Performing Network Seminar organised by Equant and Eastern Networks highlights this trend

November 24, 2003

According to a worldwide survey by the Gartner group, only 28 percent of all projects are successful. While reasons for failure range from lack of planning to insufficient resources, experts agree that companies often do not realise the importance of deploying and managing the right network infrastructure and solutions. However the situation is slowly changing as an increasing number of businesses in the Middle East are outsourcing IT management services. This was highlighted at the "Performing Network Seminar" held recently at the Fairmont Hotel by Equant, a Global network and integration services provider and its Middle East partner, Eastern Networks.

The half-day seminar provided an insight into the range of Equant's world class network integration services available to businesses in the Middle East through Eastern Networks. The presentation featured IT and telecommunications experts from the UK and Saudi Arabia who gave presentations and demonstrations on subjects ranging from IP telephony to voice, video and data convergence.

According to Darren Stratton, Eastern Networks Account Manager MEA, "While networks can deliver enormous value, due to their complex nature, they can cause enormous headaches too. As regional partners to Equant, the world's leading network and integration services provider, we have seen a sharp increase in demand for outsourcing Network Integration Services as businesses are realizing that complex projects need advanced technical expertise. Businesses purchase their equipment and software solutions from a dozen different sources, making managing them all a difficult and expensive task. By outsourcing network integration management to a known expert in the field like Equant with over 50 years of experience gained by working with two thirds of the Global 100 companies, companies can divert their time and effort to other strategic matters.

"With a team of over 3000 experts constantly on call to recognize signs of trouble and identify equipment issues before they have an impact. Problems are identified, analysed and solved before a breakdown occurs. In other words, the network becomes a strategic investment instead of an expenditure as it is easier and more cost-effective to budget a monthly network maintenance fee, instead of irregular, unplanned expenses. By controlling these large costs, it becomes much simpler to measure a network's ROI, and thus cost-effectiveness", he added.

Eastern Networks through its partnership with Equant, works actively with businesses across the Middle East to deploy Integration Services, to help businesses control costs and maximize return on investment. Integration teams procure, stage, install and test a company's newly purchased equipment, and also manages shipping, customs, and tax issues for all international deployment projects. The company also offers professional services like consulting, project management, network design and analysis for businesses looking at deploying new equipment and network infrastructure.

Pierre Dagher, Equant Middle East Professional Services, emphasised the importance of outsourcing during the presentation: "With Equant's Enterprise Application Management service, companies finally have a complete picture of all the applications running on their network and are able to control the bandwidth used by those applications. Now Network Managers can have the empirical data they need to better manage WAN costs and capacity planning, improve application performance quality, and configure applications classes and control policies.

-Ends-

Editor's Note:
Eastern Networks has been a pioneer in introducing computing and communication technologies throughout the Middle East since 1984. From PC to WAP based solutions, the company has actively and consistently continued to build on its reputation as a major reliable technical partner, with a wide range of international partnerships. In addition to being banking application developers, Eastern Networks represents a wide range of international partnerships, and is the SWIFT business partner of choice for the Middle East markets. Eastern Networks is also a Microsoft Certified Partner and has signed agreements with SIDE International, Trace Financial and Equant. They are a regional provider of Arabic-centric, web-enabled Delivery Solutions packages that include raseed-e Phone Banking, daleel-e Call Centre and bitaqat-e secure card-issuing. Eastern Networks' regional operations are managed through offices in Amman, Jordan, Dubai Internet City, UAE, Cairo, Egypt and Istanbul, Turkey.

For further information, please contact:
Darren Stratton
Account Manager
Eastern Networks
Tel. +971 4 391 2882
Fax +971 4 391 8652
Email: darren@eastnets.com
Web: www.eastnets.com

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