AN ITP TECHNOLOGY OGY PUBLICATION I AUGUST 2016 VOLUME 22 ISSUE 08 ANALYSIS DATA CENTRE COOLING TECH //30 THE GREEN ISSUE //08 UPDATE Alibaba Cloud makes ME market debut COMMENT The basis for the digital business //18 Download the free NME app and be the first to read the latest issue on your mobile devices. 2016 CABLING SUPPLEMENT INSIDE ROUND OFF WHEN IT WAS TIME TO UPGRADE ITS IT AND UC INFRASTRUCTURE, THE ROTANA GROUP TURNED TO AN OLD TECHNOLOGY PARTNER
Case study Round off When it was time to upgrade its IT and UC infrastructure, the Rotana Group turned to a long-time technology partner // 24 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / AUGUST 2016 /
The relatively smaller footprint of home-grown hospitality group Rotana belies its outsized investment in hospitality technology, and the breadth of its ambitions. From its corporate base in Abu Dhabi, Rotana Group has been steadily building up its IT infrastructure with a network of integrated and centralised hardware and application systems. Rotana s IT journey has been gradual, each new service and technology building on the foundation of the previous one as technology matures, says Samir Abi Frem, corporate vice president, IT Rotana Group. Over these years, Rotana has partnered with Avaya to deliver on these services with a partnership set to continue. In the last two or three years particularly, Rotana has implemented major infrastructure projects with Avaya and 75% of its telephony systems and much of the core infrastructure is built with technology from the vendor currently. Today, the Group has standardised their networking and wireless solutions on Avaya and have in most of their existing and new location the Avaya CC and IP telephony solutions. Avaya is focused on the hospitality industry with solutions particularly targeted at hotels and their guests. These include communication and collaboration tools built to keep guests and staff connected as well as internet connectivity and in-room entertainment for guests. Avaya has in place a team dedicated to hospitality with people in every geography focused on the vertical. This division is led by Frederick Sabty, the global VP for hospitality based in Dubai, in the region with the highest growth rates in Avaya s hospitality solutions. In the hospitality industry, you don t sell a product. One has to endeavour to sell an outcome and a solution, says Sabty. The solution has also to be integrated with existing solution that the hotel has selected to use. Rotana runs its network in dual mode: Each of the hotels within the Group has their own IT infrastructure and set-up. At the corporate headquarters, the IT team has centralised many applications and services for the whole company. This is especially true for the UAE based hotels, where, because of strong communications links, access to centralised IT services is effective. In the beginning, centralising these services between the main sites in Abu Dhabi and Dubai was hindered Avaya has shifted away from hardware to solutions and services and we are looking to work with them for things like managed services. SAMIR ABI FREM, CORPORATE VP, IT, ROTANA ROTANA GROUP CASE STUDY SUM- MARY Objective Rotana Group has been upgrading its IT infrastructure and now has standardised its networking and wireless solutions on Avaya and have in place Avaya CC and IP telephony solutions. This includes the Scopia video conferencing solutions and session border controller to enable international communication. Solution Avaya Scopia desktop and mobile applications enable face-to-face collaboration on mobile devices or desktop allowing video conferencing on the go. Scopia can be enabled for anyone, inside or outside the organisation to join your virtual meeting room as Avaya Scopia apps can be freely distributed. Results Rotana has reduced calling costs while abroad by between 70-80% by using 3G connections and calling through the app, as opposed to roaming. Staff collaboration has also been enhanced as the workforce can join in internal meetings with senior executives from their desktops. // AUGUST 2016 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / 25
by lack of MPLS connection between the two cities, and leased lines were costly, reveals Frem. Since then, MPLS services have become readily available between the two cities enabling adding of services between the two cities that host the majority of Rotana properties. The first application to be centralised was the property management system (PMS) in 2006. PMS is the core application for any hotel where all the customer information, bookings, transactions with customers are managed. Since then, technology, both within and without the hotel has evolved as well as the maturity of the internet connectivity between hotels and cities. This progress, Frem says, has enabled Rotana to integrate even more services. Two more applications, financial and emails have been put under common management. This year, three more applications, HR, finance and materials management will be delivered from the central data centre. Last year, Rotana implemented global WAN connection, to connect all the hotels in and outside the UAE. Frem says the company enjoys a good relationship with Avaya going back 10 years, and building with them a good service delivery for the hotels in that time. They have supported us in enhancing the telephony and network technology that we use. We have found Avaya to be the first to deliver new technology and innovation, says Frem Noteworthy is Avaya s Mobility is becoming crucial in the industry, and Rotana is investing significantly in Wi-Fi technology. thrust into digital transformation by starting to migrate its hardware-based technology to become software-based. Avaya has shifted away from hardware to solutions and services. We are considering working with Avaya not only on the technology part but also on services so the vendor can provide us with managed services for instance, says Frem. Sabty concurs, saying Avaya has largely shifted its focus from a vendor into essentially an integrator, bringing all the different brands that a customer may have in their network into one platform. Rotana has implemented Avaya Scopia solutions for video conferencing, based on its cost-efficiency and effectiveness, Frem asserts. Currently, the group s CXO s are 75% Drop in international roaming costs for travelling execs using this technology to communicate with the field. Frem says the Group runs a quarterly chat with the President and CEO where the whole company connects for a twohour session with the CEO. Scopia allows employees connect using their mobile devices, tablets, desktops to a joint video conferencing session. Rotana has also deployed Avaya s session border controllers (SBCs). A large number of employees from the corporate office are constantly travelling and the global connectivity from Avaya offers them access to their office extension from any device on any network. This is quite helpful for the company, says Frem, because staff can remotely open their office extensions using 3G thanks to the SBC. Equally important, says Frem, is that this is a secure connection so users do not need to open and use a VPN client to connect to the office. The result is a massive drop in telecom costs considering how prohibitive roaming costs are. There has been 70-80% drop in international telephone bills for some execs, says Frem. The solution is quite easy to use, says Frem, and even employees not very technical-savvy can confidently use the service. The selecting process for procuring major IT projects involves working with consultants to create the selection criteria and help on the process that needs to be followed, explains Frem. With experts helping to manage our selection process, we will send out RFPs and based on responses, we select a number of major vendors specialised in the service that we want. After that, we consider quality of the technology, ca- // 26 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / AUGUST 2016 /
THE CLIENT Rotana Hotel Management Corporation (Rotana) is a hotel management company with operations in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and Eastern Europe region. It has a portfolio of over 100 properties in 26 cities and operates five sub brands which include Rotana Hotels & Resorts, Centro Hotels by Rotana, Rayhaan Hotels & Resorts by Rotana, Arjaan Hotel Apartments by Rotana, and The Residences by Rotana. Rotana manages under its Rayhaan Hotels & Resorts by Rotana brand the Rose Rayhaan by Rotana Hotel in Dubai, which was for five consecutive years (2009-2013) the world s tallest hotel at 1,093 ft. Much of the core infrastructure at Rotana runs on Avaya technology. We are enabling these functionalities in guests own gadgets because customers would prefer not to learn about new devices. Avaya Scopia mobile applications enable face-to-face collaboration on mobile devices or desktop, allowing video conferencing on the go. pability to deliver and financials to come up with winning bid, he says. ConnectIT has been Rotana Group s system integrator of choice for the last two years. Frem says the SI very strong in what they do with experts in Avaya technology from networking to telephony to video conferencing. Frem says Avaya technology is pretty much plug and play. Once the system is configured, it runs as it should with the vendor called in only for major updates, Frem says, adding, We do not have technical team in place and just coordinate with the vendors and the SI for the regular upgrades. The next generation of Rotana IT infrastructure development is already underway. Frem reveals that the group is working on a major project with Avaya to centralise its reservation system across the company. A contact centre from Avaya is already in place and Rotana is now working with the vendor to upgrade this contact centre, as well as integrate it with the CRM to support the company s reservation process. Avaya installed gateways in each of the hotels, and now they all can connect back and re-route all the calls to the Abu Dhabi contact centre where the Group has centralised all their guest experience functions like reservations, residents and loyalty programmes, Sabty explains. This system connects all our toll free numbers to the CRM, enabling our cus- // AUGUST 2016 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / 27
THE VENDOR Avaya is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Its solutions and technologies cater to customer and team engagement, unified communications and collaboration, contact centre and customer experience management, and networking. The company also provides related services to large enterprises, midmarket companies, small businesses, and government organisations around the world. tomer service agents to interact with customers through calls, chats and email, Frem explains. From there, we will be able to use the same technology to transfer calls directly to the respective hotels whenever there s a need, he adds. Wi-Fi is one of the most important offerings for a hotel today, and Frem says the group is currently in the process of upgrading its wireless technology, Frem explains. When Rotana s head office was coming up, so was BYOD. The IT team by Rotana was forward-thinking and wanted to position the group as part of the evolving BYOD story and so Avaya was called upon to deploy the BYOD infrastructure, says Sabty. Avaya was keen to invest with them because the company also wanted to showcase its technology since the acquisition of Nortel. Mobility is becoming crucial in the industry, and Rotana is investing significantly in mobile technology, says Frem. Guests are increasingly dependent on their own devices and Rotana is working with Avaya to deliver on mobile telephony services. Through the Rotana mobile Frem: Anything that improves our efficiencies and helps improve the customer experience translates to happy and loyal customers. So we really need to look at how this technology can be modernised and attractive for young people to enjoy working in such an environment. apps for instance, customers would be able to call or to receive calls while in hotel premises directly through the app rather than use their mobile plans. We are enabling these functionalities in guests own devices because customers would prefer not to learn about new devices such as the telephones in their room. That s why we are working with Avaya to enable guests who would rather use their own familiar devices but access services through our apps, Frem says. Although Rotana endeavours to ensure an ROI for every solution that has been deployed, Frem acknowledged that in a service-oriented sector such as hospitality, return can never really be fully tangible and calculable. We are in the service industry, so anything that improves our efficiencies and helps improve the customer experience translates to happy customers which increases our retention rate and customer loyalty, he adds. The Avaya solutions form part of a technology ecosystem. Avaya makes the core middle technology that most systems connect to. The telephony systems connect to the property management system which then integrates with the billing system. All these different components have to talk to each other, Frem asserts. A centralised corporate IT team handles all the new projects and event standards. For any new hotels, Frem explains, the brand standards have to be communicated to contractors so they can integrate these standards when building these new facilities. Security is constantly evolving with improvements required regularly. 2017 is our security year and we are bound to invest a lot in tools and devices that enhance our security, especially for our centralised services, Frem says. Hospitality, like the rest of the IT industry, is undergoing rapid digital transformation with solutions increasingly becoming customer-centric and solutions. Further, the industry in general and Rotana in particular is working to attract the millennials both as customers and also employees. So we really need to look at how this technology can be modernised and attractive for young people to enjoy working in such an environment, Frem concludes. // 28 / NETWORK MIDDLE EAST / AUGUST 2016 /