Vox, together with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, has been awarded the PBX infrastructure tenders for the Marriott Yacht Club and the Hilton Garden Inn Mbabane.

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is one of the preferred PBX technology suppliers for The Hilton and the Marriott hotel groups worldwide.

Natalie van der Merwe, senior product manager for PBX at Vox, comments: “This enables a global partnership through a network of local, in-country partners, such as Vox, who adheres to the stringent certification and specialisation practices of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise to provide a constant standard of products, services and support to the hotel groups across the globe.”

A key value proposition in selecting Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise for the Hilton and Marriott hotel groups was ensuring a seamless experience for guests, whether visiting these hotels in Dubai, London or South Africa. For the property managers, confidence in the technology, functionality, reliability and the ability to integrate seamlessly with third-party telephone management systems (TMS) was of utmost importance.

The Alcatel Application Partner Program has been designed for application enablement which ensures third party applications and products (such as the Tiger TMS provided by Vox) are approved to work in conjunction with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise platforms, thus ensuring that future versions are always compatible.

“Furthermore, Vox was able to deliver services over and above the PBX platform by providing end-to-end value-added services such as voice, internet, LAN infrastructure and hotel specific TMS solutions (Tiger TMS),” adds Van der Merwe.

The project was administered by IT and electronics services consultants, Ethnic Technologies Africa, as part of their joint venture with MA Dlamini consulting engineers.

“Vox were the best bid received from a price and specification point of view and deployed the solution on time and with impressive professionalism,” says Tony Leça of Ethnic Technologies Africa.