Present-day economics. Analytics.

	IPOs in the GCC: Fundamentals support pipelines  GCC markets celebrated the Dubai government's initiative to support Dubai World and its subsidiary Nakheel. But will the momentum be enough to raise sustainable trust in the shattered stock markets? With dozens of IPOs in the pipeline in the GCC, a healthy portion of optimism could be justified.
	Middle East to lead global IT spend growth  After the severe IT budget cuts of 2009, this year is expected to see some stability and modest increases in global budget spending levels for the sector. Speaking at its CIO Summit in Dubai, analyst group IDC said that while it expects overall growth to be only 3.2% worldwide, it expects the Middle East to be one of the biggest growth areas in terms of IT spend, at about 12%-13%.
	How business intelligence can improve your bottom line  The acid-test for any technology or software solution is not how it's doing when times are good but how it's doing when times are bad. Right now, economically, times couldn't be much worse, but when it comes to IT spending there are few technologies holding their own like business intelligence (BI) software. BI is an umbrella term for a variety of software solutions that are designed to help businesses gather, analyse and use data to make better business decisions.