The rising IT spending in the region has been mainly driven by the burgeoning hardware market, which comprised 62.1 per cent of the entire industry, bumping off the services sector at 24.3 per cent and the packaged software market at 13.6 per cent. With aims to leverage the booming regional hardware market, NETGEAR, a worldwide provider of technologically advanced and branded networking products, has announced plans to highlight its range of best-of-breed networking and storage products, through its expanding regional operations in the GCC.
The IDC report also revealed that the six Gulf countries – Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman – will account for nearly 23 per cent of the total IT spending of the entire Middle East and Africa (MEA) region, which is expected to exceed Dhs146.8 billion in 2008, making them key markets for NETGEAR’s regional expansion plans.
The report further pointed to the potency of the Gulf information technology market, which is expected to exceed Dhs44 billion by 2011, representing a growth of almost 12 per cent. Saudi Arabia is the largest market in the region, comprising 43 per cent of the overall IT spending, followed by the UAE with 36 per cent, Kuwait with nine per cent, Qatar with five per cent, Bahrain with four per cent and Oman with three per cent.
"The massive IT spending projected for the Gulf region for the year presents us with tremendous encouragement to further strengthen our efforts to reach more customers and reinforce our relationship with our channel partners, in order to ride the current uptrend in the Middle East IT industry," said Omar Lutfi Azzawi, SMB Channel Manager, NETGEAR Middle East. ìThe growth of the regional IT hardware market due to the massive implementations being undertaken by major verticals and government bodies, as well as the rapidly-growing SMB market is pushing us to further enhance our portfolio of solutions by combining performance, functionality, ease-of-use, scalability and reliability."
Among NETGEAR’s most popular networking products are the NETGEAR ProSafe Advanced Smart Switches, which have been specifically designed for growing networks (50-200 nodes). Delivering robust security, enhanced traffic management and availability to growing networks, this range is a feature-rich, affordable, reliable and easy-to-manage alternative to fully-managed switches. Additionally, the ReadyNAS"! Pro is the newest and most powerful member of the award-winning ReadyNAS product family of state-of-the-art storage solutions. Designed for small and medium businesses, workgroups and home offices, ReadyNAS Pro delivers excellent performance and robust features in a small desktop chassis supporting 6 Hard Disk Drive (SATA 2 enterprise) and up to 6 TB of storage.
"Our strategy is to ensure that our design processes result in the integration of unique and intelligent features within all our products, and we believe that this unhindered commitment to quality has been fuelling our growth.
"Based on our deep understanding of the regional market, we recognize the opportunity to launch more products and expand our portfolio to meet the unique needs of enterprises in banking.
