Techie Manager

Oman’s IT wunderkind Tariq Hilal Al-Barwani believes his best is yet to come, reports Sunil Kumar Singh

At 21, he did his Bachelors with Honours in Computer Science from Acadia University, Canada (ranking among the top 5) and Master of Information Technology from Swinburne, Australia (finishing the two-year course programme in just 11 months with a distinction grade). Recently, he has been conferred the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award by Microsoft and around mid-March, he is flying off to Microsoft’s headquarters at Redmond, Washington to receive the award from – hold your breath – Bill Gates. He also has an exemplary dexterity in artificial intelligence, software development, mobile devices computing, relational database management system, networking and data communication, advanced web and XML technologies, electronic commerce, Microsoft.net framework, and internet security.

Tariq Hilal Al-Barwani, 27, has for the last two years been working with Nawras as online manager. But he likes to be known more than just a technical guru. And why not? His strength does not lie in computing only. He has done a number of business and management courses, such as public speaking, business concepts, professional marketing and selling skills, project management, information system management, enterprise resource planning, and IT effectiveness. “I did these courses because I don’t want to be perceived just as a techie. I like to see myself more as a techno-commercial person, who is able to handle both the commercial as well as technical side. So I’ve also gone ahead with acquiring managerial skills,” he reasons.

Childhood Dreams
Information technology has interested Tariq ever since his childhood. At five, when toddlers of his age played with toys, Tariq was learning the nuances of the computer – a ZX Spectrum 128 computer – a gift from his parents. “My father, who is my role model and friend, realised that I had passion, special skills and interest in computers; he would return home from work and discuss real-time projects with me to which I would offer solutions and suggestions. Thereafter, he hired a private tutor to further enhance my IT skills. He also sent me to institutes in order to learn courses. He had the foresight to see the future implications of a particular technology and its impact on my personal development relating to IT,” says Tariq.

And after that, there was no looking back. At 13, he joined the local science club at Al Qurm, and was selected by its management to represent Oman in the Arab Gulf Countries Council IT workshop in Bahrain. He was the youngest one to attend the workshop and, of course, the only one from Oman. Later, he enrolled in specialised institutes and completed various computer courses such as Access, Dbase, FoxBase, Oracle, Office, Windows NT, UNIX, Linux, C/C++, Pascal, Delphi, Visual Basic, among others.

Extraordinary Feats
Tariq’s CV is an eye-opener. In 1998, at 18, he got his first career breakthrough when he was offered a job at United Media Services (UMS), Muscat, where he developed computer programmes as well as websites of various companies from automobiles, banks, health, insurance, tourism, telecom, entertainment and educational sectors. Here, he led the team to develop Oman’s first general (horizontal) portal, www.omanaccess.com. Tariq’s successful stint with UMS was adequate to arm him with the requisite ammo to actualise his potential full throttle.

Two years later, he developed the first IT portal in Oman and named it after himself, www.tariq.net (now his personal site). The portal saw various corporate bigwigs like BankMuscat, Gulf Business Machine (GBM / IBM), Commercial Bank of Oman, Khimji Ramdas, Genetco, Bahwan’s CyberTek, among others, coming forward as sponsors.

Through his portal, Tariq developed a number of softwares that could be downloaded by anyone for free. These included programmes that got widely acclaimed like virus scanners and cleaners (e.g. Fix 2001, I Love you virus Bug). He also has the credit of developing the popular GTO-2 Omantel programme that simplified the process for anyone connecting to the net. This was approved and released by Omantel. Little wonder, the portal soon became a huge success, both nationally as well as globally. So much so, his portal was purchased by a prominent business house, Oman Holdings International (OHI) at a whopping price and renamed as ohitariq.net and later ohitech.com, a la Hotmail-Microsoft deal. Moreover, OHI also hired him as its internet services manager on a four-digit salary.
 
While in OHI, Tariq joined the Bachelors programme from Acadia University, Canada. For any lesser mortal, it would have been too difficult to leave a lucrative job and join an undergraduate course. But Tariq was different. As he says, “Though my salary and position at OHI was hefty, I realised that I needed to accept the challenge and attain higher academic degree in order to further sharpen my knowledge, skills and climb the organisational ladder. As a result, I resigned from OHI (after two good years) in July 2001 in order to pursue further education.”

Wearing Many Hats
Ask him how does he balance his passion for IT and personal life, and he quips, “I keep on reinventing myself. In morning, I work in Nawras. In the evening, I change my hat and do consulting, teaching, TV and radio programmes, writing articles on IT, apart from my own projects. It’s all about time management.”

Today, he has many a big project up his sleeves. For instance, his goal is to write a motivational book to encourage youngsters to follow his footsteps. He also wants to do a PhD from the US, fly back and set up his own IT consultancy in Oman. Though he feels content to have achieved his childhood dream to put Oman on to the world’s IT map, nevertheless, he has no qualms in accepting that he still has miles to go. “I don’t want people to see IT as a technical thing but more as a part of their life. IT should be more popular and I always tell people not to get afraid of IT,” he says unassumingly, adding, “I would like to promote information literacy. I want people to look for information, use the information and disseminate it for their benefit. Information is power.”

He professes, “Success can be achieved by everyone, provided one is a good listener, hard-working, ambitious, has a good attitude, and a plan with goal set in mind. Believe me; you can do better with the facilities and opportunities that are available today.”  

Way To Hall of Fame

■ His ‘happy99 virus cleaner’ programme was selected among the best and was featured in hotfiles.com — one of the popular international files download companies. ■ Created a programme for Omantel. The programme configured the ISP internet subscriber’s DNS, POP3 and SMTP protocols settings automatically. ■ At the age of 20, he created Oman’s first IT portal under his name www.tariq.net. It was the first single window or portal on everything on IT in Oman. ■ While he was in OHI, the ohitariq.net, created by him, was nominated as the best Dot-Com Idea in 2000. The IT portal was selected as the best portal in the country, and Omanaccess.com was selected second best. ■ Disseminated IT information by writing articles in Oman’s local English and Arabic newspapers since February 1999. ■ Featured by a number of national and international media publications. ■ Conducting seminars and lectures on IT matters at various institutions. ■ Playing host to live TV and radio programmes on IT. ■ Nawras, the second telecom operator, was awarded the best Website of the Year locally (by Oman Web Awards) and best ICT website regionally (Pan Arab Web Award held in Jordan last year) under his management. This year too, under his management, Nawras won the overall best website of the year award. Way To Hall of Fame