Bridgestone Europe Signs Wide-Ranging Contract with BT
By BT this week announced a big new deal with the EMEA part of Bridgestone Corp., the world’s largest tire and rubber company.
“I am proud that Bridgestone Europe has entrusted us with the strategic building blocks of their ICT operations,” said Chet Patel, president Continental Europe at Global Services at BT. “At BT, we see digital transformation as empowering people – customers, businesses and employees – to do amazing things. We call this making the Digital Possible.”
As part of the new contract, BT will provide Bridgestone Europe with an array of managed cloud services and new network infrastructure. These services and networks will connect more than 200 Bridgestone locations in 20 countries in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. That will include 150 retail stores, and more than 50 offices, manufacturing plans, and testing facilities.
The specific offerings at play from the carrier will include BT’s global IP Connect virtual private network and its high-performance Internet service. And BT’s Connect Intelligence service will ensure high performance for Bridgestone Europe’s business-critical applications.
BT also will manage Bridgestone’s fix and wireless local area networks, which will enable employees at its offices and stores to securely access
the corporate network.
On the communications services side, Bridgestone Europe will leverage BT’s One Cloud Cisco portfolio of cloud-based and secure services to enable collaboration among its employees, and with customers and suppliers. Cisco WebEx managed by BT will be part of the mix.
So will BT’s Cloud Contact Cisco, which will be used by call center agents in Europe. This solution supports e-mail, SMS, social media, voice, and Web chat interactions.
“More and more organizations have started to fully embrace cloud services, recognizing the cost-cutting and agility-improving benefits that they provide,” Wael El Kabbany, vice president of the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Mediterranean effort at BT, wrote in a May 17 blog. “We expect to see an increase in the uptake of such services in the coming year, with the cloud becoming the universally accepted new normal.”
Edited by Alicia Young
