of RIM was in town to attend the conference. But as ever the industry provides choice, with Apple announcing iOS5 and the iPhone 4S that week too - prophetic perhaps, as the Middle East is probably the last remaining region where Blackberry enjoys a buoyant market share thanks to the ubiquity of BBM. Other quirks of the region were being explored as well - like, for example, the reticence in moving to Cloud computing, which is taking hold elsewhere. Concerns over available bandwidth, legal issues to do with data ownership, and security concerns outweigh the current benefits on offer. The Cloud Computing conference drew a large audience, showing that Cloud is definitely on the agenda. A big prize awaits for those who can overcome these current hurdles.
It was a great pleasure to be associated with this year's event where Gael exhibited for the first time on the Scottish Development stand, showcasing recently announced products such as Gael Risk and the mobile iPad apps for document management and audit management. Necessarily, GITEX is a general purpose IT event, however there was some interest in IT governance, particularly around the ISO27000 standard for information security as mandated by various government agencies.
It was great to see the show back to it's former glory, and to misquote a famous saying, rumours of Dubai's demise have been - once again - greatly exaggerated!