British University in Dubai builds future success on Microsoft

The university is deploying a wide range of Microsoft solutions that will provide students and staff on the Dubai campus with the IT infrastructure to support their studies.

The new university is offering Masters programmes in several different disciplines, including Information Technology, education and Project Management, in collaboration with leading UK universities. The agreement with Microsoft will allow the university to deploy a number of different solutions to meet the requirements of the various programmes, as well as the network infrastructure and services to manage the university.

"The British University in Dubai is a high quality research-led university; established to make a distinctive contribution to the higher educational system in the United Arab Emirates. To meet this objective, and as a new institution, one of the most important requirements we have of our IT infrastructure is that it is reliable and easily managed. Microsoft solutions offered us that reliability, and the flexibility to deploy solutions as we require them," said David Lock, Registrar and Acting Chief Executive of the British University in Dubai.

The University has already deployed its local network, which based on Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, plus Exchange 2003 and Office 2003 for communications and desktop productivity respectively. A university management system, which has been developed in-house on Microsoft .NET and SQL Server 2000, runs key functions such as finance, HR and university registrations. The next step for the university is the deployment of Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server, which will be deployed to create an online portal for staff and students.

"For any new organization, one of the most important factors for success is setting up a reliable, flexible ICT infrastructure straight away. The British University in Dubai has built their infrastructure using proven Microsoft technology, to create a network that they know they can rely upon, allowing the teaching and administration staff to get on with their tasks, and giving the IT staff an easily managed, adaptable and expandable base from which to deploy new services as they need them. We are very pleased that the British University has chosen to work with Microsoft at this important stage of its mission," said Abdullatif Al Mulla, General Manager, Microsoft South Gulf.