Etisalat highlights advantages of managed services in helping enterprises cut costs and be more competitive

During his presentation Abdulla Hashim, Vice President, Marketing, Enterprise Solutions, Etisalat spoke of the trends and the growing importance of outsourcing.

He also spoke about the emergence of Managed Services as a flexible form of outsourcing to help companies focus on their core business needs and reduce total cost of IT ownership.

Commenting on industry trends, Mr.Hashim talked about the significant growth in IT outsourcing over recent years.

This has tripled from $27.58m in revenues and 8% of the UAE IT services market in 2004 to $81.27m in revenues and 16% of the UAE IT services market in 2006 according to a study by the analyst firm IDC (International Data Corporation).

The increased adoption of outsourcing services points to more strategic IT decision making within the region and is a clear sign of a maturing IT services sector.

Delving deeper into the challenges faced by CIOs, Abdulla Hashim commented on the complexities CIOs face with grappling with their core IT infrastructure in addition to non core resources like devices, networks, mobility, disaster recovery and hardware support issues. He spoke about Etisalat's capabilities to help CIOs through an end-to-end Managed Telecom & ICT solutions approach so that they remain free to focus on only their core IT infrastructure.

According to Abdulla Hashim, " We see ourselves bringing great value to CIOs with our strong delivery capacity, a modern and reliable infrastructure, ownership of a superior network and processes to give them confidence in handing over their non core IT infrastructure to Etisalat through a Managed Services approach. I believe the timing is also right for a broader industry acceptance of this model of service delivery given the shortage of IT skills in the region and the obvious benefits in productivity and efficiency."

In terms of Managed Services, Etisalat has a wide variety of solutions ranging from Managed WAN Services, Managed Security services, Hosting Infrastructure, Managed Storage, Business Continuity /Disaster Recovery services and Managed Infrastructure services.