Young Arab Engineers: Against All Odds

Growing intolerant to the current state of the high technology sector in the Arab region, three young Arab engineers are seeking to sow the seeds of change. Hence, Handasa Arabia (or Arabic Engineering), a non-profit, open-source organization, was born | IslamOnline.net

When it comes to scientific research or high technology, the Arab region is always, and perhaps justifiably so, assumed a desert. This region, however, is not deficient in a rare breed of people who want to turn the situation around – with financial return not being one of their aspirations.

The founders of Handasa Arabia (HA) have a lot in common. They are all familiar with the hardships of being hardware design engineers in an Arab country where, like almost all developing countries, the industry, if any, is primitive, the funding is extremely limited, and governmental support is minimal. In the meantime, they all hold it as an article of faith that in this seemingly desert region, and similar to other developing countries, skilled, well-educated hi-tech engineers are not in short supply. They were also well aware that the lack of proper jobs for young engineers leaves them with little choice but to succumb to a job in sales and marketing or, at best, in hardware maintenance.

Eastern Promise

India has always been a land of magical promise. But it’s also home to some of the world’s smartest and most innovative businesses, and they want to do business with us | Business Today Egypt

Business between India and Egypt is pretty good joint ventures are successful, and bilateral trade between the two countries is steadily growing. However, the full potential of mutual trade and investments hasn’t yet been fully tapped.

India must be doing something right. The words “India” and “Bangalore” kept coming up during the last American election campaign, which ended up with President G. W. Bush winning his second term in the White House. But India and Bangalore were, ironically, not mentioned in the context of the foreign affairs or the international political agenda of any of the challengers. They were at the center of a heated debate over a purely internal issue; jobs for Americans. Each party was proposing its own set of solutions to stem in the rising tendency, led by almost all the American corporate giants, including General Electric, Intel and Hewlett Packard, to outsource jobs to lower-wage, yet technically competent, markets. It is here that India’s Bangalore has become a visible example.

In fact, the success of the Indian companies is twofold. Not only have they been able to convince a host of the world’s best companies to relocate some of their jobs to call centers and IT consultancies in the Indian subcontinent, but they have simultaneously been able to expand outside India, particularly in the emerging markets, with no less success.

Broad opportunities

Broadband is now satisfying Egypt’s need to stay connected to the world at high speed | Business Today Egypt

Broadband is slowly becoming the on line wave to the future, opening up new routes for many industries to benefit from the World Wide Web.

A lesson learned from the 1990s internet saga in Egypt is, arguably, only internet service providers (ISPs) survive. By Y2K, the vast majority of the dot-coms and content-intensive internet startups were readily defunct. The very few startups that survived could do so only when they converted their identities to become largely ISPs, or at least when partnered with ISPs, especially with the launch of the free internet initiative earlier in 2002. 

Case in point, one of the first Egyptian portals, Masrawy.com. 

Taking aim

Worldwide, and now in Egypt, IBM is promoting Linux software to cut into Microsoft’s market share | Business Today Egypt

In this modern-day version of David versus Goliath, a penguin holds the sling. Linux, with its iconic penguin logo, is seeking to take a knock at Microsoft’s dominance of the operating systems market in Egypt. And in going up against the software giant, Linux is getting some help from a higher power, Big Blue.

IBM Egypt heavily promoted Linux software at its annual forum in Cairo in September, announcing that the software will be playing a central role in a number of IBM’s products and services. The move should come as no surprise considering that IBM Egypt’s mother company is the heaviest investor inan open-source consortium that includes Dell, Hewlett Packard and Oracle.

The erroneous evolution of computer viruses

The evolution of communications technologies has taken two parallel paths. On the one hand, it took a path for the general good of society, as was the case with the invention of the Internet, for example. On the other hand, a path of destruction and general havoc resulted with the development of computer viruses, among other things | IslamOnline.net

The second path was not inevitable. But social organizations in the West, where viruses first emerged, seemed to condone the deeds of virus writers and propagators. People who wrote, unleashed or swapped virus codes – whether for fun or for damage, intentionally or inadvertently – were not penalized.

Legislation worldwide lagged far behind the unbelievably rapid development of communication technologies and their destructive counterparts. New laws were not formed at the same pace that a new breed of crime was emerging.

An example: David Smith, who wrote and unleashed the destructive Melissa virus was punished by just 20 months in prison and US$5000 in fines. The Melissa virus utilized email programs to propagate a virus epidemic that resulted in about US$80 million in damage.

IT depends

Information technology has trickled down to the little guys, forcing them to think through purchases carefully | Business Today Egypt

Some technological products are so ubiquitous that we can’t imagine how the world would go on without them. Microsoft Word, for instance, is used by almost everybody on the globe. When the application was first released, it made word processing easier, and granted the companies that adopted it the advantage of higher productivity. So, at the time, investing in the Microsoft Office package was considered a strategic investment in pursuit of creating a competitive advantage.

But the wide adoption of Microsoft Word that ensued neutralized the advantage. Even though we continue to ‘invest’ in Word by buying more recent versions, we no longer consider this as a way of sustaining the competitive advantage, but rather as another cost of doing business.

This is the premise of Nicolas Carr’s recent provocative book, “Does IT Matter: Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage.” Formerly an editor-at-large of Harvard Business Review and currently an IT consultant, Carr argues that as IT, including both hardware and software, “has become more powerful, more standardized and more affordable, it has been transformed from a proprietary technology that companies can use to gain an edge over their rivals into an infrastructural technology that is shared by all competitors.” 

Doubting MBAs

Experts are starting to question if a master’s degree in business administration is worth all the trouble | Business Today Egypt

The searing success of MBA programs since the 1990s has clouded a growing dissatisfaction among graduates concerning the value of a master’s degree in business administration. Not only has the strength of many programs come under question, but also the relevance of the degree to meeting the needs of today’s marketplace.

Looking back on their pursuit, some graduates have described their experience as a “joke” or the “biggest waste of time and money imaginable,” as reported by Fortune magazine earlier this summer. This should come as a relief to those of us who are longing for an MBA (and who isn’t?) but can’t afford one. 

There has never been, nor will there be, a substitute for experience. Booz Allen Hamilton, a respected American consultancy, is one company dissatisfied with the assembly-line approach of MBA programs. They take their new hires through an immersion process of on-the-job assignments that last several months, business graduates notwithstanding.