Partnership Orange - ASTRA Asigurãri
www.your-company.ro
Voice VPN
Orange Interactive



Partnership Orange - ASTRA Asigurãri
Interview with Dan Domnitanu - Vicepresident of ASTRA Asigurãri

What Orange communication solutions do you currently use in your company’s headquarters?
ASTRA Asigurãri is one of the local leaders on the dynamic Romanian insurance market. The fierce competition determines the insurance companies to look for new solutions in order to help their clients. ASTRA Asigurãri is aware of the fact that these elements are of high importance for its further development. That is why we have decided that for a long term strategic development, an integrated communication solution provided by a leader of the fixed and mobile voice and data market, at a high quality standard is essential.

Considering all these, the Orange solution is going to help us achieve our target of staying a leader through quality and competitiveness, values shared by both companies.
With the Orange communication solution, ASTRA Asigurãri benefits from a Virtual Private Network at the required quality standard and with immediate benefits in cost control, reliability, availability and monitoring.
The Orange-ASTRA partnership started in the 2000 with 61 voice subscriptions. At present, due to the development of our company and to the partnership with Orange we reached 240 voice subscriptions and 50 fax subscriptions. Through this partnership, ASTRA Asigurãri intends to benefit both from voice and data services from a sole provider. For the data communication solution Orange will design the Astra national VPN with 50 VPN radio links (with a high speed connection at the headquarters), an Internet Gateway and also the permanent connection with its agencies (108 connections) through GPRS.

What are the development directions of the Orange - ASTRA Asigurãri partnership?
The private insurance market is still at a low penetration level in Romania. In spite of this, we consider that the Orange - ASTRA Asigurãri partnership will develop, given the market’s estimated annual growth rate of about 25%, and taking into consideration a growth of over 40% of ASTRA Asigurãri and a constant increase of both the number of customers and employees. The present business environment offers the best conditions for an increased need of communication solutions, at a steady growth rate, both for the voice and data. This is how ASTRA Asigurãri will get closer to its clients and partners. At the same time ASTRA Asigurãri is known on the insurance market for its modern behavior and its capacity to put into practice the latest IT developments. The data communication network is going to be extended and the existing connections upgraded both in terms of capacity and number of terminals.

What has been improved in the current activity due to the use of the Orange solutions?
Although ASTRA Asigurãri benefits from a modern IT infrastructure, adapted to the present requirements, the market growth rate made us look for a solution that will answer - both qualitatively and financially - the development projects of our company. Thus, the partnership with Orange as a sole provider of communication services allowed us to cut total costs with about 30% while increasing quality. At the same time we are convinced that the Orange-ASTRA partnership will improve the image of both companies, which is a plus towards maintaining and developing the relationship with our partners and a guarantee of the services we provide to our clients.


www.your-company.ro

Starting July, Orange Romania offers you the web hosting service. Thus, your company has the opportunity to be present on the Internet. The service is available for all business customers who are benefiting or want to benefit from Internet access, both in dedicated versions or dial-up support.

In case your company doesn’t own a web hosting domain, Orange Romania will provide the ”ornet.ro” domain, for free. This way, your address can be www.your-company.ro, if you own that domain, or www. your-company.ornet.ro, if you do not own a particular domain.

Orange offers you a dedicated server for hosting the web pages, thus reducing the high costs involved by owning such an equipment and the necessity of providing a permanent connectivity to the Internet.

With the launching of the web pages hosting services you will benefit from:
the possibility of “building” yourself your hosting space
the possibility of using various programming techniques or enviroments involved in designing web pages, which will add dynamism and interactivity to those pages
the possibility of using the facilities offered by the Microsoft FrontPage application (included in some of the Microsoft Office packages); thus, from now on, it is not necessary that you address a specialized company in designing web pages, in case your presence on the Internet will not be of a high complexity
Thank You Points allocated, depending on the invoiced value for the web hosting services. The points may be consumed according to the Orange Thank You program rules.

Orange Romania has diversified its Internet access offer on Dial-up support by launching two new packages (Acces 20 and Acces Personal), by extending the coverage and by offering a new unique access number.



We are waiting for your opinions and suggestions at the e-mail address infocorporate@orange.ro.

.........................................