Amman, October 2011 – Microsoft Jordan and Umniah announced signing an agreement at the World Economic Forum, under which Umniah will offer its business users with business productivity hosting solutions for increased efficiency in productivity and management, using state-of-the-art Microsoft technology that reduce operational expenses by maximizing the utilization of the IT infrastructure. Umniah will be one of the early providers of hosted cloud services solutions in the region and the first in Jordan based on Microsoft’s leading applications.

Ihab Hinnawi, CEO of Umniah, stated, “Cloud computing solutions have become imperative to the smooth running of business operations and cost reduction. As such, we are committed to providing this particular solution to our subscribers in order to not only help businesses work more efficiently, but also to contribute towards achieving our goal of advancing the Jordanian telecom sector and further cementing the Kingdom’s position as an ICT hub within the MENA region.”

Husni Khuffash, Microsoft Jordan Country Manager, stated, “Cloud computing is changing the way software is consumed and delivered, offering tremendous potential for efficiency, cost savings and innovation. Microsoft has been leading the way in cloud computing for a number of years now, developing services that enable big and small companies to have a variety of options on how they access and manage enterprise-class software, and providing customers with increased mobility and flexibility to meet their evolving business needs.”

He added, “The benefits that Umniah’s customers will gain from this solution include significantly reducing their IT costs in addition to supporting a far more mobile workplace with access to vital applications and data being available through a comprehensive range of devices, from anywhere and at any time.”

With this first of its kind hosted cloud services agreement, Umniah will offer its customers Hosted Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Virtual Private Service (VPS) based on Microsoft Exchange & Hyper-V technologies. This will allow customers to cut costs by eliminating upfront investment, maintenance and support charges as the services they will be accessing will be hosted on a carrier grade Data Center that guarantees a high level of availability to customer services. Customers will also have the flexibility to perform basic email administration without referring back to Umniah via a self-care web portal.

The new business services available will include desktop and mobile e-mail, calendaring and contacts, instant-messaging, audio and video conferencing and shared workspaces.