A review on software industry in the Gulf region Research Paper

A review on software industry in the Gulf region - Research Paper Example â€Å"There are many problems associated with tracking software imports and exports in trade statistics.† (OECD, 37). These problems include the hazy differentiation between software and software media trade, trade of software being a part of hardware, lack of measuring mechanism for the sale of intellectual property in international market. (OECD, 37). For obvious reasons this obscurity is even graver in gulf region states, who stepped into this industry late in 20th century and most of the software applications are imported from developed countries. The production and development of software in developed countries have raised serious concerns for the integrity of software industry itself as the bulk productions to realize rapid economic gains has forced deviations from the recommended software development framework and guidelines. Committee on the Off-shoring of Engineering (COE, 66) observes, â€Å"Scholars conceded that the effects of off-shoring on the quality of work do ne in developed nations are uncertain because we do not know whether the productivity gains will be captured by the developing countries or the developed countries.† Quality assurance is a core subject of software engineering and this stands true in any region and domain for which the software is being developed. The deviation from this basic guiding principal of software engineering has surfaced several legal and quality issues in gulf countries. This is especially true for the gulf region where software production is either offshore or in foreign control. â€Å"The wealthy Gulf nations have long relied on foreign (mostly American) contractors to build and maintain much of their IT base.† (Carmel, Paul, 24). This over reliance on foreign expertise has given birth to a variety of legal issues in software ownership, , legitimate use, quality and maintenance. Redha (n.p) the Business Software Alliance Chair, Gulf Region, while surfacing his concerns on quality and legal i ssues stressed, â€Å"While the region is seeing rapidly growing technological adoption and internet penetration, which is contributing to overall economic growth, we need to ensure that this growth is not compromised through software piracy.† The quality issues in offshore products are a common observation because of the variance in environment and culture of the software developer and user. COE (197) observes, â€Å"When we consider off-shoring, we must remember that there is great variability in software objectives, job types, and practices around the world.† Obviously, this variability may cause quality issue in a region where environment, software quality requirements and job types are considerably different. The fact has instigated a profound realization among Gulf States to develop an indigenous software industry, which can cater local requirement with minimum quality issues and legal breaches. The Gulf States, specially Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria are now maki ng concentrated efforts to groom local software industry and the commitment of local software companies in the region may achieve better results for growth of software industry. However, the lack of latest technologies and the dearth of software engineers with required skills are two major areas where they face bottlenecks. Still quality can

The Age of New Media Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

The Age of New Media - Essay Example But, the flip side to all such developments is that the technology is also being used by some anti-social groups to carry out some destructive activities. For example, the terror network of groups like Al-Qaida etc. has been quite active in making use of networking, satellite communication etc. to shape up the nasty designs and thus causing tension in the society. Well, such groups have their own versions of truth, which they claim to be the motivation behind such acts. Therefore the governments of the world are supposed to come out with measures which can detect such designs and take corrective steps. The business world today has become quite competitive. With shrinking profit margins and high levels of competition, the corporate world has been trying to minimise the costs associated with the production and manufacturing of goods and services. Minimising the pilferage happens to be another key motive during the production and transportation of goods and services. Therefore the company management tries out ways and means to take effective control of such happenings and plan out strategies to counter them. Similarly, the retail industry is known to have a number of items on display in such a manner that customers can have a reassuring look at the items and if they feel convinced, they can purchase those products. But there are occasions when some unscrupulous elements try to lift the items without the knowledge of the sales person. To avoid such shop-lifting attempts, retail stores are supposed to put in place a mechanism so that they can keep an eye on suspicious elements. All such developments point out to one common phenomenon known as surveillance. If we take a look at the history of surveillance, the image of a burly spy in trench-coat standing on the roadside corner in the rain keeping an eye on the movement of the general public immediately comes to our mind. But the system of surveillance has graduated from this scenario and today the spy is not required to sweat out in the hot summer or drench himself in the rain, he can gather all the information on his desktop, laptop, palmtop, mobile or other handy gadgets, at the press of a button, thanks to the information gathering network. Though the modus operandi defers depending upon the importance and strategic nature of the surveillance, but one factor common in all such acts is the monitoring of our actions in different measure. While on the one hand we have biometrics machines on airports, railway stations, bus station, important offices etc. the RF tagging is used to keep an eye on goods as well as the movement of the workforce at many companies. A report brought out by the surveillance society in the year 2006 pointed out that the heightened concerns in view of the levels of intrusion in citizen's lives2. There are of course the incidents like the 9/11 attacks, the London bombing, the Mumbai shootout, the Pakistani bomb blasts, the Afghanistan war etc. which require intelligence inputs so that the terror elements are not in a position to work out similar incidents, but at