Financial solutions and outsourcing firm Agile Financial Technologies has officially launched at GITEX Technology Week.

The start-up company, which has a line of end-to-end solutions targeting enterprises from the asset management and financial services, to banking and the insurance industries, claims the time is perfect to announce its arrival on the Middle East's business IT market thanks to a need for a local presence and greater level of post-sales support for the end user.

"There is a dearth of vendors providing solutions to the insurance sector and the investment management space here and this is a market place where we need to demonstrate a local presence and a local support organisation, which we have been mindful of for the last three months when  establishing our offices and our infrastructure," says Kalpesh Desai, chief executive officer at Agile.

Agile has taken up residence inside the Business Central Towers in Dubai Internet City and has also set up an additional facility in Dubai Outsource Zone, near Dragon Mart, which it says will allow it to provide back office services to its customers.

Desai reveals that Agile is the result of the convergence of companies that specialised in offering software solutions. "We are an amalgamation of around four Indian software companies, so we are an equity backed organisation and we have put together our portfolio suite from that," continues Desai.

The firm hopes that over the course of GITEX it will be able to elicit interest from potential channel partners and develop a bulging list of end-user contacts.

"We are also in conversation with partners in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and we are also expecting to talk to delegations at GITEX from East and West Africa," says  Desai.

He claims Agile's blend of solutions provision and outsourcing will suit businesses hit by the credit crunch. "There is a liquidity issue in the market and organisations normally looking at IT spend on much larger systems will look at reducing the spend, but at the same time, non-core functions will be outsourced and this is where we fit the bill," asserts desai.