Manama, 24 May 2007: Gulf Business Machines (GBM), the regional distributor for IBM products and services in the region (except Saudi Arabia), have been organising a series of region-wide roadshows to promote 'IBM System X and Storage solutions'. The roadshow which was kicked off in Kuwait has toured across the region in Dubai, Oman, Qatar with Bahrain and Abu Dhabi as their final destinations.

A panel of well-known experts across the region were invited to speak at these events. Guest speakers and hosts includes: IBM System-X Regional Sales Manager for Middle East & Pakistan, Andy Parkinson; System X Country Sales Manager for rest of Gulf, Monis K Joseph; System X Country Sales Manager for Levant & Bahrain, Adel El Hallak; System X Country sales Manager for UAE, Joseph Huang; IBM - System Storage Middle East, Eyad Baddar; GBM - Regional Intel/AMD Base Systems X Products Manager, Boutros Habbouche; GBM - IBM Infrastructure Architect, Fabian D'Mello and GBM - IBM Total Storage Techincal Sales Manager, Ivica Jukovi?.

A panel of well-known experts across the region were invited to speak at these events. Guest speakers and hosts included: Andy Parkinson - System X regional Sales Manager for Middle East & Pakistan; Joseph Huang   - System X country Sales Manager for UAE ; Adel El Hallak - System X country Sales Manager for Levant & Bahrain; Eyad Badder - System Storage Technical Sales Specialist - Middle East and Pakistan; Boutros   Habbouche - GBM Regional Intel/AMD Base Systems X Product Manager; Margaret Adam - GBM System X Product Specialist; Fabian D'Mello - IBM Infrastructure Systems Architect; Ivica Jukovic - IBM Total Storage Technical Sales Manager

Commenting on the event, Boutrous Habbouche said, "With an extensive range of services in GBM's portfolio - from consulting to deployment, and integration to support - the objective of holding these road shows is to provide more in-depth knowledge about our services and their integration in any kind of business environment."  

"We also aim to inform all our valued clients and customers about the best practices that we follow in the industry and what we would want them to inculcate. The ultimate aim, however, after all these discussions, would be to increase awareness of GBM's initiative and to advise clients on some of the key drivers that are affecting information technology (IT) managers of today," he further added.

The key highlight of the roadshow was an overview of GBM solutions around 'IBM System X', which is the fastest growing brand under the IBM portfolio. The cutting-edge 'Blade infrastructure' enables companies to house their entire network including server integration with multiple operating systems, power, cooling and desktop consolidation housed in one data centre. Solutions around server and storage consolidation; Virtualization solutions using VMWare Virtualization software, Storage Management Solutions with Tivoli Storage Manager and recommendations on Disaster Recovery Best Practices were some of the highly relevant  topics & solutions presented.

Bahrain Business Machines (BBM) General Manager, Abdulla Ishaq said, "GBM is a solutions-oriented company and we wanted to move away from the traditional IT roadshow format of pure product update and provide our customers with value-added information relevant to their business needs.  Consolidation, Virtualisation and Disaster Recovery are all hot topics in the IT world today and our goal was to show how GBM can provide these solutions on an IBM System X infrastructure and use our experience in this fields to advise our customers on best practices and help them to choose the right solution for their environment within these key areas."

Initiatives of this kind are considered necessary by GBM from time to time in order to understand the needs and satisfy the technology requirements of local, regional and international businesses from an entry to enterprise level.

-Ends-

Note to Editor:
Gulf Business Machines began its operations in 1999. With over 40,000 products to the GBM portfolio and distribution network across Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, the company today offers an extensive range of services from consulting to deployment, and integration to support, for a growing customer base throughout the Gulf.

The company aims to help customers beat the many IT challenges by providing the best products and services, through its flexible and mobile workforce of over 400 IT professionals, ensuring extensive reach and unrivalled local market knowledge throughout the region.

GBM is the recipient of the prestigious Dubai Quality Appreciation Award from the Government of Dubai, and has won Best System Integrator at the Network Middle East awards for the past three years.  

The company is also a unique Gold Certified Partner of Cisco Systems, the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, having attained the Gold status across the region.

For further information please contact
Salim Al Orayedh,
Promoseven Weber Shandwick,
Tel: +973 17225148;
Fax: +973 17229661;
email: Salim.Alorayedh@promoseven.com

© Press Release 2007