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Ramesh Shivakumaran Gulftainer and SAP Leverage Technology to Boost UAE's Logistics-Base Economy. Gulftainer, a privately owned, independent terminal operating and logistics company, today announced SAP as its strategic technology partner to drive the UAE's booming logistics-based economy.

Under the terms of the agreement, which was signed at Gulftainer's headquarters in Sharjah, with a delegation led by Ramesh Shivakumaran, Group Director Business Services, Gulftainer, and Sam Alkharrat, President SAP MENA and Tayfun Topkoc, Managing Director of SAP UAE; Gulftainer will deploy a range of SAP Solutions running on the SAP HANA platform, across fields such as enterprise resource planning, finance and payroll, and business planning and consolidation.

Ramesh Shivakumaran, Group Director Business Services, Gulftainer, said: "A flexible and efficient IT platform is critical to supply chain and logistics. At Gulftainer, we are committed to provide the highest standards of operational efficiency and partnership with SAP will enable a more efficient, cost-effective movement of international business through our terminals, providing actionable data necessary to increase productivity and reduce costs. Through continuous improvement of our business processes, we believe we can deliver better services and, as a result, gain competitive advantage."

The Middle East's transportation and logistics market is expected to grow to USD 27 billion by 2015 with automation, ordering management and real-time tracking supporting rapid growth. The UAE's Vision 2021, aims for the country to rise from No. 27 to the top 10 in the world in the World Bank's Logistics Performance Index.

"Port operators worldwide face increased congestion and regulations, along with an increased drive towards sustainability. Our technology solutions will enable Gulftainer and the UAE to become leaders in using technology to innovate operations, support a mobile workforce and operate more safely," said Tayfun Topkoc, Managing Director, SAP UAE.

Vinay Sharma, Group IT Manager, Gulftainer said: "Increasing automation has a significant impact on the supply chain and logistics sector and need to integrate all our stakeholders including customers, supplier, employee to have extended enterprise. We needed our data analysis solutions to provide real-time insights of our business operations to have better decision making system, which we achieve through SAP-HANA partnership. By building a strong IT infrastructure to strengthen our operational efficiency, we are contributing to the fast evolution of the UAE as one of the world's most advanced logistics hubs."

Additionally, Gulftainer will be partnering with CMC, a leading Systems Engineering and Integration company and part of the Tata group. CMC brings extensive expertise in business solutions for sea-ports and will provide a solid SAP deployment framework, based on best practices, for Gulftainer's core functions of Engineering, Asset Management, Human Capital Management, Payroll, Materials Management and Finance. "CMC feels proud and privileged to be selected by Gulftainer as the preferred IT partner for a state of the art ERP Implementation in partnership with SAP. CMC's domain knowledge, technology expertise and thought leadership in Transportation, Ports and Shipping management and SAP implementations worldwide will be leveraged in this prestigious project to the benefit of Gulftainer and their customers", said Mr. R. Ramanan, MD & CEO, CMC Limited.

With a global total throughput of over 6 million TEUs in ports in the UAE, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq, Brazil and the USA, Gulftainer aims to become one the world's top six container terminal operators by 2020.