But the possibility of another boom-and-bust cycle in debt-laden Dubai is a risk for the UAE economy in the medium term, the IMF warned after the emirate announced a string of huge real estate development projects.

The IMF’s report, released after annual consultations with the UAE, indicated the country is doing more than other Gulf Arab oil exporters to rein in growth of government spending and reduce its vulnerability to any steep fall of the oil price.

Hit by the global financial slump, Gulf Arab countries boosted spending sharply from 2009, and increased it further in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011. The higher spending has succeeded in keeping economies growing, but means state budgets could fall into deficit if oil prices slide.

The UAE began curbing its spending last year, more than doubling its total fiscal surplus – the combined surplus of the federal government and all of the UAE’s seven emirates – to 8.8 percent of gross domestic product from 4.1 percent in 2011, the IMF calculated.

This lowered the oil price which the UAE needs to balance its combined budget to $74 per barrel last year from $84 in 2011, the IMF said. Brent crude oil is now around $103.

By contrast, other Gulf Arab countries continued to increase state spending substantially last year and their budget break-even prices have been rising.

The IMF said it welcomed the UAE’s plans to continue consolidating its finances: “For 2013, continued fiscal consolidation of around 2 percent of non-oil GDP is planned.

“Fiscal consolidation is expected to be driven by a rationalisation of capital spending and subsidies and transfers, while spending on goods and services, defence and security, and the wage bill are expected to increase.”

The UAE’s finances are difficult to analyse because oil-rich Abu Dhabi, which accounts for roughly 80 percent of the country’s fiscal spending, does not publicly release details of its annual budgets and outcomes.

In October, the federal finance ministry published 2011 consolidated fiscal data, releasing such information for the first time ever, but there has been no update on 2012 so far.

Because of lower oil prices, the IMF predicted the UAE’s fiscal surplus would shrink to 8.1 percent of GDP this year, before narrowing gradually to 5.1 percent in 2018.

DUBAI RISKS

Despite its approval of the UAE’s overall policy direction, the IMF warned of risks in Dubai, which suffered a crippling corporate debt crisis in 2009 but is now recovering strongly on the back of rebounding real estate prices.

“At the emirate level, a faster pace of consolidation in Dubai would be desirable to address the emirate’s continued debt-related risks,” the IMF said.

It also described “insufficient domestic policy reform to mitigate the risk of a renewed boom-and-bust cycle” as a risk for the UAE economy.

“Renewed optimism fuelled by rising real estate prices and loose global liquidity conditions could prompt a renewed cycle of imprudent risk-taking and re-leveraging by GREs (government- related entities) and private companies, which could also affect banks’ balance sheets in light of their strong interconnectedness with GREs.

“In the absence of prudent policies, this could fuel short-term growth at the expense of medium-term stability.”

Dubai’s total debt remains substantial at $142 billion, or around 102 percent of its GDP, and $35 billion of that amount is in government and government-guaranteed debt, the IMF said.

The emirate’s GREs have increased their debt to an estimated $93 billion from $84 billion in March 2012, and about $60 billion of that debt falls due in 2013-2017, it added.

In the last few months, state-linked Dubai companies have announced billions of dollars of new real estate projects. For example, last week Emaar Properties and Meraas Holding said they formed a venture to develop a huge area near Dubai’s downtown; a commercial centre, low- and mid-rise residences, an 18-hole golf course and other facilities would be built over 11 million square metres (2,700 acres).

“While further investment in the development of Dubai’s economy is welcome, the authorities should ensure that, in line with current intentions, execution will be gradual and flexible depending on demand,” the IMF said.

“New investments should be structured in a way that strictly limits risk-taking by the still highly indebted GRE sector,” it said, adding that availability of financial data on the health of Dubai’s GREs was still inadequate.

After protests by UAE commercial banks, the central bank (CBU) has postponed introducing planned caps on mortgage lending and loans to government-related bodies. The IMF said such rules were important to ensure financial stability.

“Looking ahead, the CBU should carefully monitor the interaction of mortgage lending and the real estate sector, and tighten the mortgage regulation or introduce new measures as needed,” it said.

According to Reuters, sales in the UAE have been on the rise as the country recovers from the debt crisis; assisted by an inflow of business and visitors seeking a safe haven.

“We are back after the global crisis,” said Michel Ayat, CEO of AW Rostamani Automotives, one of the biggest UAE dealerships, selling Nissan, Infiniti and Renault brands.

“This year, the UAE will sell more than the peak in 2008,” he told an HSBC automotive roundtable in Dubai.

Sales are on target for 380,000 vehicles this year, up by 23 per cent more than in 2012 and 40,000 more than in 2008, Ayat said. Sales in the first four months of the year are already at 118,000, against 96,000 in the same period last year.

Other industry forecasters have put the 2008 figure at 324,000, but the exact number is hard to verify, because official sales data is not available in the UAE and the Gulf region.

Reuters

The city is set to be the seventh most popular city globally in terms of inbound international visitors in 2013, outranking cities such as Hong Kong, Barcelona, Milan and Rome. At 10.9 percent, Dubai (along with Bangkok) shows the strongest growth in arrival numbers among the top ten global markets, with 9.89 million overnight visitors expected this year.

Dubai also ranks eighth globally by international overnight visitor spend, with an estimated $10.4 billion to be spent in the city during 2013. The Index indicates that if all top 10 destination cities maintain their current rates of growth in the next few years, Dubai will surpass Singapore and New York in 2016 and Paris in 2017 in terms of international visitor arrivals.

“While the Middle East and Africa’s top ten cities lineup is exactly the same as in 2012, there is a striking difference in how far Dubai is ahead of the other cities. Its international arrival number is almost twice that of Riyadh in second rank, and about four times as high as the third-ranked Johannesburg,” says Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, global economic advisor for MasterCard and the author of the report.

Among the Middle East and Africa’s top ten, Abu Dhabi (ranked seventh with 1.7 million visitors) showed the strongest growth rate, with an anticipated 16.1 percent increase in arrivals. The Index highlights that, if these rates are maintained in the coming years, Abu Dhabi will overtake Lagos in 2016 and match Johannesburg by 2017.

The UAE’s capital also ranked sixth among the global top 20 with regard to growth rates of international visitor arrivals between 2009 and 2013, with growth of 96.8 percent during this period.

Within the Middle East and Africa, Dubai ranks first by international overnight visitor spend, followed by Riyadh and Beirut.

Tourism is crucial to Dubai’s economy, which had a gross domestic product of around $90 billion last year; it supports the emirate’s large retail industry as well as its hospitality sector.

Occupancy at Dubai’s 599 hotels, which have 80,500 rooms combined, was 78 percent in 2012 as the number of visitors rose 9.3 percent from a year ago to 10.16 million, according to data from the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM).

Helal Almarri, director-general of the DTCM, told Reuters that the emirate was likely to have more than 160,000 hotel rooms by the end of the decade and aimed to attract 20 million tourists annually by then.

Most decisions to build hotels would not be made by the Dubai government but by private companies. However, the Dubai government is active in supporting growth of the industry by providing infrastructure, marketing the emirate overseas, adjusting visa policies for visitors and expanding the network of the state-owned Emirates airline.

Saudi Arabia, India and Russia will be the main contributors to expected growth in tourist numbers, Almarri told Reuters.

“With Emirates airline and other carriers we focus very much on extending the routes to those markets,” he said.

Dubai’s main airport handled 5.85 million passengers in March, up 20.6 percent from a year earlier, according to airport authorities.

Basically, they sell quirky and fun things that you wouldn’t normally find in traditional retail is how he puts it. His enthusiasm and belief in what he does is both audible and impressive, I must say. Of course, that could have something to do with the fact that Desado has just crossed over 100,000 members in just under three months of operation. A leap that Chbib says he’s extremely happy about.

Aside from online advertising, they rely heavily on the ‘viral factor’ to spread the word and get ‘direct registrants’ to his site. A talking coffee mug that says “Oh, that’s hot” when you pour in coffee is something you’d probably share on a social network whether or not you buy it, he says.

Oh Kipp, not another e-commerce site, we hear you moan. Surely there are enough already, aren’t there? How can the market possibly not be overcrowded yet? Well, fear not; that’s the first question we posed to Chbib – who also happens to be Sukar’s ex-CEO (an established fashion site in Dubai).

“I can see why you’d think that,” he says. “And if you were talking specifically about the fashion part of e-commerce then I could partly agree with you that it’s getting closer to saturation – particularly because of the current big players in the market – but generally speaking as an industry, we’re nowhere close to it,” he insists.

Chbib was born and bred in Germany and so he brings a lot of Europe’s market insights and expertise to the table. He says that Europe isn’t even close to being overcrowded in terms of e-commerce despite the high market ratio it shares with traditional retail. “Basically, the Middle East is where Europe was 10 or 15 years ago, and where the US was about 15 to 20 years ago,” he says.

Penguin famously hates spam, spammers and anything spam-like. Spam to him is like, well, Spam. In fact, Kipp worries about angering Penguin because one of the activities he frowns upon is unnecessary repetition of keywords. And we’ve been saying sp*m quite a bit. The point is, as an online site that heavily relies on its traffic, the last thing you want to do is get on Penguin’s bad side.

The initial release had dishonest (that’s fair to say) websites in a digital panic frenzy, mostly because they engaged in ‘keyword stuffing’ and ‘shallow link’ schemes. According to this month’s report by Portent, a Seattle-based Internet marketing agency, Penguin’s accuracy is getting stronger and tougher by the day. It’s meant to tackle “the stuff in the middle;” between fantastic, high quality content and spam.

‘In the initial Penguin update, the only sites we saw penalised had link profiles comprised of more than 80 percent manipulative links. Within two months, Google lowered the bar to 65 percent,’ states the report.

A few months later, Google started to both automatically and manually penalise websites that had 50 percent manipulative links. Matt Cutts, described as a distinguished engineer at Google, stressed that Penguin shouldn’t be referred to as a penalty, as it’s actually just an algorithmic change that demotes the ranking of ‘cheating’ sites.

In layman’s terms, all webmasters, marketers and SEO professionals need to clean up their act. If you want to keep Penguin happy, don’t pay for links, participate in link farms, participate in content farms, build websites purely for link building, place excessive links within ‘comments’ sections of websites or really anything that doesn’t directly ‘market your product or spread relevant information’.

Instead, focus on actually engaging with the community, deal with reputable directories and for the love of god, be patient enough for organic growth to kick in. The misconception is that there is a war on SEO, when in reality – at least according to Cutts – it’s a war on spam.

He says there are people who continue to sell links, despite the fact that they don’t do any good. “That’s part of how SEO has a bad reputation,” he says.

If your content is worth it, it’ll spread itself.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said its approval was conditional on the airlines maintaining at least their pre-alliance capacity on routes between Australia and New Zealand amid concerns about reduced competition.

The ACCC, which had already halved the desired alliance timeframe from 10 years, said it believed the tie-up as a whole would result in “material, but not substantial” public benefits through enhanced products and improved operating efficiency.

Qantas announced the Emirates deal in September, ending its 17-year alliance with British Airways, owned by IAG, which some analysts have suggested could seek a new partner such as Qatar Airways.

The arrangement, which includes switching the airline’s hub to Dubai from Singapore for European flights, will enable Qantas to cut loss-making international routes and focus on its profitable domestic and budget operations.

“Qantas is an Australian icon and the future of its international business is much brighter with this partnership,” Qantas Chief Executive Alan Joyce said in a statement.

Qantas shares opened 0.9 percent higher at A$1.74 ($1.82). The stock has surged 49 percent since it announced the alliance in early September.

Qantas and Emirates have been coordinating pricing, sales and schedules since interim approval was granted by the ACCC in December.

The first flight to transit through Dubai leaves Sydney on Sunday, headed for London.

Joyce and Emirates Chief Executive Tim Clark are expected to elaborate on plans to expand the alliance when they host the official launch in Dubai on Monday.

COST SAVINGS

Analysts expect the pair to explore further cost savings through catering, ground work, maintenance and procurement synergies.

The tie-up has been welcomed by the government, airports and tourism organisations but rival VirginAustralia Holdings Ltd , which operates its own alliance with Etihad, has argued the deal is too broad and would entrench Qantas’ dominant position in the domestic and corporate market to the detriment of Australian passengers.

The ACCC singled out trans-Tasman competition in its ruling, insisting the pair maintain at least their pre-alliance aggregate capacity on their four overlapping routes, subject to a review to consider whether increases in the minimum required capacity are warranted.

New Zealand authorities are yet to approve the alliance.

Qantas has been stripping costs out of its business after a year troubled by a record fuel bill, rising competition and a labour union that has opposed the carrier’s spending cuts.

Analysts have suggested the alliance could save the Australian airline A$90 million to A$100 million before taxes annually.

Emirates, meanwhile, is looking to increase its business in Australia to counter moves by Etihad and Qatar Airways.

In recent moves, Etihad doubled its stake in Virgin to 10 percent while Qatar launched its first service toPerth late last year, saying that it also wanted to partner with Australian carriers.

The good news is that, according to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), they’ll be getting it by the middle of 2013.

ICANN says that businesses and Internet users have to gear up for a drastic paradigm shift in their online behaviour as they have now given their official stamp of approval for .shabaka (شبكة. translates into .web in English), the world’s first ‘cross-border top-level Arabic domain’ which is a few months shy of being publicly available.

Arabic-speaking users will no longer need to rely on current Internet namespaces like the dot coms, dot nets and dot orgs, but rather have the same convenience that we so often take for granted when navigating the web.

Yasmin Omer, General Manager of International Domain Registry, tells Kipp that now .shabaka has been approved, there are only a few more regulatory and technical steps to be completed before the namespace can go live. And she’s certainly excited at the prospects.

“I expect .shabaka to be one of the biggest innovations in the Arab digital and online landscape this year,” she says. “Arabic script web addresses like .shabaka will be a significant factor in helping the next 90 million Arab users navigate to Arabic content.”

Omer stresses the primary aim of this new domain is to allow Arabic-speaking users to have the same kind of accessibility that we have now when we navigate the web. It’ll allow them to directly navigate to any website they want rather than ‘try their luck’ with different ones through a search engine. “Basically, the Internet will now speak Arabic as well,” says Omer.

She adds that she strongly believes it will provide a platform needed to fuel greater Arabic-oriented online entrepreneurism and innovation, and that she expects it to redefine the way businesses and users approach the internet in the global Arabic-speaking community.

It’s something that’s been growing in size and stature over the past six years or so and can probably rival any of the other awards ceremonies around the world; maybe apart from Cannes!

The news this year was the inclusion of two new categories. First, we got the much-needed Independent Agency of the Year, which went to Interesting Times, Beirut. Congratulations guys, you deserved it. Secondly, we had the category for Branded Content & Entertainment, which just proves that ‘Brand Participation’ is growing in size and stature as a complete marketing tool.

But, to be honest, I’d have to say the awards were a bit rubbish this year, especially with nine of the 15 awards not even having a Grand Prix winner.  And I honestly believe there was no really outstanding work, apart from maybe JWT Cairo’s Micro Recharge Cards, which was my favourite. Most of the awards were spread evenly across the agencies, with no agency really standing out above the rest.

Y&R Dubai winning agency of the year must have been a mathematical calculation, because, apart from their Grand Prix in Design, I really don’t see anything great from them this year at all.

Maybe this is, in some way, a step in the right direction, because with the exception of the Effies and some categories, these awards are a beauty parade of advertising that never really ran.  For 365 days of the year we are subjected to very mediocre advertising, created by all the big agencies that then suddenly produce award-winning work at awards season.  The question is why are these agencies and clients not investing in award-winning work all year round?

If agencies win awards it should be an accident of just doing great work for their clients, not one-offs created especially for the award season.  That way the industry here will get better and stronger.

This week also saw the arrival of thenetworkone in town, the organisation that champions and brings together independent agencies on a global level.  But to be honest, it felt a bit like the meeting of the clans.  Everyone was a little wary, and at one point I did think that the room might be locked and set fire to, wiping out the entire network’s competition in one go!

I was also initially concerned when Pierre Azzam, ex COO of Impact BBDO entered the room, but it was good to see yet another network man strike out on the independent path. Walk towards the light Pierre! All the big players where there; BWM Naked, Plan.net, Face to Face, Tribe, iris, Digital Republic and some of the newer guys from Bahrain, Lebanon and Cairo. A good meeting in all and I am sure it will bear fruit for the independents and the industry as a whole.

Of course the topic of conversation last week was the dancing pony for the telecom company 3, which asked more people to upload and view fun things on the web.  If you haven’t seen it, search for ‘dancing pony’ on Youtube. It’s very entertaining and engaging – the way marketing should be.

Sadly the way marketing shouldn’t be seems to still be happening in this region.  Please STOP the DJ mentions.  I don’t know who is signing this off, but this week I heard that slapstick cheester Catboy from 92fm twice read out DJ mentions for high-net-worth women’s beauty brands!  Just try to imagine it. It’s a male northerner from England, on a comedy show, talking to women about a luxury beauty product. If it was a radio ad the brand manager wouldn’t sign off his voice over, so why allow him to read from a piece of paper live on radio? Could someone please explain or justify this to me!

Hot on the heels of this marketing car crash was the brands’ radio ad that finished with the line no radio ad should ever finish with:  “wow, I have got to buy that!”  Oh my god – kill me now.

Scott Feasey is MD at iris Middle East and can be reached on scott.feasey@expression-me.com.

New data released by the International Conferences and Exhibitions, organiser of GETEX, a forum for student recruitment in the Middle East and Asia, taking place from April 17 to 19, emphasizes the urgency to introduce new schools across the country if there’s any hope to meet the growing demand over the years to come.

When Kipp spoke to Anselm Godhino, Managing Director of IC&E, we asked him to put that number in context for us.

“Yes, that number is big compared to the global environment, especially considering we have predominantly an expatriate population here,” he says. “Globally, you tend to have more of a growth within the population of a region rather than the expatriate turnaround that we have here. That growth percentage may not necessarily double in another five years but the emirates are focusing on it.”

Education officials have pointed out that by the year 2020, approximately four billion dirhams would have to be invested in Abu Dhabi’s private education to ensure that it can keep up with demand.

Godhino says that the capital is currently focusing on its ‘2030 vision’ to build more infrastructure, whereas Dubai – having already done that – will be focusing on promoting both international and national universities to a global audience, rather than just a local one.

“The number of universities in Dubai now does cater to the student demand, but the only way to sustain their growth is to make sure they’re all full,” he says. When asked whether he thought it would be challenging for both emirates to meet the growth – both in terms of infrastructure and filling them up with students – he said that he can’t help but admire the progress he’s already seen over the past few years.

“They’re very far-sighted here. They will do it. If they do build the infrastructure I believe they’ll be able to fill it up,” he says confidently. “And the more schools we have, the more the competition and the better the quality.” He adds that while the developed world still seems to be struggling to cope with the economic downturn, the UAE goes on with an upbeat attitude like the recession is a thing of the past.

Queues of investors have formed outside the offices of major real estate developers in the past several months, in scenes that recall the emirate’s boom days before 2008, when money poured into Dubai property from around the world.

That boom was followed by a devastating crash when the bubble burst; inflated residential property prices plunged by more than 50 percent between 2008 and 2011. Dubai was forced to obtain a $10 billion bailout from neighbouring Abu Dhabi.

This time around, there are reasons to think that any property bubble will not be as large as the last one; supply and demand have not diverged as much, and government officials have said they will regulate the mortgage industry.

But given Dubai’s history, renewed signs of exuberance in the property market are grounds for concern. Mario Volpi, head of residential sales and leasing at property consultancy Cluttons in Dubai, warns that an unsustainable bubble could form unless the government steps in.

“Many investors who are queuing up for these properties are looking to make a quick buck by flipping them,” he said. “We need a rule that perhaps stops selling of property for two years after purchase. Or perhaps some sort of a tax on such sales.”

RECOVERY

Although there a big variations within Dubai’s housing market, and many low-end properties are still weak, prices generally hit bottom around the middle of last year. Since then they have recovered impressively, rising as much as 20 percent in prime areas.

Some investors among the roughly 100 lining up earlier this month at the downtown headquarters of Emaar Properties , the emirate’s biggest developer, were veterans of the last boom.

“There is the same excitement in the air…People are buying anything that’s being offered by Emaar,” said one Pakistani investor, who did not wish to be identified because he did not want to draw attention to his operations.

The investors were seeking to buy “off-plan” properties – projects which had been designed but not yet built, and which might be sold on to another owner before construction. And, like the old days, many or most purchases appeared to be in cash.

“No one standing here is buying on mortgage. This is a cash buy business,” the investor said.

Ryan Mahoney, chief executive at property brokerage firm Better Homes, said: “In case things get too overheated, I do hope the regulators step in.”

Individual Dubai property agents handled as many as 30 separate projects at a time during the boom between 2006 and 2008, he said.

“Now we handle about two to three and they have not been launched. So, it’s still nothing like the days back in 2008, but there is definitely increased speculation in the market.”

There are some good reasons for the market’s recovery. Thanks to a burgeoning tourism sector and its status as a business hub for surrounding regions, Dubai’s economy is now recovering strongly, growing at a rate of roughly 4 percent. Political unrest elsewhere in the Middle East is prompting some people to use Dubai as a safe haven for their wealth.

Mansour Group, also the largest distributor of General Motors cars in Egypt, is aiming to sell supermarket chain Metro and discount grocery store Kheir Zaman, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity as the matter is not public.

The ongoing discussions signal increased appetite by Gulf-based firms to expand their presence in the most populous Arab state at a time when valuations are low due to the political strife in the North African country.

Gulf banks have bought assets from their European counterparts in Egypt but the interest in Mansour Group’s supermarket business shows the focus may now be spreading to other sectors such as retail where growth prospects are seen promising in the longer term.

MAF is the sole franchisee of French hypermarket chain Carrefour in the Middle East.

Due diligence on the deal is currently under way and a decision could be taken as early as January, one of the sources said.

MAF Group declined to comment on the report. Mansour Group was not available for immediate comment.

Metro is Egypt’s largest supermarket chain with more than 40 outlets in 10 cities. Kheir Zaman, a discount grocery store, has over 2,000 employees and 30 stores throughout the country.

EGYPT BULLS

Unlisted MAF, the franchisee for Carrefour hypermarkets in 19 countries and operator of nearly a dozen malls across the Middle East and North Africa, is keen on expanding in Egypt through acquisitions, according to one Dubai-based banking source who is aware of the discussions.

Carrefour Egypt, which has 13 outlets across the country, is a joint venture between MAF and the parent firm.

“As a regional investor, MAF would be more comfortable with the long-term prospects of Egypt than other foreign investors,” the source said.

“The country has the largest population in the Arab world and expanding into consumer and retail space is a bet which is more likely to pay off. No matter what the shape of the economy, people still need to buy their groceries.”

Despite the political turmoil in Egypt, cash-rich Gulf investors remain interested in raising their presence after last year’s revolution while European banks looking to repair damaged balance sheets have been selling overseas units.

BNP Paribas agreed to sell its Egyptian arm for $500 million to Dubai lender Emirates NBD last week.

This month Societe Generale also agreed to sell its majority stake in National Societe Generale Bank to Qatar National Bank for $2 billion.

Mansour Group is also a stakeholder in French lender Credit Agricole’s Egyptian business and runs McDonald’s Corp’s chain in Egypt among its other businesses.

The majority of new refineries and upgrade projects in the Middle East are designed to produce ultra-low sulphur diesel that meets European environmental standards, so they can export some of it to Europe or Asia.

The multi-billion dollar investments are also likely to transform fuel trade flows in the Gulf as the extra capacity will allow OPEC heavyweight Saudi Arabia to reduce its diesel imports and even become a net exporter in winter when its own fuel needs are lower.

State-run Saudi Aramco’s Jubail joint venture with France’s Total, the first of a trio of 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) refineries due to open over the next five years, will refine Saudi heavy crude into fuels ranging from gasoil, including diesel, to gasoline and petroleum coke for domestic consumption and export.

Jubail alone is expected to increase Saudi cleaner diesel production capacity by around 176,000 bpd once it is fully operational, while two more projects are expected to boost Saudi diesel capacity by a total of 461,000 bpd by 2017.

“Saudi Arabia has been a substantial net importer of gasoil for several years, but as Jubail is commissioned in 2013, this trend should reverse itself by the end of the year if not earlier,” Robert Smith, consultant at FGE Energy said.

Saudi Arabia has historically been short of gasoline and gasoil. Its petro-dollar fueled economy and growing population has rapidly driven up internal demand, especially when power generation surges in the hot summer months from May to August.

The world’s biggest crude oil exporter imported an average of 243,000 bpd of gasoil/diesel in the peak demand month of July this year, compared with a record high of 290,000 bpd in July 2011, according to official Saudi data.

The majority of its fuel imports are met by other Gulf producers, or by suppliers from India and Singapore.

The startup of the three refineries will nearly double Saudi diesel output, helping it become a net exporter in the cooler months. Its diesel imports will not stop completely, analysts say, due to rising demand and because the high-quality diesel the refineries will produce will not be used in power plants.

Nevertheless, refiners in Asia will have to find alternative buyers for fuel they have been selling to Saudi Arabia in increasing quantities over the last five years, traders say.

“The whole trading pattern is going to change dramatically in a few years, once all the new refining capacity comes online,” a Singapore-based trader said.

“One of our Dreamliners has the same problem that the United plane had and I am very disappointed in Boeing,”Qatar Airways Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker said in an interview at London’s Heathrow airport on Thursday.

“We will demand compensation (from Boeing)… we are buying planes from them to use them, not to put in a museum.”

He said the plane, which has been grounded since Dec. 9, would not fly until next week after a Boeing team had repaired the fault.

Boeing said it was working to replace electrical components so the jet could return to service, but said it was not yet clear if the issue was identical to the one that affected the United flight last week.

On Dec. 4, a brand new United Airlines Dreamliner with 184 people aboard was forced to make an emergency landing after one of six power generators failed.

Boeing said its technicians “would evaluate the findings in Qatar to understand the root cause of this issue and take the appropriate next steps.”

Qatar Airways, which received its first Boeing 787 Dreamliner earlier this month, has placed orders for 60 Dreamliners - 30 firm and an option for 30 more. It currently has a fleet of three 787 jets.

Al Baker said he was concerned that two airlines finding the same fault may indicate the presence of a wider, systemic problem with the U.S. made jets.

“Two aircraft having the same major problem so quickly is a cause of concern,” Al Baker said. “Boeing need to get their act together because the delay of more than three years in delivery forced us to slow our expansion plans.”

The mechanical issues, while not uncommon for airlines, are another headache for Boeing – a company still working to overcome the negative perception of production problems that delayed delivery of the 787 by 3-1/2 years.

The Doha-based carrier expects to take delivery of two more Dreamliners on Dec. 19. It expects to have 10 of the lightweight jets in service by the end of 2013, a reduction from the initial plan for 30.

Al Baker said the airline industry faced a tough two years with more “consolidations and collapses” likely but that conditions would start improving in 2015.

The chief of the online translation company says that research proves that ‘85 per cent of consumers are more inclined to buy a product when confronted with information in their own language, and 54 per cent say this is more important than the actual price’.

Now Kipp is no professional marketer but it does make sense that an online customer would be – if anything – at more ease surfing through a website in his or her own language. The question is, if the potential is so enormous why are so many ignoring it then?

Firstly, why do you think that businesses don’t invest enough into languages?

Businesses have the perception that website translation and localisation requires a lot of resources and high budgets, they are afraid to dig into that field as they believe it’s an endless process and that it requires a lot of technical and operational involvement especially when it comes to ongoing website translation. Dakwak helps companies of varying sizes and budgets to expand their business into international markets; it’s the only software which gives marketers complete control over their translated websites.

Considering the diversity of the Middle East, isn’t having English enough to survive?

Businesses these days are not seeking survival, they want to expand and grow. There is enormous potential for businesses to maximise sales by creating localised content, the internet has removed boundaries and made it easier for companies to embark on global trading.  Using online translation software to remove language barriers can help change a business’s reach, fortune and exposure to a wider market.

How does offering other languages increase sales?

According to recent surveys done by Common Sense Advisory, 85% of internet consumers require to see information about the product in their native language before making a purchase order. Another survey that solidifies this case highlights that only 18% of European internet users buy from websites in foreign languages. That said, we believe translating and localising websites into different languages is definitely very important to increase revenues even if the percentage of increase is relatively small.

How would you advise companies to go about adopting new languages – in terms of investment and phases of implementation?

It’s a pretty straight forward process; it starts with researching which languages are the most relevant for their product/website in terms of traffic sources. They can then translate their website to those languages using machine translation and track the traffic coming on those selected languages for a short period of time, for three months for example, and decide accordingly which of these languages should be professionally translated to enhance the user experience and increase conversions, and which aren’t attracting traffic and should be replaced with other languages.

Specifically for the GCC, many major websites have both English and Arabic, is that enough in your view?

It is greatly dependent on the nature of the product or service; in the case where it is a regional or international product, expanding into more languages should be a priority. For example, French would be important for any business targeting the MENA region. The other case would be businesses in the GCC with a local product or service; adding more languages would be more of an added value and would enhance users’ trust in the website more than making a direct impact on the conversion rate.

Do you think if more businesses adopt international languages in the UAE, it would have a strong and immediate effect on investment?

Yes indeed, businesses investing in more languages especially in a country of diverse cultures and nationalities like the UAE, will directly impact their revenues and sales as it will ensure reaching and communicating with all potential customers in their native language.

According to his statistics, a $30 trillion internet sales black hole is being lost in translation because marketers in the United Arab Emirates are not localising their websites for different countries. He adds that adopting eleven languages could theoretically reach 85 percent of the world’s population. Now, eleven languages seems a bit excessive for Kipp but perhaps that’s where the future is headed.

As much as the UAE exists in the media as an iconic and attractive destination for investors, tourists and property buyers it’s also a rather popular target for cybercrime. Last year, Symantec says it was ranked as one of the most highly spammed countries in the world. This year, according to a report by Norton, it has cost the country AED 1.5 billion in direct financial losses and victimised 1.5 million people.

Oh Kipp, we get it! There is a lot of cybercrime out there, and we’re always careful so please stop. Well Kippers, the fact is that the most obvious of common sense precautions are ones that need the most frequent reminders. We speak with Justin Doo, cloud and security practices director for MENA, Symantec in hopes that we could all be a little more aware and really understand why the UAE is such a popular target.

“It’s popular because perpetrators see the higher rate of success here. It’s in the emerging markets and Internet penetration is higher than education,” Doo says. “Another key factor is the use of genuine software versus counterfeit. Yes the authorities have been rather loud and vocal but piracy is still higher than in mature markets.”

Doo explains that targeting is hardly ever random and we should bear in mind how educated these people are. After all, he adds, it takes money to set things up. “I would speculate that the UAE is more popular because of its population and online penetration.”

He adds that we as a region are – by definition – more trusting. And Kipp couldn’t agree more. “We leave our shops open, our mobile phones on the table and cars unlocked. We don’t fear theft in the UAE as much as in other parts of the world.”

You may have received countless spam calls, messages and emails from wealthy Nigerians claiming to be making you a rich man or woman. You stop and think, how silly would anyone have to be to fall for that? Well, the fact is that techniques and technology are advancing and you would be surprised.

“We should never forget that they are educated,” Doo warns. “They know the region and they know what to do. They also know how to take advantage of something viral and with elements of human interest. We get telephone calls from someone claiming to be from a Etisalat saying we won huge amounts of money, and some people fall for that – because we’re too trusting and sometimes too susceptible.”

Even if you’re shaking your head at this point, it’s not necessary that you would fall victim to cyber attacks in the same manner. Kipp reckons that with the popularity of social media and the numerous apps that ask for your permission, we are handing our security to attackers on a silver platter. “Social media, by default, is viral. It uses interest and commonality to spread. Now the trend we’re seeing is how attackers can hijack the trust we’re putting into these sites and you have to remember, even if they have a success rate of 1 percent on Facebook, that’s still almost 10 million.” The Symantec report notes that in this year alone, 46 percent of social media users in the UAE had fallen victim to cybercrime while the global average is at 39 percent.

Obviously, with the unique diversity of the country’s population, it’s not always the easiest task to spread awareness in a simple enough way for everyone to understand. “When you’re spreading a message about online security here, how many languages do we have to communicate in?” Doo asks. “It’s not just Arabic and English. Almost 90 percent of the population are expatriates who are extremely active on social media, keeping in touch with friends and families back home – which make us even more trusting and open to sharing.”

He explains that particularly when content goes viral on social media – it is then that perpetrators leap to chance of using that to spread malicious websites and software. We are far more ready to share something if it comes – or appears to – from someone that we trust, he adds. He reminds us that money is almost always the key driver and infiltrating one’s online privacy could just be the first step to many things. “Somebody earlier had designed an app or the code for it that would enable users on Facebook to dislike posts. Obviously, thousands went ahead and posted that code into their browsers and malware was automatically downloaded on their machines.”

Who then, do we turn to?

To a certain extent we can expect users to do certain things and be more cautious. Question things more, he stresses. “We still need to pressure the service providers for a better infrastructure and more protection. Even if there is a link to a malicious website or malware, the link behind it can be blocked them. We need to ask more from the service providers.”

Prices rose despite expectations of around 36,000 new units forecast to enter the market in the next two years, a study by property consultancy CBRE showed.

“Because the best quality products (properties) are seeing this demand, they are raising the rest of the market,” said Matthew Green, head of research & consultancy UAE at CBRE Middle East.

Dubai’s residential property prices have slumped by over 60 percent since its peak prior to the financial crisis. Off-plan purchases and speculation had created a real estate bubble that burst after the economic slowdown in 2008.

However, the emirate has recently begun to announce big projects similar to those built during the boom period.

The latest announcement was in November by Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who revealed plans to build a complex including 100 hotels and the world’s biggest shopping mall.

Only one-fifth of sales this year were through mortgages, as banks remain reluctant to lend, indicating that some speculative buying by investors has returned.

“Only 20 percent of the sales were through mortgages. So there is some speculation creeping back into the market. We also saw some off plan announcements and we have to keep a watch on this,” said Green.

A majority of the new supply is expected from secondary locations like Dubailand, Motor City and DubaiSports City.

Meanwhile, rental prices in the emirate, home to the world’s tallest tower, rose by an average of 17 percent over the past 12 months, said the report.

The study attributed the rise in rents to the sustained period of population growth, positive economic performance, increased occupier demand, and limited availability of quality units in the desirable locations.

Though the office water cooler used to be the preferred platform for venting, in the recent years social media have provided embittered customers a more comprehensive arena to rant. And while it isn’t rare to see Twitter splattered with bouts of #ihateUAEbanks every now and then, there has been little to no response from the banks themselves.  Which is why, a round table including representatives from the banking industry organised by Souqalmal.com proved to be a very interesting discussion.

Interestingly only two representatives from the banking world turned up. Frans Jan Burkens, Head of Customer Banking at Commerical Bank of Dubai and Sadia Noori, Brand Experience Manager from Mashreq bank provided insightful commentary to a room full of disillusioned UAE bank veterans including UAE blogger Alex McNabb and Mo Elzubeir, Managing Director of Mediastow.

Despite the massive chip on either party’s shoulders, the conversation that followed was civil and extremely thought provoking. Kipp for one, got to thinking about the source of this old animosity. Where does the frustration with UAE banks come from? Who is to take responsibility for the disillusionment and what is the best way forward. Here are some of the propositions brought forward through the discussion-let us know what you think.

-Customer Service representatives are not empowered: You can scream all you want until you are blue in the face, but if the customer service representative at the other end of the line is powerless to take the necessary actions required to resolve your issue there will be no progress. Without empowering the customer service representatives to take independent steps or to deter from their prescribed scripts, there is little support s/he will be able to provide a customer.

-Diversity and multiculturalism is a barrier: This one is a bit of a cliché, but does the ‘melting pot/salad bowl’ status of the UAE make it difficult for banks to provide a service which will cater to all? Are genuine attempts at problem-solving getting lost in translation? Are UAE banks stretching themselves too thin in an attempt to cater to their varied customers from the UAE, Philippines, India, Lebanon, Egypt, etc?

-Help me to help you? Do you customers need an attitude makeover? Do customers approach call centers with an attitude of weariness that gets in the way of quick and effective problem solving? Do UAE bank customers need to develop better understanding and empathy when dealing with bankers?

-Processes in place not equipped to handle: Are the processes in place out of date? Are there limitations in the systems preventing reps to accurately and quickly help clients? Do banks need a structural overhaul?

-You get what you pay for: Complaints heard by the masses aren’t likely to be shared by the Premium Premier Superduper Gold customer who gets everything but a complimentary cocktail when they approach their bank. Is this skewed perception of who deserves good competent service the reason why banks are unable to provide the everyday account holder with the stellar service their richer counterparts receive? And by that extension would it be a practical idea to offer customers a better support system for an additional charge?

-Inadequate customer service reps: Do customer service representatives lack the sophistication and competence of the customers they are trying to serve. If they say ‘you get what you pay for’ is it not surprising that the minimum wage rep is unable to provide their customers with adequate responses?

So what do you think? Who should bear the brunt of the blame and what is the best way forward?

The deal is structured in two parts. Batelco, which already has assets in Jordan and Yemen, will pay $680 million upfront for the fixed-line, mobile, and television business spanning 12 markets from theChannel Islands to Afghanistan. That includes a 25 percent stake in the holding firm which owns CWC’s 55 percent interest in Monaco. Through options valid for one year, Batelco will also be able to then take control of the Monaco asset for $345 million pending approval of the local government.

All in, the deal value works out at 6.7 times trailing earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortization. That’s pretty rich. While the Monaco and Islands unit is stable and cash generative, almost 80 percent of the unit’s earnings come from three relatively mature markets: Monaco, the Maldives, and Guernsey. CWC itself and its wider peer group trade on a trailing EBITDA multiple of around 4 times. News of the deal, meanwhile, pushed CWC shares up 6 percent.

The sale is good for CWC. Though trading conditions remain challenging, management is finally delivering on expectations. Once the UK firm offloads its Macau unit, it will be firmly focused on Latin America - mainly Panama - and the Caribbean. Ahead of any further investment the firm’s net debt to EBITDA will also fall from around 2.8 times to around 1.8 times, within its target range.

The logic for Batelco, however, is harder to understand. It will almost double the size of its asset base. That might generate some procurement synergies and help it compete with rivals, backed by larger operators, in its home market. There might also be some financing benefits. But opportunities for regional expansion are limited – especially for a small operator like Batelco. In the end, the disparate Monaco and Island business is an odd fit for any telecoms operator – let alone a small Middle Eastern telecoms one.

Memories of the crisis will keep many investors cautious about stumping up money before projects are completed. That will leave the plans heavily dependent on bank loans and the bond markets – and the global climate is not favourable for banks.

Official announcements over the past few days have recalled the heady days of the mid-2000s, when Dubai was building some of ts most flamboyant projects, including the world’s tallest skyscraper and an archipelago of man-made islands.

Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum unveiled plans last week for Emaar Properties and conglomerate Dubai Holding to build a complex housing 100 hotels and the world’s biggest shopping mall.

He did not say how much the project would cost but one local property analyst, speaking on condition of anonymity in the absence of fuller details, estimated it would cost between $20 billion and $50 billion. The upper end of that range would be well over half of Dubai’s annual economic output.

On Monday, Sheikh Mohammed announced that Dubai planned to build a 10 billion dirham ($2.7 billion) complex of five theme parks. Other projects dusted off by the government and property developers in the last few months include a canal to the city’s business district and a $1 billion replica of the Taj Mahal.

It is by no means certain that all these plans will go ahead. Dubai has a history of cancelled projects: plans for a kilometre-high tower, an underwater hotel and a huge waterfront development were mooted in the boom years and never happened.

But unlike projects which ran into trouble during the crisis of 2009-2010, the viability of the new plans will be based to a large degree not on Dubai’s volatile real estate market, but on revenues from tourism and retail spending.

So if the emirate’s tourist boom continues, the projects may pay off. Passenger traffic at Dubai International Airportis growing at an annual rate of well over 10 percent.

Nevertheless, in the aftermath of Dubai’s crisis, it would be difficult to finance much of the projects by pre-selling parts of them, said Craig Plumb, regional head of research at consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle.

“There is natural caution among investors to buy off-plan. There is investor appetite for some small off-plan projects but certainly not at this scale,” he said.

“So where the money is going to come from for this project is a question that Emaar and Dubai Holding will have to address soon.”

FINANCES

In contrast to its oil-rich neighbour Abu Dhabi, Dubai’s government does not have the large fiscal reserves needed to finance the projects; it was forced to take a last-minute $10 billion bailout from Abu Dhabi at the height of the crisis to avoid a bond default of a state-linked developer.

Here in the UAE, many will have the expat package including education but what happens when your child moves on to further education and where are they likely to go?

All things to consider, especially when CNN Money recently stated that those without a college degree were more than twice as likely to end up without jobs and that over a lifetime, the earnings gap between a high school diploma and a degree graduate is in excess of $800,000.

There is no doubt the freedom that an education can provide but paying for it can be expensive, especially where there is little or no financial assistance.  It is estimated in the UK alone (Push Student Guide 2012) that by the end of 2013, the average student debt will be a shocking £60,000 or $96,000 per pupil – something which will take many a lifetime to pay off.  When looking at universities overseas, it is also worth considering that student loans and government assistance may not be available if for example you do not pass residency requirements, so it is important to have funding in place prior or ensure you qualify for eligibility if seeking financial assistance.

With university fee’s having increased well above inflation in recent years, it is essential that if you want to provide financial assistance, you need to consider the facts and act as soon as possible.

Taking two popular university destinations the USA and the UK for example, the current average university cost including courses and accommodation is £18,000 / $28,800 per child per year.  In the US, this figure is higher at £21,875 or $35,000 per year but top Ivy League Universities can charge that alone just for tuition fees.  On a four year course in today’s money you would be looking at between $115,200 – $140,000 per child which represents a significant outlay to consider.

Planning effectively can make a real difference and the sooner it is planned, the less you need to spend.  Without even taking the effects of inflation, for example, to achieve a $140,000 lump sum of money you could invest $400 per month for 18 years from the birth of your child in an Education Savings Plan vehicle (assuming a realistic 5% growth rate).  However, to achieve the same $140,000 in just 5 years, you would need to put away $2060 per month representing 30% more in contributions or $37,200 – over a quarter of the total amount required.

Alongside this planning, it is important to consider additional costs which could be quite significant but are often overlooked such as travel for both your child and visiting parents (as regularly the parent will be based in a different country).

It is also vital that the currency of the plan is taken into consideration when considering where your child may end up.  Currency fluctuation can impact the value of money significantly and must be taken into account to maximise your money and returns.

Overall, the message is clear – make a plan and seek professional financial assistance to ensure that all the bases are covered and that there are no hidden surprises.

John Bailey, Financial Consultant – Acuma Independent Financial Advice

There has been a lot of buzz in Dubai over the past weeks about highly desirable real estate projects being launched and sold out within days or even hours of being released.  This is not to say that every property project in the emirate will receive this response, rather demand is skewed towards specific projects, with very specific facilities and amenities in key areas. The first project to generate a huge response was ‘The Address the BLVD’ by Emaar, which according to media reports ‘sold out faster than tickets to Justin Bieber’s Dubai concert’.

The latest Emaar development to hit the market and bound to cause a frenzy is the launch of an extension to Arabian Ranches called Casa.  The first phase released is made up of 253 Moroccan style villas.  Completion of these villas is set for end of 2014 and the wider project will include schools, health clubs, cafes/restaurants and other retail outlets. In order to avoid mayhem with long physical queues, which would put buyers and their agents to considerable inconvenience, the sales management at Emaar have set up an online system for registration.

Online registration was on a first come first serve basis and I sincerely applaud them for coming up with this idea. This is a clever way of allowing people to complete their business in a civil manner whilst avoiding bad publicity from disruptive queues. People who manage to register online will receive a time slot to purchase a property when they release them on 24^th November and this will guarantee that all 253 units will sell.

An additional benefit is that individuals can register directly and only Emaar- approved agents can register for their clients or for themselves too, which eliminates the possibility of scams or any kind of fraud.

Aside from the online system, the interesting issue here is the popularity of these projects.  It seems that Dubai is developing an insatiable appetite for sought after residential projects in key areas. Established residential communities within easy access of the work and leisure facilities of Dubai simply cannot be built fast enough.

Residents want to be within easy commuting distance of DIFC, Media City and other commercial districts, and also want to be within a comfortable distance of the beaches, malls and other leisure attractions of the city.  At the same time, the average Dubai resident has very high standards for their home.  They want green spaces, beautifully manicured public areas, access to gardens, children’s play areas, fitness facilities and swimming pools as well as onsite supermarkets and cafes.

A few key communities do manage to offer it all. Prime examples are The Arabian Ranches and Emirates Living.  There are several reasons why a community like Arabian Ranches, for example, is popular. Firstly, Emaar properties are highly regarded in terms of quality, finish and services.  The Casa development launch is a small part of a much larger development that is already well-established and leverages on the existing supply of successful schools, mosques, community centers, recreational facilities, tennis courts and retail units which will guarantee a successful launch.

Finally, the proposed properties themselves have good specifications, with a beautiful Moroccan design, and are of an excellent size (3,100 – 3750 sqft), offering six different layouts for 3 or 4 bedrooms and are due to be delivered quite soon (at the end of 2014).

It is interesting to see that the only companies launching at the moment are Emaar, Nakheel, and Damac, and in particular most are launching specific sections of each project. This sends out a clear message that the market can absorb these small amount of units. This is quite a different scenario to that of the pre- 2008 era, when greed encouraged massive developments to be planned without any regard for genuine demand.

This is a very different, more carefully considered time where projects are being launched at a rate that allows the market to absorb them and where supply is catering to proven demand. Overall, it’s a very positive message that the Dubai property market is on the right track. The more positive messages like this that come out from Dubai, the more likely it is that serial investors and first time owner- occupiers will be encouraged to take the plunge and purchase property in the emirate or increase their portfolio once again.

The shift, which appears to be in response to tough market conditions and a realisation that the Gulf airlines cannot sustain their breakneck expansion indefinitely, may benefit consumers by providing more integrated flight schedules and helping carriers cut costs, which could in some cases translate into lower fares.

Qatar Airways last week became the first major Gulf airline to announce plans to join the oneworld alliance. Members of the alliance, which includes American Airlines, British Airways and Cathay Pacific, cooperate in areas such as route networks, frequent flyer schemes and parts procurement.

That deal was announced shortly after archrival Etihad Airways, Abu Dhabi’s flag carrier, sealed a codeshare deal with Air France-KLM, under which they will share flights.

Emirates entered a codeshare deal with Australia’s Qantas earlier this year, the first for the Dubai-based giant, which had previously steered clear of alliances and relied on organic growth by expanding its fleet.

“This is great news for the consumers,” Tony Tyler, chief executive of the International Air Transport Association(IATA), said at an industry conference in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday.

“Alliances help airlines offer very competitive fares on other airline networks. So consumers can go around world at competitive prices.”

MARKET SHARE

Airline alliances were set up in the 1990s to help carriers benefit from each other’s marketing efforts and route networks in the face of national regulators’ tight control over traffic rights. In addition to oneworld, the big alliances are Star, which includes Lufthansa, and SkyTeam, which includes Air France-KLM and U.S. carrier Delta.

The entry of major Gulf airlines into alliances took many industry analysts by surprise. The three top carriers, created over two decades from the mid-1980s, are backed by rich governments, enjoy modern aviation infrastructure and are based in a part of the world near several key population centres.

This has allowed them, relying on their own resources, to transform the Gulf into an intercontinental hub. In doing so, they took away a big chunk of market share from the older airlines; the share of Middle East and North Africaairlines in international traffic has jumped from 4.8 percent in 2002 to 11.5 percent, according to IATA.

The Gulf carriers have become huge in the process. Emirates is one the largest customers of Airbus, ordering over 90 A380 superjumbos, while last week Etihad reported a 19 percent year-on-year rise in third-quarter revenues, a growth rate far beyond the capabilities of most Western carriers.

Emirates “have been resolute in going it alone and with their current performance and planned capacity growth, they can afford to wait and see hasty marriages of convenience unravel rather than act in haste,” said Sudeep Ghai, partner at consultants Athena Aviation.

Having an open architecture and approach when building a cloud matters deeply. Only an open cloud allows customers to manage diverse infrastructures by bringing them together under the same cloud architecture. Instead of creating a new cloud silo or forcing them to (impractically) start their IT over from scratch, an open cloud extends its benefits to their entire IT infrastructure, delivering greater efficiency and agility and putting them in control of their technology roadmap and, ultimately, the future of their IT.

But what does “open” mean in the context of cloud? It certainly doesn’t begin and end with the submission of some format to a standards body or with an announcement of partners endorsing some specific technology platform. And open source may be (or in our view, should be) a given. But it’s more than that too.

An open cloud has the following characteristics:

•Is open source. This allows adopters to control their particular implementation and doesn’t restrict them to the technology and business roadmap of a specific vendor. It lets them build and manage clouds that put them in control of their own destiny and provides them with visibility into the technology on which they’re basing their business. It provides them with the flexibility to run the workloads of their choice, including proprietary ones, in their cloud. Open source also lets them collaborate with other communities and companies to help drive innovation in the areas that are important to them.

•Has a viable, independent community. Open source isn’t just about the code, its license, and how it can be used and extended. At least as important is the community associated with the code and how it’s governed. Realizing the collaborative potential of open source and the innovation it can deliver to everyone means having the structures and organization in place to tap it fully.

•Is based on open standards, or protocols and formats that are moving toward standardization and that are independent of vendor and platform. Standardization in the sense of “official” cloud standards blessed by standards bodies is still in early days. That said, approaches to interoperability that aren’t under the control of individual vendors and that aren’t tied to specific platforms offer important flexibility. This allows the API specification to evolve beyond implementation constraints and creates the opportunity for communities and organizations to develop variants that meet their individual technical and commercial requirements.

•Intellectual property rights owners offer freedom to use the technology. Recent history has repeatedly shown that there are few guarantees that intellectual property (IP) assets will remain accessible to all from one day to the next. To have confidence that you will continue to enjoy access to IP assets that you depend on under the terms that you depend on, permission needs to be given in ways that make that technology open and accessible to the user. So-called “de facto standards,” which are often “standards” only insofar as they are promoted by a large vendor, often fail this test.

• Is deployable on your choice of infrastructure. Hybrid cloud management should provide an additional layer of abstraction above virtualization, physical servers, storage, networking, and public cloud providers. This implies, or indeed requires, that cloud management be independent of virtualization and other foundational technologies. This is a fundamental reason that cloud is different from virtualization management and a fundamental enabler of hybrid clouds that span physical servers, multiple virtualization platforms, and a wide range of public cloud providers including top public clouds.

• Is pluggable and extensible with an open API. This lets users add features, providers, and technologies from a variety of vendors or other sources. Critically, the API itself cannot be under the control of a specific vendor or tied to a specific implementation but must be under the auspices of a third-party organization that allows for contributions and extensions in an open and transparent manner. Deltacloud, an API that abstracts the differences between clouds, provides a good example. It is under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation and is neither a Red Hat-controlled project nor tied to a particular implementation of cloud management.

• Enables portability to other clouds. Implicit in a cloud approach that provides support for heterogeneous infrastructure is that investments made in developing for an open cloud must be portable to other such clouds. Portability takes a variety of forms including programming languages and frameworks, data, and the applications themselves. If you develop an application for one cloud, you shouldn’t need to rewrite it in a different language or use different APIs to move it somewhere else. Furthermore, a consistent runtime environment across clouds means that retesting and requalification isn’t needed every time you want to redeploy.

An open cloud requires a wide range of attributes to push the needle from wholly closed to truly open. Having a few of these attributes is better than not having any. But only the full gamut lets organizations maximize the benefit they gain from cloud computing.

-George DeBono, General Manager, Middle East & Africa at Red Hat

Judging from the advancements in Mobile Computing in 2011, it is safe to assume that the market will grow exponentially in 2012. Here are the six computing trends for 2012 that could impact the way you do your business:

1 – Developers are moving from building small mobile apps for iOS and Android, to full-scale integration with backend applications – integration that will tie into customer relationship management, enterprise resource management systems and more. More people and applications will not only be using mobile phones, but also incorporating many types of remote devices, including remote sensors. Middleware will be necessary to support these types of applications through advanced messaging and complex event processing (CEP) technology.

2 – This year, the industry is likely to witness the intersection between middleware and big data. CIOs and decision-makers look at big data as a way to store and analyze vast amounts of information. Middleware can help to leverage and extend that information into applications via a more robust process and analytics platform.

3 – Cloud computing- the buzzword of 2011 in the IT world- will continue to be huge. And it’s because, as Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions continue to mature, and the need for PaaS solutions to support more enterprise-related applications continues to increase, cloud-based solutions will grow beyond the core application server to include other middleware capabilities such as integration, workflow and process management. This is because organisations are eager take advantage of everything cloud has to offer – more effective economics, the shift to operational expenses from capital expenses, increased ability to scale, quicker time to market, etc.

Take note, however, that a lot of organisations have raised concerns regarding the development of cloud standards. Although the market is still young, standards will play a key role in its subsequent success.

4 – As the emergence of this new role of developer operations, or dev-ops, becomes more apparent, developers will begin taking on more and more responsibilities. A side-effect of increased migration to the cloud is that more developers are handling deployments in addition to development. In addition, greater levels of abstraction, as a result of PaaS and cloud in general, will allow less skilled developers to create resources like sophisticated e-commerce websites without the skills needed in the past. Innovation leaders in the middleware and cloud market will come up with solution platforms which make it easier for developers to complete these tasks in the cloud, allowing more people to become involved in building applications than ever before.

5 – A major pain point echoing through industry has been the need to scale businesses. As the global economy meanders through continued malaise, organizations are battling to maintain growth- emphasizing the need to scale without increasing fixed costs. CIOs are focused on avoiding vendor lock-in and Enterprises continue to express interest in more standards-based, open technologies.,

6 – Talking about important standards in 2012, HTML 5 will see greater adoption, especially as a standard to support mobile applications. The benefit of HTML 5 is that it provides the richness of an application but also offers greater portability across various mobile platforms. Another standard that is receiving increased attention is Business Process Model and Notation 2 (BPMN2).

This standard has made a place for itself amidst other technologies, such as Business Process Execution Language (BPEL).An increased interest in technologies like Advanced Messaging Queuing Protocol (AMQP) is expected. There has also been significant demand for a standards-based wire protocol in industries like financial services and transportation. People are tired of proprietary messaging protocols. There is also a lot of discussion around cloud standards. Although the market is still young, one may expect to see more standards starting to mature here for the benefit of interoperability and choice for the customer.

The IT forecast for 2012 is bright for vendors who pay heed to the consumer and make a conscious effort to align their cloud offerings to allow new economies of scale in IT and contribute true value to their customers’ business.

George DeBono, General Manager, Middle East & Africa at Red Hat

Settling on the right key idea is essential. The proverbial light bulb must spark over your head before you can start anything! Your idea can be anything with the potential to make money. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a brand new invention or product. In fact, many successful small businesses have found a way to deliver an existing service or product more efficiently and economically or have customized an existing product or service to fit an opportunity.

Getting to know your market
When starting a business there are many things to think about, such the type of business, the competition and business viability. You will need to do some market research to find out if there is demand for the products or services you intend to supply.

As a starting point, market research involves finding answers to questions like: Is there a market for my product? Am I going to be able to get into this market or are there already too many other players? Who are my competitors? What do they do and what can I do better or differently? What does my target market think of my product or services? How much will they pay for it? What is the best way to promote my product or service?

Asking yourself these questions, and acting as an objective critic, are the best ways to kick-start the start-up process.

Laying the foundations
Once you have decided your business is a viable option, you need to develop a business plan. Your business plan will highlight everything you need to do to get started and will keep you focused and on track. Depending on what type of business you intend to start, your plan could include elements such as market analysis, a management plan and a financial plan.

The first question to ask then considering any new business venture is that of funding. Namely, this refers to how to pay the costs to start and run your business. Bank loans, credit cards, self financing are all viable options. And while you’re operational, you also need to consider how much salary you need to support yourself while starting your business.

This whole task can seem daunting to a lot of people starting out, especially those lacking a business background. The thing to keep in mind is that a great business plan doesn’t require hundreds of pages with thousands of charts.

It is important to consider key elements, such as your capital investment, partnership agreements and operating costs when putting this together. A financial forecast that includes targets and revenue and profit KPIs is also very helpful in approaching your business from a holistic and big-picture mindset.

Sentinel's Prajit Arora says entrepreneurs should hit the ground running but not before arming themselves with proper research information.

Other important aspects included are how much you can charge for your product or service, how much it will cost to produce or deliver, and the size of your potential market. The plan should also evaluate your competitors in addition to possible barriers to entry such as high fixed costs and government regulations that might need to be taken into account,

Piles of Paperwork
There are many things you need to do before you can begin selling your product or service and raking in the dirhams. You will need to register your business name, website domain and…(CONTINUED TO NEXT PAGE)

The spending increase by enterprises is driven by a sea change in mobility and cloud computing needs, as well as the desire for unified and collaborative services such as enterprise social media, as smart phones and tablet PCs have gained popularity.

Competition will be intense; business communication equipment vendors, systems integrators, software and online service providers all will seek to grab a share of the MENA region’s fast-growing enterprise ICT opportunity.

Telecom operators can capitalise on core capabilities to secure a share of the enterprise opportunity. Their multiplatform network infrastructure, established relationships, wide reach, reputed brands, and access to capital will be key assets.

“Despite those advantages, MENA opera­tors will not automatically win enter­prise customers. Operators will need to approach the business market in a fundamentally new manner and create a new value proposition. They will need to refocus efforts to capture the opportunity presented by the creation of millions of new small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) over the next several years. They need to expand their offering to lock in key accounts and leverage their incumbent position with government agencies. If successful, regional MENA opera­tors will tap into a growth area, fuelling substantial gains for years to come,” said Bahjat El-Darwiche, Partner, Booz & Company.

A GROWING ENTERPRISE OPPORTUNITY

As many MENA consumer telecom markets approach saturation, MENA operators hope to continue growing by putting new emphasis on their efforts in the enterprise segment. The ICT segment for enterprises in the MENA region is significantly underserved. Although enterprises account for as much as 6.5 percent of all mobile SIMs in some European countries, they average less than 1 percent in the MENA region. Yet, the MENA enterprise ICT market is growing rapidly. It will almost double within five years, from an estimated $14.8 billion market in 2010 to $26.1 billion in 2015.

Increases in both the number of enterprises and the expected ICT spend per enterprise will drive that rapid growth. According to Booz & Company, an expected number of enterprises in the MENA region will grow at a 10 percent annual rate through 2014: this will add almost 4 million new businesses to the current base of 8.25 million. That growth substantially outpaces the growth rate of businesses in both Europe and North America. Nevertheless, ICT spending per MENA enterprise, currently one-fifth that in western Europe and one-tenth that in the US, is bound to increase.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF OPERATORS’ STRENGTHS

Telecom operators can capitalise on six core capabilities to secure a share of the enterprise opportunity. Each of these six core capabilities provides MENA telecom operators with an edge over competitors in approaching the enterprise business. A combination of some or all of these capabilities adds up to a potent competitive advantage with enterprise customers:

1. Multi-platform network infrastruc­ture • Telecom operators can use their multi-platform network infrastruc­ture to deliver services on a variety of devices.

2. Established customer relation­ships • Through their current offerings and interactions, telecom operators have access to an estab­lished enterprise customer base.

3. Wide reach • Telecom operators use a variety of sales channels and have a strong presence across the geography they serve.

4. Large-scale programme management experience • Many established telecom operators have broad experience in man­aging large-scale infrastructure deploy­ment and service delivery programmes with many stakeholders and interdependen­cies.

5. Trusted brands • Many telecom operators enjoy established brand recognition, typically in the consumer market where they have ample experience.

6. Access to capital • Particularly in the MENA region, telecom operators are cash rich and have the means to invest in long-term, capital-intensive projects.

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For a good part of my first hour at the Dubai Airport Expo, I went from stall to stall inquiring about the special offers on smartphones. Naively, I expected to see at least some kind of discount in the phones on sale, yet what I found was what is commonly accepted by most GITEX shoppers. Though there aren’t real discounts on mobile phones as such, GITEX provides the shopper with a lot of freebies.

Take for instance the first stall that I walked into, CompuMe. For every Blackberry Torch 9860 one bought, the team threw in a free car charger and an original Blackberry bluetooth headset. Then there are the special GITEX “bundles” where stores offer two products at a discounted price: a Blackberry Curve and Playbook for under Dh2k from Jacky’s. But if these aren’t enough to tempt you, surely the good ol’ scratch and win offer from HTC, for buying any one of their phone, may be enough to tempt you.

Given that the phones aren’t any cheaper here at GITEX, I was hoping to save a few dirhams by snagging a great deal with one of the telecos, as I mentioned earlier. But before I go on any further, I have a confession to make, though I said I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted I did have an inclination towards the Samsung Galaxy S series. I was first introduced to the phone by a colleague. I played around with it at work and thought it was a pretty smooth, sweet-looking phone. It was easy to use and pretty to play with. There were other phones on my mind, like the cool Blackberry Torch and the Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray. But pushed for a choice, it would probably be the Samsung Galaxy; both for its attractive interface and even more attractive price.

But back to my cunning, albeit misguided, attempts to snag a deal here at GITEX; as I approached the Samsung store, the young salesman, or should I say sales boy (complete with a very Bieber-esque hairdo), enlightened me of a fantastic deal from du. Apparently if you bought a few members of the Samsung Galaxy family from du, you would walk away with a data package of 1 GB every month for an entire year. Already congratulating myself for proving the naysayers wrong, my happiness lasted until I walked up to the du stall to seal the deal.

At du, I had the misfortune of dealing with, what would have to be, two of the silliest girls in the world. After teasing the information out of them, I came to realise that the special offer with the Samsung phone comes at a price – Dh100 a month to be specific. It is actually a great deal – providing you go with a 1 GB data package, 100 minutes of both local and international calls each, 50 local and international SMSes each. No doubt a good deal, in a country where a data package with “free calling time+smses” and 10 MB of data costs no less than Dh99 a month. Whereas in du, if you just wanted a data package of 1 GB only, you would be set back by Dh200 a month, in Etisalat the charge for the same is Dh145 a month. A bit of a difference, but still too steep in my opinion.

And while I felt almost convinced that I had found the GITEX offer for me, I got severely tempted when I approached the Etisalat podium. There is an excellent offer for the Blackberry Bold 9900: you pay Dh1,299 for the device (which ordinarily is something around Dh2,500) as long as you commit to one of their postpaid packages, Seeing as telecos in the UAE have some of the best data plans for the Blackberry phones, with the price of the social package costing as low as…

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Over the years the event has evolved to cover a wide range of sectors related to or affected by information technology.  These include business solutions, consumer technology, and government. In addition, conferences, talks, and side events take place alongside the main exhibition. This has led the organisers to dub event “GITEX Technology Week”.

GITEX debuted in 1980 just nine year after the UAE’s unification. The event which reportedly attracts more than 160,000 visitors from around 60 countries will takes place annually at the Dubai World Trade Centre, while the more recent Gitex Shopper is held at Dubai’s Airport Expo.

Fast forward to today and the economic rollercoaster we are experiencing has put that term on its head. These days, ‘business as usual’ has increasingly come to mean entrepreneurial business.

Entrepreneurial activity is erupting across the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (MENASA), promising to revolutionise economies and reinvigorate communities. According to the MENA private equity association, venture capital deals tripled in the past 2 years; a strong indication of the growth of entrepreneurship in the region.

The rapid and exponential growth has ushered in a new era of business, something which analysts have attributed to the global financial crisis, alongside an improvement of infrastructure and services for start-ups and entrepreneurs.

MYRIAD MILESTONES

In November 2010, the Celebration of Entrepreneurship (CoE) event took place. And, for the first time a platform was created in the Middle East where more than 1,500 thought leaders, inspiring entrepreneurs and creative minds could come together. That landmark event was backed by Abraaj Capital and gathered a full ecosystem of entrepreneurs, innovators, business leaders, youth and artists to instigate a new phase of entrepreneurship in the region. CoE represented a milestone in Dubai’s entrepreneurial landscape, where more and more individuals were being encouraged to take that step

In a similar trend, TED, a non-profit “devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading” opened its doors in Dubai under TEDxDubai, an independent chapter, in 2009 to bring under one umbrella the biggest, brightest and most innovative ideas worth spreading in the UAE.

TEDxDubai put the spotlight on some of the country’s most innovative ideas. The Parham brothers, the brains behind Wild Peeta, a Dubai-based fusion shawarma start-up and Mohammad Harib, founder of Freej, a popular animated series are just a couple of speakers that shared their story in hopes of inspiring others to follow their passion and turn it into a business. Since its inaugural meeting, TEDxDubai has played an important role in nurturing and showcasing Dubai’s finest ideas worth spreading.

With entrepreneurship events, start-up weekends and even “tweet-ups” becoming the mainstay in the UAE, and particularly in Dubai, it has become a little less daunting to turn “dream ideas” into a reality. Services such as those offered by the Department of Economic Development for start-ups and SMEs and those provided by organisations such as Sentinel Business Centres have made taking that courageous step forward a reality for many. These include a gamut of services, from legal paperwork to fully serviced office space.

BUSINESSES TO HELP START YOUR BUSINESS

Long gone are the days of coming to Dubai to make a quick dirham and leaving. Today, more and more business owners are looking to make Dubai their home, and grow their business here. The process of the setting up a business, however, is still labyrinthine and daunting to anyone who is setting up a business in the UAE for the first time.

For many, the lure of the Free Zone option is very attractive. Touted as being the quicker and more affordable option, many companies have blindly opted to pursue this, with many unknowingly operating illegally. According to Mohammed Shael, CEO, Business Registration & Licensing Division, DED, in an interview on Dubai Eye 103.8, “Free Zone companies in Dubai must have a local Dubai branch or local distributor in order to sell goods or services in Dubai, otherwise this is considered illegal.”

“The problem is that a lot of expats do not do their research adequately, and rely too much on word of mouth to make important decisions such as selecting their trade licence option,” added Mr Shael.

For many, the lure of the Free Zone option is there. Touted as being the quicker and more affordable option, many companies have blindly opted to pursue this, with many unknowingly operating illegally.

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According to Mohammed Shael, CEO, Business Registration & Licensing Division, DED, in an interview on Dubai Eye 103.8, “Free Zone companies in Dubai must have a local Dubai branch or local distributor in order to sell goods or services in Dubai, otherwise this is considered illegal.”

“The problem is that a lot of expats do not do their research adequately, and rely too much on word of mouth to make important decisions such as selecting their trade licence option,” added Mr Shael.

And with this comes the increasing need for assistance in building the properly licensed and set up foundation for these mushrooming businesses.

Start-up hubs or incubator facilities exist to eliminate a lot of the perceived hassle of obtaining a legitimate and appropriate trade license, and do away with many of the worries faced by start-ups. Perhaps more importantly, in an almost organic way, companies like Sentinel are helping create bridges across the network of entrepreneurs.

Finally, expect this same pace of evolution in startups and SMEs in the Middle East to continue and for this business unusual to eventually become the norm.

Prajit Arora is the Managing Director of Sentinel Business Centres

And you know what we found? Quite a few interesting things, actually. One of them is that there are more Saudi nationals (71 percent) intent on running their own business then there are entrepreneur-minded UAE nationals (48 percent). Seeing as a majority 34 percent of our Saudi respondents work in the government, it seems the private sector is almost completely bypassed by Saudi nationals, keeping Saudisation of the private sector a distant ambition.

Even with a lot of potential for growth in the SMB sector and with the existing SMB-related organisations, most respondents are still not convinced of the ease of setting up a new business in the UAE with about 66 percent saying it would be ‘somewhat or extremely difficult’. In fact, ‘strict government regulations’ is listed as the top barrier to entry into the SMB category. This is followed by the perception that there is a saturation of global brands in the market—which, in Kipp’s mind, is more indicative of consumers’ different sentiments toward local and global brands rather than the market’s actual level of saturation. (The infographic below shows you the rest of the list of barriers.)

This sentiment goes hand in hand with the perception that most of the support goes to nationals while there is still a lack of support for expatriates interested in opening a business in both Saudi Arabia and the UAE—a whopping majority 40 percent of all the respondents feel this way, in fact.

And when it comes to online, Kipp wondered: would most of the tech-savvy region bring a strong digital presence to their hypothetical business? Rather disappointingly for us as a digital title, a majority 37 percent say that while some sales might take place online, primary selling will remain through more traditional methods. Only 13 percent say they will sell purely online. Looks like we’ll be expecting more Mom N Pop stores in the future.

Besides staunch competition from brands with global muscle, entrepreneur wannabes are grounded in the importance of having availability of finance in their aspirations to open a business. Interestingly, all the respondents—expatriates and nationals alike—say the presence of a local sponsor and access to accurate industry information remain key factors to the success of setting up a small business in the region.

Is it time then to have a committee that liaises between entrepreneur, investor and government, Kipp wonders.

While it’s nice to see the cultivation of small and media businesses is encouraged, Kipp things this is quite mouthful of a statement. How many entrepreneurs out there have ever said running your own business is a piece of cake?

In our mixed salad bowl of a community in the UAE, this is most likely a case of last in translation—but it’s still a very timely one at that, with Entrepreneurship Summit coming up this week from April 14-16.

Towards the later half of 2010 and until now, the UAE government has been encouraging the youth to start thinking about running their own business, with the recent run of the Youth Entrepreneur Competition 2011 (YEC), which translated to most of us as a very crowded week at Dubai Mall—overflowing with teenage litter and high on what we hoped was nothing more than business adrenaline.

While time will tell if this move to get the kids interested in entrepreneurship works, we wonder if being your own boss was already palpable in the community.

So we went to you, Kipp readers, about their aspirations to be the next Richard Branson or Anita Roddick. And here what you had to say:

Joe: “It really comes down to looking at taking their communications, the applications they’re looking for and having those served to them by a third party provider and changing the way they pay for that, moving from a capital expenditure to a monthly service charge.”

Q: Why so much success, when past hosted models didn’t get very much traction?

Joe: “The reason we’re seeing such an increase in traction or acceleration in cloud-based communications has to do with the trends. There are a number of companies that started the trend by experimenting with moving different computing or different software to the cloud and have found that the cloud was a good way of doing business. They discovered there was a lot of benefit to it.”

Q: How much momentum are you seeing in the area of cloud-based communications?

Richard: “I’m seeing quite a shift toward cloud-based communications, and people tend to forget that communications has been in the cloud forever. What we’re seeing is that companies are moving the way they manage their communications into the cloud.”

Take, for instance, the recent comments by Dr Peter Heath, the chancellor of the American University in Sharjah. Speaking at a networking event for young entrepreneurs in Abu Dhabi last week organised by the not-for-profit group Tamakkan, Dr.Heath stressed young entrepreneurs should first look at local needs before setting up shop instead of merely copying already successful Western business models.

The National quotes the chancellor as saying “”I think there’s a mentality to take successful models from Europe and the US and say ‘why don’t we do something like that in the Middle East’?(…)”Rather than creating businesses like Facebook and Google, people should be analysing the market and looking to fill the current needs here.”

Fair enough, thinks Kipp. But we also think that while the rhetoric behind these kinds of statements is inspiring, it is also theoretical. Sure, we agree with Dr.Heath, entrepreneurs needs to be aware of the cultural particulars of the location of their operations, but rather than striving to be original and different from other business, Kipp can think of at least three examples that prove you just need to be the first in the market.

However, evolving technology like “cloud computing” has created a sea change for companies, enabling businesses to manage their potential risks and beat Mother Nature-induced chaos.

Read more:  The economic cost of nature

Source: BBC

And yet history is full of stories of successful companies that made their starts during recessions. According to Insidecrm.com, Hewlett-Packard got under way during the Great Depression of 1939. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs began Apple in 1976, a time when the US economy was struggling badly, and about the same time as Microsoft started up. CNN got underway in the recession of 1980, and MTV wasn’t far behind. Even GE, started way back in 1873, began in a recession. Powered with good, innovative ideas, a new company can succeed even in tough economic times.

What’s more, entrepreneurism represents a potential tonic to the economic predicament we all share. These risk takers help forge new market segments, help encourage money to flow, help generate jobs – all the things we so badly need. And, what is more, they are often driven by young people. Kipp has written a number of times about the predicament of the world’s youth, who are finding it harder than ever to attain meaningful employment. Estimates say that millions of new jobs will be needed in MENA in the coming years to keep the young population employed. These jobs will come from global companies entering the market, yes, but also from entrepreneurs.

In this special report, Kipp will take an ongoing look at entrepreneurship in the region. Who are the entrepreneurs, and what are their ideas? Where will they find money, and what’s in it for the investors? Can they overcome the crippling bureaucracy of countries like the UAE, where company law is dated at best and prohibitive at worst?

Earlier this week, IRENA chief Helene Pelosse quit her position as the agency’s first interim director. The departure of Pelosse – who was IRENA’s interim director general for almost 15 months – came as a surprise for most because as recently as July she appeared to be considering her stint at IRENA to be one of a longer tenure. The National reports that on July 29 Pelosse is known to have said, “IRENA is like a baby – it’s an organization that didn’t exist so you had to build it up, you had to set it up, it’s a long-term process (…) We will take years to get there.”

Speaking to AFP just yesterday, Pelosse claims she left the agency because of “intimidation” tactics used by the UAE government against her to force her out of her job. Pelosse told AFP: “Since I’ve been here, I’ve done several things which have led each time to the (UAE) foreign minister calling Paris to say, ‘This does not please us at all.’” Pelosse claims her offences include publicly accusing the UAE of delaying its payments and wearing a t-shirt at a climate conference in Amsterdam which read “IRENA recruits 50 percent women”.

IRENA was established in 2009 and Abu Dhabi beat out three European countries, including Vienna and Germany, in a bid to host the headquarters of the organization. When it began, the agency had big plans to speed up the process of going green and reducing climate change. But bureaucracy and financial restrictions appear to have curbed the fast pace of initial plans. With the funding for the project being based primarily on voluntary contributions, IRENA has reported severe financial restraints in the past year. According to IRENA’s website, Japan still owes the agency $2.1 million, and the US owes an estimate of more than $3 million. Though it must be noted that the US has not ratified the IRENA treaty; in fact only two members of the G8 have ratified the treaty as of yet, and only 42 out of 148 overall.

News of trouble with IRENA comes shortly after reports that Masdar City, the ambitious carbon-free, environmentally friendly city will not be completed until 2020, four years after it was supposed to be completed. And Abu Dhabi’s pet project might even stretch until 2025. To rub salt in, the project has also been scaled down, as Emirates 24/7 reports.

There are two different views Kipp could take on all this. First, that the glass is half full: the UAE is making very noble attempts to save mother earth. But as complications arise around, you wonder whether the country should cut the smoke and mirrors around the big green talk until it has something tangible to boast of. The alternative view, of course, is that it’s all just talk; a big green-washing scam to make a country built on petro-dollars appear environmentally concerned.

We always try to be optimists, but it gets harder all the time…

No community can disturb the natural balance and live without the consequence, for each organism has its own role to play in the global order. But humans in their quest for development have affected ecosystems in every way.What we do by our action is break the cycles that are necessary to survive — be it the food, carbon or water cycles. And the destruction sees no national boundaries. That’s why heads of nations should pay heed to the clarion call from the United Nations Environment Program report released at the two-week UN Convention on Biodiversity in Nagoya, Japan. The report urged governments to incorporate value of such national capital in their decision-making. The economic implications of failing to stop the loss of species and damage to ecosystems due to pollution, overexploitation or habitat destruction can be very high.
As the world’s cities grow, showing the value of “ecosystem services” like water purification and flood control provided by the surrounding countryside can help city authorities maximize efficient use of natural capital, said the report. It cited the example of New York City authorities, who paid landowners in the Catskill mountains north of the city about $1.5 billion to prevent runoff of waste and nutrients into nearby watercourses to avoid building a new water treatment plant for up to $8 billion. Water bills for New Yorkers went up by 9 percent, instead of doubling, as they would have with a new filtration facility, the study said.

It survived because it is now commonly accepted to be essential. The very future of mankind’s survival on the planet is not threatened by a banking collapse, but it is by water shortages, extreme weather events, global warming, famine through crop failure, and many more factors. We can argue all day about climate change – does it exist, is it caused by man – but the fact is a majority of scientists are now convinced that the climate and the planet are changing, and that human activities play a role. And, whether we’re causing it or not, the consequences will be ours to face.

So as the credit crunch ravaged economies, spending on “green” technology and innovation and environmental efforts remained strong. And some major economies even increased investment in the sector, believing it to have longevity and huge potential growth. The more citizens trained and employed in green industries the better – investment here fought unemployment and prepared the work force for the needs of the future.

In the early stages of this month, a huge conference takes place in Tianjin, China. The countries of the world are attempting to form a new Kyoto Protocol, the document that attempted to establish a unified strategy to deal with carbon emissions and to try to halt global warming. As these world powers try to thrash out a deal, Kipp explores the environmental issues facing our region in this month-long special report, sponsored by GE.

From an indoor ski slope to the tallest building on the planet to a series of man-made islands and manicured golf courses kept lush with desalinated water, Dubai and its fellow emirates are strewn with symbols of the defiance of nature.

Its extravagant developments have lured the super-rich and the super-famous, but attracted criticism from those who say such rapid development is destroying the natural environment.

In a shift in keeping with a property slump that hit Dubai World — the conglomerate responsible for many of Dubai’s most ambitious developments — the UAE has moved its marketing towards idyllic, natural islands off the coast of Abu Dhabi.

It has promised to get 7 percent of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2020. It has also embarked on the Masdar project to build what it says will be the world’s first zero emissions, zero waste city, though the completion date has recently been put back to 2025 from 2020.

Not everyone is convinced real changes are afoot.

“All of this is green, advanced-tech branding, not deep, strategic change of the sort that would propel the Gulf states into the 21st century,” one internationally-renowned specialist in sustainable development said. “The Emirates can and must do better than 7 percent in 10 years.”

He asked not to be named because he wanted to maintain relations with the UAE “to nudge them in a saner direction”.

Here in the UAE, “going green” is not just everybody’s favourite eco-catch phrase, it’s also a source of much contention. For years, the UAE has been deliberating passing regulation that would see construction projects forced to proceed with the protection of the environment in mind. Many would welcome the move, but others are cautious about the increased expenses builders will incur – expenses that they would then presumably pass on in the form of increased rent for tenants. “The overall cost of construction will rise substantially, putting a strain on financing modules and ultimately on the local community, the purchasers, tenants or end users,” says Antonios Dimitracopoulos, partner at Bin Shabib & Associates (BSA) LLP.

Given the current tightening of purse strings spurred on by the financial crisis, it is not surprising that Gulf News recently reported that the high costs that builders assume are associated with going green are often a deterrent for building owners.

Or maybe not. Recent research shows that entrepreneurship is on the increase since the recession. A study from the Kauffman Foundation, a prominent think tank specialized in the field of entrepreneurship, found that in 2009 an average of 320 out of 100,000 adults created a new business each month last year even as the recession took hold (a significant increase from previous years). Economists say that it is very common for people to turn to entrepreneurship in times of a recession, in particular because finding a job maybe daunting, frustrating or just not possible.

In fact, it is entrepreneurial ventures that are catalysts to recovery during a recession, as they provide niche services and employment opportunities. Gulf News’ Hisham Wyne says entrepreneurs are “the lifeblood of the new economy (…) startups are often responsible for catalyzing (…) pecuniary well-being.” He goes on to say that, “Despite the cards being sometimes stacked against them, several young entrepreneurs in Dubai have started viable businesses through dint of competence and persistence.”

This kind of wanton disregard by airlines for what the rest of the world sees as rational behavior is hardly news anymore. And the explanations for the mysterious forces at work behind airline fares are never quite satisfactory.

Some chalk it up to bad business – a situation where the corporations have become so large, that they struggle to stay on top of all the variables that ultimately determine profit – fuel prices, airport prices, legislation and regulatory matters, intense competition. The result at times resembles a chaotic wild west, where inconsistencies and poor business strategies are around every corner. If you’re like me, though, you assume there’s a method to their madness – some deeper genius embedded in those contrarian fare prices – a rationale that industry outsiders can never fully discern.

The air fares to and from Dubai, however, have long defied explanation. At least they have in the case of Emirates. The Dubai-owned airline is a proud success story in the Emirate and region, and tends to receive favourable reviews from those who fly on it. And yet, it only takes a bit of research on the website to notice a frustrating pattern in the pricing.
“It’s no secret to anybody,” commented a business owner to Kipp. “It’s cheap to fly to Dubai, and expensive to fly away. It’s like they’ll do anything to get you here – and everything to prevent you from leaving.”

To UAE-savvy travelers, this won’t come as a surprise. One-way fares to Dubai, departing major European and North American airports, are frequently a pittance compared to the return trip back to the city of origin. For example, at time of writing, traveling from Houston to Dubai on Emirates in early September would run you $920 one-way. For the return flight, add an additional 20 percent or so, nearly $200. Travel the same day from Heathrow to Dubai, and you can expect to be out $587. The same trip in reverse – Dubai to Heathrow – will set back more than $750. That’s an increase of more than 25 percent.

New York-bound flights out of Dubai on Emirates run a hefty 60 percent more than their inbound counterparts ($830 versus $1,339). But the biggest discrepancy by far was noted on departures from Paris or Rome. Dubai-bound flights from these cities are a real bargain at just under $642 and $550, respectively. But travel the other way in you’re in for a rude awakening – a hefty $1,550 price tag for one-way travel to these cities – more than double the departure from Charles de Gaulle, and nearly triple that for the Rome departure.

One after another, with the capacity crowd roaring at almost every line, more than a dozen comedians took what is essentially an Anglo-American art form and gave it a decidedly Egyptian spin.

Tamer Farag, a 35-year-old professional tour guide, riffed cleverly on the bizarre linguistic games Egyptians play – incorporating English words like “coffee shop,” “upgrade,” and “jacket” into Arabic, then randomly applying Arabic grammar rules to them.

“So what’s the plural of jacket?” Farag asked the crowd in Arabic. “No, it’s not ‘jawaacket,’ that’s low-class! All the chic people say ‘jacketaat.’ What’s wrong with you?”

Noha Kato, a young woman who wears the hijab, talked about how hard it is for veiled women to find places to swim. Her options are either to find a pool with women-only hours or opt for the slightly ridiculous “Islamic swimsuit.” “For people who don’t know, it’s like a diving suit with a ballet dress stuck on it. So you end up looking like a Muskateer,” she said, drawing a huge laugh.

Kato, delivering her routine in fluent English, joked that at age 22, her parents are already fretting about her never getting married. “I feel like a yogurt cup with an expiration date stamped on my forehead,” she said.

The year 2010 may just be remembered as the one that homegrown stand-up comedy turned the corner in Egypt. If so, the Feb. 19 comedy showcase known as Hysteria may be the moment that proved Western-style could thrive here. The stand-up scene has been bubbling below the surface for several years. Clubs and coffee shops have started hosting occasional stand-up nights, drawing on a growing pool of locals eager to perform. “It’s going to be very gradual. It will still take time for people to catch up to it,” the manager of the Cairo Jazz Club, Shady Hamza, said.

Hamza started experimenting with stand-up nights earlier this year, bringing in two or three comics to perform brief routines as an opener to the night’s band. To his surprise, he discovered that his nightclub – which normally doesn’t start filling up until 11 p.m., was packed by 8:30. “I’m excited about the idea and I want to be part of its growth,” Hamza said.

Even better, Christensen Yachts in Vancouver announced the first North America contract signed since the financial crisis – for a pair of identical 50-meter yachts, each costing roughly $30 million. Why two? Apparently, for the anonymous buyer, one was not enough. This is not the first time an owner has treated himself to two identical boats; after all, when you jet from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean you don’t want the stress of having to learn a whole new deck plan. What if you’re taking a romantic moonlight walk? You certainly don’t want to bark your shin on an unexpected outcropping.

It’s easy to poke fun at the excesses built into the luxury yacht trade. There is perhaps no market on earth where men compete more aggressively in measuring their… equipment. (I actually have never heard of a woman ordering a super-yacht. These days, in America, women who have shattered the glass ceiling seem content to spend their fortunes on more humdrum opportunities like campaigning for the Senate.) Like skyscrapers, yachts continue to grow in size, with the newly affluent happily pushing the envelope.

Recently, the envelope soared from letter to legal size, as the latest, greatest super-yacht ever built steamed out of the Blohm and Voss shipyard in Germany. The Eclipse, commissioned by Chelsea Football Club’s owner Roman Abramovich, is all of 557 feet long, surpassing by 36 feet the record previously held by the 532-foot Dubai, owned by Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Because the Eclipse project has been carried out under the strictest security, descriptions of the boat (ship?) have bordered on the incredible, or possibly the ludicrous. The cost had been originally estimated by Huffington Post at between $400 million and $1.2 billion; even to a former stock analyst, that seems like a large range. The current betting is $486 million.

Today’s leaders, it seems, refuse to acknowledge that harnessing the words of warriors in response to attacks on state security is both antiquated and destructive in an age where populations no longer take up their sticks and rush into battle to protect their mud huts at the first hint of foreign aggression.

Yet leaders continue to give inflammatory speeches, whipping the public into a frenzy of racial contempt and tribal finger-pointing in countries that allegedly endorse multiculturalism, equality, and racial harmony.

Following this year’s Moscow attacks, Russia’s leadership wasted no time in pledging their determination to root out attackers and “destroy them all.”

“We know that they are lying low, but it is already a matter of pride for law-enforcement agencies to drag them out of the depths of the sewer,” announced Putin on March 29, following the explosions of two bombs during morning rush hour, which officials say killed 38 people and injured more than 60.

Putin’s words have a familiar ring. So do the future consequences they may have on ethnic communities who shoulder the blame. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York in September 2001, American leaders were equally vociferous about their commitment to violence.

Pointing “the full wrath of the United States” at the Taliban, US Secretary of State Colin Powell proclaimed: “You either respond and rip them up, help us rip them up, get rid of them, or you will suffer the consequences.” US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld offered a slightly clearer, but no less vigorous image of a “broad, sustained effort that will have to use our diplomatic, our political, our economic, our financial strength, as well as our military strength.”

Speaking without the tempering influence of advisors a few days after the 9/11 attacks, America’s then-president, George W. Bush, harnessed the words of the ancient warrior to maximum disadvantage when he characterized his response as “this crusade.”

Cloud is a generic term used by IT professionals to describe the Internet. When coupled with computing, it gains wider meaning: The availability of applications, platforms and infrastructure on the fly. Cloud computing offers organizations IT resources in a cost effective, scalable, reliable and fault tolerant manner. In addition to faster provisioning, cloud computing gives organizations easier management and monitoring of their IT resource management. This is what Mobily has gained with its first cloud computing setup, which has resulted in a major cut in time to market, the company said.

“A year ago, we conducted a careful audit of our internal computing needs and those of our business customers, then we consolidated each of them and started our first cloud computing initiative inside Mobily,” said Mobily’s Chief Information Officer Medhat S. Amer. “Today, a significant portion of our internal computing needs have been addressed with the launch of our first computing cloud without any additional investment in physical computing resources,” he added.

Focusing on the efficiency of cloud computing, Ahmed Altheneyan, vice president IT operations, said: “When a project needs computing resources, they can be allocated and provisioned in less than 15 minutes using our computing cloud.”

Mobily has plans to roll out subsequent computing clouds for its internal computing and storage needs. “By adopting a cloud computing approach to IT and networking needs, we have efficient utilization of our current resources, which in turn translates itself into cost savings for us,” said Altheneyan. “We can take those cost savings back to the customer and provide them with affordable services, without compromise on quality.”

Among successful cloud computing examples are Google’s apps engine, Amazon’s EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), Microsoft’s Windows Live platform, salesforce.com’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) cloud, and Rackspace’s cloud-based computing and hosting solutions.

- Arab News