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TMCNet: Safaricom And Cisco Enter Deal for Managed Customer Services

[December 07, 2009]

Safaricom And Cisco Enter Deal for Managed Customer Services

Nairobi, Dec 07, 2009 (The East African/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) -- Safaricom has become the first mobile telephony services provider in East Africa to adopt a managed services concept based on Cisco solutions.

This follows the growth in demand for managed services in the information technology market in the region as companies strive to restructure their information technology expenditure.

Following this adoption, Safaricom will be launching several managed service offerings based on Cisco solutions, the first being a "Managed Office in a Box," which includes connectivity, conferencing and collaboration tools, security and a virtual private network.

The connected office solution will allow companies to take advantage of Safaricom's communications expertise to access highly secure Internet-based communications.

"This deal forms a key plank of our overall strategy, which has seen us put substantial investments in the country's two undersea cable ventures and acquire two WiMAX operators. We have also formed a dedicated unit, Safaricom Business, to drive our ambitions in this category," Safaricom chief executive Michael Joseph said.

End-to-end solution Cisco provides managed services solutions as a way for its partners to differentiate themselves in the marketplace.

It helps companies envision, build, and market a new generation of value-added managed services delivered over an extensible, efficient Internet protocol infrastructure.

The firm's managed services will provide Safaricom's customers with a complete end-to-end solution built and tailored to meet their individual and business needs and increased productivity to help manage costs and ultimately increase their profitability.

The breadth of the Cisco managed services technology offering helps to deliver a unique market opportunity for its partners.

The IP service will be delivered through Safaricom's wired and wireless local area networks with integrated security features.

Once the IP service is in place Safaricom will be able to deliver the technologies with the most apparent business return including IP communications, telepresence, application-aware data center services and other technologies.

"Cisco's managed services offering is designed to give service providers the competitive edge that will allow them to stay ahead of the game when it comes to their customer needs. We are working closely with Safaricom to build and launch a full portfolio of managed services. We expect "managed collaboration services" such as Cisco Unified Communications and Cisco TelePresence to grow significantly in the region with the arrival of submarine cables. These cables, such as Seacom and TEAMS on the East Coast, will offer high bandwidth at attractive prices, enabling these managed services. At the same time, "managed virtualization services", like server and storage management, bundled with hosting, firewalling and VPN offerings will meet customer expectations for advanced services and will be a key differentiator for service providers targeting businesses. Cisco's vision is to be the leading enabler of ICT and broadband acceleration in emerging markets through innovative, scalable, high- value technology offerings." Yvon Le Roux, vice president, Cisco, Africa Levant.

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