The region's IT industry is expected to touch $80bn by the end of 2012 providing a platform to start-up companies and encouraging venture capital, according to Dubai Internet City Executive Director Malek Al Malek. A recent white paper on the Middle East commissioned by DIC showed that Middle East countries were on target to spend $13bn on IT-related products, services, and infrastructure in 2008. This would provide a proliferation of opportunities for entrepreneurs who are in the forefront of the diversification of the region's economies away from oil, he said.