Pan Emirates to upgrade IT infratsructure

To keep pace with its ambitious expansion plans, Pan Emirates has commissioned EMW, The Smart Convergence Experts and leading supplier of services and products in the telecommunication, ICT, Engineering and Project Management sector, to upgrade its IP Telephony systems at the head office in Sharjah, UAE to one of the latest Avaya platforms. This will greatly increase system availability and enhance communication between the various branches and head office. The contract also includes installation of smart mobile technology at two new branches to support the warehouse management system and product tracking.

Eyas Khashan, Director-Information Technology Resources, Pan Emirates comments, “Pan Emirates has been experiencing rapid growth and expansion within the Gulf region. Apart from the current 11 branches in the UAE, Oman and Qatar, it is set to launch a number of outlets in the near future covering all the other Gulf States. We have a centralized IT system where all the branches are connected remotely to the head office. To support our ambitious expansion strategy and improve performance, we needed to update our server platforms at the head office to a bigger, flexible and more capable solution from Avaya”.

The current Avaya S8300 IP Telephony system in its head office in Sharjah, UAE will be upgraded to the robust and powerful Avaya S8730 with intuitive multimedia messaging and call centre. The S8370 has a high reliability and redundancy ratio of 99.99%. This will increase the overall PABX system availability and minimize the risk of one component causing a failure and lost business opportunity. The fundamental strength of the Avaya S8730 Server architecture is that the entire server complex is duplicated. By creating duplicated servers with one active and one acting as a hot standby, it ensures that there is no single point of failure (SPF).

The solution will be fully integrated with the existing one and the old system license and database will be transferred to the new system. To optimize utilization of resources, the existing servers will be migrated to two new major sites at Al Barsha and Techno Park. These two sites will also be outfitted with smart, secure and seamless mobile technology from Trapeze Networks.

The Pan Emirates Al Barsha showroom next to Mall of the Emirates is spread across five floors, each floor measuring 30,000 sq. mts. The Techno Park site located in Jebel Ali will be a huge focal distribution centre for the region. Both will be operational in June 2009. EMW will install Trapeze Networks’ centralized management wireless systems comprising of the ‘MX-200R Mobility Exchange®’ Intelligent WLAN Controller and Smart Mobile Access Point MP-422 A, that will support more than 150 access points in each site. Mr. Khashan explains that besides warehouse management system support and product tracking, the Trapeze wireless solution will be used for ‘voice over wireless’ which makes it much easier to connect employees everywhere and at any time through wireless phones. The next phase of the project will involve installation of the Trapeze wireless system across all other sites including ones that have other wireless systems.

Serjios EL-Hage, CEO at EMW Middle East, says, “We are happy to have been chosen by Pan Emirates as the incumbent implementation partner for this project. Almost all our high profile customers’ wins comprise of very complex and highly integrated solutions and Pan Emirates trusted us back in 2005 till today”.

Khashan had first worked with EMW during Pan Emirates’ VOIP deployment in 2005, when EMW, Avaya Gold Partner and the only Service Delivery Partner for the UAE recommended Avaya for the project. Subsequently, EMW implemented Juniper WAN Acceleration and LAN Solution at Pan Emirates to support their IP Telephony. “I was very happy with the EMW support engineer’s knowledge and skills. The EMW sales team is very knowledgeable about the latest technology which helps us take the right decision,” says Khashan.

The implementation of the wireless and Voice over IP project is expected to be completed by mid May 2009.