Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 3rd June 2002

Comtrust, the e-business infrastructure unit of Etisalat, announces it has formed a strategic alliance with Vertscape, the leading international provider of enterprise .Net Web Services and eBusiness solutions.

This strategic alliance will enable (Dubai-based) Vertscape to market and sell Comtrust’s entire range of market-leading e-business infrastructure solutions in the country and allows both companies to significantly expand their services to customers. These services will include data security, inbuilt payment gateways and online security.

Tariq Habib, Senior Manager-business & technology and Acting General Manager of Comtrust says, "this alliance with Vertscape is another significant and important step towards helping businesses and governments in the UAE embrace e-commerce on a variety of levels and platforms."

“We already enjoy an excellent relationship with Vertscape and through them, we believe we have a strong platform by which to enhance our market presence,” he said. “Through the marketing and sale of our comprehensive line of e-commerce products and services, which cater to all e-commerce customer needs, we can offer customers a one-stop-shop solution,” added Habib.

Vertscape is one of the few companies in the region to offer fully web based business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) e-Business solutions to its clients for retailing, wholesaling and supply chain management.

This is the second major collaboration between the two companies. In late 2001, Vertscape and Comtrust jointly completed the creation of Thuraya Satellite’s online e-commerce site. Vertscape provided its eBusiness eShop solution for the sale of Thuraya’s mobile phones and services online through the Comtrust secure payment gateway.

Chirayu Patel, Director of Operations, Vertscape expressed his delight at the new partnership with Comtrust which he said will add considerable value to Vertscape’s XeRM Business Suite of solutions.

"Data and payment security has been among our primary concerns and we go out of our way to ensure that our customers’ security requirements are taken care of effectively and efficiently. This partnership with Comtrust will go a long way towards providing our customers with a dependable and reliable solution that ensures secure transactions over the web, thus adding significant value to Vertscape’s e-business solutions,” he said. “As a result of this mutually beneficial commercial partnership, all Vertscape clients will benefit from services offered by Comtrust."
Some of the services that will be incorporated into Vertscape’s eBusiness suite include secure transactions, security capability, store payment interface and WAP payment.

Commenting on the multitude of benefits that the partnership would introduce for clients, Patel further added, “Vertscape and Comtrust have jointly executed some of the most complex end-to-end secure online payment solutions in the region. We have tremendous amount of joint experience in this area. Together, Vertscape and Comtrust will deliver one-stop shop e-solutions to the UAE market.”