Roshan upgrades EMC information infrastructure to enhance services and maintain lead position in Afghan telecoms market

The new EMC information management solutions will provide Roshan with greater control over its business data, increasing the operator's operational efficiency and cost effectiveness of storage, helping it to introduce new subscriber services more quickly and minimizing business disruption.

The telecoms market in Afghanistan has grown rapidly in recent years, and the new infrastructure will enable Roshan to manage its million-plus customers, comply with new regulatory requirements and position itself for competition in the telecoms market. There are scheduled to be five telecoms operators in Afghanistan by end of 2007, and while Roshan has built its subscriber base to over one million customers in two and a half years, the company is keen to differentiate itself from competitors, with new services and enhanced customer satisfaction.

Afghan telecoms regulators have introduced new rules for telecoms companies that mean they are now required to keep customer data in online form for 36 months, so Roshan is looking to gain maximum return on investment from its data management infrastructure. Roshan is also taking a pro-active approach to putting in world-class disaster recovery and business continuity policies, to prepare the company for future regulatory requirements.

"Roshan is dedicated to providing the highest level of service to our customers, and to ensuring that we not only meet telecoms regulations, but that we exceed them. This major technology upgrade gives us the control and management of our data that we need to serve our customers properly, to plan and deploy new services, and to manage our information infrastructure for maximum efficiency," said Karim Khoja, Roshan Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

The upgrade project will put in place two EMC Symmetrix™ DMX-3 Series high performance storage platforms to handle data storage and disaster recovery. EMC Centera™ solutions will manage policies and processes for archiving of data, including email archives. Roshan will also deploy EMC DiskXtender® and EMC EmailXtender® technologies for archiving. Roshan plans to move some of its previous information management infrastructure to a testing environment, to increase return on investment from the solutions.

"EMC has a long relationship with Roshan, and we are very pleased to be working with them again to upgrade their information infrastructure. Most of the leading telecoms companies worldwide choose EMC solutions to manage their data, and with our expertise in this segment, we are confident that the storage solutions which we are putting in place for Roshan will help them to build on their success so far to become a world-class telecoms company,"

said Mohammed Amin, General Manager, Middle East and North Africa, EMC.