As the UAE marks its golden jubilee milestone, Cisco celebrates the nation’s remarkable successes as a young country that leads across innovation and technology and inspires communities and countries to build a better future.

Since 1971, when the union was formed, the United Arab Emirates has created a fertile landscape for explorers, innovators, and investors from around the world to gather and build cities of the future.

Commenting on the celebration, Cisco’s Managing Director in the Gulf Region, Shukri Eid, said: “Innovation has been at the heart of this nation’s vision, and it continues to be the north star for designing the next 50 years. Through determination, perseverance and wise leadership, the UAE is consistently at the top of regional rankings in global competitive indices and technology has played a pivotal role towards this status.”

“As the nation celebrates its golden jubilee, we at Cisco stand ready to enable the UAE towards crafting the next phase of development over the next 50 years by creating a knowledge-driven economy focused on growth, progress and prosperity,” Shukri added.

Cisco opened its first office in Dubai in 1994 and since then its business in UAE has grown from strength to strength. In 2009, Cisco expanded its presence and opened two new offices in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Over nearly three decades, Cisco has been proud to play a role in the UAE’s journey to fast-track digitization across sectors including Business Innovation, Smart Cities and Talent Development. Key collaborations include:

Striving to Secure UAE’s Digital Future

Since 1999, Cisco’s Networking Academy (NetAcad) program has been empowering UAE residents to develop their skills in IT, so that they may enter or progress in careers involving networking, cybersecurity and IoT. In the UAE alone, Cisco has 44 active networking academies, and has trained over 88,700 students, with 49% female participation.

Providing critical infrastructure

Since its establishment, Tecom has chosen Cisco as a key partner in the development of Dubai Internet City and Dubai Media City, providing not only critical solutions like Cisco IP Telephones and Ethernet, but also knowledge transfer by training its team of engineers to reach global qualification standards. Moreover, in 2002, Dubai Internet City (DIC) signed an agreement with Cisco to deploy advanced Internet and telecommunications infrastructure across the complex. As part of the agreement, Cisco helped DIC to enhance its internet architecture and grow its business to provide next-generation telecommunication services.

Creating Impact in the UAE

From helping Masdar to create smart-grid projects in 2009, to transforming Abu Dhabi into a sustainable knowledge-based society with (ADSIC) in 2010, Cisco has been part of many future-agenda projects in the UAE, which helped the country to be the most digital-ready in the region.

Raising the bar for innovation

In 2017, Cisco also opened its Innovation and Experience Center in Dubai – combining the company’s technological capabilities with a customer experience center, illustrating how digitization can advance sectors including education, healthcare, retail and finance.

Supporting national digitisation agendas

For close to four years, Cisco has been collaborating with the UAE government, local industry and academia to fast-track technology adoption and deliver impactful digital outcomes, as part of its Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) program – which focuses on contributing towards many of the aspects explored in the Digital Readiness Index.

Delivering the most digitally connected event in World Expo history

As a Digital Network Partner of Expo 2020, Cisco worked closely since 2018 with the organizer to help deliver highly immersive digital experiences for Expo 2020 Dubai, the region’s most anticipated event. Today, with help of Cisco, the world is witnessing the most digitally connected and immersive event in Expo history.

Preparing for the next 50 years

Since the preparation for the next 50 years has been announced, Cisco has been chosen as a trusted partner to contribute to the UAE’s ambition of attracting 3,000 coders every month to the country’s workforce. Moreover, Cisco is collaborating with the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology in a series of initiatives that will support UAE’s industry and advance technology SMEs in their digitization efforts and provide them with capabilities vital for their success, prosperity and competitiveness.

ENDS