Avaya had the chance to flex its might at the Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC). The Trade Centre is the organizer of GITEX Technology Week, the only major technology event in the world using the Avaya Spaces collaboration platform to offer attendees a blended conference experience. I caught up with Nidal Abou-Ltaif, President, Avaya International, to talk about the conference and about the company’s new push to further penetrate the space.
Ltaif said that the partnership would ensure international speakers who were unable to travel to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) due to the Coronavirus could dial into conference sessions virtually via Avaya Spaces. GITEX did still welcome over 1,200 participating companies that flew representatives to Dubai from over 60 countries.
Avaya Spaces, the workplace collaboration platform, which is available in over 100 countries, helped to host more than 280 hours of conference content at the event including sessions on artificial intelligence, smart cities, 5G, government, future mobility, education, and healthcare. Ltaif said that the platform is already leveraged by countless businesses, schools, governments, as well as other organizations, noting that Coronavirus caused a spike in adoption. Since launching back in early 2020, Ltaif said the technology has helped to bring together distributed groups of people into workspaces where they can access messages, meetings, sharing content, task management along with a full cloud-based collaboration suite.
Trixie LohMirmand, Executive Vice President, Events Management, Dubai World Trade Centre, said in a statement that 2020 felt like a year of missed opportunities, which is why putting on GITEX in its 40th year felt like the right thing to do. Canceling or even postponing the event due to the pandemic would have been devastating. It would have also put an end to a long-standing tradition of hosting the typically in-person event year-after-year for the past four decades.
“After a year of missed opportunities, GITEX, in its 40th edition, is finally giving the technology industry a platform to reconnect and do business again through in-person networking and conferences. We are pleased to welcome Avaya to this landmark edition of GITEX and are thankful for their strategic support and commitment to digital transformation in the region,” LohMirmand said.
GITEX Technology Week also served as an umbrella event for some of the APAC region’s leading technology conferences, including GITEX Future Stars, the largest tech startup event in the Middle East, and GISEC, the area’s largest cybersecurity conference/exhibition.
“Avaya helped us pull off this landmark edition of GITEX and are thankful for their strategic support and commitment to digital transformation in the region”
WebRTC-based technologies are on the rise as new home workers face challenges like the low-bandwidth situations some find themselves in. Google perfected the technology back in 2007, and it has been greatly increasing in use since then. The pandemic has helped to further speed that along, as an increasing number of enterprises seek to have the flexibility needed to foster more pleasant customer interactions. There is also the fact that having in-person events is increasingly less safe, so having a failsafe in place, especially in this climate is warranted.
