Dubai Municipality head office goes wireless on Cisco's Integrated Wireless Network suite

The decision to adopt Cisco technologies was reached during high level meetings between Municipal authorities and Cisco personnel that were held during the recently concluded Gitex Dubai 2005.

Earlier, a group of DM Municipality technicians had recommended the use of Cisco Wireless solutions after auditing several other vendors as well as the networking needs of the authority. Cisco's Integrated Wireless Network portfolio will now enable DM to build a scalable enterprise wireless network that cost-effectively addresses WLAN security, deployment, management, and control whilst reducing the total cost of ownership.

Commenting on the choice of Cisco Integrated Wireless Network suite, Abdul Hakim Malik, Director of IT Department, Dubai Municipality, said, 'Dubai Municipality is a dynamic organisation with a tremendous requirement for streamlined IT and network infrastructure solutions. Cisco's Integrated Wireless Network portfolio met the criterion that was being sought by Dubai Municipality for the wireless network at our head office. Moreover scalability, security, manageability and control that Cisco solutions provided were unmatched.'

Samer Al Kharrat, General Manager - Gulf Region and Pakistan Cisco Systems said, 'We welcome the decision by Dubai Municipality to implement Cisco's Integrated Wireless Network, one of the most innovative and comprehensive suite of WLAN solutions in the industry. Our solution will address almost all the network deployment requirement scenarios of Dubai Municipality, be it software enhancements, scalability features, security capabilities, hardware advances, or wired and wireless integration enhancements. Our relationship with Dubai Municipality forms the core of Cisco's public sector strategy in the Gulf Region, where we proactively assist governmental organisations to achieve their stated goals through a paradigm shift in the way they interact and respond by investing in technology and improving effectiveness.'

The Cisco Integrated Wireless Network is an evolution of the Cisco Structured Wireless-Aware Network (SWAN) strategy. The solution consists of two secure, enterprise-class WLAN solutions - the Cisco Distributed WLAN Solution and the Cisco Centralized WLAN Solution. The solutions are based on the recently acquired Airespace product portfolio, which includes the Cisco Aironet 1000 Series Lightweight Access Points, the Cisco 2000 Series, 4100 Series, and 4400 Series Wireless LAN Controllers, the Cisco Wireless Control System (WCS) and the Cisco Wireless Location Appliance.

Cisco Systems is already an approved vendor for routing technology for Dubai Municipality. Both the organisations have had a close working relationship of over a decade in delivering high end networking architecture for the authority.