Albahith
Welcome to the world of Saed Younis, a self-proclaimed professional nerd. Surrounded by hundreds of books, hundreds of thousands of  dollars' worth of  test equipment, and 15 engineers nestled behind high blue cubicles fiddling with 2.5 square inch chip boards (the essence of it all); Saed Younis is quietly designing, developing, and producing CDMA based wireless devices. In layman's terms, he is making cellular phones. ALBAHITH (Researcher) is owned and funded by brothers Saed (CEO) and Eyad (CFO)Younis and is a Qualcomm CDMA technology and chipset licensee.

Two years of hard work seem to have paid off, at least on the technical side. ALBAHITH has just designed the most compact, most efficient CDMA2000 800 megahertz wireless local loop on the world market today.

"We developed wireless local loop in seven months using 100% Jordanian talent from 100% Jordanian universities," said Mr. Younis proudly. Qualcomm had given him two years for development. He is now gearing for a production pilot run for hundreds of units. After that he will be ready to sell his device, which offers basic voice and entry level data of 144 Kbps. He is eying markets in the Middle East and Africa.

"What we actually make is cell phones. A wireless local loop has two parts in it, a full fledged cell phone in it to talk wirelessly to the switch and on the other side it has a little circuit that emulates what a switch would look like from a wire perspective," said Mr. Younis.Wireless local loop, "last mile connectivity", is used in place of running copper wire to connect users (for voice and data) in areas where traditional wire networks are too costly to deploy or where they simply do not exist.  It is also a viable technology for new entrants to liberalizing telecom markets for fixed line and high speed data carriers.

"This business is not for the squeamish," he said. It certainly is not, when considering the two brothers, alums of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with 13 U.S. patents to their name, made a six figure investment; and two years later are yet to make money hey have made no money. But things look ready to change.

The technology start-up, which recently moved to Jordan from Dubai Internet City, is also designing and developing cool high precision, pick and place industrial robots. If you really want to know more, this includes the design and fabrication of zero backlash reduction gears, high stiffness members, accurate servo motor controllers and power electronics, as well as man-machine user interface. Other than the electric motor, they do everything!

Blue Energy for Advanced Technologies
Mohab Murrar, CEO of Blue Energy for Advanced Technologies (BEAT), very much embodies the spirit of his company. He is young, dynamic, determined, and full of passion for technology - passion that had to be put into something.   

"We felt a need in the market to have a young, energetic, upbeat company. We wanted to be a bit different in how we understand and listen to our customers; to provide them with the solutions that really are talking to their business needs," said Mr. Murrar. "I don't care about satisfying my customer, really. I care about delighting my customer, which is seven steps above satisfaction," he added, often speaking in sound bytes and making jokes throughout the interview.  BEAT is a Microsoft partner, offering ready- and custom-made software to its clients. The company provides solutions in the areas of business intelligence, workflow and business process automation, intranet and document management, content management, and enterprise application integration. For instance, in the area of business intelligence, one of BEAT's landmark clients is Zara Investment Holding Company, which owns six hotels in the country. The software that BEAT developed for the company can group all the information from its six hotels into a centralized database and provide management with business intelligence reporting, including what-if scenarios.

"Basically, we provide all solutions that assist the information worker to become more efficient and productive in their day-to-day operations," Mr. Murrar said.

These solutions often revolve around the Microsoft platform, he explains, in that they are custom-made solutions that work seamlessly with Microsoft products.

Although the company does not own any intellectual property rights for its Microsoft-compatible products, it is in the final stages of writing a software solution for the services industry, for which it will own the intellectual property rights, but the CEO says he can't say much about it at this point.

Since BEAT officially started operations in July of 2004, it managed to garner some important clients including Fastlink, the Cairo Amman Bank, and Aramex. The company just completed its first assignment for a client in the U.S. who outsourced a complete software project to BEAT.  According to its CEO, BEAT is now a profitable company, employing 33 people and doubling its revenues from last year. The company, which receives 85% of its revenue from the local market, is now at the end of its start-up phase.

Jeeran.com
Omar Koudsi and Laith Zraikat, two high school buddies, started fiddling with ideas for an Internet-based business during their university years. They experimented with several Internet models when they finally came up with the first Arab Web hosting community. When they started in 1997, the dentist, Mr. Zraikat, and the economist, Mr. Koudsi tried to develop a product that did everything. That didn't work. Launched in 2000, Jeeran.com provides online tools for people and small businesses to build their online presence.  A form of online publishing, the company provides users Web hosting and design, online storage, image management, e-mail and  recently, blogging. "We didn't have an initial investment. Our capital was our creativity, our knowledge, and a computer," said Mr. Koudsi. "Because we had no money, we had to learn programming and design ourselves. We learned from the Internet and books and just reading," Mr. Zraikat said. In 2003, they both left their paying jobs to work full time on the project.  In 2003 they made the ipark, Jordan's technology incubator, their home until they graduated in September 2005. 

"This is a very big risk, even if you know what you are doing," said Mr. Zreikat. 

Well the risk seems to be paying off. With 500,000 members from around the world and an impressive advertising clientele list, the two young entrepreneurs are now in talks with investors to help them expand regionally. Asked how a dentist and an economist became founders of an IT company, Mr. Zreikat said, "University is not just about getting a degree. You should do more during that time. It is a time to learn how to learn.  I didn't feel if I was a dentist I would be the best dentist in the world. But I felt I can be the best with what I am doing now."

Eco-Consult
Founded in 1995 with just two employees, Eco-Consult is a management consulting firm that engages primarily in development work with governments in the region, including those of Lebanon, Palestine, Morocco, Yemen, and Jordan. It has taken on projects related to both front and back-office operations in an effort to help governments do their work better. Today, Eco-Consult employs 35 professionals and has revenues topping $1.8 million.

Ra'ed Daoud, founder and managing director of Eco-Consult, is quick to mention that his company does not install IT systems. Eco-Consult adopts a top-down approach in re-engineering business processes and designing new workflows and procedures which are then supplemented by the appropriate systems. Its objective is to make sure their clients make active use of a sustainable solution. It does not actually develop programs; instead, it matches systems and processes to businesses and their requirements. The company's activities are focused on training and capacity building; business consulting; and environmental and natural resources management, both for the public and private sectors. Although 85% of the company's business is local, much of this is supported by international agencies like USAID and the World Bank. One of its most important projects at the moment involves Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for the Water Authority of Jordan, a massive undertaking involving 7,000 employees and $300 million in expenditures - one of the largest in the country.

Eco-Consult's Director of Business Consulting, Ramzi Qushair, talked about the challenges involved in working with government. "Most of our work involves operations, so changes in government do not drastically affect us," Mr. Qushair told Jordan Business. "However, there is that lack of continuity because of having to present to new ministers every few months. In less than a year, we've made presentations to no fewer than four ministers about what we are doing."

Overall, Mr. Daoud feels there is a lack of coordination and agreement among ministries. The two executives believe in a greater need for understanding business processes and project timelines before reaching out to technology, and a need to examine the regulatory regime in place which has survived unchanged for decades. Nevertheless, Eco-Consult believes it has been able to find a good balance with its government projects, including its work on the Department of Income Tax online portal as part of the Jordanian e-government initiative with Estarta.

Esense
In 2001, when Mohammed Banat was an employee at a reputable IT firm in New York, he received a phone call from Jordan that changed his life. A friend of his said there was a project they could work on together.

"It took us three seconds to make the decision. We had this dream since we studied together in Princess Sumaya University for Technology," he told Jordan Business in an interview.  

Mr. Banat quit his job that very day and was in Amman 20 days later. With the JD500 they had in their pockets and another JD1,000 they borrowed, the two rented an office in Jabal Al Hussien and equipped it with their personal computers.  

"This was all we needed; our PCs and some coffee," reminisced Mr. Banat, now managing partner of Esense, a Amman-based software development house. Today, in its fourth year of operation, the company employs 50 professionals and has a turn-over of million dollars (up from $150,000 last year). It now exports custom-made software solutions to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and to a client in the United Kingdom, who is now also a partner.

The company, which only last year expanded outside Jordan, develops custom-made software solutions from scratch, and so it owns the intellectual property rights for its products.  

"That makes our target really broad; anybody, in any sector, who has any need that is not catered for by ready-made products," said Mr. Banat, who has developed software solutions for clients ranging from the public sector to the pharmaceutical industry.

Jordan's e-government initiative, for example, is one of Esense's clients. The company is also developing an online portal for the Dubai Financial Market which goes well beyond content management. Among other things, the Web site provides real-time market watch data and sends mobile messages when prices change. 

Citing growth and recruitment as some of its main challenges, Esense is doing it slowly but carefully. "We haven't been putting any effort into marketing the products because we have been trying to sharpen the saw. We are going to take what we already have and start marketing it. I think June 2006 is going to mark a significant change in the company's history," says Mr. Banat, who is very optimistic about the future. And surely enough, he has lots of reasons to be.

Razor View
Majied Qasem is one of those early birds when it comes to Jordan's ICT industry. He first ventured into Arabia Online, the first Arabic language online portal, and sold his share in the company two years later. He later started OneWorld - now Estarta - with Ennis Rimawi in 1997, in which he is still a partner. His experience in the sector led him to the raison d'etre of Razor View, an IT consulting firm.

"A lot of people are focused on technology for the sake of technology. We need to automate the system, we need to go online, they say. There was very little focus on looking at technology as a way to help you become more effective doing business...to make more money," said Mr. Qasem, founder and managing partner of Razor View.  "IT consulting is part of what we do, but we do it from the business side. We help companies realize their potential through IT," he was quick to add.       

Razor View is competing for projects in the Gulf, where his entire clientele is based, with the likes of the McKenzie Group, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Accenture. Mr. Qasem's company only targets large conglomerates and corporations, regardless of which sectors they operate in. "We never compete on price; we have a lot of experience and we know what we are doing. Besides, we are from this region and to this region and we offer a unique blend of services," Mr. Qasem told Jordan Business in an interview, noting that quality is better controlled with Razor View due to its focus and smaller size.  Mr. Qasem insists that Razor View is not a consultancy, but rather an advisory firm.  "Our differentiator that allowed us to excel in the region has been the simplicity and the visualization of what we do. We don't give the client a 100-page document, we give them a nice poster that is extremely visual, which helps the client visualize their operation, structure, and organization," he said.

Established in 2003, Razor View now has 10 clients in the Gulf and grew by almost 100% since last year, according to its managing director. 

Hakaya
When Hakaya was chosen as one of the ten companies to present their products to Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, on his last visit to Jordan, it was chosen for a good reason. Established in 2001 as a pure services company, Hakaya slowly started customizing software for its customers. As business grew, the small company looked for ways to minimize time and resources for customizing solutions - a challenge that most software development houses face. So it developed tools for automating the software development process in order to make life easier for its developers. The tools that were developed for internal purposes became so efficient that Fadi Abu Hejleh, general manager of Hakaya, decided to sell them to other solutions providers.

The code generator, builder, and runner Hakaya Studio was presented to Bill Gates during his short visit to Jordan. The product was pre-released in Gitex 2005, receiving overwhelming interest from India, Pakistan, Ireland, and Egypt - Hakaya's new target markets. Furthermore, a university in the United Arab Emirates approached Hakaya about teaching the concept of Hakaya Studio as a course.

"What sets our product apart is that it is technology-independent and platform-independent," Mr. Abu Hejleh told Jordan Business, noting that it is the first such product in the world. 

"Using our tools, software developers can directly generate an application from very simple definitions; certain inputs that do not need a senior developer," he added.

These definitions include specifying the programming language and technology of the application (i.e. a program written with C-sharp and is Microsoft compatible, or written with JAVA and Oracle compatible, etc.) and the platform (a Web application, or a Personal Digital Assistant system, or a desktop program).

More than JD200,000 was invested in developing Hakaya Studio - a process that took a year and a half with five full-timers and three part-timers working on the concept. Mr. Abu Hejleh predicts the company's size could increase by 10 or 20 times if the product takes off.

"In the past 20 to 30 years, software developers used to repeat and repeat code. At some point in the future, the role of the developer will change from a code writer to an application definer or analyst," he says.

"Eventually, someone with knowledge in the industry can use our tool to build or generate an application with minimal technical experience.  We dream to become part of this future, for it to be said that we triggered its onset."

Globitel
If you call almost any company, ministry, or university today, chances are the automated attendant that asks you whether or not you know the extension number was installed by Globitel. Established in 1996 to provide converged telecom solutions for the Jordanian market, the company has been expanding both in terms of markets and products ever since. Now, the company employs 40 professionals and has over 2,000 installations covering more than 23 countries. Globitel's sales reached $3 million in 2004, and the company's founder and executive manager, Samer Halawa, is expecting $4 million in sales in 2005. 

The company's product line covers four main areas: call monitoring and recording, operator solutions, enterprise solutions, and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solutions or speech recognition. The company is noted throughout the region in the call monitoring and recording area, with clients including Mobile Telecommunications Company (MTC), Saudi Telecom, Qtel, and Jawwal. In Jordan, it recently added Jordan Telecom to its list of clients (taking the contract away from a French company), thus becoming the provider of choice for all telecom operators in the country. Globitel often finds itself competing with international companies, but it seems to have proven itself by constantly staying ahead and providing more value-added services to its clients.  

The company's call recording and monitoring solution provides sophisticated service that range from automatically assessing employee performance to recording banking transactions for legal purposes.      

Asked whether Globitel develops its own solutions, Mr. Halawa affirmed, "From A to Z. This is what Globitel is all about. Our focus is to build our own intellectual property."

Today, Globitel is working on an IVR system that recognizes natural speech. The company is using an American speech recognition engine, adding to its value by Arabizing it. The software aims at doing more automatically using natural speech understanding so that, instead of asking the caller to press a button to choose menu options, the auto respondent would ask simply worded questions, and would understand if the client answered in unstructured, colloquial Arabic. 

Reflecting on the challenges ahead for Globitel, Mr. Halawa believes his company needs to focus on growth, remaining focused and identifying its product range, and the technical challenge of developing high quality products.

PaymentCentric
Sameer Mubarak saw opportunity in Jordan. "I had to start something," said one of the founders of Telaterra, an IP-based technology company, and general manager of PaymentCentric, the company behind the largest billing service in Jordan, eJaby.

Mr. Mubarak wears many hats. He is now working with the Ministry of Transportation on revamping the sector via automation. And in the U.S., he has a major multi-million dollar project to automate truck entry and exit into ports.. Nizar Zahran, business development and marketing manager, also saw the opportunity. "Every month, everyone thinks of how and where to pay their bills," he said.These ideas grew to become the foundation of PaymentCentric. Set up in 2001 with $1.1 million in capital in partnership with a German company, RS2 Group, the company offers an automated clearing and processing house providing electronic bill payment service, Internet payment gateway, and advanced retail card processing. Basically, PaymentCentric lets customers pay their postpaid, prepaid, and incidental bills, including phone bills, electricity and water bills, at payment depots spread throughout the country in real time. "In a nutshell, we clear the transaction between the bill issuer and the payment lease," Mr. Zahran explained.

Last year, they launched PaymentCentric's second service, eSal, which enables retailers to sell a wide variety of prepaid cards, including mobile phones, voice over IP (VoIP), internet and international calling cards. It is known in the industry as e-voucher distribution service.Within a year eSal has grown to become the largest distributor of e-vouchers in the Middle East."We have to stress here that both eJaby and eSal are home-grown services developed and deployed in Jordan. They are not services we imported," said Mr. Zahran. Asked about how many clients they have, Mr. Mubarak said the number does not count in the business. "Let me give you an example here in Jordan. We have nine clients who account for about 93% of the total billing in Jordan." Among their clients are nine banks, Jordan Telecom, Fastlink, the Water Authority of Jordan, and the Greater Amman Municipality.

PaymentCentric now operates in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, UAE, and Syria, with corporate presence in Iraq and Croatia. The company began with just four employees and now it has grown to 42 in Amman and 82 in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Zahran are now restructuring the company to become a corporation, with expectations of double-digit growth in 2006.

Quirkat
A year ago Mahmoud Khasawneh and Candide Kirk left the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (MoICT), where they worked in e-Government, to start their own technology company.  They decided to forgo lucrative private sector offers to try to make it on their own. The youngest of the 10 companies profiled in "Prime Time", Quirkat is positioning itself as a regional publisher and developer of video games. And they are learning fast how to play the game.

The one-year-old company, with offices at the iPark business incubator, is an interactive entertainment services company focused on the development and distribution of cross-platform games and entertainment solutions for the Arab speaking Middle East market. In September 2005, they deployed their mobile games here in Jordan with MobileCom, they just signed a deal with MTC Bahrain, and are close to launching their games with big regional mobile operators in the Gulf.

On their games menu are EA SPORTS FIFA Football, Colin McRae Rally and Jewel Quest, all games from leading global publisher I- Play.

"We want to bring total quality gaming experiences to regional audiences...the region hardly exists in the industry. So the 300 million persons mean absolutely nothing to entertainment companies," Mr. Khasawneh said, explaining that piracy is one of the reasons global players have shied away from the region.

Ms. Kirk explains that Quirkat's vision is to take games developed by global players and create the graphical interface that will make them relevant to the region. "So if it's a game where you are building cities, the architecture becomes relevant to the architecture of the Middle East," she said.

What's their business strategy?  They align themselves with well-known international developers and publishers, getting select titles with the hope of making them more localized and lucrative. 

"We are among the first so we are focusing on building the business channels. That will lay the foundation for further local development by Quirkat to produce regional gameplay concepts that depend on and generate new and unique IP. The entertainment industry is complex with many stakeholders: developers, publishers, IP owners, technologists, and artists," Mr. Khasawneh said. "We're putting the pieces of its puzzle together in a regional context. It's great. We are ready to go."

© Jordan Business Monthly 2006

 

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