IBM has been operating in Egypt since 1954, offering a range of IT services and technology development operations. The IBM Cairo Technology Development Center currently employs more than 500 software developers, architects and professionals.

Recently Egypt’s Ministry for Communications and Information Technology entered into a cooperation agreement with IBM to establish a nanotechnology research center in Egypt – the first in North Africa. In addition, they plan to develop university curricula centered on Services Science, while launching a Global Service Delivery Center. This is expected to boost the exportation of IT services, and provide a full range of business consulting, cross-industry expertise, application development and maintenance, software testing and embedded software development services to IBM customers. The three-year agreement starts in January 2009, with joint investments in the range of 30 million US Dollars.

Samuel J. Palmisano, IBM chairman, president and CEO, commented; "I am optimistic about Egypt’s future because of the way it is nurturing its talent, its human resources and its technical potential. These initiatives mark IBM’s commitment to strengthening that process of growth and opportunity, and extending the long and highly successful partnerships we have enjoyed in Egypt. Another agreement for training and human resources development was signed to introduce Services Science, Management & Engineering (SSME) into the Egyptian Universities' curricula. SSME is a new academic discipline designed to develop the skills required in an increasingly services based global economy among university graduates.

In 2005, Oracle founded its eighth support center with the intention of having its global customer services based in Cairo. Oracle has witnessed high levels of success due to the skills of Egypt’s team, and as a result, has amplified its investment to provide support for a range of core applications.

Assem Khalil, Oracle’s Director of Support services envisions a bright future for the center in Egypt. ”We chose Egypt as the best place for the center for a number of factors, including its talent pool, political support from the Egyptian government, telecom infrastructure and the flexibility of the labor law.”

Following three years of successful operation, Egypt’s government has exceeded Oracle’s expectations in meeting that commitment. Today, Oracle has established two high speed communication lines, each at 45 MB, which represent the high-tech services expected by the company and its customers. Oracle has worked closely with the Ministry of Communication & Information Technology (MCIT) to train local people to staff the center, with over 1,000 people completing the Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) course in the past year.

“Egypt has increasingly become an important hub for global companies,” comments Khalil. “The official opening of our new global support services center in April 2008 demonstrates Oracle's understanding of the potential growth of the country.”

As of February 2008, the Oracle Global Support Services Center has moved to its new offices in Smart Village, the 600 acre out-of-town technology park on the outskirts of Cairo, which supports the growth of Egyptian ICT companies offering business process outsourcing services, among a range of other initiatives.

Orange Business Services represents the France Telecom Group, offering converged voice, data and mobile services, as well as IT expertise and managed services designed to transform business processes and improve productivity of enterprise customers. Orange Business Services launched in Cairo in 2005 with just 100 employees and today has over 1400. Its services range from IT implementation and fault management through to change administration in 20 different languages.

Orange Business Services country Vice President of Customer Services and Operations, Yasser Radwan, is optimistic about Egypt’s outsourcing prospects. “We always knew Egypt’s value proposition, and that’s why we’re here and experiencing double digit growth. The most important aspect is the abundance of Egypt’s talent pool, offering thousands of very good quality, multi-lingual engineers. Additionally, Egypt is in close geographical proximity and time zone to Europe, which facilitates Orange Business Services’ work with European-based clients. The Egyptian government has also implemented an ever-friendly business environment that is making the country more attractive than other countries in Europe.”

Egypt’s government has covered much ground over the last few years, initiating world-class certified training programs, and injecting soft skills courses in current graduate curriculums.

“Infrastructure developments in electricity, telecommunications and the rise of high-tech business parks were also key factors affecting our decision to invest in Egypt,” continues Radwan. “The Egyptian telecommunications infrastructure is engineered to provide substantial services and to absorb the rapidly growing ICT industry. With its current infrastructure, and the large number of international and regional fiber optic cables that pass through Egypt, the country has international and national links, and reliable connectivity to the rest of the world. In this way, Egypt has excellent components for Orange Business Services to manage its global technical support center from Cairo.”

Software Quality System (SQS) Egypt was established in 2007, and is a fully owned subsidiary of SQS AG - the largest independent provider of software testing and quality management services worldwide. Operational for more than a quarter of a century, the SQS Group has acquired specialized knowledge in software development over the course of its project activities.

Axel Bartram, Managing Executive at SQS Egypt, comments on why Egypt offers good opportunities for a successful outsourcing partnership – if key decision makers go about the process in the right way

“Location advantages for the ICT sector include low energy and wage costs and the geographic location with access to markets in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The close proximity to Europe is a key factor, because the difference in time between Central Europe and Egypt is only one hour – a clear advantage over countries in the Far East. The North African country also has a stable economy and a well-developed IT infrastructure, thereby making it an attractive offshoring location.” As a company with a strong presence in Germany, it is important that SQS maintains language ties with business partners in Germany. Bartram points out that Egypt’s multilingual workforce is another benefit of outsourcing in the country, as the language accessibility aids communication and productivity.

“In Egypt there are a large number of well-educated high school and university graduates who speak German. Cairo has a German university that graduates some 500 students each year. They are fluent in German and can often express themselves well in other European languages. This makes them ideal candidates for jobs involving SQS customers from German-speaking regions and for working closely with colleagues at the Homeshore Test Centre in G?rlitz.”

Bertram highlights the fact that Egypt’s government has significantly developed the IT- industry environment over the last few years. “Because ITIDA is part of the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT), companies enjoy access to the country’s official data pool. The development agency provides excellent support to companies desiring to set up offshoring operations in Egypt. ITIDA provided SQS with valuable, concrete support in founding our subsidiary in Egypt.”

Teleperformance Egypt was established in 2007 as the first multinational contact center in Egypt, representing its parent company, and offering services such as telemarketing, tele-collection, business process and CRM outsourcing services for Egypt, North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Teleperformance globally is a leading provider of outsourced CRM and contact center services; rolling out customer acquisition, customer care, technical support and debt collection programs on behalf of companies worldwide.

Egypt’s solid population equates to a large and highly skilled human resource base, where English is fluently spoken by university graduates. With the launch of its latest IT operations, Teleperformance Egypt aims to complement its offshore solutions in English, gleaning support from the Egyptian government’s initiatives are aimed at actively encouraging the contact center industry. Culturally speaking, commerce, science and engineering degrees are highly desirable in Egypt, and tend to produce excellent candidates for jobs in the ICT and engineering sectors in Egypt and worldwide.

Yannis Skordilis, Chairman and CEO of Teleperformance Egypt, stated that, “With a population exceeding 75 million, with over 200,000 university graduates each year, a skillful and dedicated management pool, a dynamic and growing local economy - which is quickly transitioning to the service sector - Egypt represented an ideal opportunity for Teleperformance.”

Skordilis continues, “We look forward to developing this major opportunity and bringing into the market Teleperformance skills and know-how, which are already recognized worldwide.”

Yannis Tourcomanis, Director of Teleperformance’s Southern European Operations, added, “Egypt represents a major booming market with a strong domestic economy. In addition, the Egyptian government’s strong commitment to the contact center industry gives us the opportunity to meet our clients and prospects’ needs locally, as well as to act as a regional hub for the Arabic-speaking countries in the Middle East region.”

Vodafone Egypt was established in 1998 and has developed from an employee base of 300 into more than 5,000. Vodafone CEO Richard Daly sees this as only the beginning, however, envisioning a customer base of up to 60 million customers one day, up from the current 30 million.

“Both quality and quantity of available labor are very high,” comments Daly. “Purely on our product—call center services—you need to have a good education, be bilingual. The education system does produce intelligent people, it does produce well grounded people, it does produce lots of bilingual people and people who are very ambitious to get jobs with companies like Vodafone.”

Vodafone Egypt now offers strong outsourcing or in-sourcing call center operations to other Vodafone operations around the world, including New Zealand and Australia. This has caused other Vodafone groups to take notice of the benefits of working in Egypt, and has stirred off-shoring call center operations to contract Vodafone Egypt for a number of their business needs. The reasons for Daly’s optimism are three-fold – price, quantity of labor and geography.

“I think the geographical factor is important. I really do think of Egypt as right in the middle of the action,” explains Daly. “For the whole of the European operations, it’s just an easy option. And even when you have the complete opposite—like Australia and New Zealand—it is even better for us because we run the UK during the day and in the same seats we will run Australia and New Zealand at night, so the efficiency of the building is massive.”