Bentley Systems, a leading provider of software for the entire lifecycle of infrastructure, has registered “tremendous growth” in the Middle East with revenues rising in excess of 30 per cent in 2005 over 2004, its chief operating officer says.

Malcolm Walter also said the company had doubled its personnel in the region during the past three years and would probably double the figure again over the next three years.
“Within the region, Saudi Arabia has been very strong in plant business because of the oil and gas sector. Our geospatial business is also doing well, for example mapping.”
Walter said the UAE building market, particularly in Dubai, was strong. Road infrastructure was being upgraded, so Bentley was seeing very strong demand.
“We have been in this region for the past 10 years and would like to grow faster than we have so far.
“There are three areas in the world where we are currently focusing, namely the Middle East, China and India. As a technology company the Middle East is a good part of the world to be in.”
He said some countries in the region were very sophisticated and there was a willingness to adopt technology and use it to their advantage.
 “Every 18-24 months we upgrade our products or offer new ones. We have also been an active acquirer of other companies. In the last five years we have acquired over 30.
“We acquire products and bring them into our portfolio, integrating them on our MicroStation and ProjectWise platform as well as across each other. When we do that we refer to it as an integration tax.
“ If we pay the integration tax our users do not have to pay it. It is very difficult to integrate products but it benefits our users. If they have to buy products from different vendors it would be very expensive for them. So when we offer our industrial portfolios we do the integration, we pay the integration tax and this is another way our product portfolio keeps growing.”
The company’s revenue reached $337 million compared with $300 million in 2004 and as much as 47 per cent of that came from North America.
Bentley has been in business for over two decades. It serves the civil, building, plant and geospatial markets and its solutions are used to design, engineer, build and operate infrastructure such as roadways, bridges, airports, skyscrapers, industrial, power plants and utility networks.
The company is well known for its MicroStation products and has been developing them since 1984. “MicroStation is to Bentley what Windows is to Microsoft,” said Walter.
Bentley’s 2005 revenues were evenly distributed among the four Bentley business segments under which the company has organised its business, namely Bentley Geospacial, Bentley Building, Bentley Plant and Bentley Civil.