• By Joel Young

• The Entrepreneurial Spirit, Saskatoon Sun

• Sunday, June 16, 2002

Nezar Freeny is president of Amanah Tech Inc., a relatively new start-up company in Saskatoon that, in the Spring of 2001, began providing web design, web hosting, and network administration solutions to three customer groupings.

It serves local businesses that are typically small start-ups who never experienced the power and effectiveness of the Internet world, Middle-Eastern-owned businesses in North America, including non profit organizations, educational institutes and small businesses in general – Amanah offers these companies the benefit of conducting business activities in their native language – and, lastly, but importantly to Amanah, the Arabian Gulf market. This market region has tremendously large group companies in the multi-billion dollar oil-rich category under their umbrella such as retail, oil education, construction, etc.

Interestingly, Freeny’s journey commenced in his birthplace, the Sudan, Africa and his native tongue is Arabic. Traveling with a spirit of adventure and an eagerness to learn, he lived in the U.K., New York and Toronto, where he attended high school, arriving in Saskatoon to take his bachelor of computer science degree at the U of S. After graduation, Freeny worked for a few years honing his computer skills in network administration and Oracle development. He recognized that a gap in the marketplace existed for a web provider with both English and Arabic skills in Canada who could also extend offers for considerable cost advantages for clients.

And so, Amanah Tech was born with the reality of considerable research and concentration on the large market potential in North America and the Middle East for the identified services that Amanah could provide.

Amanah Tech currently has three full-time personnel: Janea Bellay, marketing director and a web design member as well as Freeny.

Locally, Amanah has entered the market with direct mail campaigns, advertising and personal referrals. Its present position internationally has seen company representative travel to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to sign a major contract with one of the three largest Group Companies in Dubai to transfer all web hosting to the Amanah Tech organization. This contract, a landmark for a Saskatchewan company in this industry, guarantees a long-term relationship for the future. Amanah also met with 40 other companies in Dubai to commence a powerful foray in the Arabian Gulf market region.

Market research, project development and alliance building are cornerstones of the development of Amanah Tech with an outlook to provide enhanced sophisticated hosting solutions and IT applications to clients in the Arabian Gulf and to ensure technology needs are met in such areas as Voice over IP and Dynamic Databases which moves into leading edge information technology fields.

Amanah Tech has also commenced investigation expanding its range of client services in both technology and non-technology areas for the international world, particularly in the realm of relevant education for the Middle Eastern marketplace and its people.

Young can be reached at eagleyoung@shaw.ca