A dedicated team of eight staffers has been set up to man Microsoft's Arabic software testing facilities at its new base in Dubai Internet City (DIC).

New personnel will be added over a period, confirmed the U.S. company's top regional official.

Said Bahram Mohazzebi, general manager for the Gulf and Eastern Mediterranean territory: "We now have a more efficient infrastructure and will continue to localise and Arabise our products in order to better serve our Arabic speaking customers.

"The simultaneous launch of Arabic and English versions of Windows XP later this month is an indication of our commitment to this region, and we will continue to deliver on this as we move forward."

Earlier, the entire Arabisation development process was overseen out of the company's bases in Redmond, U.S., and Ireland.

"The Middle East is still a fast-growing market with a number of significant government initiatives. Further, large corporations in the region understand the need to develop a strong IT infrastructure that supports business growth and, therefore, we continue to see huge potential in this region."

The shift to DIC, where the company has an entire block dedicated to it, follows the opening of an office in Oman late last month.

Microsoft has separate offices managing its interests in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. These markets, plus Gem, come under the Middle East and North Africa division based in Istanbul. The Mena territory contributes around $300 million to the company's overall revenues.

Added Mohazzebi, "All our planned launches are on schedule. Windows XP will be launched on target, in both English and Arabic, and is by far the best operating system we have brought to the market.

"We are also very excited about the rest of the year during which we will launch more of our .Net servers, including the Visual Studio.Net as well as our .Net framework for developing enterprise applications."