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ADVA and NEC Corporation has announced that Etisalat UAE, the telecoms pillar of e& is offering on-demand virtual services to its corporate customers using ADVA’s suite of Ensemble NFV technologies with the solution system integration conducted by NEC in close collaboration with Etisalat UAE, who are onboarding various network functions on top of the platform.

The new universal customer premises equipment (uCPE) offering gives enterprises across the Middle East quick and secure access to the industry’s widest range of multi-vendor virtual technologies. With the ability to harness virtual network functions (VNFs), including SD-WAN, routing, firewall, DDoS prevention, and IoT applications, Etisalat UAE’s business clients can try out services without risk and seize new revenue opportunities in an instant.

“At Etisalat UAE, we continue to enrich businesses by providing solutions, harnessing advanced technologies and maintaining our cutting-edge telecom infrastructure offerings,” says Khaled Murshed, chief technology and information officer at Etisalat UAE. “We live in the ‘connectivity renaissance’ age, which offers us multiple opportunities to maximise value creation for our customers. Our new uCPE services enable our business customers across the Middle East to accelerate their digitisation journey by supporting the creation of new business models as well as applying innovation to their current processes.

Until recently, delivering our dynamic, individualised offerings required multiple hardware platforms in several different sizes to be stored in multiple locations to meet stringent SLAs. Today, as part of always being focused on enhancing the journey for our business customers, we are now providing every application on a single platform, through the reliable support of our long-term partner NEC, combined with ADVA’s Ensemble software suite. Not only have we made our business processes efficient by optimising hardware resources, but our customers can now take advantage of such open standards-based solutions at highly competitive prices and attractive feature points.”

By leveraging ADVA’s entire Ensemble product family on white box platforms, Etisalat UAE’s government and enterprise customers benefit from the software-based uCPE solution and its ancillary services. The offering means virtual services can be enabled on demand and gives businesses in 16 countries across the Middle East, Asia and North Africa access to the Ensemble Harmony Ecosystem. This multi-vendor environment offers unrivaled variety and choice of virtual products. Etisalat UAE’s new solution features Ensemble Connector as the NFVI platform.

This provides an embedded vRouter function using 6WIND’s Turbo Router. Other key components include Ensemble Orchestrator and Virtualisation Director, which provide simple and effective management and orchestration (MANO) architecture. ADVA’s virtual edge cloud technology streamlines Etisalat UAE’s customer deployments, improves operational simplicity and empowers Etisalat UAE to roll out secure virtualised services at scale.

“In close collaboration with NEC, Etisalat UAE’s uCPE solution will enhance the agility and productivity of enterprises and governments seeking to accelerate their digitisation efforts. Etisalat UAE is an innovative Tier 1 service provider that is now free to select best-of-breed components at each layer and optimise cost through disaggregation, including white box, VNFs and NFVI/MANO. What’s more, with the ability to offer a wide variety of virtual applications on the same platform, Etisalat UAE will play a vital role in offering added value for each customer by selling innovative new services,” comments Mike Heffner, GM of edge cloud, ADVA. “Our Ensemble Connector solution ensures that Etisalat UAE can now ship uCPE to a customer site and provision it securely with zero-touch provisioning. This provides a new level of dynamism and efficiency that will be key to accelerating digitisation throughout the Middle East.”

NEC has been an open networks advocate since the early stages of digital transformation and engaged in a full range of network domains that include core, transport and RAN. It has also been a long-term business partner to Etisalat UAE, consistently providing solutions such as multi-vendor telecom cloud platforms as well as domain automation and end-to-end service orchestration solutions from its subsidiary Netcracker. This helps Etisalat UAE bring innovative services to market faster and ensure superior customer experiences. In this project, NEC capitalised on its comprehensive system integration capabilities and worked together with its global partner ADVA to design and implement the new uCPE solution.

“We are honored to be Etisalat’s partner of choice to achieve greater simplicity and efficiency for its uCPE services through our close global partnership with ADVA. It’s a boost for Etisalat UAE’s business customers, who will benefit from quick and easy access to voice, internet and security applications at cost-effective entry points,” says Hideyuki Ogata, GM of the service provider solutions department at NEC Corporation. “As an open networks promoter and cloud partner of Etisalat UAE, combined with our support and comprehensive expertise, NEC looks forward to its dedicated and continuous support in advancing Etisalat UAE services across all industries, from education and healthcare to e-government and smart cities within the MEA region.”

Etisalat Group has changed its brand identity to e&, effective from February 23, 2022. Its strategy aims to accelerate growth through the creation of a resilient business model representing its main business pillars. The telecoms business currently continues to be led by Etisalat UAE in e&’s home market and by existing subsidiaries for international operations, upholding the group’s rich telecoms heritage, bolstering the strong telecoms network and maximising value for its various customer segments.

Ramping up digital services for individual customers to elevate their digital-first lifestyle, e& life brings next-generation technologies through smart connectivity platforms in entertainment, retail and financial technology. To enable the digital transformation of governments, large-scale enterprises and corporates, e& enterprise focuses on maximising value through its end-to-end solutions in cybersecurity, cloud, internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as deploying mega projects. e& capital allows the group to focus its efforts on driving new mergers and acquisitions while maximising shareholder value and strengthening global presence.

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