Cisco and Raya Contact Center announced the opening of the Cairo Center of Excellence in Egypt, the Cisco Inside Sales hub servicing the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region, according to a joint statement. The center will provide sales and partner coverage to 18 countries in the Middle East and Africa: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, UAE, KSA, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and Yemen. It is one of five global hubs; the others are in Lisbon, Portugal; Prague Czech Republic, Raleigh, North Carolina (USA); and Toronto, Canada. The center is equipped with Cisco TelePresence, which enables people from different offices and cities around the world to meet virtually, allowing specialists based in Cairo to have face-to-face virtual meetings with customers and partners. Cisco Inside Sales provides incremental coverage using a cost effective and increasingly centralized and virtual sales model, which is aiming in 2011 “to achieve deeper market penetration in the MEA region,” the statement read. The center is operated by outsourced-business inside-sales provider Raya Contact Center and will initially employ 33 people across Middle East and Africa. Cairo will be the “supercentre for this geography and all new positions will now move to Cairo. The number of employees is expected to grow to more than 50 over the next 12 months.” Tarek Kamel, Egypt's minister for communications and information technology, said, “The initiative aims at attracting international companies' investments and should increase ICT exports of software development, IT and business process outsourcing services, which, in turn, will create competitive job opportunities for the young trained and qualified Egyptian caliber in this field."
