Information Technology Geographies

When looking at Saudi Arabia we notice that information technology is concentrated in three major areas of the country. These three areas happen to be also the major cities; these cities are Riyadh the capital, Jeddah on the West Coast and Dammam on the East Coast.

Riyadh by is by far most the largest and most important IT incubator in the country, this manly because it is the capital and most of the government agencies that sponsor R&D are located there. Riyadh is also regarded as the business center of the country; therefore, many of the businesses locate there. Another significance of this city is Economic Balance Program; this program is a host for several important joint ventures. Most of these joint ventures are with large global firms some of which are in the IT field. Dammam comes in second, at a time it was considered the major IT center in the country, mainly because of the presence of KFUPM and Aramco. Both of these organizations are considered as pioneers in the use of IT in Saudi Arabia, and fostered most of the early R&D efforts in the country. Jeddah comes in third, it has the least IT concentration among the three. As it was mentioned earlier the Kingdom's FLAG access point is through Jeddah, in addition many of the earth stations are located in there. With these two major access points Jeddah can be identified as the communication hub of the country, which in turn led to some concentration of IT organization in the area.