Page 34 - SAMENA Trends - March-April 2022

REGIONAL & MEMBERS UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS

Collaboration structured around impactful pillars
The agreement, which is e&’s first strategic partnership alliance
after its repositioning, will focus on e& harnessing the versatility
of the Microsoft Cloud and partner ecosystem to create new
solutions, accelerate value creation for businesses of all sizes,
as well as engage customers and empower e&’s employees. The
collaboration between the organizations will be structured around
three strategic pillars:
• Focus on business-to-business engagement across large
enterprises, governments, small and medium-sized businesses,
by helping them in their digital transformation journey.
• Re-invention of the consumer experience, with a focus on
empowering consumers, broadening, and enriching the e&
services portfolio.
• Setting the foundations to power e&’s transformation journey
by modernizing networks and platforms, building ecosystems
and transforming the e& culture to attract top talent.
“The United Arab Emirates has fully embraced digitization with
an impressive speed and vision,” said Judson Althoff, Executive
Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, Microsoft. “Our
strategic partnership with e& emphasizes the role that Microsoft’s pillar of e& in the UAE collaborated with Microsoft to enable
comprehensive and trusted cloud plays in our customers’ digital Microsoft Teams availability across the UAE. Soon after, e&
transformation, bringing together the unique capability of launched its first customer service powered by Microsoft Azure,
networks, hyperscale infrastructure and partner solutions to drive enabling SMBs to grow and scale their operations. Last year, it
economic growth, sustainability, and societal wellbeing. e& has partnered with Microsoft for 5G and Edge to lay the foundations
made a commitment to continuously innovate, and we are proud for next-generation use cases. In 2021, e& enterprise was named
of the role Microsoft is playing as part of this journey.” Microsoft Country Partner of the Year for the UAE in recognition
Partnership built on strong foundation of joint successes for providing outstanding solutions and services to customers in
e& and Microsoft have been strategic partners for many years, strategic industries such as government, healthcare, and financial
playing a key role in the UAE’s transformation into one of the services. e& enterprise has also been instrumental in accelerating
world’s smartest nations. In 2019, Microsoft launched its customer journeys on remote working during the COVID-19
much-anticipated UAE data centers in collaboration with e&. At pandemic by offering Teams Direct Routing as a service, to help
the height of the pandemic in 2020, Etisalat UAE, the telecoms save costs and enable business continuity for multinationals.

Mobily Joins Group to Build 19,200 Km Undersea

Cable System

Etihad Etisalat Company (Mobily) has
become part of the Southeast Asia -
Middle East - Western Europe 6 (SEA-
ME-WE 6) consortium to build a 19,200
km-long undersea cable system linking
Saudi Arabia with 10 other countries.
This new system will enhance Mobily’s
global network connectivity and offer one
of the lowest latencies available between
Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and
Western Europe, transferring more than
100 terabits per second. Furthermore, it
will create an additional layer of network
diversity and resiliency for the heavily
loaded traffic from the Middle East toward
Europe and Asia. This announcement
comes in line with Mobily's effort to enable

34 MARCH-APRIL 2022