Dubai: Aiming at expanding its Middle East and African markets, Satyam Computers, one of India's leading IT majors, would turn its Dubai base into a regional operations hub to oversee the company's interests in the two territories.

"We have so far kept a low profile but we are going to aggressively enter the market here, beginning with South Africa," Ram Mynampati, Satyam's global president of the commercial and healthcare business, said.

He said even in the United States where Satyam was on a strong footing, it has never sought to play up its activities. "May be that has got to change."

"We do not believe in the traditional outsourcing approach of having everything done in India, or directly from the client's operations," he said.

"We have developed a concept of anchors, under which our operations in Canada oversee the interests in the US, while the one in China sees to Japan and South Korea."

"It is the same strategy we will bring to Dubai, for the Middle East and African territory," he told the media.

Satyam - which recorded revenues of $ 553 million in its last financial year - was one of the first Indian IT majors to establish a direct presence in this region with an office in the late 1990s.

In another initiative, Satyam will shortly have some form of localised Arabisation support for some of its services, while details such as coding will still be done in India.

"The Middle East continues to be of prime importance in our global operations," said Mynampati.