'Gitex Times- the week that was'

Gitex mania took over Dubai last week and the 1300+ stalls and 125,000 visitors foot fall as claimed by the organizers had gone up from last year as usual making it the largest IT exhibition in the Region and one of the largest in Asia. People from both IT and business community swamped the halls in huge numbers with some looking for new technology and some for time pass and shopping away from monotonous office routine especially from places like Saudi. However most of the balance crowds, I should admit were more of on lookers who were looking for bags, caps, pens, key chains, valets, stress balls,etc and whatever freebies they can get hold of at the end of the day to proudly display in front of their eager families in the evening.

Some of the freebies virtually caused a stampede making people run all over the place just to get hold of these items as though they have never seen something like that before during their life time especially on the last day. What was surprising was that most of the big names put up their stalls in the same place like the earlier years virtually exhibiting the same partners and product lines making it bit boring and monotonous. Unlike the earlier years there were not many new names especially from India and who ever came to put up a decent stall privately confided that the Indian IT market and man day rates were growing at a phenomenal rate much better than the rest of the world including Middle East and prospects were coming in all the way to India to look for possible outsourcing of development and off shore opportunities rather than they having to come over on shore for business opportunities. Things have turned around and whether this Region likes it or not and they need to look at off shoring and automation even for regular on site transactional operations and support given the current trends of cost of living in UAE and the skills available back home.

Gitex over the years seems to be becoming more and more of a media hype and marketing exercise for getting some decent visibility and coverage, but otherwise is still an excellent place to network and meet all the old and new contacts in one place and of course for all the free gifts. Last but not the least was the fair, slim, good looking females employed by all the biggies dressed up in eye catching costumes going all over the place under the pretext of distributing some leaflets and special offers which made us wonder whether it was an IT exhibition or a catwalk!

RK