Gulf Air, the national carrier of the Kingdom of Bahrain, today announced the renewal of its Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft. As technology is changing fast, creating opportunities and challenges to businesses, it is vital to empower the business with Microsoft latest products in order to be better equipped to respond to market changes. The agreement, which secures better business visibility and higher internal engagement, was signed by Gulf Air A/Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Maher Salman Al Musallam, Gulf Air’s Director of Information Technology, Dr. Jassim Haji and Microsoft’s General Manager in Bahrain and Oman Mr. Sherif Tawfik, in a meeting held at the airline’s headquarters and attended by senior management from both organizations.
Commenting at the meeting Gulf Air A/Chief Executive Officer, Al Musallam said: “More than ever, people are looking for personalised experiences whenever they utilise a service or product and we find that loyalty is increasingly to businesses that deliver quality customer service. That is exactly what we are opting to offer with the help of our long-term partner Microsoft.”
“In today’s fast-paced world, the competitive advantage for consumer-oriented businesses like Gulf Air is to have timely and uninterrupted access to information; we are confident that Microsoft Cloud Solutions hosted in our state-of-the-art private cloud will help us build a more connected workforce at the operational level and promote a new level of collaboration across all levels of the organization while reducing the cost of our IT function” said Dr. Jassim Haji.
Under the Enterprise Agreement, Gulf Air will benefit from a range of cloud-based solutions and services that will help them improve their operational productivity and workforce efficiency in a cost-effective and timely manner. Gulf Air will also gain access to extensive technical and operational support from a team of Microsoft’s experts.
“We are excited to renew the Enterprise Agreement with Gulf Air and extend our partnership to support them in their new venture to move to the Cloud, boost their business processes, increase productivity, create a more efficient working environment and reduce IT operations cost”, said Sherif Tawfik, General Manager for Microsoft in Bahrain and Oman. “Empowered by Microsoft’s technologies offered in this Enterprise Agreement, Gulf Air is now ready to take a great leap towards ensuring further business growth and excellent customer services.”
Microsoft Cloud Solutions will provide Gulf Air with the highest levels of reliability, performance and security and the best service level agreement policies in the industry. Microsoft Cloud Solutions through its cloud-based email, calendaring, conferencing and web-based Office apps such as Lync and SharePoint will enable Gulf Air employees to collaborate efficiently and get the right information to the right people at the right time.
The Enterprise Agreement is part of Microsoft’s Volume Licensing program for organizations, which provides businesses with a simple, cost-effective way to license the necessary software and create a sufficient infrastructure designed to drive user productivity and influence business growth.