MEA November 2017

November 2017

Also in this Issue: Powered by Passion

A Steep Learning Curve Adamjee Life Assurance Co. A Vision Linked With a Mission

We invite Yuven Naidoo to provide an in-depth look at the institution’s valuable work in the higher education sector.

Editor’s Note

, Welcome to the November edition of MEA Magazine, providing you the latest news, deals and developments across the Middle East and Africa.

In recent news, on the 2nd November, Riverbed Technologies the promotion of Elie Dib to the position of Regional Vice President for Middle East, Turkey and North Africa (METNA) in recognition of his leadership of the regional sales team.

Gracing the covers of this month’s edition, is Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology (Pty) Ltd, previously PC Training and Business College, who commenced operations in 1998 in Tongaat as a Computer Training Centre. It established branches in the various provinces and today has a national footprint of over 70 sites. We invited Yuven Naidoo to provide an in-depth look at the institution’s valuable work in the higher education sector.

Elsewhere in this issue, LC & Partners Engineering Consultants is a multidisciplinary Construction Project Management and Integrated Engineering consultancy firm, operating on an international basis. We spoke to the Business Development team at the company as we ask them about being named Best Innovative Project Management Consultant 2017.

Here at MEA Markets, we hope that you enjoy reading this informative edition and look forward to hearing from you.

Jessica Daykin, Editor Phone: +44 (0) 203 725 6842 Email: j.daykin@aiglobalmedialtd.com Website: www.middleeast-markets.com

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Contents

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, 4. News 6.

A Steep Learning Curve

10. A Vision Linked With a Mission 12. Excellence, Engineered 14. Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 Broadens Reach for Enterprise Workloads 16. VAT in the Gulf Corporation Council—Accelerating Compliance with the Right ERP Platform 18. Riverbed and Zscaler First to Deliver Unified Cloud Networking and Security Solution 20. Public Cloud – Part of the Strategy for Middle East Organizations but Not The Strategy 22. Consolidation - The Foundation for IT and Business Transformation 24. Veeam Achieves 37th Quarter of Record Bookings Growth 26. Local Operations Personnel Connect with the International Sour Gas/Sulphur Community 28. Stratasys and e-Xstream Engineering Cooperate to Offer Customers Predictive Simulation Tools for Improved Process, Material and Part Performance 30. Etihad Airways Launches All-Cargo Flights at MIA

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Riverbed Technology announced on the 2nd November the promotion of Elie Dib to the position of Regional Vice President for Middle East, Turkey and North Africa (METNA) in recognition of his leadership of the regional sales team.

On the 2nd November, Riverbed Technology announced the promotion of Elie Dib to the position of Regional Vice President for Middle East, Turkey and North Africa (METNA) in recognition of his leadership of the regional sales team which has resulted in deeper penetration into key industry verticals including government, defence, finance, Oil & Gas and most recently, the retail sector.

Riverbed Promotes Elie Dib to Regional Vice President for Middle East, Turkey and North Africa 4 MEA MARKETS / November 2017

Dib will continue to report directly to Andy Elder, Senior Vice President, EMEA at Riverbed, who said, “Through his tenure at Riverbed, Elie has held senior management roles, including responsibility for the channel and subsequently our entire operations in the region. He has successfully implemented initiatives that have streamlined our business processes and strengthened our relationships with the channel community.�

Dib, who previously held the position of Regional Managing Director, METNA, was responsible for deepening relationships with key channel partners as well as leading the

NEWS

, sales team to drive much closer engagement with customers in the region. “Through our investment, we have developed a set of focused partners who have achieved the highest level of sales and technical proficiency across our portfolio, and together we are creating new business opportunities with our joint customers and delivering comprehensive, integrated solutions to them,” said Dib. As Regional Vice President, he intends to continue to focus on the sales, channel, and technical sales teams, and has a clearly defined strategy to position Riverbed as the fundamental provider of visibility for network, application and end-user experience monitoring. “Every enterprise is a potential customer for Riverbed and we will penetrate new accounts by first addressing their pressing need for end-toend visibility with our Riverbed® SteelCentral™ solution. Once we have demonstrated our ability to solve some of the greatest IT challenges organizations face, we can demonstrate the importance of the other products in our portfolio which are designed to tightly integrate into a holistic platform for application performance,” explained Dib. While Dib believes Riverbed SteelCentral is the entry point into new accounts, he is also keen to raise awareness around Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN).

The very recent Riverbed Future of Networking Global Survey 2017 reveals that 93% of respondents intend to implement SD-WAN within the next four years. Dib said, “While conversations are still in their early stages, we are keen to ensure our customers start adopting next-generation software-defined technologies, such as Riverbed® SteelConnect™, to keep pace with the changing demands of cloud and hybrid networking and help accelerate their digital transformation strategies.”

“We see plenty of opportunities in METNA characterised by enterprises that are keen to use the very latest technologies to enhance the services they deliver to customers.

Today, businesses run on applications, and our ability to address the performance, visibility, and control of applications, whether they are based on-premise or in the cloud, makes us extremely relevant to the market,” concluded Dib.

AESG Expands Workforce by 115% as Middle East Demand for Integrated Consultancy and Commissioning Services Grows AESG has further extended its position as the largest specialist consultancy firm in the Middle East with the expansion of its team by an impressive 115% in the last 12 months in spite of challenging market conditions.

UAE based consultancy firm specialising in solving complex challenges in the build environment, AESG has further extended its position as the largest specialist consultancy firm in the Middle East with the expansion of its team by an impressive 115% in the last 12 months in spite of challenging market conditions.

This follows a surge in the volume of multi-speciality as well as large commissioning projects that AESG has been awarded in recent months. Additions to the company’s team include highly-qualified project management specialists, façade engineers, fire and life safety consultants, commissioning managers, sustainability consultants and environmental consultants.

“A unique advantage of working with AESG is that clients are offered a comprehensive set of services from a single organization,” said Saeed Al Abbar, Director at AESG. “Providing all services as a unified package with dedicated project managers and streamlined processes has enabled us to deliver more integrated solutions. As there are strong interlinks between these service disciplines, our process is also more coordinated and efficient.”

Offering an example of this, Saeed explained, “A building façade has a significant influence on fire and

life safety, energy efficiency and sustainability. Having the expertise within one offering and employing tools such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) and parametric design allows us to deliver a more optimized and integrated end result.”

Key elements of AESG’s Specialist Consultancy Services- the company’s package of integrated servicesinclude fire and life safety, façade engineering, sustainable design, waste engineering and environmental consultancy. This year alone, the company has successfully delivered this comprehensive offering for a major residential development on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi which includes over 25 buildings, as well as for projects in the Dubai Creek Harbour and Dubai Business Bay. Adding to this, AESG’s commissioning division has recorded

notable project awards in the residential, hospitality, retail and critical infrastructure sectors.

In addition to augmenting the skills sets of its workforce, AESG intends to leverage its added headcount to penetrate new geographies and market verticals. “Our mission is to position AESG as a global market leader in consulting services by being the first UAE-owned and incubated engineering consultancy firm to penetrate global markets,” said Al Abbar.

Over the last 12 months, the company inaugurated its first operations hub outside the Middle East by opening an office in London, established a new division for Fire & Life Safety, and entered into partnership with Tecnalia, one of the largest research organizations in Europe employing more than 1,300 people.

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A Steep Learning Curve Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology (Pty) Ltd, previously PC Training and Business College, commenced operations in 1998 in Tongaat as a Computer Training Centre. It established branches in the various provinces and today has a national footprint of over 70 sites. We invited Yuven Naidoo to provide an in-depth look at the institution’s valuable work in the higher education sector.

The institution is registered with the Department of Higher Education as a Private Further & Higher Education and Training Provider, under the Further Education and Training Colleges Act, 2006 (Reg. no. 2008/FE07/050) and the Higher Education Act, 1997 (reg. no. 2000/HE07/008) respectively.

The institution is accredited by the Council on Higher Education (CHE), Umalusi and numerous SETAs. It is also aligning itself to the Quality Council on Trades and Occupations (QCTO).

Post School Education qualifications are offered at National FET Certificate, Higher Certificate, Advanced Certificate, Diploma and Degree levels in the fields of media, information & communications technology, business, management and economic sciences, and public management.

In addition, skills development, learnerships and short learning programmes are offered at all sites. Richfield has a proud track record with over 250 000 learners completing a range of programmes and qualifications in its rich history. The institution has made significant progress in increasing the number of

accredited sites, offering a wide range of higher education programmes. In the further education and training sector, it has 39 accredited sites offering accredited programmes through various SETAs. The institution also undertakes training with SETAs, corporates, municipalities and government departments.

The institution has developed an extensive national database of corporate employers that are currently providing work integrated placements for learners. A database of over 850 companies that have provided Work integrated learning (WIL) for learners. Work integrated learning has increased the rate of employability of learners.

The work readiness programme (WRP) complements the theoretical knowledge with contextualised, well-structured authentic learning in the work environment. WRP addresses areas not included in work integrated learning i.e. WRP complements WIL. From 2011, the institution implemented a compulsory work readiness programmes, consisting of life skills, soft skills and employment skills which would bridge the gap between life at college and work.

The institution’s intervention of

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WIL and WRP makes a positive contribution to the standard of graduates to the corporate world as endorsed by many employers during the employer surveys. Ratings based on employer surveys regarding the institution’s graduates, indicate that 86% of employers rated Richfield graduates’ knowledge and technical skills as ‘good to excellent’.

With teaching and learning, community engagement and research within its mission, Richfield strives to embody the basic convictions of the South African democratic ideals that individuals be given full opportunity to discover and develop their talents and interests, to pursue their unique potential and to achieve an intellectually, culturally and economically satisfying relationship with society.

The Academic Senate The Academic Senate is a subcommittee of the Board of Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology.

External members ensure that Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology can draw advice from other Higher Education role players, civil society, business and public universities.

The Academic Senate is the highest academic decision-making structure of Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology and in this capacity, directs academic policy for the Richfield Holdings Group.

The Academic Senate, is chaired by the Chief Executive Officer.

Cluster directors, senior national programme directors and campus managers, representing the intellectual capital of the institution.

Members of the board provide a range of quality assurance services on curriculum, programme planning and outcomes, work integrated learning and industry integration, ultimately guaranteeing that the learner is presented with the best possible qualification within his or her field of study.

Academic faculties Our improved programme offerings for 2017 are diverse and designed to meet and exceed the needs of business, industry, government and society with diverse learning options help within the following faculties: • Faculty of Business Leadership; • Faculty of Information Technology; • Faculty of Computer Applications & Systems

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Engineering; Faculty of Education, Recognition of Prior Learning and Skills; Faculty of Public Administration.

Graduates from Richfield remain a key resource to address the skills shortages in business administration, leadership, marketing management, finance and major projects requiring astute project management in the globalised economy.

Information technologies are one of the most important and promising fields given that qualified specialists with a Bachelor of Science degree in IT are needed in all areas of life – from business and science to the entertainment sector.

The Faculties of Information Technology, Computer Applications & Systems Engineering help develop experts in the fields of new technologies & applications, leading to software developers, engineering gurus and computer application specialists.

A range of tertiary qualifications based on various NQF levels and duration of study are offered.

Partnerships & affiliations In the current economic situation, it becomes mandatory for institutions to increase their networking opportunities through affiliations and partnerships. When partnerships are implemented correctly, the private sector can increase efficiency and choice, and expand access to education services, particularly for households that tend to be poorly served by traditional delivery methods.

Richfield’s relations with the private sector, encompass cooperation with business corporations, small and medium enterprises, professional and economic associations as well as other organisations of the business community, individuals, communities, parents and families.

Richfield recognises that when we collaborate with some of the most ambitious organisations, we can multiply our impact in

areas from education to economic development to poverty alleviation because of our ISO 9001:2015 accreditation status! We have enduring partnerships and affiliations with several like-minded organisations and leaders who are eager to help drive global change and deliver true results.

as a separate function, but is considered integral in all aspects of teaching and learning. The focus is particularly on areas where the institution has proven competencies that can alleviate developmental and capacity problems in identified communities.

The institution is a founding member of the Association of Private Providers of Education and Training (APPETD) and plays an active role in its activities. The institution is also active in Certified Institute of Professional Practitioners & Trainers (CIPPT), South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC).

The primary concern of our community engagement programme is to assist in making difference through the upliftment, development and supporting the communities. The institution prides itself on not just becoming involved in projects but also implementing expertise in an innovative manner to achieve sustainable improvement in the community.

We endeavour to integrate our CE projects with various research that would benefit the community.

University collaborations involve University of South Africa (UNISA), University of Kwa Zulu Natal (UKZN), Durban University of Technology (DUT), Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), Simon Fraser University, Mahatma Gandhi University, Manipal University, Namibia University of Technology and the University of Magdenburg.

Collaborations with publishers/ learning content developers include Press Reader, Zinio, Pearsons South Africa, Book Publishers, Cambridge University Press, McGraw-Hill, Emerald, Springer, Juta, Oxford, Wiley, Elsevier, Future Managers – Siyafunda, VMEdu, Labour Law Management Consulting- Ivan Israelstam.

We envisage engaging and affiliating with multiple agencies, to pool our resources, talents, and issues to create a comprehensive and better education for all for the future.

The institution sees community engagement as a key priority and therefore it is entrenched in our strategic objectives and in the vision and mission statements.

The institution feels that it is imperative to be responsive to the educational, cultural, economic, industrial, environmental and social needs of South Africa.

At Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology, Community Engagement is not treated

To assist Grade 12 learners in preparing for their final examinations, Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology together with the Department of Education and Avusa Media, compiles an educational supplement. This tool is used by grade 12 learners to improve results and increase access into higher education.

The institution also rolls out a national project, known as The Career Guidance Programme, through visitation at schools. Our Richfield team goes far and wide to schools across all borders to ensure that our future leaders are properly guided in making the best career choice for themselves.

We visit over 300 schools on a yearly basis bringing a sense comradeship and a whole lot of fun and laughter, to these schools with students even winning bursaries to study at our institution.

World class technology in education In 2017, all students registering for degrees & diplomas for the first year will receive a free Vodacom 10-inch Tablet PC including a two-year warranty, 16 GB memory card, BlueTooth keyboard, support lectures, e-books & e-libraries and 500Mb monthly data for 12 months.

The tablet PC being lightweight and portable, allows students to study for their relevant qualifications wherever and whenever it suits them. Each tablet PC is pre-loaded with relevant learning material for each student’s qualification. Our world class technology includes global podcasts of experts’ opinions on pertinent subjects; online entry to the integrated campus administration system and e-library for assignments, accounts information and examination results.

This initiative has transformed teaching & learning, by providing a more dynamic and interactive classroom experience that has paved the way for a more effective e -learning rollout. The tablet PC and the accompanying access to technology will change the way students and lecturers interact.

Tablets are currently the most well-known and sought after technological devices and are in huge demand for every aspiring student. These innovative devices have created a platform for effective communication and combines access to all in one convenient, connected device…a game changer.

Campus infrastructure Richfield’s mix of policies, frameworks, strategies and practices and reconfigured them, to provide learners with a world class learning experience. The legacy of the institution continues with the year 2016 loaded with a range of new initiatives. Some aspects are highlighted below.

World class institution The institution’s programmes have been historically driven by demand in the workplace. The National Scarce Skills List for South Africa provided by the Department of Labour as well as The Seta Sector Skills Plan demand work based programmes that are geared towards preparing learners in finding meaningful employment in the ICT, commerce, and government.

Work integrated learning Included in the curriculum are, compulsory work readiness skills

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and work integrated learning programmes requiring appropriate workplace assessment for all learners, before awarding qualifications.

Learner’s on-line Access to ‘Learner’s On-line’, a responsive learner support system which is integrated into the campus administration system and learner concerns framework of the institution facilitates learner progress.

Learner management system The institution has migrated to the Moodle Learner Management System, which is also used by major universities of the world.

Learners can directly access additional learning content from the website.

Relevant curriculum Developing and delivering curricula in line with industry and employer requirements are supported by an externally represented National Academic, Quality Assurance and Research Board (NAQARB) in line with the institution’s curriculum design and improvement framework.

Professional management Teaching and learning expertise on each campus, together with professional management, ensure that the learning needs of learners are met and that the quality of teaching for learning, community engagement, assessment and research is continually improved.

Studentsare provided us with a system of nationally managed, standardised learning materials and curricula which are reviewed and upgraded regularly. Student materials are also preloaded on tablet PCs, making them easily accessible.

Interactive learning Manageable class sizes allow for interactive teaching for learning and provision of strategic supplementary classes in smaller groups targeting specific needs in student development.

Community engagement An effective community engagement (CE) strategy makes campuses more accessible to the communities they serve. Joint

projects and use of institutional infrastructure for CE purposes are encouraged.

Quality assurance Nationally managed assessments, examinations and external moderation ensures consistency and uniformity of standards in all our campuses throughout South Africa.

Quality Council on Trade & Occupations (QCTO) The skills development landscape is currently under review with the formation of the Quality Council on Trade & Occupations. The institution is keeping abreast with all developments in this regard.

Internet enabled libraries Access to internet enabled libraries and laboratories, that offer full text electronic database downloads for teaching and learning purposes, are available to learners.

Administrative systems The implementation of the Integrated Campus Administration System (ICAS) has contributed to the development of the institution’s MIS and has facilitated integration into the HEQCIS, Umalusi and SETA MIS eventually working its way to the NLRD Campus social life All campuses have staff responsible for work integrated learning, social and cultural activities and community engagement programmes. Social Networks using Wi-Fi connectivity and tablet PC’s are encouraged and freely available at all campuses.

Benchmarking An active benchmarking strategy of our key processes, programmes and curricula with other private, public, national, international and trade organisations is carried out in the constant pursuit of excellence and continued improvement.

Academic infrastructure The institution has state of the art facilities and highly qualified academic and support staff including a mix of foreign academic professionals who also provide rare and critical skills.

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Employment and Skills Development Agency (ESDA) The Department of Higher Education/Labour has awarded the status of an Employment and Skills Development Agency (ESDA) to the institution in all nine provinces.

Articulation of qualification The institution’s qualifications are positioned on the National Qualification Framework (NQF) and certain qualifications are also positioned on the new HEQSF. All qualifications have an occupational content and allow for vertical and horizontal articulation.

Distance learning Distance learning study through Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology’s Distance Learning has the benefit of allowing you to develop your career without having to leave employment, or to pursue a qualification when family or other personal commitments make full time study on campus impractical.

Distance learning now enjoys a key role in many of the world’s higher education systems and it is likely to expand in the future as new ways of teaching and studying which make use of new technologies, especially in the digital divide, become available. As an institution committed to Digital Information Technology (DIT) Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology is becoming the centre for ‘mLearning’ and is committed to the further development of flexible learning systems.

work experience afforded to a learner as part of the fulfilment of his/her programme of study towards a qualification. It includes: • Time spent working in industry, commerce and/or the community; • Work-related field trips and; • Work in a simulated or actual environment for an appropriate period.

The institution has adopted the Council on Higher Education’s Work Integrated Learning: Good Practice Guide in implementing Work Integrated Learning.

During this period, the learner will demonstrate progress towards the achievement of learning outcomes that are embedded within the specific and critical cross-field outcomes of the learner’s programme. Learners are provided with direct and realistic feedback at the workplace about their performance in a way that allows them to improve.

The aims of WIL include the following: • To enable learners to utilise their work-based learning to supplement the theoretical knowledge • To allow for employer/learner negotiated learning • To permit professional and personal development through WIL • To facilitate upgrading of knowledge and/or skills in an area of vocational interest • To provide opportunity for a gradual introduction into the workplace

In distance learning, students acquire course knowledge principally through their study of texts and other electronic media such as a: PC, tablet, laptop, iPad or cell phone. They are assessed in much the same way as for other modes of learning.

There is often provision for some face-to-face tuition, although this is not as substantial as it is in conventional full-time learning.

Instead, there is a more intensive use of communications such as email, Skype, YouTube and other audio-visual media.

The focus of our WIL Strategy is on attaining work placement for our learners; their learning in and from the workplace; critical reflection in and on learning; its relevance for them in terms of enhanced skill, knowledge, understanding and potential; its relevance for employers for performance, contribution and output. While lecture room learning is a mainstream method of learning, WIL aims at improving the quality of employer engagement activities through:

Work integrated learning Work Integrated Learning (WIL) refers to the real-life or simulated

Providing better support for work placements; • Promoting joint (employer-

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institutional) curriculum development; Supports a more structured collaboration between Seta’s, public institutions and other stakeholders such as professional bodies.

Embedding higher education into the skills infrastructure, particularly at local level through such initiatives as work based learning programmes and n service training.

Improving the institutions capacity to manage market intelligence on skills issues, and undertake regular evaluation of employer satisfaction of graduate skills and qualities in-line with our BBA and BSc.

Library & e-library resources Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology possesses a substantial academic library collection of over 60 000 textbooks across its 30 libraries nationally.

The library subscribes to an increasing number of electronic journals (e-journals) and electronic books (e-books) from leading publishers such as Elsevier, Swets and EdITLib. This vast collection of over 3000 e-books and e-journals are available to learners and staff online 24/7 via the internet, regardless of the user’s physical location. PC Training and Business College is registered to the African Digital Library. The ADL has a collection of 8714 e-Books consisting of: • The African digital library collection (3808 titles) • A publicly assessable collection (4906 titles) The collection includes a wide variety of subjects ranging from arts, astronomy, mathematics, technology and engineering, medicine and health. As from 2012, learners had access to the eLibrary collection directly from their tablet PC’s. At each site the library has qualified staff to assist learners with their research and general enquiries. The recent rapid growth has seen a heightened emphasis on creating specialised libraries at each new site as well as creating an atmosphere to

foster and nurture creative thinking and innovation.

The library also houses a resource centre which accommodates corporate training material, currently containing 225 DVD materials sourced from Harvard University, Stanford University and Knowledge Resources to enhance skills which will make the transition to employment effortless. Along with this collection, digital materials on 261 courses on computer and soft skills containing lesson plans, power point slides, tutorials and practice assessments have been purchased from Velsoft.

One of the tasks of managing eLearning will be to take stock of the current approach, and develop a plan for improving the digital academic literacies of our learners. They are highly connected, and collaboration is second nature to them, whether collaboration within formal learning situations or outside of them.

One of the key challenges in managing eLearning is to take stock of the current approach and to develop a plan for improving the digital academic literacies of our learners. The following schematic model illustrates digital academic literacies in relation to the academic programme and the type and frequency of interventions.

The institution has arranged a bulk volume subscription for all its learners with ScienceDirect, which supplies eBooks and eJournals to various research institutions and

universities throughout the world.

Elsevier’s SciVerse integrates the familiar, trusted content from ScienceDirect, Scopus and scientific websites – with the forward-looking community developed applications that enrich and expand content value. By combining peer reviewed content with productivity enhancing applications, SciVerse serves as a vital scientific ecosystem that facilitates collaboration, rewards innovation and accelerates science.

Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology envisages the gradual, sustained migration from hardcopy to electronic versions of all key library resource material, in keeping with our commitment to advanced technology as well as a greener future. Learners are encouraged to explore all available resources and are supported in all aspects of library usage. They are motivated to take their learning to the next level with Richfield as their partner.

Recognition of prior learning Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is the process whereby skills and knowledge, gained by individuals outside formal learning processes, are assessed and granted formal recognition. It is seen as a catalyst for social transformation as it provides the tools whereby candidates of all ages, can gain access to jobs and places of higher education, previously unavailable to them because of their lack of formal education. RPL serves to develop

South Africa’s existing human capital thereby strengthening the country’s economy.

Why Should You Consider RPL? • To gain a formal qualification of the skills you acquired in the workplace, to secure that much deserved promotion; • To enable you to bridge the gap between informal, non-formal prior learning and formal learning; • To gain access to a higher course of study despite the entrance criteria.

The RPL Process Prior learning is assessed against the requirements of formal training programmes, in accordance with the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA).

This assessment is carried out by academic specialists in the relevant fields with assistance from trained RPL assessors. Once assessment has been carried out and RPL learners have been declared competent and ready to enter formal training at a certain level, support opportunities are made available to enable them to bridge the gap between non-formal and formal learning and thus to succeed at their chosen lifelong learning paths.

Company: Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology, Name: Yuven Naidoo Email: ynaidoo@richfield.ac.za Web Address: www.rgi.co.za Address: 292 Anton Lembede Street, Durban Telephone: +27 31 304 9340

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A Vision Linked With a Mission Adamjee Life Assurance Co. provides insurance solutions to clients.

The company offers a variety of products, with some relating to insurance online.

Based in Karachi, Pakistan, Adamjee operates with the vision of creating a superior Global Insurance company, which will be the single largest player in the market through innovation.

Innovative in a variety of areas, staff are working hard to achieve this vision through products in pricing, packaging and distribution, therefore revolutionising the industry.

Furthermore, the company has a mission to deliver outstanding profitability, benefitting its customers, employees and shareholders, all the time whilst providing a premium service. For the company to be successful, all employees must be working towards reaching the same targets, and the company ensures this by embedding the firm’s vision and mission into its staff culture. Customer focused, Adamjee and its staff always place the client first, guaranteeing that clients will be satisfied and pleasantly surprised by the exceptional service and products offered to them.

Founded in 2008, the formation of Adamjee Life is a result of the partnership between Adamjee Insurance and Hollard, South Africa. Both partners are well established and have a glorious legacy of providing to quality need based insurance

product and services to the Pakistani market for over 60 years. Significantly, technical expertise exists not only in Pakistan but also South Africa through collaboration with Hollard Insurance Co. Ltd, the largest private insurance group in South Africa which has invested sizeable amounts in emerging markets.

Possessing extensive knowledge and expertise, particularly within the local market, Adamjee is able to gain valuable consumer and market insight, and also the capability to provide comprehensive solutions to clients’ insurance products, as well as servicing requirements.

Interestingly, since the partnership between the two companies, the services and products offered by the firm have been vital in Adamjee’s ongoing success. Collaboration between staff as well as the partners has been a crucial factor in producing the best products and providing the best services.

Operating with a firm vision, and a linked mission, the company is also committed to many other various factors, all of which have played some part in its success.

Adamjee is committed to making a difference within the community and the society it strives to serve, mostly through behaviours which demonstrate its dedication.

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Additionally, Adamjee adheres to applicable laws and regulations which govern company’s business conduct. The team aim to provide intelligent and innovative solutions which meet its client’s requirements through a practical approach, and this will help the company create new value, and subsequently accelerating its delivery quality system and services.

A competitive industry, companies must work fast and creatively, but also maintain its integrity. Staff are engrained to promote integrity in all of the company’s relationships. All employees enjoy working at the firm, as the team aim to create a dignified workplace, based on honest, open and respectful communication, as well as fair and unbiased treatment of each other and all of its partners.

g A Vision Linked With a Mission Company: Adamjee Life Assurance Limited Address: The Forum, Suite No. 301, 3rd Floor, Plat G-20, Block 9, Clifton Karachi, Pakistan Phone: 0092-21 35362620 Website: www.adamjeelife.com

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Excellence, Engineered LC & Partners Engineering Consultants today is a multidisciplinary Construction Project Management and Integrated Engineering consultancy firm operating on an international basis. We spoke to the Business Development team at the company as we ask them about being named Best Innovative Project Management Consultant 2017.

Thanks to LC & Partners Engineering Consultants’ global experience and fruitful relationships with public and private clients, the company boasts a wide spectrum of capabilities across different sectors, both for greenfield and enhancement projects.

LC & Partners Engineering Consultants offers innovative and sustainable solutions with the aim of solving the most complex and demanding challenges, both in emerging and fast-growing economies and in more stable and structured economies. The company operates in three main areas of activity: Infrastructures (roads and highways, airport and railways), Buildings (hospitals, schools, hotels, high-rise and luxury villas) and Energy & Environment.

Every project involves a complex interdisciplinary effort.

At LC & Partners Engineering Consultants, all relevant technical disciplines for the main Areas of Activities, i.e. Infrastructures, Energy & Environment and Buildings, are mastered through in-house expertise and trusted specialist sub-consultants, ensuring an effective integration among specialist design components within the overall Project framework.

Modern construction projects are often extremely complex and require effective management in order to ensure that quality, time and costs as per Client’s expectations are met at all stages and for all project components. LC & Partners Engineering Consultants offers fully integrated Portfolio, Programme and Construction Project Management services which can be flexibly adapted to the nature and the peculiarity of each single project (or group of projects), client and context of operations and cover the entire life cycle of the project.

their win since, before explaining how they think industry awards benefit firms such as themselves.

Furthermore, LC & Partners Engineering Consultants puts a great deal of effort into assuring the best quality of the provided services while preserving the occupational health and safety of the employees and the environmental sustainability of its operations. These objectives are pursued through the implementation of an Integrated Management System for quality, environment and safety, which is fully compliant with ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015, OHSAS 18001:2007, of which is certified.

“Industry awards are certainly an interesting opportunity for firms such ours to showcase their services and gain attention in the market, especially in such competitive and globally connected times where media reputation is a fundamental key to success.”

Starting off, the team tell us how it feels to have been given their award, and what they believe the reasons behind the success are and how they have showcased

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“At LC & Partners Engineering Consultants, we were very pleased to learn about the award and the satisfaction for the achievement was not just that of the management but also, and foremost, that of the team that has made it possible. We believe the reasons behind this success, is the company’s attitude towards constant improvement and innovation. We have showcased our win on our website and on our social media profiles.

Amongst its many credentials and modern day thinking, there is one distinguishing factor which sets LC & Partners Engineering Consultants apart from other similar firms within the industry, and that is its innovation and obsession with excellence, as the team allude to.

“Fundamentally, the most distinguishing character of LC & Partners Engineering

Consultants, among all, is certainly our obsession of excellence and our constant innovative state of mind. In these times of increasing complexity and rapidly changing contexts, this translates in a very agile organization, capable of delivering effective services with a very pro-active and problem-solving attitude, with great focus on risk management and prevention and with the customers’ satisfaction always in mind.”

Nearing towards the end of the interview, the team explain what type of feedback they have received from customers since being named as Best Innovative Project Management Consultant 2017, and how they plan to capitalise on the success of the company.

“Since winning our award, our best clients congratulated us for the achievement, stressing how this is a well-earned recognition of the efforts made

by LC & Partners Engineering Consultants in developing a business approach that clearly distinguishes our services from those offered by our competitors.

After all, innovation is key for maintaining a stable competitive advantage.”

Ultimately, as we move towards the future, LC & Partners

g Excellence, Engineered

Engineering plans to capitalise on its continuous success, as the team sign off by explaining how they will always look to improve the services that they can offer to clients, coming up with new ways to be more efficient. “Moving forward, by continuing in our quest to constantly innovate, finding better ways to service our clients in a cost-efficient way.

In this perspective, growth is expected to come as the result of a further consolidation of our reputation in the market as a young and dynamic, innovative construction project management firm.�

Contact: Business Development Team Contact Email: info@lcandpartners.com Telephone: +971-4-4470812 Web Address: www.lcandpartners.com

MEA MARKETS / November 2017 13

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Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 Broadens Reach for Enterprise Workloads Latest release of industry-leading object storage platform strengthens support for OpenStack and heterogeneous environments, improves usability and performance.

On the 8th November, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, Red Hat, Inc. announced DUBAI, UAE, 8th November 2017 – Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced Red Hat Ceph Storage 3, a major upgrade to its massively scalable, softwaredefined object storage platform, with the introduction of support for block storage via iSCSI and file storage via CephFS. With these additions, Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 extends the value of unified storage in OpenStack and heterogeneous environments, substantially broadening the use cases for the storage platform built for petabyte scale deployments.

Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 builds on Red Hat’s years of leadership in object storage, enables more robust and better performance at scale, and introduces the ability to deploy storage in containers for greater cost-savings and operational efficiencies.

Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 includes the following highlights: • Enables a large variety of storage needs in OpenStack, helping enterprises fully exploit the scale of the platform for cloud infrastructure deployments without incurring costs of discrete storage systems that need to be procured and managed separately. The introduction of CephFS, a POSIX-compatible, scaleout file system complements the existing block and object storage support provided

by Red Hat Ceph Storage for OpenStack. Customers will be able to incorporate storage more effectively with OpenStack for private cloud deployments across a number of use cases including web-scale cloud, Network Functions Virtualization infrastructure (NFVi), and development/ compute clouds.

•

Eases migration from legacy storage platforms through newly added support for the iSCSI interface for wider platform

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support and increased breadth of use cases, including backup and recovery. This is particularly beneficial to heterogeneous storage environments such as VMware and Windows that lack a native Ceph driver. The iSCSI gateway enables enterprises to use a single, cost-effective, and highly scalable, block storage platform for existing virtualization infrastructure alongside their use of Ceph with modern workloads, reducing the need for dedicated Storage Area Networks (SAN).

•

Deploys enterprise storage in Linux containers for simplified operations and a smaller hardware footprint.

Containerized storage daemons enable users to run Red Hat Ceph Storage on fewer servers by co-locating services that previously required dedicated hardware, while avoiding the risk of resource conflicts. Preliminary tests based on a standard Red Hat Ceph Storage

cluster configuration showed lowered hardware expenditure by at least 24 percent. This is particularly relevant to telco customers, such as those implementing NFVi, who struggle with hardware and space constraints.

Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 also aims to significantly improve the user experience by helping administrators proactively monitor and troubleshoot distributed storage clusters via a graphical view of usage data for the cluster as a whole, or its individual components. The new web-based interface, which includes more than a dozen dashboards, is based on the upstream Ceph Metrics project.

This release also adds several other usability enhancements and layers of automation, such as dynamic bucket sharding, designed to help simplify maintenance and lower operational costs.

This release builds on Red Hat’s momentum in the storage market. Recently, Red Hat Storage was positioned in the “Visionaries” quadrant of

g Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 Broadens Reach for Enterprise Workloads

Gartner’s October 2017 Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage for the second year in a row. Red Hat is positioned the furthest right for completeness of vision and the highest in ability to execute within the Visionaries quadrant.

Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 is based on the community version of the open source Ceph Luminous project, to which Red Hat is a leading code contributor.

Availability Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 is expected to be generally available in November 2017.

Supporting Quotes “Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 represents a key milestone for OpenStack, VMware, and Windows communities in need of a unified storage solution.

With this release, Red Hat lays the groundwork for all softwarebased storage services to be delivered as containers in the future while helping customers increase agility and shrink deployment costs.”

- Ranga Rangachari, vice president and general manager, Storage, Red Hat “Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 is probably the most advanced software-defined storage solution combining extreme scalability, inherent disaster resilience, and significant price-capacity value. By combining Red Hat Ceph Storage with Fujitsu server technology and networking components to a complete solution stack including endto-end maintenance services, we are helping customers fully benefit from open source SDS without the implementation and life-cycle risks of a ‘build-yourown-storage’ approach.”

- Olivier Delachapelle, head of Data Center Category Management EMEIA, Fujitsu “Spending on software-defined storage solutions continues to outpace spending on traditional storage architectures. Softwaredefined storage offers the capabilities needed in digital transformation namely IT agility with greater levels of automation

and lower capital costs. Red Hat Ceph Storage provides a highly scalable, unified and softwaredefined platform supporting performance at scale for current workloads while providing the ability to deploy storage in containers and easily manage storage in OpenStack cloud infrastructure deployments.”

- Laura DuBois, group vice president, IDC Eric Endebrock, vice president, Marketing, Storage Business Unit, Micron Technology, Inc. “As cloud computing evolves to all-flash infrastructures, Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 supports that trend in many ways, such as enabling native writes to the block storage device to provide a strong performance boost. Micron Accelerated Ceph Storage clusters were built on Red Hat Ceph Storage with Red Hat’s collaboration. Based on scalable all-NVMe™ reference

architectures, they are a prime example of the performance achievements gained from tuning IT for such IO-intensive workloads.” - Eric Endebrock, vice president, Marketing, Storage Business Unit, Micron Technology, Inc. “Providing enough scalable object-based storage to meet the capacity needs of our online architecture has been critical for our researchers and our Node of the National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (Nectar) research cloud. Monash has worked extensively and successfully with Red Hat Ceph Storage for nearly two years to support a variety of use cases including the Nectar project. We are excited about achieving even greater economies with containerized storage daemons in Red Hat Ceph Storage 3, and new support for iSCSI and CephFS

gives us the opportunity to service native Windows research workstations around the campus and offer programmatic access to project-specific file systems in our OpenStack clouds.”

- Blair Bethwaite, senior HPC consultant, Monash eResearch Center “Rackspace has continued to work with Red Hat to refine and innovate our award-winning Rackspace OpenStack Private Cloud powered by Red Hat offering since launching it in February 2016. Red Hat Ceph Storage is an integral part of our private cloud offering. We are excited by the continued innovation in the Ceph project, and the lengths that Red Hat goes to support successful consumption in an enterprise setting.” - Bryan Thompson, general manager of OpenStack Private Cloud, Rackspace

MEA MARKETS / November 2017 15

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VAT in the Gulf Corporation Council—Accelerating Compliance with the Right ERP Platform Epicor regional vice president, Middle East & Africa, Monzer Tohme provides an interesting article on the accelerating compliance with the right ERP platform.

The clock is ticking.

In January 2018, the UAE and Saudi Arabia will adopt a Value Added Tax (VAT) at a standard rate of 5%, with the rest of the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) to follow soon after. The UAE’s Ministry of Finance has explained in clear terms what is required of businesses—that they “will be responsible for carefully documenting their business income and costs, and associated VAT charges”. For those familiar with VAT compliance in other countries, there are no surprises here. And PwC, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and many others have already published whitepapers cataloguing the nuanced challenges of VAT in the Arab Gulf region.

The benefits of VAT are well established. For business, compliance is relatively straightforward and the tax is neutral to economic hiccups and changes in trading and distribution patterns. Governments benefit from VAT being a proven inflation-neutral system, and Gulf governments in particular can be assured of steady funding for public spending, to cover any possible shortfall in nonoil GDP in the midst of a dip in

petrochemical prices.

Operational readiness But benefits aside, being prepared for VAT compliance can be a daunting prospect. If you manufacture, distribute or sell goods you need to understand its impact, and have a working knowledge of input and output tax. You need to understand the difference between Standard, Zero and Exempt rates. How will you manage VAT as it pertains to your cash flow? What deferredpayment schemes are available and how can you optimise the timing of recovery of VAT on costs? If your business crosses national boundaries, you need to consider the requirements of customs authorities—VAT will add an additional layer to import-export regulations, and full compliance will demand deft handling.

In addition to all of these considerations, it is expected that there may be many exemptions and exceptions when it comes to intra-GCC transactions. And there will remain the significant grey area of government suppliers, where a public agency may have its exempt status suspended for the purposes of maintaining a competitive market.

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Different industries will need to address these complexities in different ways, in addition to keeping on top of their own sector specific issues.

Financial services The finance sector traditionally enjoys many exemptions when it comes to VAT. In the case of GCC VAT, it is expected that these exemptions will extend to Shariah-compliant banking and insurance (takaful), but industry players will have to wrestle with a certain amount of complexity to make proper use of these benefits. Organisations need to ensure that services are identified correctly as exempt or taxable, and that VAT on reverse-charges is properly managed. Banks and other financial institutions may need to reassess the design of products to comply, not only with VAT, but with fundamental changes in consumer needs.

Manufacturing Organisations within the manufacturing supply-chain will feel acutely exposed to the impact of VAT. Smooth implementation is crucial, to ensure sustained cash flow and optimal operating efficiency. Manufacturers must keep price fluctuations firmly in mind, just as their customers will, and pay due attention to new

invoicing requirements. Those that are involved in trade with other countries inside and outside the GCC, should be prepared to comply with the strict auditing requirements of customs officials.

Hospitality and tourism Airlines, hotels, travel agents, and other industry specialists will have very different VAT stories to tell.

The reason for this complexity lies not only in the vast operational differences between, say, an air carrier and a hotel, but also in the differentiation between a principal and an agent. In a recent report on GCC VAT by Deloitte, the consultancy firm pointed out that “many tourism businesses describe themselves as an ‘agent’”, but for the purposes of VAT compliance they must “consider if they are acting as a principal in reality, while referring to themselves an ‘agent’”.

Other complexities will arise for the sector in its dealing with inbound and outbound business.

Depending on an end-customer’s itinerary, multiple different rates of VAT may apply, depending on which country is deemed to be the origin of the business transaction—the so-called “place of supply”.

Technology to the rescue Whether you run a fully fledged,

g VAT in the Gulf Corporation Council—Accelerating Compliance with the Right ERP Platform

integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system or a standalone finance package, you will likely have access to basic VAT functionality. But compliance with new country-specific regulations within the GCC may require anything from mild configuration to extensive procurement.

Whatever your scenario, aim for extensible functionality and flexible options that minimise the likelihood of financial penalties. With a series of interlocking global engines, you can easily configure the rules that determine how transactions are posted, where they are posted, how tax is calculated, how currency is handled, and how data is stored.

Demand flexibility, so you can add the functionality that makes sense for your business. The best solutions are designed around core functions that worldwide tax systems have in common, with national variations as configuration options.

In particular, ensure your chosen ERP system is capable of producing the required level of documentation. A comprehensive set of electronic-compliance features is advisable, as is a structured reporting framework that can produce VAT submissions in a wide variety of formats.

Remember that non-compliance can have a detrimental effect not only on the corporate purse, but on brand credibility. Managing the intricacies of VAT regulations is made a lot easier with the right technology platform for commerce.

MEA MARKETS / November 2017 17

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Riverbed and Zscaler First to Deliver Unified Cloud Networking and Security Solution Seamless integration of Riverbed SteelConnect SD-WAN and Zscaler cloud security platform streamlines networking and security, and provides agility for the modern enterprise.

On the 13th November, Riverbed Technology announced a joint solution with Zscaler, a leader in cloud security, to enable organizations to securely transform to the cloud.

The seamless integration of Riverbed’s cloud networking and software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) solution, SteelConnect, with the Zscaler™ cloud security platform, enables enterprises to accelerate the adoption of cloud and incorporate Internet broadband-based transport in branch and remote office business locations without compromising network security.

This unified solution provides a powerful combination that delivers greater business agility, better user experience and lower costs – all while ensuring advanced protection for networks and end-users.

Enterprises are rapidly moving to the cloud to capitalize on the benefits of digital transformation.

However, legacy network infrastructure and security approaches are becoming increasingly irrelevant in a cloud and mobile-first world.

In addition, legacy hardware approaches are complex, labour intensive to manage, and difficult to maintain, while security approaches that backhaul all Internet-bound traffic into data centers compromise performance and end-user experience. To address these challenges, businesses are transitioning from legacy hardware to a new software-defined and cloudcentric networking approach in order to achieve greater IT agility, a faster pace of innovation and lower costs, as businesses increasingly succeed or fail based on their IT outcomes.

Riverbed SteelConnect SDWAN and Zscaler cloud security together enable businesses to securely connect the right user to the right application on any device, from any location.

Riverbed and Zscaler have

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integrated Zscaler into the application-defined policy and orchestration engine via the SteelConnect graphical user interface (GUI), streamlining the approach for identifying and steering traffic to the Zscaler Security Cloud. The solution dynamically chooses the optimal Zscaler Data Center, with more than 100 worldwide, to use for each site in the SteelConnect network, providing enterprises with simplicity and power for expanding their use of cloudbased services and Internet Broadband across their hybrid WAN. “Enterprises are in the midst of a major transition from legacy, hardware-based approaches to software-defined networking in order to keep pace with changing business needs in today’s cloudfirst world. However, as today’s hybrid IT landscape becomes more distributed, managing and securing enterprise networks have introduced new challenges,” said Jerry M.

Kennelly, Chairman and CEO of Riverbed Technology. “With native, seamless integration of Zscaler security with Riverbed SteelConnect, businesses can now leverage the simplicity of policy-based network orchestration with the power and reach of cloud-based security across remote business locations.”

“The rise of cloud and mobile technologies has challenged enterprises to evolve perimetercentric networking and security approaches that no longer serve them,” said Jay Chaudhry, CEO and founder of Zscaler.

“The seamless integration of Zscaler’s cloud security platform with Riverbed’s SD-WAN solution lets companies securely adopt a cloud-first strategy, simplifying branch operations while achieving unrivalled performance, agility, and control.”

Key benefits of the SteelConnect SD-WAN and Zscaler Cloud Security joint solution:

g Riverbed and Zscaler First to Deliver Unified Cloud Networking and Security Solution

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Enables simplified branch operations and improved business agility with centralized, cloud-based management of network and security functions. With a few clicks, businesses can now seamlessly deploy SD-WAN capabilities in the cloud, along with cloud security, enabling new sites to be brought online in minutes or hours, not days or weeks, eliminating the need to buy, deploy, and manage security appliances in all branch office locations.

Delivers fast connectivity to apps and data, regardless of network type or user location, by enabling local Internet breakouts. Zscaler provides seamless protection with the largest cloud security platform peered with the leading cloud providers.

SteelConnect is the only SD-WAN solution that provides unified connectivity and orchestration spanning WAN, W/LAN, cloud and data centers, offering enterprises the ability to scale elastically to enable rapid deployment of configuration changes, updates or policy modifications without impacting performance or requiring appliance refreshes.

Ensures universal protection of users regardless of how they connect to the network by enforcing advanced threat prevention, data protection and access controls without compromising performance.

SteelConnect SD-WAN and Zscaler Cloud Security work seamlessly together; web and cloud traffic is routed to the optimal Zscaler Data Center based on application and user-defined policies, to ensure nothing bad comes in and nothing good leaks out.

“Access from the branch to the cloud is important for enterprises with the rising use of SaaS applications, and SD-WAN solutions like

Riverbed SteelConnect provide a holistic solution. But direct internet connections raise security concerns,” said Dan Conde, Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Integrating a cloud access security broker like Zscaler with tight SD-WAN integration is a way to create a single enterprise-wide view of the network – from cloud to the branch office. The tight integration and common administration of Zscaler with Riverbed SteelConnect provides a distinctive advantage, offering simplicity and ease of operation.”

Initially launched in April 2016, Riverbed SteelConnect is the industry’s first and only SD-WAN solution that unifies deployment and orchestration of hybrid

WANs, branch networks, and cloud environments, including one-click connectivity and optimization into AWS and Microsoft Azure. SteelConnect also enables zero-touch provisioning, allowing an enterprise to set-up a global network and connect to the cloud in minutes, and easy ongoing network management that provides the ability to make network or business/application policy changes with a few clicks of a mouse.

Since the initial launch of SteelConnect, Riverbed has added numerous new features including integration with SteelCentral for visibility and insights, integration with the market-leading WAN

Optimization solution (Riverbed SteelHead SD), dynamic routing, and following the strategic acquisition of Xirrus (leading cloud-based Wi-Fi company) in May 2017, enterprise-grade WiFi – bringing the power of policybased network management out to the wireless edge. Riverbed SteelConnect continues to gain market momentum, and today Riverbed has hundreds of SD-WAN customers across all industries. This year, Riverbed announced strategic partnerships with service providers Orange Business Services and Optus Business, who are leveraging SteelConnect to deliver an SDWAN managed service to their customers.

MEA MARKETS / November 2017 19

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Public Cloud – Part of the Strategy for Middle East Organizations but Not The Strategy Taking time to provide an interesting, in-depth article on Pure Storage is CIO of Pure Storage, Yousuf Khan.

For consumers and businesses alike, digital technology has proven disruptive.

Consumers can, in theory, embrace or reject the trend as they see fit. But a reluctance to embrace digital technologies can leave organizations falling behind competitors. The good news is that enterprises in the Middle East are already making strides in this area. In a recent survey we conducted, of 300 IT decision makers in the region, 72 percent of respondents stated that their organizations are committed to being informationbased companies. In fact, the survey found that digital solutions already contribute almost 50 percent of revenue in these companies.

It is often the responsibility of IT leaders to innovate in line with the business’ digital vision, without breaking the bank. In response to this pressure, over the past several years, public cloud has seen increased adoption across a multitude

of industries. The demand for simpler storage, combined with an unprecedented explosion of data, has created the perception of an unstoppable drive toward the public cloud. A “cloud-first” strategy is the popular buzzword for executive leadership. But it’s important to understand what that really means.

The narrative that cloud and traditional storage are at direct odds, while compelling, is oversimplified. Within today’s landscape, there are more options than just public cloud and traditional on-premise.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has exploded, while private cloud has also seen significant increase in relevancy. A strategy that deploys some combination of these options is referred to as hybrid cloud. This is a route that most enterprises in the Middle East are opting to go down as evidenced by findings of the survey where 69 percent of businesses say they will increase their public cloud usage in the next 18-24 months. In parallel, private cloud (57 percent) and

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SaaS (56 percent) usage is also expected to grow in the same timeframe.

In my conversations with more than 70 CIOs, VPs of Infrastructure and technology leaders over the past several months, the general consensus is two-fold: • Organizations that aren’t using public cloud in some capacity are likely missing out • Public cloud is part of a strategy – but it’s not the strategy Strategic infrastructure is key to optimizing for the new reality of digital business – and that means building a hybrid cloud.

Today, major retail brands – which were previously never considered technology companies – are generating more data than high tech firms did a decade ago. Car companies like Mercedes and Tesla, outfit cars with sometimes hundreds of sensors, which constantly pour critical

performance data back into organizational databases.

90 percent of all data ever generated was generated in the last five years. Analysts forecast that by 2025, we will generate 180 zettabytes – or 180 trillion gigabytes – of data annually[1] To gain advantage from that data, maintain a modern pace of innovation and improve operational efficiency, organizations must be highly analytical and strategic about which workloads and applications live where.

Analytics and business intelligence are two of the top focus areas for CIOs with 74 percent of respondents to the survey reporting that they see more demand in the business for real-time analytics and interactive simulations than a year ago. To effectively utilize both, modern IT professionals must understand the strengths and limitations of different infrastructure options to create the optimal hybrid environment for their organizational needs.

g Public Cloud – Part of the Strategy for Middle East Organizations but Not The Strategy

Public cloud has revolutionized the standard for easy IT. It’s simpler to manage, and removes the time and energy burden of technology upgrades from the customer. It’s a utility model, which is attractive to organizations for which CapEx is limited, and provides the flexibility needed to scale up and down quickly depending on fluctuating demand. An insurance company, for example, needs more infrastructure up and running when more of its customers are on the road – to scale up and down over the course of days or hours requires an agile solution.

The other side of the same coin is scale over time. As an organization’s data requirements grow, so does the public cloud bill – exponentially. Today, there is an entire industry being

created around public cloud cost management. Many CIOs report directly to the CFO, and when we speak to them, cost certainty is a recurring theme. A volatile and unpredictable operating expense can be untenable when building a digital organization.

For all its agility and ease, the public cloud often comes with a performance and reliability downgrade when compared to the best on-premise solutions.

This is corroborated by findings from the survey as availability (52 percent) and performance (47 percent) were cited as two of the key drivers for continued use of traditional on-premise solutions.

Availability and reliability are core tenets of any cloud strategy.

Today, CIOs need to be much more deliberate and thoughtful about the impact of outages on

end-users and customers. In the public cloud, disruptive outages do happen. In fact, it happened to Amazon Web Services (AWS) this past February. For missioncritical business operations, like high-performance analytics or anything at scale, a hybrid environment is better suited.

Last, and top of mind for a great many CIOs I’ve spoken with, is compliance, something that is particularly important in the Middle East; 77 percent of IT decision makers surveyed said their organization has reduced usage of public cloud over the past year due to security concerns and 38 percent cite security as the key roadblock to adoption of public cloud. In highly-regulated industries such as healthcare and government, data sovereignty and direct

control over response to outages are a non-negotiable requirement for many workloads. CIOs need to consider compliance strategy in a world where data sovereignty and regulations are fast changing. In light of global events like Brexit and geopolitical tensions in the region, CIOs need to ensure that their cloud strategies align with ever-fluid national and international regulations and requirements.

Ultimately, smart, successful companies use resources toward solving customer problems.

Organizations need IT to work for them, so that their best and brightest technical minds are working to advance the next wave of innovation rather than managing infrastructure.

MEA MARKETS / November 2017 21

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Consolidation The Foundation for IT and Business Transformation Proving a detailed piece on the “ARCH” strategy - a strategy that enables the delivery of ITenabled services more consistently and efficiently, and allows the IT department to provide the organization with new, innovative, high-value business applications that can set the organizations on a strong growth trajectory, is the Sales Director, Middle East, ServiceNow, Mark Ackerman.

In every type of business, growth is good. However, there is what might be considered “good growth” and “bad growth.” Good growth makes an enterprise more agile, responsive, and competitively successful, and tends to spur further growth.

Bad growth, in contrast, can hobble agility, responsiveness, and competitive success, and lead to stagnation or worse for that enterprise. A hallmark characteristic of bad growth is the proliferation of multiple redundant and/ or incompatible versions of the same or similar resources.

“ARCH.”

What’s needed to address the “bad growth” challenges are an effective strategy for consolidation and modernization, and a technology platform that enables execution of that strategy. At the highest level, your strategy will consist of four primary elements, which can be summarized by the acronym

Assess What You’ve Got Once you have identified one or more compelling use cases, you need to assess and quantify the true business value and costs of current resources carefully.

This information is necessary to determine which resources should be consolidated, which should be migrated to a more

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Assess your current IT Service Management (ITSM) and business resources to determine their real business value and costs Retire those resources not meeting your business needs Consolidate and modernize those resources worth keeping Host your most valuable and critical resources on a common platform that enables easy and effective migration, modernization and management

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robust platform, and which should be retired. Wherever possible, this information should be expressed in dollars or some other metric that enables consistent, “apples-to-apples” comparisons of all resources under consideration.

depend on specific business needs and goals, and on the consolidation features available to you. Those features, in turn, depend upon the specific characteristics of your candidate consolidation platforms. At a very minimum, the platform should:

Retire What’s Not Delivering Value Your assessment efforts will enable you to rank your incumbent application based on the value they are delivering to the business and the costs required to realize that value.

This ranking is a critical element of your next major step: retiring the applications that cost too much, deliver too little, or both.

This step is essential, as it will help your IT and business teams to focus on the applications that matter the most to the business.

These are the applications your company should consolidate.

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Consolidate – On the Right Platform How best to consolidate will

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Support both ITSM and business resource consolidation, for maximum business value Already be known, validated and approved by IT decision makers and their teams for rapid adoption and effective support by IT Be cloud-based, and should include integrated support for multiple consolidationenabling features Integrate with your applications and information sources, and support modern, open Web standards to ease and speed resource consolidation efforts Include extensive, easyto-use, pre-built templates

g Consolidation - The Foundation for IT and Business Transformation

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for consolidation-related tasks, to minimize “time to success” Enable business users to create applications quickly and easily, with the full guidance and support of IT but with no direct IT intervention required Include specific features that let IT decision makers sleep well at night Be offered by a proven, committed provider of enterprise-class, cloud-based solutions, and supported by comprehensive professional services and a broad ecosystem of helpful knowledge, partners and users

Host with the Best Platform – and Platform Vendor When choosing the right platform for your organization, below are some questions you should ask every vendor you consider: •

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Does the vendor offer a written service level agreement (SLA)?

Is the offering based on modern, cloud-based technologies for maximum flexibility and economy?

Are upgrades to the vendor’s technologies straightforward and nondisruptive to your business operations?

Does the solution make it easy to create and tailor applications and their interfaces to meet specific business requirements and user preferences, to maximize adoption and minimize training?

Is the offering proven in the real world at enterprises with requirements at least as demanding as those at your organization?

Is the offering known to and supported by IT decision makers at your organization and elsewhere?

Does the solution incorporate support for mobility, social networking and other features that make applications more usable and popular?

Is the solution supported

by a broad ecosystem of partners, users, and readily available knowledge, online and in person, at user groups and industry events?

The right combination of justification, planning, execution, and platform can reduce or eliminate redundancies, incompatibilities, and complexities associated with those resources, as well as

associated hardware, software, and maintenance costs. It can also make management processes and delivery of IT-enabled services more consistent and efficient, and enable new, innovative, highvalue business applications.

And as these extend beyond IT, they can also extend the value of IT consolidation platform investments.

All of these benefits can, in turn, increase IT’s support of and relevance to the business, and IT’s overall business value, while improving IT’s perception across the enterprise. Achieving these benefits, however, relies upon the careful selection of a platform that can support the features and functions needed to succeed with consolidation.

MEA MARKETS / November 2017 23

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Veeam Achieves 37th Quarter of Record Bookings Growth Veeam achieves 37th quarter of record bookings growth, along with 72 percent bookings growth for its multi-cloud solutions and 84 percent growth in new enterprise bookings.

On the 5th November, : Veeam® Software, the Availability for the AlwaysOn Enterprise™ innovator, announced it has reached another company milestone: surpassing 16,700 service provider partners in response to the high demand for Veeampowered cloud offerings for data availability, protection and management. Building on its 10 years of leadership in providing always-on availability for virtual workloads, Veeam has expanded its capabilities to physical environments as well as multi-cloud support for Microsoft Azure and Azure Stack, Amazon Web Services, IBM Cloud, and support for SaaS applications including NEW Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 1.5. As the demand for uninterrupted digital experiences continue, Veeam experiences steadfast momentum.

“Customers are adopting our multi-cloud solutions at record pace. It took six years for Veeam to clear $50 million in bookings for our cloud business. Today, we now report $54 million in three quarters,” said Peter McKay, CoCEO and President of Veeam.

“This quarter, we surpassed the bookings in our cloud business, exceeding what we did in that business in all of 2016. With an

increase of 72 percent yearover-year Cloud bookings for Q3 and more than 1 million VMs now protected with Veeampowered cloud services from our Veeam Cloud & Service Provider partners, our momentum is clear – Veeam has now expanded its leadership position as the No. 1 Availability provider for any app, any data, on any cloud. As we persist on our high trajectory of growth and gain market share from legacy vendors, our commitment to partners and alliances is enabling us to scale to meet our goal of $1.5 billion in bookings revenue by 2020.” m is clear – Veeam has now expanded its leadership position as the No. 1 Availability provider for any app, any data, on any cloud. As we persist on our high trajectory of growth and gain market share from legacy vendors, our commitment to partners and alliances is enabling us to scale to meet our goal of $1.5 billion in bookings revenue by 2020.”

In today’s digital economy, organizations are embracing a multi-cloud strategy to drive increased innovation, speed time to market, and optimize cost.

But as workloads expand, and user expectations for Availability increase, many organizations are left vulnerable. Veeam’s momentum in the space is

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testament to the company’s vision and its ability to protect the most critical workloads across any cloud.

To continue to satisfy the needs of service provider partners, meet the needs of their customer’s environments, and differentiate themselves from the competition, Veeam has expanded its product portfolio to provide an even greater range of cloud offerings.

The NEW Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 version 1.5 adds new scalability and multitenancy support for enterprise deployments and service providers offering managed Office 365 backup services.

Launched on October 3, Version 1.5 already has more than 22,000 organizations using this product since the initial release, delivering data protection for over 2 million Office 365 mailboxes.

Veeam is offering free licensing of new products to partners in the Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) program through the end of the year. Veeam is also offering Veeam Availability Console as a free product for VCSP partners, further delivering on its commitment to leverage service providers as a way to meet the demand for Availability in the cloud.

g Veeam Achieves 37th Quarter of Record Bookings Growth

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ServiceNow to Become a Native Mobile Enterprise Cloud Platform with Acquisition of SkyGiraffe Acquisition will embed native mobile apps across ServiceNow portfolio, enabling enterprise customers to easily give employees consumer-like mobile experiences for any app.

Announcing an agreement to acquire mobile platform company SkyGiraffe, cloud-based workflow leader ServiceNow, plans to deliver a truly native mobile enterprise cloud platform. The acquisition will let ServiceNow customers easily deliver consumer-like mobile experiences for any application built on the Now Platform, unleashing greater productivity and convenience for employees who want to work mobile-first, anytime, anywhere.

“Our work lives should be as mobile friendly as our consumer lives,” said CJ Desai, chief product officer at ServiceNow. “With our native mobile platform approach, ServiceNow intends to

make getting work done anytime, anywhere through great mobile experiences as easy as hailing a taxi, ordering coffee or booking a dinner reservation.”

ServiceNow expects SkyGiraffe technology to be embedded in the Now Platform in 2018, offering all packaged applications in a native mobile format, including its flagship IT Service Management (ITSM) product. SkyGiraffe extracts the complexity of enterprise applications with its intelligent “meta-data” architecture by converting business processes and manual workflows into an easy-to-use mobile experience.

Because the mobile experience will be native, ServiceNow will also support offline applications.

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ServiceNow also expects that its customers and partners will be able to build mobile apps in days, not months, utilizing no/low-code tools and design templates.

There will be no need to write cumbersome code or scripting.

Native mobile app experiences are expected to include maps, live GPS, phone, contacts, email, rich media and notifications.

“Making our technology native to the ServiceNow platform will deliver a truly mobile-first approach,” said Boaz Hecht, co-founder and chief executive officer, SkyGiraffe. “We’re thrilled to be joining ServiceNow and scaling our technology with one of the industry’s fastest growing enterprise software companies to create better mobile work

experiences for millions of people worldwide.”

The company expects to complete the acquisition in Q4 2017. Financial terms were not disclosed.

This news follows ServiceNow’s acquisition of design studio Telepathy to enhance the company’s commitment to delivering outstanding design and consumer-like experiences in its products and on the Now Platform.

“Together the investments of SkyGiraffe and Telepathy will help ServiceNow customers better deliver consumer-styled apps to the devices that they want when it matters most,” Desai said.

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ServiceNow to Become a Native Mobile Enterprise Cloud Platform with Acquisition of SkyGiraffe

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Stratasys and e-Xstream Engineering Cooperate to Offer Customers Predictive Simulation Tools for Improved Process, Material and Part Performance Collaboration aims to enable appropriate mechanical properties and faithful part functionality to deliver ‘print right, first time’ capability - supporting improved cost and time efficiencies for customers. Customers also set to benefit from increased material understanding and greater dimensional accuracy of 3D printed parts.

On the 14th November, Stratasys Ltd., a global leader in applied additive technology solutions, announced at formnext 2017, that it is collaborating with e-Xstream engineering, a world leader in multi-scale modelling of composite materials and structures, to deliver high performance process modelling and structural analysis numerical tools for Stratasys additive manufacturing solutions.

effective numerical tools is designed to offer customers high-performance design and validation capabilities. These include increased material understanding and greater dimensional accuracy of 3D printed parts to optimize output results and expand the aperture of applications. By doing so, our aim to increase the adoption of Stratasys 3D printing technology in key manufacturing sectors, including aerospace and automotive, is further facilitated.

The combination of Stratasys additive manufacturing solutions with e-Xstream’s accurate,

“Stratasys recognizes the importance of simulation and modelling as a way for customers

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to optimize part production by designing with additive in mind, while ensuring that the material and process will deliver ‘print right the first time’ assurance,” said Scott Sevcik, VP Manufacturing Solutions at Stratasys.

Central to the collaboration is the objective to develop predictive simulation solutions for Stratasys’ Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) technology to enable the production of tighter tolerance, higher performance parts. This is aimed at being achieved in conjunction with

e-Xstream engineering’s standalone material modelling platform, Digimat, which offers a self-contained module to enable a flexible interface that is accessible for basic to advanced level designers, as well as other users across multiple manufacturing based workflows.

Core functions of the collaboration comprise: • Process simulation applied to the design-to-3D-print workflow to achieve the high accuracy and repeatability required by manufacturing users. Advanced numerical

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Stratasys and e-Xstream Engineering Cooperate to Offer Customers Predictive Simulation Tools for Improved Process, Material and Part Performance

tools are needed to predict and mitigate part warpage as well as realize the impact of design decisions on the manufacturing process before the part is produced.

Material engineering to create a framework and methodology for characterization by understanding the key parameters driving the material’s behaviour. This framework will support the accelerated development and optimization of future material system solutions.

Part performance predictions that are applied daily to complete the engineering workflow for traditional manufacturing processes, providing the

product designer with an accurate early design.

The extension of Digimat’s structural analysis solution for FDM will predict part performance (stiffness, strength, etc.) as a function of the material and the printing process parameters, such as printing direction or toolpath.

“For engineers to unlock the design freedom that additive manufacturing offers, they need tools for accurate and effective analysis. We are happy to be collaborating with simulation leaders, such as e-Xstream, whose customized tools are a key contributor to enabling additive manufacturing to

become a high-performance production technology,” continued Sevcik.

Further to the collaboration, the next release of e-Xstream’s material modelling platform, Digimat, will deliver the first material models of ULTEM™ 9085 resin, a strong, lightweight thermoplastic meeting aerospace requirement, with a complete process package for the Stratasys Fortus 900mc Production 3D Printer.

Customers are provided the numerical tools necessary to perform both process simulation and structural analysis by feeding critical process information from Stratasys’ pre-processing software, Insight, to Digimat’s AM module*.

“We are very excited about this collaboration, which we believe will enable Stratasys customers to benefit from e-Xstream’s polymer multi-scale modelling expertise to improve the way they design for manufacturing,” said Roger Assaker, CEO of e-Xstream engineering, Chief Material Strategist of MSC Software.

“The ability to foresee the influence of designs on part printing and performance should enable users to save time and reduce costs by improving overall accuracy, reliability and workflow efficiencies,” he concluded. *Digimat 2018.0 will be available for download at the end of November 2017.

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Etihad Airways Launches All-Cargo Flights at MIA New Abu Dhabi service is airport’s second freighter route in the Middle East.

On November 7, Miami International Airport welcomed its first weekly flight

by Etihad Cargo – the cargo division of FiveStar-rated Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates. The new scheduled freighter flights, served by Boeing 777-200F aircraft, make a stop in Columbus, Ohio before continuing to Miami, Amsterdam and Abu Dhabi. The route launch makes Miami the airline’s third U.S. cargo route and fourth in the Western Hemisphere, joining Columbus, Tucson and Bogota. Etihad Cargo’s entry into the Miami market now also gives MIA two all-cargo routes in the surging Middle East region.

“We proudly welcome Etihad Cargo to Miami-Dade County,” said Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos A. Giménez. “Their addition to the local cargo industry brings new revenue and job creation to our community, which is already home to the busiest international freight airport in America.”

Etihad Airways is the fourth carrier to launch all-cargo service at MIA this year. In February, Qatar Airways launched two weekly cargo flights from Doha and Miami, with stops in South America and Europe; Mexico-based Aeronaves TSM commenced 10 weekly flights

from Cancun in March; and TACA Peru began four weekly freighter flights from five South American cities in August.

“Congratulations to Etihad Cargo on their successful launch at MIA, which will further increase our trade with both Europe and the Middle East,” said MiamiDade Aviation Director Emilio T. González. “Their new route is yet another significant milestone in our strategic plan to expand into untapped regions of the world.”

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David Kerr, Etihad Cargo Senior Vice President, said: “We are pleased to offer main-deck capacity on this burgeoning trade route for businesses from MiamiDade County and beyond to the Middle East. Miami International Airport, with its excellent connections to South America and its modern infrastructure, is an ideal destination for Etihad Cargo.”

Established in 2004, Etihad Cargo complements the belly-

hold capacity of Etihad Airways’ 100-aircraft passenger fleet with 10 all-cargo aircraft that fly scheduled service to Europe, North and South America, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent and Africa.

Etihad Cargo was voted Cargo Airline of the Year at the Air Cargo Week World Air Cargo Awards in 2017 and 2016.

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