Abu Dhabi Ports Company and Cisco Unveil a New Route for Collaboration

Cisco Borderless Networks and Collaboration Solutions Aim to Deliver a Highly Secure, Reliable and Seamless Infrastructure Foundation across Khalifa Port

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – October 11, 2011 – Cisco announced today that the Abu Dhabi Ports Company (ADPC) has chosen Cisco® Borderless Networks and Cisco Collaboration solutions for Phase 1 of its Port Special Systems project. The deployment will enable ADPC tobuild a highly secure and reliable platform to deliver services across Khalifa Port and eventually the industrial zone (Kizad).

At a ceremony held at GITEX 2011, Cisco and ADPC signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to strengthen this relationship and explore potential collaborative opportunities that will enable the smart operations of the port as well as strategically connecting one of the world’s largest industrial zones, which will facilitate trade, logistics and development contributing to the overall economic expansion of the region.

Highlights/Key Facts:

• As a core part of this MOU, Cisco commits to explore the opportunity to cooperate in the creation of new service propositions & initiatives, primarily focused on aligning ADPC’s ICT strategy objectives with Cisco’s advanced technologies. This may enable ADPC to stay at the forefront of technological updates and market transformations to be able to harness new trends and translate them into new business opportunities to achieve ADPC’s sustainable growth objectives. The MOU may also bring training and continuous education opportunities to ADPC’s employees that strengthen their productivity, career development and job satisfaction.
• Khalifa Port & Industrial Zone is a key enabler for economic diversification, development and trade in the region as it will promote new partnership models and services at the forefront of industrial logistics and manufacturing. Hence there was an urge to deploy a smart and intelligent platform that will form the basis to drive the intelligence of the services and systems as well as to develop a connected hub for trade and logistics between the offshore port and the onshore facilities.
• ADPC was in need to explore a solution that delivers state-of-the-art technologies to support the highly sophisticated port-related applications and systems and the unprecedented world-class capacity growth of the port. Cisco was leading to achieve ADPC’s business goals through the provision of a technologically advanced and powerful network to cope with the envisaged network traffic while connecting people and devices onshore and offshore as well as outstations indoors and outdoors through a highly available, highly secure and reliable communications network.
• The Cisco Borderless Network Architecture aims to allow Khalifa Port  to connect anyone, anywhere, anytime and on any device –reliably and seamlessly and with a high degree of security.
• An Ethernet network is also required to provide data connectivity throughout Khalifa Port, allowing multiple local area networks (LANs) to communicate between devices both on- and off-shore. The active components must be technologically advanced and powerful enough to cope with the massive network traffic, allowing sufficient capacity for future expansion. Cisco Catalyst® Switches were the key enabler for such an advanced and powerful network.
• The WLAN infrastructure is intended to support the various port systems and stakeholder groups that require remote access to the data network. Since the WLAN is an extension of the data network, any system that is accessible over the LAN shall be accessible over the WLAN, given the correct security permissions. The Cisco Wireless solutions were able to provide anywhere, anytime access to information and resources.
• Connecting people across the onshore and offshore facilities and outstations was made simpler through Cisco’s Unified Communications solutions.

Tony Douglas, CEO, Abu Dhabi Ports Company

“This deployment represents a major step forward that will enable ADPC to use the network as a platform to build the foundation of modern port infrastructure and business services to achieve Abu Dhabi 2030 vision for establishing a sustainable and diversified economy.”

Wayne Hull, director and general manager, Cisco UAE

“Cisco’s continued collaboration with Abu Dhabi Government and Abu Dhabi Ports Company demonstrates our vision to play a major role in connecting the nation. Empowering Phase 1 of Khalifa Port and Industrial Zone through Cisco technologies and solutions is a true testimony of Cisco’s leadership and innovation.”

Links / URLs:

• Emerging Markets RSS Feed:

http://newsroom.cisco.com/data/syndication/rss2/EmergingMarkets.xml

• Middle East News:

http://www.cisco.com/web/ME/about/news/index.html

About Abu Dhabi Ports Company

Formed by the Abu Dhabi government in 2006, ADPC is a master developer of ports and industrial zones. Its primary function is to propel economic expansion by establishing the firm foundations of modern infrastructure, real estate and business services across Abu Dhabi.

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate.  Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com.  For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

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