Al-Futtaim Technologies, one of the region’s leading systems integrators and a member of Al-Futtaim, announced it has won a major contract to implement Alcatel-Lucent IP Telephony and Unified Communication solution for Etisalat, the UAE’s leading telecommunications service provider.

Etisalat needed a state-of-the-art solution that would integrate its internal communications across all technical media. It chose to replace its existing TDM-based PBX with a state-of-the-art IP Communication system to service 10000 users across the length and breadth of the UAE.

"Etisalat is a pioneer in bringing cutting-edge technology to the UAE and the region. We are constantly reviewing our business processes in order to meet the growing demands and expectations and the MIC (My Instant Communicator) suite will help us to achieve new benchmarks in efficiency and productivity," said Fadhil Al Ansari, Executive Vice President Engineering, for Etisalat. "We were impressed with the capabilities and performance of the Alcatel-Lucent solution proposed by Al-Futtaim Technologies. We are confident that this will ultimately enable us to offer a higher level of service to our customers."

Al-Futtaim Technologies will deploy Alcatel Lucent’s OmniPCX Enterprise IP Telephony System along with My Instant Communicator (MIC) and Genesys Express. The solution will integrate with Etisalat’s existing enterprise Email infrastructure thereby allowing users across the organisation to connect with teams and collaborate via voice, email, messaging and share documents through appropriate applications.

Venkat Raghavan, General Manager of Al-Futtaim Technologies said: "At a time when speed and mobility of the business environment is of paramount importance, the solution from Al-Futtaim Technologies combines your most frequently used communications services enabling you to work smarter and faster.

"MIC integrates five key components: telephony, messaging, collaboration, one-number services and presence services which helps end users to benefit from real-time unified communications, a single user interface and complete control over their communications. We are confident the solution will dramatically increase employee productivity and ensure key decisions can be made anywhere at anytime."