Technically, the only true innovation
comes in a CD shaped as a credit card.
The e-bizCard, compatible with any CD-
ROM, is the latest offering of the French-
based Ebiz Production. However, were the
unusual shape its only selling point, it
would have been passed off as nothing
more than the latest gimmick in data storage.

But Ebiz is using this new gizmo to
attract Lebanese businesses. Production of
the e-bizCards will begin sometime next
fall. Stored in each card will be a listing of
the top 360 businesses in Lebanon. They
will be made available to Lebanon’s
major companies and foreign trade mis-
sions. “It’s one of a three-pronged pro-
motional campaign dubbed First
Lebanon, which aims to bring Lebanese
businesses to the fore in the global mar-
ket,” says Yann Rotil of Ebiz Production.

For a flat fee of $480, a company will get
its logo, contact address and a short com-
pany profile printed on 15,000 e-
bizCards, 5,000 business handbooks
(which will also be distributed free to
CEOs and consultants) and on the
Internet at www.firstlebanon.net for 17
months. Thirty-six commercial sectors,
ranging from airlines to banks to travel
agencies, are represented.

This is not the only compendium of
Lebanese businesses. Sites such as
www.lebanon.com and www.lebanonlinks.com are well established and have
perfectly adequate links. But the novelty
does come with the trilateral approach to
First Lebanon and with Rotil’s insistence
that, thanks to Internet protocols, “any
search on an international engine such as
Yahoo! or Excite with the words ‘busi-
ness in Lebanon’ will yield firstlebanon in
the top ten results.”

So far, 145 companies have signed up
including Demco Steel Industries and
First National Bank. If First Lebanon
proves successful, Ebiz plans to set up sim-
ilar projects in the UAE, Saudi Arabia
and Jordan with the goal of creating a
firstmiddleeast.com. As for the e-
bizCards, they have simply been thrown in
to make the project appear state-of-the-art.

Say it with music

It’s the cyber equivalent of the singing
telegram. Electronic Services has
launched its newest online service,
Songees at www.songees.com. For $1, a
member can send a personalized song
greeting to a fixed or mobile phone anywhere
in the world. Songees, the double e
is simply an attempt to get around registered
domain names, is the brainchild of Adel
Reda, a local entrepreneur who believes
that his service fills a special niche. It is for
all those “Lebanese who want a fun way to
keep in touch with their relatives and
friends abroad,” he says. “It’s the latest
thing after e-greeting cards.” Intracom, a
local ISP that recently sold its database and
dial-up network to Cyberia, operates the site.

Songees’ drawback: you have to use your
credit card to buy $20 worth of credits,
which then have to be used within a year.

Data Management, a local ISP, has
helped another Internet start-up become
equally musical, Karim Saikali’s CD shop,
E-com Lebanon at www.e-comlebanon.com.
But it’s not the first online store to offer
CDs to the average Lebanese surfer. Souk
Loubnan at www.soukloubnan.com and
Soukna at www.soukna.com have each been doing that for the last
four months. What makes
Saikali’s idea novel is that it
adopts an independent database,
turning his site into a
mixture of Amazon and eBay.
Shoppers can create their own
e-shop in Saikali’s virtual mall
to sell or trade their old CDs at
no extra cost. “We hope to
earn from advertising banners,”
says Saikali who, though unwilling to disclose the initial investment,
admits that the break-even point may be
several months away. E-comlebanon.com
recorded a respectable
2,800 visitors in its first month,
but only eight CDs have actually
been sold so far.

According to the slogan on the
company’s welcome page, “customers
can place their orders
from anywhere in the world and
have the CDs delivered inside
Lebanon.” This is no doubt an
effort to encourage expatriate Lebanese
who, having received several birthday
songees from the folks back home, feel
duty-bound to return the favor with the
latest in Western jingles.

Sold to the lady with IBM

“Do I hear more bids?” Internet users
probably won’t hear those words
while surfing the net. But if it is an auction
they are looking for, they might want to
check out www.mazadi.com. E-Commerce,
a seven-month-old Lebanese
startup specializing in online business ventures,
is promoting the site as the Arab
region’s first online auction arena. It is
modeled after the much larger US-based eBay.com
auction site. Visitors can bid on merchandise
and, for at least the next three
months, can put their own goods up for
auction free of charge.

Johnny El-Hashim, manager of the site
believes www.mazadi.com has great
potential, and he is looking for up to
$500,000 in venture capital funding from
investors who feel that Lebanon has a
bright online future.

If you use Microsoft Word, Excel or
Outlook, then you’d better keep on
your toes: You are vulnerable to one of
the most common pests on the Internet
today. The electronic bete noire is the
macro virus, a little program that, unlike
general computer bugs, hides inside a
word processor document or spreadsheet
and can do a world of damage to beginners
and sophisticated computer buffs alike.

Globally, more than one in ten of all computers
are expected to encounter a virus in any
given month. This startling figure is the projected
forecast by the International
Computer Security Association (ICSA) and
represents a 3% increase over last year. In the
ICSA study that polled IT professionals
from 300 large US corporations with some
750,000 PCs, the 8% monthly rate of virus
alerts that were reported in 1999 is expected
to grow to 11% this year (see graph).

In Lebanon, in the absence of official surveys,
figures for the number and frequency of
viral attacks are at best approximate. Some
estimates, loosely based around the number
of panicked customers who phone their dealers
for help, put the toll as high as 5% a
month, while others insist on the more salubrious
rate of 1% of all PCs. The average
brings the Lebanese rate of infection in line
with US figures given that not all virus
encounters actually develop into full-blown
infections. “But virus infections are definitely
on the rise,” says Mihran Boudromian,
head of Expervision’s software and sales
department. “A lot has to do with the fact that
more viruses are being created.” Georges Hajj, senior consultant
for Compudata, concurs. “It’s a
Catch-22 situation: the more antivirus
programs there are, the
more new viruses there are that
can beat them and the more
there is a need to update existing
anti-viruses.” Between
them, Compudata and
Expervision have a client
base of some 400 customers
on maintenance
accounts
ranging from corporate
to private
PC owners.

In the ICSA
study, by far the
biggest problem was
deemed to be the rise of
macro viruses. The survey
found that incidents of macro-virus infections
had doubled on average every four
months in 1999 and that some 64% of all
reported viruses were macro-induced, compared
to 46% a year earlier. Boot-sector
viruses, which attack the program that boots up the
computer, and file-infector viruses each
accounted for about 10% in both years.

“This is one aspect of technology where
I don’t mind lagging behind the West,”
says Boudromian cheekily. “Although
we’re receiving an increasing number of
macro-attacks, the main e-invaders are still
boot and file viruses.” Though potentially as
fiendish and destructive as their macro
counterparts, these viruses are unambiguous
programs with a clearly-defined icon when
running in Windows.

Somewhat paradoxically, the main reason
for this variance with the West is the higher
occurrence of software piracy. “Most of
our viruses have come from diskettes or
pirated CDs, rather than off the Internet like
Chernobyl for example,” he says,
referring to last year’s virus attack that
caused mayhem across Asia and the
Middle East as 600,000 PCs crashed. “But
we’re catching up,” adds Boudromian.
“Within a year, our computers should be as
macro-ridden with disease as in the West.”

A macro is a small chunk of code that can automate tasks like formatting. But macros
can also execute malicious actions and
spread as viruses, infecting a computer in
the way a retrovirus, such as HIV, infects the
human body. The macro virus starts running
when your word processor, for instance,
opens an infected file. Once it is running, the
virus copies itself into the word processor,
again like a retrovirus that is intent on
invading the DNA of a human cell. Once
infected, the macro virus runs every time
you open an existing document with your
word processor or create a new one. When
it runs, the virus makes a copy of itself into
the file, infecting the new file.

“The root to the macro problem,” says
Hajj, “is that Word makes it easy to send a
complex document complete with fonts,
pictures and even embedded spreadsheets.”
It is therefore very convenient to email
a Word file from one person to another,
which, when coupled with the growing
popularity of email, produces a related
boom in email-borne viruses.

Most common computer viruses of 1999

An analysis of the most common computer viruses of 1999 shows that although
the threat of new self-propagating viruses is growing, older viruses are still very
common in Lebanon.

One boot sector virus, Ethan, is nearly six years old but still appears in the top five
(see table). The list was compiled based on customer calls for help to Compudata
and Expervision.

The three self-propagating viruses on the list were Melissa, Laroux and Happy99,
which forward themselves by hijacking a computer’s email program. This means
that instead of taking months to spread into the wild, these viruses have the potential
to attack globally within days.

However, Georges Hajj, senior consultant for Compudata, believes that old
viruses still pose a major threat: “Some viruses become so common, they will never
become extinct; they will always lurk on a floppy disk in someone’s drawer.”

According to Hajj, the key to long-lived viruses is being virtually invisible. “Viruses
which jump up and down with very destructive payloads draw attention to themselves
and effectively kill themselves off.”

What computer bugs do once inside your PC depends on the fiendishness of their
creators. Some, like Happy99, merely display annoying messages or graphics
on your screen. “Happy99 does nothing, it just spreads, although it still causes damage
by using up system resources.”

But others, such as the Chernobyl virus, are highly damaging, capable of corrupting
the motherboard and thereby hoodwinking the computer into believing it has no
hard disk. This permanently cripples the machine and deletes all stored data, necessitating
the purchase of a new motherboard and BIOS chip that can cost anywhere
between $90 and $120.

While having a hard disk wiped by
a virus may seem the computer
equivalent of Armageddon, many
companies and individuals are fortunately
in the habit of keeping
back-up copies of information and
sensitive files.

Boudromian is similarly concerned by
the rise in infections. “Macro viruses will be
driving the increased virus infections in
Lebanon,” he predicts. “We have entered an
age of pandemic contaminations at speeds of
light, when a single virus has the capacity to
bring a million PCs to a grinding halt.” In this
explosion of macro viruses that promises to
be a growing threat to our information
economy, it is almost with nostalgia that he
looks back at 1995, when “absolutely the
only serious threat of infection came from a
faulty floppy disk or a pirated CD.”

Macro viruses didn’t exist prior to the
release of Microsoft Word 95. But with Word 95
and later versions, Microsoft added the ability
to store macros in files along with text. As
a result, one of the telltale signs of having an
infected copy is that the word processor will
only save Word template files, since this is the
only way that the macro can propagate.

Since then, newer releases of Microsoft
Word and Excel have had the ability to
store macros in ordinary document files.
Being able to store macros inside a word
processor is a powerful feature. For example,
you can have a macro that computes the
terms of an installment loan, or that automatically
asks a few questions and then
draws a graph. Many businesses have created whole applications that run inside
Microsoft Word and Excel. “Microsoft has
called this modification an enhancement,”
says Hajj, “but it significantly compounds
the macro virus problem.” Boudromian
agrees: “By themselves macros aren’t
inherently dangerous. What is dangerous,
however, is the ability of Word and Excel to
have macros that automatically execute when a file is opened.” And there lies the
breeding swamp for macro viruses.

The computer industry has come to
accept viruses as a fact of life, with programmers
striving against ever more virulent
strains. Commercial anti-virus software
protects against many of the most
common macro viruses. Functioning as
antibodies, the latest anti-virus software such as Norton AntiVirus 2000 and
McAfee VirusScan, which between them
grab over 80% of the local market, recognize
some 14,000 known strains of viruses
that can worm their way into systems.
Playing Russian roulette may have its aficionados,
but clearly the best solution
remains to shield your computer with the latest
in anti-virus software.

However, it’s worth bearing in mind that
even though anti-virus software will fight the
most common Word macro viruses, it’s not a panacea. Anti-virus vendors estimate that
as many as 200 to 300 new viruses are created
every month simply because it’s easy for
a computer programmer to take an existing
Word macro virus, make a few changes and
create a new virus that won’t be detected.

An important factor in the flurry of virus
incidents, almost as important as the
attacks themselves, is the laxity in updating
anti-virus software regularly, scanning
incoming email and attachments, improper
installation and too little attention to anti-virus policies for remote users. “We do our best to
inform and encourage our customers to be
vigilant at all times,” says Hajj, “but unfortunately
there’s still a great deal of lethargy
when it comes to adopting safe controls.”

In the American ICSA survey, about 60%
of those respondents who had been infected
correctly diagnosed the disaster from the
start. Put another way, 40% of computer
users took some time to realize they had
caught a bug.

“Of course the surest way to avoid being
infected by macro viruses is to disable
them,” says Imad Tiba who teaches a computer
course at Business, Engineering
Studies and Technology. “You can do this
under Microsoft Word 97 and later versions
including Word 2000 by changing your
macro security setting.” Of the three settings
that are available, the low setting lets Word
run any macro that it finds. “Don’t use this setting,”
insists Tiba. “Instead, specify high
security, which disables all macros unless they
are signed by a so-called trusted source.”
The program lets you specify which signatures
that it should trust; the rest are automatically
ignored. There is also a medium
security setting. In this mode, a warning
pops up each time a file that contains macros
is opened, giving the user the choice to have
them enabled or disabled. Most users are
recommended to leave their security setting
on high, since, as Tiba advises, “there is no
way of telling beforehand if a macro is going
to be safe or not.” Boudromian puts it more
jocularly: “it’s the electronic equivalent of not
handing your credit card and car keys to a
complete stranger.”

And while being infected by an electronic
bug is anything but funny, to some virus programmers,
creating such widespread panic
with a few lines of computer commands is all
a joke. The boot-virus W97M_AUTOEXEC,
for instance, carries a riddle. When recipients
of the virus open an infected document, they
are presented with a question and given three
chances to answer. Possible results include the
messages, “You are wise, please choose this
again later,” “Congratulations,” and “Stop it!
You are so incurable, lose three chances!
Now, God will punish you …”

In this case, ‘divine punishment’ consists,
quite predictably, of deleting all the files on
the hard drive.

Spring cleaning your computer

If your 6-gigabyte hard drive is already half full with unneeded files, program remnants,
cached Web files and other useless garbage, now may be the time to clean
out the cobwebs.

Think of a PC-user as a litter-lout leaving cigarette butts, candy wrappers,
Almaza bottles and used Kleenex tissues all over the pristine landscape of your hard
drive. A typical Windows program installation scatters support files in several directories,
so you can’t simply lay waste to a single folder to get rid of all the litter.

Well-written Windows software registers how to uninstall itself either in the
add/remove programs utility in the control panel or in the folder it builds in the programs
menu. Using an uninstaller generally gets rid of most traces of a program,
but it can leave things like shared support files, saved games or data behind.

You can clear a little more space by dumping your temporary Internet files, but not
really enough to make a big difference. You can also go on a search-and-destroy mission through
every folder on the drive using Windows Explorer, but don’t kill anything you’re not
absolutely sure about because you could wind up with a very expensive paperweight.

Windows 98 and Windows 2000 also have a utility that automatically dumps useless
files. Go to the Programs Menu, then Accessories, then System Utilities and
pick Disk Cleanup.

Then again, there’s always the more radical, scorched-earth approach: If your PC
is so totally bogged down by all the stuff you’ve downloaded, your quickest course
of action is to nuke the drive. You just reformat and load the essentials, Office 2000
and your favorite wallpaper, and you’re ready to start cluttering things up again.

It’s been anything but plain sailing. Joe
Faddoul, the 56-year-old chairman of
BML Istisharat, has been pursuing a
personal quest since he got into the computer
business almost 30 years ago. His
goal is to simplify the handling of complex
computing systems, the huge software programs
that companies and banks use to
manage everything from finances to customer
service. “We’re selling a service, so
our job is to be reliable and extremely cost-
efficient,” says Faddoul.

This could be rhetoric, but the fact is that
he has successfully marketed the company’s
products and lifted revenues from almost
zero in 1976 to $6 million last year (see
graph). The firm’s banking software,
Integrated Computerized Banking System
(ICBS), is mentioned in the annals of IBM
in New York as one of the top ten success
stories in software, and according to 1998
figures from the London-based International
Banking System, it ranks fourth out of 34 in
terms of sites where it has been installed:
some 40 banks in over 350 sites. With about
20 cents of operating profit extracted from
every $1 of revenue, Istisharat appears to
have something of a golden touch.

These respectable payoffs, rising to $1.2
million in 1999, have attracted such local
heavyweights as Societe Generale, Societe
Nationale d’ Assurance (SNA) and the
Lebanese Swiss Bank who are among the
company’s main shareholders. “Within its
class, BML Istisharat has the largest revenue base and the most advanced products,”
says Maroun Badr, assistant manager of
development at Societe Generale.

How do they do it? Analysts say
Istisharat’s $100,000 to $600,000 software
packages help organizations become more
customer-friendly on two fronts. This 28-
year-old company offers what both foreign
and local rivals cannot offer: a combination of
built-in customer profiling based on a successful
track record and personal attention
to the quirks of the local market. Using
Istisharat’s software, companies can make
their organizations more self-service oriented.
Credit Libanais replaced the French
software, Delta, with the Istisharat system
because, in the words of deputy general
manager Antoine Raad, “Istisharat has a
solid foundation for building the relationship
between businesses and the customer.”

Sammy Hashem of Libano-Suisse
agrees. The insurance company bought
Istisharat’s URIS package (Life Insurance
and Reinsurance), for about $100,000.

Today, Faddoul’s software firm derives
60% of its revenues from export sales to the
US and Western Europe, with a sprinkling to
the Middle East. Clients include Citibank,
Assurances Generales de France and
Banques Populaires (BPRNP). In the Middle
East and Lebanon, Banque Nationale de
Paris International (BNPI), Societe Generale
and Credit Bancaire all use Istisharat’s software
packages. But most of their bank clients
are foreign, not Lebanese. “This is a paradox,”
admits Faddoul. “Lebanese prefer to buy
blue-eyed software.”

Competition is particularly stiff from foreign
software manufacturers like Kindle
and Midas-Kapiti International (MKI) who
compete for banking accounts. They hold
the top three notches in sales figures of the International Banking Systems (MKI is
second and third with two banking packages,
Midas and Equation).

The Arab Bank has completely transformed
its operations over the past eight
years to install an English/Arabic version of
MKI’s Equation system. MKI’s software
was chosen because “the innovative use of
MKI IT has revolutionized our banking
business in the areas of cost savings and
improved customer service,” says Tarek
Abdulrezak, deputy manager of Arab
Bank’s IT department.

Kindle and MKI are subsidiaries of
Misys, a UK publicly-owned company
quoted on the London Stock Exchange.
The Misys Banking and Securities
Division (BSD) is the world’s largest independent
provider of software products to the
sector, supplying applications and services
to around 1,600 customers in 100 countries, 360 odd customers with Kindle’s
Bankmaster system, and the remaining
1240 on either of the MKI packages. In
1999, Misys generated revenues of $920
million and an operating profit of $213
million. BSD accounts for 60% of revenue
and the Insurance Division for 9%.

Given Istisharat’s turnover of $6 million,
Faddoul is hardly a big-company guy in
global terms. With his core of just over
100 key accounts around the world,
Faddoul is refining the art of nurturing customers.
Citibank has been a loyal Istisharat
client since 1988, which has accounted for
$2 million in sales in 11 years.

As a result of his own experience in market
research, Faddoul is quick to advise
potential clients to conduct thorough surveys
of corporate IT before any costly purchase.
He has also made local prices on
Istisharat software low compared to
Europe, at averages of $100,000 and
$350,000 for insurance and banking
licenses respectively, compared to
$250,000 and $500,000.

It may seem somewhat unexpected to
learn that Istisharat entered the electronic
arena almost by accident and that, like most
success stories, the company has humble,
back-office roots. Istisharat opened its doors
in 1972, on a radically different footing.
Istisharat, Arabic for consulting, was set up by
four partners, including Faddoul, with a
business plan aimed primarily at market
research and management consultancy. The
subsequent replotting of corporate strategy
came with the start of the war, when demand
for management consultancy and research
dwindled to almost nothing overnight. “War
forced us to transform into a computer services
company,” says Faddoul. By 1988,
Istisharat had graduated into a principal software
developer with a breakthrough on the
lucrative Citibank account.

But as IT matured, businesses were forced
to broaden their plans. Istisharat acquired
the agency for IBM in 1990 and an extra three
letters to its company logo. “Lebanon
Business Machines was our and IBM’s first
choice,” says Faddoul. “But that was already
registered by a company that sells typewriters.
So we became Business Machines of
Lebanon, BML Istisharat, a name we kept
even when we sold our IBM agency.”

It was with the same corporate eye on an
evolving electronic landscape that they
dropped IBM in 1995 in order to focus
solely on software development. “In the
1980s there were only four or five players
in the hardware business, now there are
hundreds and competition is that much
more cutthroat,” says Faddoul. “It became
clear that we were losing time selling computer
boxes when the real action had shifted
to software.”

In retrospect, Faddoul believes the move
out of hardware was a sound decision.
Turnover has grown eight-fold in the last
four years, and profit margins are as much
as ten points higher in the service industry.
Istisharat has 100 employees who are split
into three software departments and working
on four packages: banking (ICBS), insurance
(LIRIS and CIRIS) and Integrated
Manufacturing and Distribution (IMAD).
Their packages handle such functions as
management information systems and, in the case of IMAD, follow-up
on the manufacturing process.

Here’s how it works: Software is created,
developed under Oracle or AS/400 platforms
and installed on UNIX or NT, which
is then assembled into application-style
packages. These tailor-made programs are
then used either within companies or
between them, allowing companies to create
customized relationships with each of
their distributors or dealers and clients, giving
them up-to-date catalogs, order forms,
pricing, marketing materials, billing and
inventory. “We’ve developed our system in
a very parametric way,” says Faddoul
about their IMAD package. “You can use it
for textile or beer or cement.”

And while some 50 companies use the
IMAD system, bringing in a turnover in 1999
of about $600,000, IMAD represents only
10% of Istisharat’s business. The true
money-makers are in banking and insurance,
which, respectively, account for 68% and
22% of sales. Both licensing fees and installation
costs are higher for the financial sector,
with license fees ranging from $400,000 to
$600,000 ($350,000 to $400,000 in
Lebanon) for banks, and $250,000 ($100,000
in Lebanon) for insurance companies.

Typically, a bank implementation of the
software should take between 12 to 18 months, 12 months for an insurance company
and six to nine months for an average-sized
manufacturing or distribution business.
However, time frames can and do vary widely.
Six months represents roughly two
months in man-days, and these are billed at
$350 a day per project leader and $150 to $200
a day for a standard programmer, increasing
the net revenue for a typical project to
$30,000. Faddoul’s methods are sometimes
considered harsh but effective. He is also fair.

As the brainchild of a profit-sharing
scheme, 25% of company profits are redistributed
to members of the software teams.

An unexpected ally in Istisharat’s business
has come in the form of a general merging of
company descriptions and of nations.
Deregulation in the US and Europe has
brought a convergence of banking and insurance,
a move that is being copied in
Lebanon. “URIS is our latest child. In essence, it’s a bank insurance package which
we have already implemented at Fransabank
and Societe Generale.” Faddoul hopes that
URIS will become the next big earner as
more banks go down the insurance route.

Internationally, the European Union’s
(EU’s) move towards a single policy on tax
and other fiscal matters is also making life
easier. “The EU is actually helping our
industry to streamline and standardize our
products,” he says. At $600,000 per license
fee, the insurance package for the US is 2.4
times European fees. This is partly due to the
upgraded version that is being sold in the US
market, and partly to the differences in
legal reporting in each state.

If Istisharat’s contest with the foreign giant
Misys is something of a struggle between
David and Goliath, on the home front, at
least, the odds are stacked in Istisharat’s
favor. The company stands alone as a
Lebanese provider of banking and insurance
solutions in a market that has become saturated
with software developers all focusing on
similar back-office packages. “There are too
many players in a small field,” says Khalil
Taller, head of Logos, which provides general
bookkeeping and payroll packages.
“Recession is hitting hard with cutbacks in the
IT industry.” As much as 65% of Logos’
turnover now comes from export sales to
the Middle East, compared to 25% in 1998.

This is a strategy that’s been adopted by
Software Design, whose flagship Dolphin
business application package is sold in 15
countries in the face of a dwindling local
market. “In Lebanon’s software ecosystem,
there are essentially only seven or eight true
outfits in terms of western-style professionalism
and pursuit of high tech,” says Michel
Nseir, general manager of Software Design.
And in an emerging industry already marked
by fast consolidation, the company with staying
power may be Istisharat. “[Faddoul] has
done a great job in operations,” says Nseir. “I’d
say BML ranks about top on that list.”

Many executives complain that immature
technology and industry fragmentation
are keeping them from installing the latest
technology. That’s why Istisharat may have
an edge. Says Sammy Hashem of Libano-
Suisse, “In emerging software markets, the
people who win are the people who are
broad.” And Istisharat has proved that it is considerably broader than most of the 250 or
so local software developers. As the service
shakeout intensifies, smaller software companies
with tiny revenue streams are
already falling by the wayside. Skygazer
Technologies, which has been operating for
the past six years as IT consultants in both
the private and public sectors, recently disclosed
its decision to move its business
to Canada. “The bottom line is that
there’s no trust in this country,” says Abbas
Dagher, owner of Skygazer. “Poor business
ethics compound a market that is already stifled
by recession and government control.”

But companies like Istisharat should be
able to survive, not least because with a
healthy roll of major international clients,
they have chosen to specialize in a field that
pays as much attention to street credibility
as it does to software expertise.

Istisharat’s work should easily translate
into a dot-com environment. Faddoul doesn’t
believe that the rise in e-commerce can
adversely affect his traditional bricks-and-
mortar clientele. “Even if banking is transformed
into e-banking, the banking function
itself will remain,” he says. “There will
always be a need for banks, and therefore we
will always have a role to play.” Nor does
Faddoul feel the frustrations of being in a
backwater of the global economy, frustrations
that have driven countless other
Lebanese to take their talents and innovations
to Silicon Valley. “In today’s Internet
environment, it really doesn’t matter where
your head office is located. We can troubleshoot
a bug in Indianapolis, say, from the
comfort of our offices in Riad al Solh.”

Faddoul’s challenge now? To keep abreast
of e-banking and e-insurance with particular
regard to moves that would see software
developers operate their own portals on the
net. Oracle’s chairman Larry Ellison recently
funded a new Internet startup, NetLedger,
which aims to convince small companies that
it can do their bookkeeping over the Web. For
$4.95 a month, companies can hire
NetLedger to store and handle all of their
invoices, bills and general ledger records.

And while Istisharat’s eye is on a different
breed of customer, Faddoul still needs to woo
the industry with ideas that will fend off
rivals. If he can do that, then the rising e-tide
will assure smooth sailing for Istisharat.