Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and President of Zayed University, will on Saturday officially launch Smart Square, one of the university's specialised centres.
Located at Dubai Internet City, Smart Square, which is empowered by IBM, is the first such centre in the Middle East.
Dr Hanif Hassan, Vice President of Zayed University, said the centre recently signed cooperation agreements with ministries and organisations.
Two of them were with the Ministries of Finance and Industry and Labour and Social Affairs."With this centre, we aim to enhance the performance of the government and help cut down on the bureaucracy involved," he said.
According to Dr Hassan, Smart Square aims at implementing successful e-business solutions.
This would involve consultancy works as well as realisation of technology leading to: Innovated Processes, Developed Know-ledge, Optimised Enterprise, Accelerated Business as well as the making of Students-Business-Ready.
The centre relies on a network of skills and capabilities provided by one of the largest and most reliable companies in the world. The business partnership with IBM guarantees customers accurate delivery of running solutions. Smart Square will provide e-solutions for both government and private sectors inside the UAE and within the gulf region.
The projects are staffed with international experts and students of the university. Bringing local students in charge of local e-business projects is one of the main characteristics of Smart Square. With this combination, it will be able to meet local requirements and ensure a deep understanding of local business needs and culture.
According to Tarek Niazi, Executive Director of Smart Square, the students of Zayed University will work in the centre with most experienced international staff and research technologies to support the set up of Smart Square.
"This experience is essential for exploiting the opportunity to innovate business through human resource of UAE and enabling UAE nationals to run the centre on the long run," he said.
Smart Square provides excellent source of creative human capital and society knowledge. Young minds full of ideas strive to make their visions become true in real business.
Those human resources will meet with experiences experts complementing their knowledge and ideas by showing them world-class quality methodologies proven in global e-business development projects.
Gulf News 2003
