Ministry of Interior deploys Cisco Collaboration Solution

Cisco and the UAE Ministry of Interior (MoI) today announced the commencement of the third and final stage of deployment of the Cisco Prime Collaboration which will connect all of the Ministry’s employees across the seven Emirates. The substantial deployment forms part of the MoI’s efforts to contribute to the UAE Vision 2021 National Agenda aim for the UAE to be the safest place in the world by leveraging the power of technology and innovation.

At GITEX Technology Week 2016, the MoI and Cisco also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for strategic cooperation which focuses on technology innovation to enable the Ministry to stay at the forefront of technological updates and to harness new trends. The MoU also covers the provision of training and continuous education opportunities to MoI employees on Cisco’s latest technologies to support the advancement of productivity and career development.

When complete, the MoI collaboration deployment will enable different departments and sections within the Ministry and across its offices and facilities in the UAE to collaborate more efficiently, and with lower operating expenses. The project was initiated nearly two years ago to gradually migrate from the current legacy PBX IP phone system to a next generation platform.

“We are playing our part by contributing to the vision of making the UAE one of the safest and greatest countries in the world by 2021 and ensuring the UAE government is a leader when it comes to excellence and innovation. The UAE Ministry of Interior places great emphasis on using world class infrastructure and technology to provide efficient and transparent government services around the clock to exceed the expectation of citizens and residents and improve the quality of life in the country,” said Brigadier Engineer Hussain Ahmad Al Harithi, Director-General of Electronics and Telecommunications Services at the Ministry of Interior. “We constantly strive to adopt the latest developments in smart technology and partnerships with technology leaders allow us to benefit from advanced solutions to make efficient use of the city’s resources and to deliver on our mission of achieving the highest standards in the areas of security, emergency preparedness and reliability of police services and road safety.”

The MoI has offices hosting thousands of users that makes communications challenging, costly and complicated. In order to mitigate these challenges, MoI evaluated several technology providers in the area of Collaboration, selecting Cisco following multi-vendor performance tests for its compelling and concise holistic approach to the Ministry’s current and future needs.

“Cisco is honored to be working closely with the UAE’s Ministry of Interior to deliver its connectivity and communication objectives on this significant project, making the MoI our largest collaboration reference in the UAE,” said Shukri Eid, Managing Director – East Region, Cisco Middle East. “With the implementation of Cisco Prime Collaboration, we are delivering a simplified, unified management of collaboration networks that helps MoI move away from a previous distributed model that was costly and difficult to manage to a centralized, simple to manage architecture. The adoption of such advanced technology delivers a significantly reduced total cost of ownership and ensures the Ministry is a forerunner in embracing technology and digital transformation.”

The Cisco solution will enable MoI employees to connect to their regular meetings with external government entities and individuals directly through video conferencing thus reducing delays, enhancing communications and making business decisions faster. The Cisco solution to MoI converges voice, video, and data collaboration around a shared IP-based infrastructure, which simplifies making calls, sending messages, or joining audio or video conferences.

Cisco Prime Collaboration will also give MoI the benefit of rapid provisioning of users and services, while giving Ministry the capability of real-time monitoring of the entire Cisco Unified Communications system, substantially increasing productivity and lowering operating expenses. The solution also provides key performance indicators enabling MoI to analyze trends for capacity planning, resource optimization, and quality of service to further improve the overall collaboration experience.