Nokia and du reinforce commitment to growing business mobility in the region

This commitment comes at a time when more and more businesses in the region are realizing the strategic role that services like Nokia's Intellisync have to play, in endowing businesses with the tools to equip their mobile workforces, and allowing time spent outside of the office to be used more efficiently.

The Nokia Intellisync service, which will be available from du, will allow customers to receive mobile email immediately via the push email service, while further applications for businesses include mobile access to information from business applications such as customer relationship management, supply chain management and other database-driven industry solutions.

During its joint session with du at the Middle East CIO - IDC summit, Nokia highlighted findings from a global research it commissioned with IDC, which found that mobile workers using devices enabled with voice data applications and access to critical data allowed customer-focused time to increase from 50% to 80%.

Additionally, the paper found that more than 48% of workers in Western Europe spend part of their day as mobile workers, a trend clearly on the rise in the Middle East too.

"The current business ecosystem has reached an important level of maturity, which must be capitalized on quickly if organizations in the region want to gain or retain a competitive advantage. du's forthcoming adoption of the Intellisync service will go a long way in providing the benefits of enterprise mobility to businesses throughout the Middle East, encouraging greater productivity inside the office and the mobile workplace,"

Nokia's Regional Manager for Business Mobility, MENA and SSA, Joe Devassy, says.

David Holliday, Executive Vice President Commercial, du, explained; "du is committed to introducing intelligent communications to the UAE market. This partnership with Nokia underscores our mission to not only enhance the overall mobile experience, but to also deliver full-fledged quad play services; voice, data, video and mobility over fixed and mobile networks."

"The recent collaboration with Nokia to adopt the Intellisync Suite and push email service is clear recognition from du for the increasing need for sophisticated business solutions in the UAE , and the growing need for swift, instant and reliable email access while on the move," added Holliday.

Other recent research commissioned by Nokia and conducted by Dun and Bradstreet in the Middle East also found that mobile device management is one of the top priorities for today's IT departments in the region.

Of the 150 companies that were researched in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and South Africa, 46% had a device management system in place and 54% of companies said they were planning to implement one in the near future.

Nearly two thirds of the surveyed CIOs stated that mobile device management was 'very important' for their business, while in the UAE, figures were more telling; with 77% of the UAE's companies agreeing that mobile device management was one of the biggest priorities for their organizations.

The research additionally highlighted that an increase in business mobility corresponds to a direct increase in the need for device security, due to the increasingly sophisticated nature of devices that store a greater amount of information, including sensitive business data. 80% of businesses in the UAE cited that lost devices were a major concern to their organizations.