Intershop Communications Inc., a U.S.-based provider of e-commerce applications, announced at a Dubai press conference on Tuesday plans to increase its presence in the Middle East and North Africa. The company is considering Dubai’s Internet City as a potential site for its regional office.
As part of the plan, the company will increase its number of end-user sites in the region from four (ourvillagemarket.com, lebvote.com, jarmall.com and yalla.com) to 55 in the coming months, and increase the number of commerce site licenses—the company’s main source of revenue—to 3,500.
"We are targeting the Fortune 500 companies in the Middle East in the banking, oil, retail and other business sectors. We are looking for companies who we can offer consultancy and systems integration. In the UAE, we will be the dominant player in e-commerce next year," said Basel Tutunji, Intershop's international sales consultant for the Middle East.
Intershop is currently negotiating with telecommunications firms in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman and Jordan, following its partnership with the Emirates Telecommunications Corp. (Etisalat) on the Comtrust project. Intershop provided Comtrust with an Internet trading platform, enabling merchants to develop and market business-to-business and business-to-consumer e-commerce sites.
In Saudi Arabia, Intershop will supply the technology for Aramco's online procurement initiative. Another agreement was recently signed between Batelco Jeraisy Ltd. (Atheer), one of Saudi Arabia’s largest Internet service providers (ISPs), and Intershop's regional solutions provider, Netways, to purchase and install the company's software.
Intershop’s regional partners to date include Itqan, Logica, Cosmos, and Emirates Computers in the UAE; Newtek in Saudi Arabia and Egypt; STS in Jordan; and Netways, Terragate, and Data Management in Lebanon.
Supplementing Intershop’s e-commerce platform are Arabic templates for its e-commerce platform, created by one of the company’s local partners.
With more than 270,000 licenses sold worldwide, Intershop's global customers include enterprises such as Compaq, Deutsche Telekom, Canon, Kraft, Sony and Motorola.
Intershop is one of six founding partners of the E-@LLIANCE, a non-profit initiative committed to educating businesses on e-commerce and offering them turnkey solutions.
Founded in 1992, Intershop is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in the US, Germany, France, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Sweden, Finland, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United Kingdom.― (Albawaba-MEBG)
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