Luxury launch

The UAE's Burj Al Arab is generally acknowledged as being one of the best hotels in the world. Designed to resemble a billowing sail, the building soars to a height of 321 metres, dominating the Dubai coastline. At night, it offers an unforgettable sight, surrounded by choreographed colour sculptures of water and fire. This all-suite hotel epitomises the Dubai lifestyle and reflects the finest that the world has to offer.

The hotel is part of the dynamic and fast growing Dubai-based luxury hospitality group Jumeirah, and it claims to be the most luxurious hotel in the world, catering to sophisticated business and leisure customers.

Located in the heart of the Gulf's hospitality industry, Burj Al Arab is known worldwide for its exceptionally high standards. Many of its guests are repeat customers who appreciate the hotel's commitment to providing a unique experience on each visit. For this reason, and in line with parent company Jumeirah's "Stay Different" slogan, Burj Al Arab wanted to offer guests early access to "world leading" IT. The hotel management decided to equip each of the Burj Al Arab's 202 guest suites with laptops which were running Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise Edition and the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

Frederick Sabty, director of IT at Burj Al Arab, says: "Our aim is to be different and an innovator at the cutting edge of technology. We offer the world's best service, the best food and beverages, the most luxurious accommodation and the best IT. We wanted to make it even easier for our guests to access their e-mail messages, the internet, and multi-media content."

Burj Al Arab has begun the migration to a new operating system for back of house operations, but the 202 suites - there are no rooms at Burj Al Arab - have come first. "Our guests are our top priority," says Sabty, who is also using the 2007 Microsoft Office system. "Having made the decision to switch to the best, we wanted to be up and running with the new system within three weeks. By becoming an early adopter of a new system, we are putting our guests on the first step of a big staircase because eventually they will all be using it for their business and leisure."

Burj Al Arab invited Microsoft Gold Certified Partner KalSoft to implement the technology for 206 laptops for all 202 suites after choosing Microsoft Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

The deployment tool used was Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007, which provides tools and guidance for deploying Microsoft's Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

Shahid Roofi Khan, solution architect at KalSoft, says: "The deployment takes just 18 minutes at the end machine and only two clicks of the mouse to get the laptop ready for the end user. Working with the hotel, we have provided full back up for the live environment with excellent connectivity." Fast time to market was also a concern for Burj Al Arab. "If we had used manual deployment, it would have taken a lot more time," says Khan. "There were, of course, lessons learned, as there are with any new technology, but we were well supported by Microsoft Services in the event of any escalation issues. After the implementation in late October, it was ready for go live in just 23 days."