Qatar has joined hands with Link Development, a leading IT solutions provider in the region, to develop its National Day portal based on the latest Microsoft SharePoint 2010 technology.

The announcement was made at the Middle East SharePoint conference which started on Sunday in Doha.

The government related portal aims to engage the community in the events and activities taking place on Qatar’s National Day on December 18 and will be launched shortly, said a senior government official at the Link-sponsored conference.

The country is gearing up for massive national day celebrations especially after its historic '2022 World Cup bid' win, said a statement from the State National Day Celebration Organizing Committee.

“We are pleased to announce the development of the portal on Microsoft SharePoint 2010. In line with our objective of utilising state-of-the-art technology, we decided to go ahead with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 as it is the business collaboration platform of choice for the enterprise and the Internet,' said a Committee spokesperson.

'We aim to provide our visitors with relevant, up to date, and easily accessible information through this advanced portal,” the official said.

'The core of the portal is the events module, aiming to highlight National Day celebrations. The site is all integrated with a multiple views calendar, a list of activities and details, along with content and media relevant to the events,' he added.

Mohammed Hammoudi, country manager, Microsoft Qatar, said, 'We are very pleased at having the Qatar National Day website hosted on the latest technology through our Microsoft SharePoint 2010 solution based on the Microsoft Hyper-V platform.'

'SharePoint 2010 will greatly enhance the user experience of visitors to the portal. The advanced features will provide visitors with user-friendly interfaces, interactivity, online collaboration and easy access to all information and content, allowing for a smart and efficient way to search and navigate the website,' he remarked.

Irini Raafat, managing director of Link Development, said the website carries the latest information and news about National Day as it was designed to provide Qatar’s nationals and visitors alike with a 360 degree view of the events as well as engagement and interaction across social media.

The site offers social network integration features, visitors to the website are able to log in with their Facebook account, minimizing time spent registering on the portal.-TradeArabia News Service