Technology & IT | Friday 29 January, 2016 6:45 am |

This month, Microsoft named Jawabkom.com as one of the top 100 most visited websites in the Arab world. Jawabkom is the largest questions and answers Arabic website, connecting users to certified experts who can answer urgent and serious questions in dozens of fields, spanning medicine, law, counselling, IT support, and many more.

The world-renowned software giant Microsoft honored Jawabkom on the eve of the young company´s second birthday by writing acase study that chronicled Jawabkom´s many successes. Multiple teams from Microsoft collaborated for several weeks to draft the case study about Jawabkom, and Microsoft's conclusions about Jawabkom were remarkable, acknowledging that the company is "one of the most popular services in the Middle East". This recognition bolsters Jawabkom's brand, placing it in the upper echelons of the top tech brands in the Arab world.

Jawabkom receives tens of thousands of questions daily in Arabic, English and (soon) French through customized, one-on-one interactions with a wide range of Middle East experts, from doctors and lawyers to language teachers, and has become very popular, very quickly. Within its first year, Jawabkom has attracted millions of registered customers and continues to grow at a rapid pace.

Microsoft´s case study of Jawabkom highlights how the website built on its early success by accessing up to $120,000 of free cloud services and software under Microsoft´s  BizSpark program. With this access, Jawabkom expanded into new markets in the Arab world while maintaining its individual focus on the unique characteristics of each country segment. In addition, Jawabkom hosted its open-source technology on Microsoft´s Azure cloud solution, and enhanced the reliability and availability of its platform to meet the rigorous demands of being one of the fastest-growing and most popular websites in the Arab world. Indeed, Co-Founder and CEO of Jawabkom Raed Malhas said, "The BizSpark program and Azure have underpinned our drive into Saudi Arabia and Morocco and our expansion into Algeria, Tunisia, the UAE, Jordan and other countries."

The impact of Microsoft´s support has seen Jawabkom achieve new heights of innovation and operational excellence that positions it strongly for the future. Hana Habayeb, the Regional Developer Experience Lead at Microsoft for the East Mediterranean, North Africaand Pakistan, agrees, saying, "Jawabkom is an ambitious company with an impressive track record that has been enhanced by its participation in Microsoft´s BizSpark program and use of Azure. The achievements resulting from Microsoft and Jawabkom´s collaboration make it a key example that many tech companies should follow in the future."

Co-founders of Jawabkom Raed Malhas and Deniz Erkan are Microsoft veterans with over seven years of tenure at Microsoft. Malhas and Erkan met while working as software developers at Microsoft at its Redmond headquarters, and left the company together to embark on their entrepreneurship journey. Malhas says, "To us, the close collaboration we have had with Microsoft has been incredible. It's as if we're home again, still getting support from the mother ship, Microsoft, where our careers were born. We both helped build some instrumental technologies while at Microsoft, and getting its support now has been extremely refreshing."

The Jawabkom case study may be viewed or downloaded as a PDF on Microsoft's website, here.