Khorafi Business Machines (KBM), the Kuwait operation of Gulf Business Machines (GBM), Distributor for selected IBM products and services in the GCC excluding Saudi Arabia, has implemented a turnkey networking infrastructure solution at the new headquarters of leading Kuwaiti firm, Mabanee Company. The project is designed to increase the firm’s operating efficiency and productivity.
Mabanee Company engages in business activities related to commercial real estate, such as the ongoing construction of the largest shopping mall in Kuwait. Additionally, warehouses and commercial buildings are built on Mabanee-owned land, on which it subsequently generates returns from rental income from tenants leasing its commercial property space as well as from their use of its value added services.
With future plans to network all of its properties together, the rich functionality of the solution - which will also be made available to networked properties - will provide value added differentiation and business benefits, which will be a catalyst in attracting new occupants to its commercial premises.
The components of the infrastructure solution include IBM servers, structured cabling, high-end Cisco-based security and networking systems, such as switches, firewalls, routers, IDS as well as a number of applications. These comprise Cisco-based network monitoring and maintenance solutions (NMS) as well as an ACS security application to manage user authentication.
With the introduction of IP Telephony and wireless connectivity, the solution facilitates network access and Internet browsing. Part of this included replacing the company’s traditional PABX system and its regular telephone sets with the latest IP telephones.
“The IP Telephony aspect of this solution will enable us to fulfil our plans of eventually networking all sister companies and our real estate holdings together. When this happens we will be looking at extending our IP Telephony capabilities as a service to our real estate tenants. This will ultimately provide incremental revenue generating opportunities,” said Jacob Joshua, IT Supervisor, Mabanee Company.
“As a turnkey solution, our scope of work ranged from laying the structured cabling to creating Wireless LAN connectivity and ensuring the deployment of all necessary solution components. This IBM and Cisco components work together to create this feature rich and scalable solution. Among its many benefits are high availability - through the role of a backup server - and investment protection since the infrastructure can be scaled in accordance with Mabanee’s business expansion plans,” said Georges Kaldany, General Manager, KBM.
Mishaal Al- Usaimi, Assistant General Manager, Mabanee Company, explained how IT is key to the company’s future plans: “Differentiation in the competitive business in which Mabanee Company is engaged is achieved by adding value to our commercial real estate offering through the sophistication of our communications systems,” said Mr Al-Usaimi.
Mabanee Company conducted several market studies and short listed candidates according to their capabilities, quotations and deliverables. In all cases KBM came out tops. “Confidence in the vendor assigned to this undertaking was key and KBM was selected due to their approach to the project and on the basis of their reputation, credentials and in particular because of their expert skills, such as their many Cisco certified professionals,” added Mr Al-Usaimi.
KBM managed the implementation process as the main contractor in the project. This included close co-ordination with external departments since adhering to delivery dates was largely dependent upon external factors such as the readiness of the location and the new offices and local government regulations and processes, in addition to delivery schedules for the various elements of the total offering.
Mabanee Company’s 50 staff are initially using the solution. Functioning as a Virtual Private Network (VPN), all mobile users are able to access the entire network from anywhere in the world via tunnelling – a secure way to access their data.
A Direct Inward Dialling service (DID) has also been provided and this allows all internal users to have direct telephone lines. Up to 100 internal extensions are available, each with a voicemail facility. This allows messages to be forwarded to the e-mail address of the employee. This level of access will ensure that anyone who interacts with Mabanee Company will be assured of a quick response and hence customer service and internal communication levels will be enhanced.
“In the future, we are looking at different types of IBM and CISCO solutions such as Tivoli, WebSphere and Lotus. This will enable collaboration and workflow management processes to be incrementally added to the networking and security solution presently being installed,” concluded Mr Joshua.
