RIYADH — Cisco announced on Thursday that it has signed a three-year Managed Services Agreement with the Saudi Telecom Company (STC) and to deliver the full functionality of a Service Provider-grade Network Operating Center (NOC). A major focus of STC's business strategy has always been to meet the needs and expectations of its customers in various business sectors. Expanding and maintaining the Broadband Data Services portfolio is one of the key initiatives by which STC aims to deliver the highest possible levels of network availability, performance, security and resilience. The key goal of this agreement will be to dramatically transform STC's customers' experience by maintaining very aggressive levels of performance (SLAs and KPIs) with a clear emphasis on staying ahead of the market whilst also delivering the results that serve as STC's main business drivers.
“Contracting Cisco for Managed Services will enable STC to reduce or reallocate IT resources, relieving our highly skilled, expensive staff of routine tasks such as monitoring routers, responding to help-desk inquiries, and resolving user problems," said
Abdullah A. Alzmame, Network VP of STC.
"The result will be increased IT staff productivity enabling STC staff to focus on strategic projects thereby improving service quality, enabling employee mobility, and integrating new technology-all proven productivity-enhancing services. The agreement represents a major milestone for both STC and Cisco that will undoubtedly help STC maintain its leadership position by delivering best possible network performance.”
“By switching to Managed Services for value-added IP-based services, STC will see benefits in four primary areas in which they can realize savings namely traditional service fees, hardware, IT costs, and transport," said Eng Mohammed Alabbadi, General Manager, Cisco Saudi Arabia.
"An organization like STC will immediately be able to reduce service fees by 49 percent; IT costs by 21 percent, hardware costs by 20 percent, and transport costs by 10 percent after adopting Cisco Managed Service. These savings can then be passed on to STC customers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia thereby ensuring satisfaction all round.” Cisco Managed services will deliver comprehensive, higher-quality IT services for STC resulting in a managed network that is larger and more robust, leading to greater reliability and availability, with service-level agreements (SLAs) promising up to 99.999-percent availability. Additionally, because service provider-managed networks are monitored 24 hours a day, STC will benefit from higher monitoring levels and faster responses to network events.
The signing of this Managed Services agreement is a significant development for both STC and Cisco as it highlights the importance of STC's Core Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) Network. It incorporates all of STC's service offerings running on Cisco's latest platforms and will be backed-up by Cisco's “best in class” Managed Services.
STC's Core data network is currently witnessing unprecedented growth in end-user activities. This agreement will ensure continuity of best possible core transport network performance for several years to come.
This agreement will also strengthen an already long-standing business relationship between STC and Cisco while ensuring that STC continues to provide its customers with high quality and most advanced network services. The agreement will ultimately supply STC with a Managed Service solution which delivers a world-class quality of service that meets STC's customers' daily needs and also dramatically transforms their customers' experience. — SG
