Dubai entrepreneurship

Entering the market

The principal turning point for the Slovak-Czech GCWare Middle East (GCWare ME) Company in its considerations on entering the market in the United Arab Emirates was presented by a high-tech project oriented to dynamic navigation for Dubai City under the name Dalílí. The Company cooperated with Intergraph Middle East to win a tender held by the Dubai municipal governmentagainst competition with such huge competitors in the field of navigation and location services as Webraska, Navteq, TeleAtlas. Project Dalili was officially put into operation on March 8, 2006. The system, utilizing web applications and computers installed in motorcars, reports on actual traffic situation on individual segments of roads and streets, updated every 5 minutes. The system also provides a platform for additional applications like PDA or SMS, and putting them into operation during next update, or possibly upgrade, of the system is under consideration.
The GCWare ME Company, a member of the YMS & GCWare Group, has its seat in the Arabic „Silicon Valley“, also known as Dubai Internet City. In this way the Group, with offices in Trnava and Prague, has expanded its activities, besides London and Gottmadingen Germany, also to the most rapidly expanding city in the world.
The office was already established 4 years ago but it is fully operable from May 2006. To have such a position directly in Dubai and on such a big, complicated and for Dubai absolutely important, project was the basis we started from and still continue with. As a logical follow-up to the already running Dalílí system we provide its maintenance and technical support. Presently we are continuing with the final version of the 1st up-date, based on updating of map data for not only Dubai city but also the whole United Arab Emirates, which is extremely important because of the rapidly increasing bridges, streets, buildings, hotels and administrative centers. Under this system we will offer new navigation apparatuses for motorcars equipped with touch-screen, are TMC and Arabic enabled, and also portable. Our company has also developed special software for automatic screening of traffic incidents in a so-called TIC editor, which means that the technician in the traffic control center does not need to enter traffic incidents manually.

My guide

Dalili which, in translation from Arabic language means “my guide”, is an essential everyday partner on roads in Dubai. The city has 1.4 million citizens and at the same time has also exactly the same amount of motorcars. Despite the fact that many foreigners work in Emirates and mainly in Dubai, most of whom own no vehicle since they are mostly term-workers, it is normal for local, thus Emirate families, but also families of residents from other Arabic countries, India or Europe, own a number of cars. This fact is shown on the roads, which are overcrowded despite the fact of having 6 lanes in one direction. When traveling through Dubai you will notice that in the vast majority of cars there is only one person - the driver. This fact means that at midnight the roads are as full as in Europe during rush hours. Dalílí informs accurately about position of incidents and traffic-jams, and recommends the shortest way to your destination. In the near future we also plan to enrich this system with a PDA/PND version, as the system is prepared for this possibility.

How people live

The population in the Middle East is on the rise; Arabic countries belong among those nations with the biggest population index. The growth of cities, in combination with interest in implementing new technologies also to this part of world, is the reason why many Arabic cities have expressed their interest in our dynamic navigation system. Our company is presently in different stages of discussions with the individual municipal or state institutions responsible for traffic control.
So far concentration on location services prevails in the GCWare ME portfolio. In January 2007 we won a tender in the Sharjah Emirate, also in cooperation with Intergraph Middle East. In Sharjah the company is working on two systems – a road information system and address administration system. Our task within the road information system is to consolidate the wide scope of information and activities related to municipal planning and construction, mainly connected with roads and the constructions associated with them. We provide routing and traffic analysis for the Šardža municipal government, to aid them in reacting correctly during increasing traffic-jams and urban development.
On the other hand, the address administration system is oriented to provision of a reference system of addresses for all governmental bodies, and the public sector. The system will be related to all objects associated with the road network, allowing automatic and exact location of any specific area. The systems of road information as well as address administration will be solved by means of web applications accessible by a wide group of users. Thus, both systems will fill the information gap between Institution for Road Maintenance and development of Sharjah Emirate and its contractors.

Activities of GCWare ME cross beyond the United Arab Emirates borders. After many months of effort we managed to place ourselves on the list of selected companies of the huge Oman company Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), in the area of fleet management, and thus were invited to a forum oriented towards a monitoring system for commercial vehicles organized in April 2007. PDO belongs among the biggest Arabic companies in the crude oil industry, and leases up to 20.000 commercial vehicles.
Besides location services, GCWare ME is also becoming involved in the field of geographic information systems and data processing for the power engineering industry. In this case we cooperate with Company Geodis Brno, spol. s. r.o., and have presented a mutual solution in several important oil companies. GCWare ME of course has the target to establish its solutions on the Middle East market, but at the same time also wishes to link with partnership companies offering complementary services to our solutions. In this way the horizon of local inhabitants becomes slightly wider and thus they achieve more complex view about the abilities of Slovaks and Czechs in their effort to hold their own in global competition. Our effort and work was also awarded with a request from the Sharjah municipal government asking our company to present a lecture about geographic information systems within the frame of the 1st Sharjah GIS symposium organized by Sharjah University.

Partnership required

An inevitable element in the finding of the right business partners and customers is regular participation at general exhibitions in the IT sphere, such as Gitex 2006, and also at specialized expositions like for instance Location Middle East or Map Middle East 2007.

Operating in Dubai is not so simple. It has many specifications and requires necessary adaptations from the side of the mother company. Different working days belong among such basic specifics – in town-council Emirates the working week starts on Sunday and ends on Thursday; on the other hand, in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait where we have also developed our activities, they start their working week on Saturday and finish it on Wednesday. Some companies and banks in Emirates also operate on Saturdays, which means they have a 6-day working week. Moreover, there is a 2-hour time shift in summer and 3 hours in winter against the Central European Time (CET). The hiring of personnel is also not a simple task. One cannot expect such necessary technical and also personality features in the majority of interviewed applicants as in our home country, unless they are Europeans. The fact that Dubai is an expensive city should also be taken into account, and accommodation in particular is considerably more expensive than elsewhere around the world. And we should not neglect the fact that this part of the world follows different religious and moral fundamentals, the implications of which must be taken into consideration by Europeans. Dubai is a hectic, cosmopolitan city. It is great challenge to work and also to win recognition here. Whoever wants to test their own capabilities and make something of themselves in this different environment, let them take a chance and try it. It is an extraordinarily valuable experience.

Prepared by: Emíre Khidayer, dated on April 30, 2007