Gitex 2021: Batelco brings collaboration to Bahrain operations

Bahrain telco Batelco is to deploy the Avaya Spaces workstream collaboration platform for the digital workplace to address the needs of enterprises as they support the hybrid mode of working.

Batelco serves government, enterprise, consumer and global markets in what has grown into one of the most competitive environments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It serves corporate and consumer markets by delivering fixed and wireless telecommunications systems for the residential, business and government segments in Bahrain, including all IP fixed and 4G LTE wireless home internet networks and MPLS-based regional data solutions.

The company’s portfolio includes data and cloud services and systems as well as datacentre solutions from Tier III Uptime Institute certified facilities.

Following its introduction of AWS Direct Connect services in 2019 and software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) in 2020, the company announced earlier this month that it had created a customised solution that bundles both services.

AWS Direct Connect provides a way for customers to establish a dedicated private network connection between AWS and datacentres, offices or colocation environments, while the SD-WAN blends MPLS, internet, LTE and 5G technologies into a single communication channel that delivers improved visibility, agility, control and cloud integration.

The company’s digitisation and connectivity goals are said to be in line with those of Bahrain to transform how businesses operate as well as transform the lives of residents, enabling everyone to connect, work and live better through the delivery of technology-based products and systems.

With a stated and ongoing commitment to roll out smart home and smart city digital technology, Batelco believes it is playing a crucial role in Bahrain’s prosperity and development. It feels confident that the introduction of the unified collaboration solution in the country will help it deliver evolved collaboration capabilities to its customers as they continue their transition to the digital workplace.

It builds on an already successful partnership with the software provider that will see the telco offer Avaya OneCloud unified communications as a service (UCaaS) through its Bahrain datacentre. The tool is an all-in-one video meeting and collaboration system for the digital workplace that is designed to bring together distributed groups of people with immersive, composable workspaces where they can message, meet, share content, manage tasks and collaborate in the cloud.

“Our partnership with Avaya has already seen us deliver world-class communication solutions through the cloud, helping organisations to quickly transform via subscription-based models, and we have seen significant growth in demand for these cloud-based solutions since their introduction,” said Abdulla Danesh, general manager of enterprise at Batelco.

“Our offering of Avaya Spaces takes things even further, enabling our customers to overcome the limitations of traditional PBX with an easy-to-implement, secure workstream collaboration solution that catapults them into the digital workplace. The addition of Avaya Spaces to Batelco’s portfolio will address the needs of organisations in Bahrain that require the convenience, visibility and accessibility of workstream collaboration tools deployed in the cloud.”