CAIRO, Egypt, June 11, 2009 - Egypt's minister of communication and information technology, Dr. Tarek Kamel, joined executives from Cisco, Xceed and the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) to formally inaugurate an international contact center for Cisco® customer service and support.

The new contact center is already serving Cisco's customers in the Europe, Middle East, Africa, and emerging markets⁽¹⁾ in seven languages - Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. This announcement is in line with the initiative of Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to increase ICT exports, which is being executed by ITIDA. The contact center also plans to employ up to 300 full-time staff by its third year of operation. ITIDA will support the contact center with connection lines for the various countries for an initial three year duration.

Speaking at the press conference to mark the strategic collaboration Dr. Kamel, said that Egypt is currently focusing on attracting foreign investment in the field of outsourcing, customer service and support. He pointed out that global IT and telecommunications companies find that the Egyptian market provides real opportunity and competitive advantage for investment including low operational costs, political stability, and highly qualified human resources. He also added that many recent international reports have stated that the Egyptian IT and communications field is very promising as proved by the great achievements reached over the past few years. 

Joining the minister, Xceed and ITIDA executives at the press conference was Cisco's senior vice president for Customer Value Chain Management, Angel Mendez and Cisco's general manager for Egypt, Hani Abdel Aziz.

"In considering locations, Cisco specifically chose Egypt because it has many unique advantages for a contact center destination," commented Mendez. "Additionally, Egypt aligns with Cisco's focus to partner with emerging countries in order to create innovative and inclusive business models enabled by technology."

"Our decision to collaborate with Xceed and ITIDA was based on a number of principles: the quality of agents, accent neutrality and the ability to resolve customers' issues. In addition, the flexibility of both Xceed and ITIDA to adapt to our changing business needs and a cultural fit with Cisco will strengthen our ability to advance our country transformation agenda," commented Hani Abdel Aziz.

Xceed was selected due to its innovative, world-class offshore support services and dedication to quality. Xceed looks at each client independently to deliver solutions based on the client's existing business models and enhancing them to achieve specific goals with regard to client satisfaction and long-term profitability. "We are looking forward to a great working partnership with Cisco and are adamant that we will deliver an excellent customer experience," commented Adel Danish, Xceed chairman and CEO. "We already have ambitious plans to grow and expand this operation throughout the Middle East and North Africa region as customer demand grows."

Note to Editors:

(1) - Emerging markets comprise Latin America (Spanish and Portuguese language supported from Cairo), Middle East & Africa, Russia and Eastern Europe.

About Xceed

Xceed is a global provider of quality, multi-lingual Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services. We offer integrated customer care, technical support and associated back-office processing to commercial and governmental clients worldwide.

Xceed was established in 2001 to serve as the IT arm of Telecom Egypt with a client base of more than 11 million subscribers. Since then, Xceed has developed into a global provider of BPO services, with multi-sites at multiple locations. Xceed serves to be one of the largest contact centers in the Southern Mediterranean Region.

Xceed currently has four (4) sites within Egypt with its head quarters located in Cairo's technology park, The Smart Village. Xceed has an additional contact center, geographically and culturally proximate to Europe, at Morocco's technology park, "CasaNearshore Park". This site boasts a large, qualified Francophone talent pool. Xceed also has representing offices in Canada and Dubai.