CIO One March-April 2020

EDITORIAL

PUBLISHED BY Business Media International REGISTERED OFFICE: Office 10, Sharjah Media City www.bmi-digital.com EDITOR IN CHIEF Raman Narayan narayan@bmimea.com Mob: 971-55-7802403 SALES DIRECTOR Ankit Shukla ankit@bmimea.com Tel: 971-4-2618885, Mob: 971-55-2572807 ASSISTANT EDITOR Arya Devi arya @bmimea.com Tel: 971-55-8542917 CIRCULATION MANAGER Jinal Chheda jinal@bmimea.com Tel: 971-52-5875607 SALES Mohammad Mubin mohammad@bmimea.com Tel: 971-58-5875607 DESIGN Sunil Kumar design@bmimea.com

WE MUST MEASURE UP AND OVERCOME It is a period of great uncertainty for the world at large as the pandemic continues its devastation and the numbers of patients continue to grow. Social distancing is seen as an effective strategy to keep the pandemic under check and hopefully eliminate.

Everyone is biding time, since the first vaccines will take perhaps over a year to be available, if not more. But in the meantime, Businesses needs to get back to some mode of normalcy.

Educational institutions are already getting down to their business with e-classes. Thanks to the advances of technology, the world to a reasonable extent has been able to migrate its work from physical to digital. A convergence is surely in the works of the physical and digital and could be a trend that will stay once the pandemic has run its course and petered out.

It is possible, global travel will be reduced to some extent over the remainder of the year as safety first would be the key consideration. Reduced Business travel will be offset by more digital interactions, meetings and webinars alike. In due course, there would be a balancing out as the digital cannot supplant the efficacy of the physical, especially in initiating a higher sense of camaraderie and a sense of belonging as that is achieved with the annual customer or partner meets for instance.

There is a great momentum around the landscape of technologies that enables virtual video based collaboration from anywhere and across most devices. Microsoft has enhanced its Teams software, which is used widely in education and Business. Zoom is quite a popular tool although it has had to deal with some questions around data security. There are several others that have come to the limelight during the current phase.

E-commerce seems to have benefitted in a big way. From Food deliveries to supermarkets, pharmacies to electronics, almost all segments have seen an upswing in online sales. While the governments across the world try and do their best, Technology has also risen to help cope with the challenge through enabling real-time intelligence on infections and recoveries. Humankind is indeed not helpless and is negotiating the way ahead to safety and a better future.

R. Narayan Editor in Chief, CIO ONE

Management Chairman S.N. Tiwari

CEO Saumyadeep Halder

Publisher Raman Narayan

Managing Director Ankit Shukla

sn.tiwari@bmimea.com

narayan@bmimea.com

saumyadeep@bmimea.com

ankit@bmimea.com

Disclaimer: While every effort has been made to validate the accuracy of all information included in the magazine, the publishers wouldn’t be liable for any errors therein Copyright@2019 Business Media International LLC. All rights reserved.

March /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 3

CONTENTS

CONTENTS COVER STORY

CASE STUDIES Epicor ERP to aid Epoch Cosmetics & Toiletries ........................................... 25

COLUMN CX TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY ........................................ 16

Remote working due to coronavirus?

Here’s how to do it securely ............. 28

NEWS INSIGHTS

Why enabling remote working isn’t the only reason you should consider VDI ....................................... 30

Extreme Networks expands its foot in Middle East ............................................. 12

6 critical remote capabilities for the modern service desk .................... 32

CIO INSIGHTS

A CEO’s 5 golden rules in managing a cybersecurity crisis .......................... 34

Blockchain and AI Convergence ............ 22

INTERVIEW Enabling the digital workplace ............. 13 Adapting Technology to meet the need ................................................. 14 Digital Transformation for competitive advantage ........................... 26

SPECIAL FOCUS Digital Transformation to Business Transformation ........................................ 20 News ..................................................... 06 New Tech .............................................. 36 Market Space ........................................ 38 4 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

NEWS

SHADOW IOT DEVICES A CONCERN FOR CORPORATE NETWORKS: INFOBLOX RESEARCH

Over 80% of enterprises surveyed in UAE said the network security solutions they plan to deploy in the next 2-3 years are cloud-based functions (e.g. CASB, UEBA, Proxy) Infoblox, a leader in Secure Cloud-Managed Network Services, announced new research that exposes the significant threat posed by shadow IoT devices on enterprise networks.

The report, titled “What’s Lurking in the Shadows 2020” surveyed 2,650 IT professionals across the US, UK, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and UAE to understand the state of shadow IoT in modern enterprises.

Shadow IT devices are defined as IoT devices or sensors in active use within an organisation without IT’s knowledge. Shadow IoT devices can be any number of connected technologies including laptops, mobile phones, tablets, fitness trackers or smart home gadgets like voice assistants that are managed outside of the IT department. The survey found that over the past 12 months, a staggering 80% of IT professionals discovered shadow IoT devices connected to their network, and nearly one third (29%) found more than 20.

The research showed that over 86% of enterprises in UAE have more than 1,000 devices connected to their corporate networks. Nearly a third of enterprises (30%) have between

5,001 – 10,000 connected devices on their corporate network. Nearly 70% of respondents in UAE said that on an average day over 1000 non-business provisioned IoT devices like smart watches, voice assistants, tablets, Fitbits etc. connect to the business network.

92% of enterprises in UAE have a security policy in place for personal IoT devices connected to the corporate network. However only half (50%) of the enterprises surveyed feel their security policy for personal IoT devices is ‘very effective’. 90% of enterprises in UAE have varying degrees of concern about shadow IoT devices lurking on remote or branch locations.

Over a third of respondents in the UAE (34%) mirror the security solution at their branches that they deploy centrally at their headquarters. Over a third of respondents in the UAE (35%) said they see OT devices (e.g. HVAC, Video Cameras, MRI machines) as their biggest security concern when it comes to their network security. Over 4 in 5 respondents in the UAE (81%) said the network security solutions they plan to deploy in the next 2-3

Ashraf Sheet

Regional Director MEA, Infoblox

years are cloud-based functions (e.g. CASB, UEBA, Proxy).

The global report revealed that, in addition to the devices deployed by the IT team, organisations around the world have countless personal devices, such as personal laptops, mobile phones and fitness trackers, connecting to their network. The majority of enterprises (78%) have more than 1,000 devices connected to their corporate networks.

“The amount of shadow IoT devices lurking on networks has reached pandemic proportions, and IT leaders need to act now before the security of their business is seriously compromised,” said Malcolm Murphy, technical director, EMEA at Infoblox.

CYBERKNIGHT LAUNCHES ITS OPERATIONS TO ACCELERATE INCIDENT RESPONSE CAPABILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST

CyberKnight's Art of Cybersecurity Distribution methodology leverages strategic partners to assist enterprise and govt organizations augment their security posture

CyberKnight Technologies hosted an official reception to announce the launch of its operations in the Middle East. The event took place, in the presence of the CyberKnight’s leadership team and over 40 industry stakeholders including Vendors, Channel Partners and local Media Partners. During the reception, CyberKnight’s innovative Art of Cybersecurity Distribution concept, as well as, its Zero Trust Security (ZTX) Framework were unveiled.

CyberKnight Technologies, a company founded in 2019, is a cybersecurity value-added-distributor (VAD), headquartered in Dubai, covering the Middle East with on-the-ground presence in Saudi Arabia and all key Middle East markets. The ZTX (Zero Trust Security)

6 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

framework incorporates emerging and market-leading cybersecurity solutions that protect the entire attack surface, by leveraging AI, to help security teams at enterprise and government customers fortify breach detection, accelerate incident response & remediation, while addressing regulatory compliance.

Avinash Advani, Founder & CEO at CyberKnight said, “Launching CyberKnight is a commitment to our regional enterprise and government customers that our team will continue to be their trusted advisors to help them defend against today’s cyber threats and adhere to local compliance regulations.”

Advani continued, “The vendors that have been on-boarded into our portfolio in such a short period of time are a testament to their belief in our capabilities to become a full extension of their teams on-the-ground, achieve rapid ROI, TTV and market penetration.”

He ended with, “Inspired by the Art of War

by Sun Tzu, CyberKnight's Art of Cybersecurity Distribution methodology is a unique, transparent and value-driven approach to addressing existing challenges in the Channel, as well as, partner empowerment. Loyalty to our partners is fundamental to our success and is achieved by our commitment to their differentiation and increased profitability.

Vivek Gupta, Co-Founder and COO at CyberKnight added, “CyberKnight has built a best-of-breed team of cybersecurity industry veterans that come with decades of combined experience, deep rooted customer and channel relationships, local experience covering the Middle East, and most importantly the highest levels of expertise, passion and energy. In line with our vision, we strive to change the definition of VAD by keeping our finger on the pulse of innovation and emerging technology”.

NEWS

RIVERBED REVEALS RESULTS OF ‘RETHINK POSSIBLE: VISIBILITY AND NETWORK PERFORMANCE- THE PILLARS OF BUSINESS SUCCESS’ The survey revealed that 85% of leaders in the UAE believe business innovation and staff retention are driven by improved visibility into network and application performance.

Riverbed announced the results of a survey which found that over 85% of leaders in the UAE believe business innovation and staff retention are driven by improved visibility into network and application performance.

The survey findings unveiled in the ‘Rethink Possible: Visibility and Network Performance – The Pillars of Business Success’ report cites a positive correlation between effective technology and company health, a finding that is supported by the fact that 79% of C-Suite, IT decision makers (ITDMs), and business decision makers (BDMs) in the Emirates state that digital performance is increasingly critical to business growth.

A little over half (53%) of UAE respondents have felt frustrated by current network performance, with IT infrastructure being given as the key reason for the poor performance. This problem is exacerbated by a lack of full and consistent visibility, as one in three ITDMs in the UAE report that they don’t have full visibility over applications, their networks and/or end-users. Furthermore, a staggering 88% of C-Suite and BDMs in the country believe that slow running and outdated technology is di-

rectly impacting the growth of their businesses. This highlights the importance of implementing new technology to drive productivity, creativity and innovation.

Business priorities and challenges are evolving, so the technology they rely on needs to advance too. The large majority (87%) of the UAE’s ITDMs acknowledge that their IT infrastructure will have to change dramatically in the next five years to support new ways of doing business. A further 95% of all respondents in the Emirates recognise that innovation and breaking boundaries is crucial to business success, emphasising the need to embrace new technology. This may be why 60% UAE respondents strongly believe that investing in next-generation technology is vital.

Commenting on the research findings, Mena Migally, Senior Director, MENA at Riverbed Technology, said: “All leaders recognise that visibility, optimised network infrastructure, and the ability to accelerate cloud and SaaS performance are the next frontier in business success. Given this, it’s time the C-Suite, business decision leaders, and IT decision makers

VECTRA EMPOWERS ORGANIZATIONS TO DETECT AND STOP OFFICE 365 BREACHES As account takeovers continue for Office 365, controlling risk remains the top concern for organizations adopting Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models Cyber risk is becoming an escalating concern for organizations around the world, and Office 365 data breaches are at the forefront.

Even with the rising adoption of incremental security approaches like multi-factor authentication, access controls continue to be circumvented. In fact, 40% of organizations suffer from Office 365 account takeovers. As these data breaches make headlines with growing consistency, the resulting financial and reputational costs mount.

It is far too easy for an attacker to manipulate human behavior and gain high privilege access to business-critical SaaS resources. According to Microsoft’s Q3 FY19 earnings call, there are more than 180 million monthly users on Office 365. With so many users, 100% cyber hygiene becomes impossible. To make matters worse, teams continue to struggle to keep up with weekly vendor-driven configuration changes and new best practices. And once an initial foothold is gained in a SaaS

Hitesh Sheth CEO, Vectra

application, it is just a matter of time before they laterally move and cross into other parts of the infrastructure.

Against this backdrop, a massive number of alerts are flooding Security Operations Centers (SOCs), forcing analysts to spend time

Mena Migally

Senior Director, MENA, Riverbed

come together to invest in the right solutions, prioritise measurement, and place visibility and infrastructure at the top of their agenda.”

With over 90% of all business and IT leaders in the UAE agreeing that organizations must rethink what’s possible to survive in today’s unpredictable world, technology needs to be an enabler in the process.

manually analyzing and prioritizing which ones deserve attention. This is overwhelming security analysts’ time and organizations’ security budgets. As threat actors become more efficient at dodging and targeting the enterprise, most analysts simply can’t keep up.

“Attackers will follow a path of least resistance and the convergence of these elements makes exploiting the cloud easy for them. In no other construct is it fair to expect a person, or security team, to be correct 100% of the time. This is an unacceptable expectation and entirely unfair to security teams,” said Vectra CEO Hitesh Sheth. “The last thing we want is to create more work for security teams. What is needed is technology that removes the dependency on human behavior and human error and brings control back to the security team. This is what Vectra can provide.”

Credential abuse is the leading attack vector in SaaS, especially for Office 365. In an effort to help organizations securely and successfully protect their applications, Vectra AI, the leader in network threat detection and response (NDR), is announcing the launch of Cognito Detect for Office 365. Backed by new detection models focused on credentials and privilege in SaaS applications,

March /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 7

NEWS

NUTANIX REVEALS RETAIL INDUSTRY FINDINGS OF SECOND ENTERPRISE CLOUD INDEX REPORT Nutanix ECI report shows retailers prefer hybrid cloud architectures to deliver flexibility and security reach $641 billion in 2022, demonstrating it’s at the forefront of business leaders’ strategy.

In line with broader IT industry trends, many retailers also recognize the full, long-term costs of the public cloud.

Greg Smith

VP, Product Marketing, Nutanix

Nutanix, a leader in enterprise cloud computing, announced the retail industry findings of its second Enterprise Cloud Index Report, measuring retailers’ plans for adopting private, hybrid and public clouds. The report found the vast majority of retailers (87.5%) identified hybrid cloud as the ideal IT operating model. It also showed many retailers (72%) are planning to move some public cloud applications back on-premises.

Retailers recognize that seamless customer experience is no longer a “nice-to-have” — it’s a critical factor in winning new customers and retaining existing ones — and flexible cloud infrastructure is critical to delivering it.

A recent IDC report noted worldwide spending on customer experience technologies will

Additional findings of this year’s report include Retailers focus most on agility. Unlike in the broader IT industry, where cost is the top driver, retailers ranked the ability to accelerate IT deployments (54.3%) as the top factor in deciding the best cloud environment for each application. In order to adapt quickly to customer trends in an age of multichannel selling across many platforms, retailers are leading the pack in maximizing the flexibility of IT infrastructure to keep pace.

Data showed that security heavily shapes retail cloud deployment plans. Nearly twothirds of respondents (63.6%) said security has significant influence on their future cloud deployments, with hybrid cloud specifically identified as the most secure (32%). As data privacy regulations continue to tighten and expand, retailers are at the forefront of looking for ways to efficiently manage customer data securely. Hybrid cloud operating models offer the security and flexibility retailers need

to stay ahead of policy changes.

Always innovating to keep pace with customers’ demands, retailers outpace averages in using the public cloud to run digital applications and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

They also run their business applications more often in the public cloud than other industries, with about 11% current penetration of multiple public clouds and about 19% penetration of a single public cloud.

“Staying relevant to today’s customers means having the necessary cloud infrastructure in place to embrace omnichannel retail experiences,” said Greg Smith, VP of Product Marketing, Nutanix. “Retailers use data to connect the e-commerce and in-store shopping experiences, and the only way they can do this accurately and efficiently is through flexible, scalable technology. The rise of selling on social media platforms also means integrating payment into the user experience, bringing security and protection of customers’ data to the forefront of retailers’ minds. Hybrid cloud provides the portability and control needed to bring retailers into the new era of customer experience.”

AVEVA EXPANDS INTO THE DISCRETE MANUFACTURING MARKET Schneider Electric successfully deploys new AVEVA Discrete Manufacturing Solution in more than 70 smart factories AVEVA, a global leader in engineering and industrial software, has unveiled its new Discrete Lean Management software to support digital transformation in the discrete manufacturing market. The new offering improves operational efficiency through the digitalization of lean work management for both manual and automated production lines. AVEVA’s quick-to-deploy and easy to use digital tools enable access to production information, KPIs and notifications on dashboards, workstations and mobile devices to improve overall equipment and labor effectiveness, and to facilitate data-driven continuous improvement.

AVEVA Discrete Lean Management is designed to address the issues faced by operating manufacturing plants still using paper-based systems for lean and work order management, work instructions and data collection procedures. It enables physical records to be replaced with digital tools that mitigate

8 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

the risk of manual processes and provides real time visibility into production performance allowing team collaboration in response to production issues.

“AVEVA Discrete Lean Management is the result of our close collaboration with Schneider-Electric and has been already successfully deployed as a digital lean system to many of their plants globally. We are excited to be able to announce the general availability of these proven lean and industry best practices to all our customers to help improve their manufacturing productivity and profitability, and also jumpstart their smart manufacturing and digital transformation journeys,” commented Harpreet Gulati, Senior Vice President, Planning and Operations at AVEVA. The AVEVA Discrete Lean Management software solution is used in Schneider Electric’s manufacturing plants and has been success-

Harpreet Gulati

Senior VP, Planning & Operations, AVEVA

fully deployed in more than 70 smart factories globally resulting a 10% productivity increase due to downtime mitigation and 70% improved response-time due to automated escalation of production issues.

The World Economic Forum has commended four of Schneider Electric’s Smart Factories for comprehensively deploying a wide range of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies and use cases at scale, while keeping people and sustainability at the heart of their innovation strategies.

NEWS

MIMECAST EXPANDS E-DISCOVERY CAPABILITIES Mimecast Case Review redesigned to offer rich dashboards and reporting, powerful search and legal hold functionality Mimecast announced that Mimecast Case Review offers a new, intuitive user interface that is designed to provide an entire platform of capabilities for helping to respond to e-discovery. Built on and leveraging Mimecast Cloud Archive, a market leading platform, Mimecast Case Review includes a redesigned interface and enhanced features. New benefits are engineered to include a more granular search, scalability, item level legal hold and rich dashboards and reporting for greater productivity for legal and IT teams. This new feature will enhance existing functionality and benefit all current and future Cloud Archive customers.

“In today’s corporate environment, e-discovery events are slow, inexact and create major headaches as legal and IT waste time trying to understand the results,” said Shane Harris, senior director of product management at Mimecast.

“The addition of Mimecast Case Review will help ensure legal and IT teams can find the information faster via a more accurate search, which will lead to improved productivity and less wasted time by all parties involved in the process.”

Litigation affects organizations of all sizes, industries and regions. Often, IT and legal staff

are asked to respond to and manage multiple litigation events - creating challenges in the ability to scale human and technical resources. Internal investigations, subpoenas or being sued involves a discovery request of all relevant materials, including the proliferation of electronic data, that may be called into investigation during the legal matter. This, in addition to the emergence of data protection and privacy laws, such as GDPR and CCPA, is a challenge for any legal or IT team who then needs to sift through an enormous amount of data to identify relevant content. Deploying the right technical assets is essential in saving time, 46% of Mimecast archive customers save more than 10 hours a week on self-service search.

Mimecast Case Review is designed to contain a new, intuitive user interface that streamlines e-discovery via a powerfully integrated platform. Early case assessment is a crucial part of the e-discovery process, but it’s nearly impossible to accurately gauge risk at this stage when data is disorganized, Mimecast Case Review helps organizations keep their data organized from the very beginning, improving productivity and saving money and resources. Mimecast Case Review is engineered to provide a more

A10 NETWORKS DELIVERS VIRTUAL DDOS DEFENSE SOLUTION Thunder Threat Protection System (TPS) enables service providers to build and operate elastic DDoS defenses with 100 Gbps in a single virtual appliance A10 Networks announced it has delivered the industry’s highest-performance virtual DDoS defense solution with its software version of the Thunder Threat Protection System (TPS) solution, vThunder TPS. The enhanced vThunder TPS provides 100 Gbps throughput in a single virtual appliance and can be expanded to 800 Gbps with eight-way clustering. As a result, service providers can build elastic DDoS defenses that can be incrementally scaled during wartime when peak capacity is required. vThunder TPS is compact and efficient, allowing it to be deployed in next-generation mobile edge compute (MEC) environments, conserving space and power while providing powerful DDoS protection.

5G mobile operators and cloud service providers are increasingly moving from purpose-built hardware-centric infrastructures to be more agile and virtualized. These operators

need DDoS defenses that can keep pace with this movement toward elastic, virtualized private clouds. The transition to 5G makes this even more critical as operators need to be able to ensure the availability of business services against the potential for large DDoS attacks, particularly during high-visibility times like global sporting events and seasonal shopping spikes. DDoS attacks will only increase in severity as operators expand services to support IoT-driven energy, agriculture, transportation, healthcare and manufacturing.

Shane Harris

Senior Director, Product Management, Mimecast

accurate search due to its faceted search, search term highlighting and improved sort and filtering which will allow users to arrange results based on key metadata fields.

“The relevance of e-discovery has increased year over year, yet organizations are still outsourcing this vital task,” said Ryan O’Leary, Senior Research Analyst, Legal, Risk, & Compliance, IDC. “Having strong e-discovery and case review processes in-house helps reduce risks for organizations, allowing them to stay compliant while saving resources, budget, and ultimately strain on the legal team.” vThunder TPS provides operators a cost-efficient way to protect their networks and infrastructures without over-provisioning DDoS defense capacity. vThunder TPS provides customers with Cloud-ready DDoS Defense. Customers are able to gain deployment and operational flexibility with DDoS defenses that support major private cloud platforms including KVM, VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V. A high-performance 100 Gbps virtual appliance can scale to 800 Gbps with eight-way clustering to meet the performance needs of 5G mobile operators and cloud providers.

With A10’s FlexPool licensing, capacity can be scaled up in hours via license allocation rather than in weeks or months required for hardware purchasing, delivery and installation. Capacity can be scaled back down by reallocating licenses to other points of presence when intermittent demand subsides. A10’s subscription price model also provides lower start-up and upgrade costs.

When combined with the Orion 5G Security Suite, vThunder TPS provides high-performance DDoS detection and mitigation and protection against other threats across mobile and cloud network infrastructures.

March /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 9

NEWS

ETISALAT JOINS FORCES WITH MICROSOFT TO ENVISION ‘TELECOMS PROVIDER PLATFORM OF THE FUTURE’ This partnership enables 5G powered by AI, public cloud and edge computing and facilitates delivery of next generation networks to regional customers empowering business and consumers In a multi-year partnership, Etisalat has announced that it has teamed up with Microsoft to drive public cloud first strategy through a digital transformation program that enables Etisalat to build a digital platform infused with automation and AI providing a simplified network architecture and operations empowering Etisalat subscribers and improving customer experience.

“Etisalat and Microsoft embark together on a bold new digital transformation journey that will allow us to leverage our industry expertise to deliver the next generation of networks,” said Saeed Al Zarouni, Senior Vice President, Mobile Networks, Etisalat. “Keeping in line with our overall strategy and vision of ‘Driving the Digital Future to Empower Societies, we at Etisalat are committed to nothing less than the total transformation of the consumer and business customer experiences.

Etisalat today has transitioned to a digital service provider – the provider of choice for digital services among enterprises and SMB customers, supporting them to monetise services to generate new revenue streams.

Together with Microsoft, we are building the communications network of the future.”

Microsoft Azure will power the infusion of AI capabilities into Etisalat’s network by expanding Microsoft Azure solutions into the network, and for Etisalat’s new technologies like Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) and Network Edge Computing (NEC). These will significantly speed up computing at the edge, which combined with 5G, will enable

new types of applications related to smart cities, autonomous systems, gaming, AR/VR, IoT, and vision computing solutions.

“Our partnership with Etisalat is further demonstration of the trust regional enterprises place in the intelligent Microsoft Cloud,” said Sayed Hashish, General Manager, Microsoft UAE. “Our mission is to empower every individual and organisation on the planet to achieve more. Etisalat’s digital transformation journey centres on a public-cloud-first strategy including network workloads. Its partnership with Microsoft is designed to merge its telecommunications capabilities with our intelligent cloud solutions, including artificial intelligence and self-healing networks.”

OMAN ICT GROUP AND IFS SIGN STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP The strategic partnership is expected to create a path and provide a competitive IFS ERP solution into the Oman market while upskilling Omani consultants provide the necessary technology inputs whenever and wherever required. The partnership with IFS is focused on bridging the gap between the way business is done and technology, while preparing for the changes that are taking place within the world of digital transformation.

What is important is that IFS is able to provide flexible and tailormade solutions across a wide range of sectors including, Aerospace & Defense, Energy, Utility & Resources, Engineering, Construction & Infrastructure, Manufacturing and Service industries. This covers some of the most vital sectors in Oman.

IFS, a global enterprise applications company, has announced the signing of a new agreement with Oman ICT Group. The crucial partnership will help the Oman ICT Group achieve its key strategic objectives of developing the ICT sector for national advancement and includes Omanisation. Customers in Oman will now have a choice of an easy to deploy solution either on premise or in the Cloud and benefit from a low total cost of ownership.

The Oman ICT Group is mandated to create synergies between various operating companies, and is aligned with the National ICT Strategy to

10 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

According to Said Al-Mandhari, CEO, Oman ICT Group, “Keeping pace with technological advancements is very important in ensuring that we are more effective and efficient in our operations. The strategic partnership with IFS goes beyond the commercial aspects and creates a new market for IFS. Simultaneously it also strengthens Oman ICT’s growth prospects by helping us capitalize on the international experience that IFS brings to the table. We are keen on serving our community to the best of our abilities and such partnerships are the need of the day.”

“On entering a new phase of expansion in the Middle East, IFS is very pleased to join hands with a premier entity such as Oman ICT Group who are instrumental in driving the ICT investments in the country.

We will be focused on having intensive training programs at the initial stage to ensure that local Omanis have the right IFS skills.” said, Mehmood Khan, Managing Director and Vice-President for the Middle East and South Asia at IFS.

NEWS

DEWA’S SAP RUNS AT MORO IN ONE OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST DATA MIGRATIONS IN THE UTILITIES SECTOR Nearly 250,000 man-hours were spent, with more than 150 specialists from DEWA, Moro Hub, EY, SAP and Virtustream working on the project.

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has migrated its on-premise SAP landscape to Data Hub Integrated Solutions LLC (Moro) to realise innovation, cost efficiency, scalability, speed, and resiliency.

This is one of the world’s largest migrations for SAP HEC in the utilities sector.

It is also one of the largest data migrations across all industries at the European, Middle Eastern and African (EMEA) level.

tion for the public and private sectors in the UAE and the region in terms of data storage and cloud-based digital service management. This enhances the integration of institutional operations, monitoring operations, providing the best suggestions for decision making, providing world-class high-quality services and multiple solutions in one place, thus enhancing customer experience,” added Al Tayer.

The project consists of two parts: the migration of on-premise landscape to SAP HEC and the managed services by Moro Hub. DEWA collaborated with Moro Hub and several international IT vendors including SAP, EY and Virtustream to complete the project. DEWA’s SAP landscape consists of 24 SAP modules including business-critical systems like Business Suite on Hana, CRM, SRM, PO, Business Intelligence, Fiori and complex integration along with external entities and third-party systems.

“The growing changes in DEWA’s technology requires harnessing all capabilities to innovate unconventional services that achieve the wise leadership’s directions in digital and smart transformation, which focus on quality, excellence and leadership. This enhances the competitiveness of the Emirate bringing it to the forefront of cities that not only foresee the future but also create it. We strive to provide innovative and smart services that save the time and efforts of customers and make them happy. We believe in the importance of innovation in creating sustainable solutions to challenges, keeping pace with global rapid changes and transform them into opportunities,” said Marwan Bin Haidar, Executive Vice President of Innovation and the Future at DEWA.

The move is one of the largest of its kind globally. The project transferred over 100 terabytes of data from 101 systems and tested more than 28,370 business transactions.

This migration aims to offer better business support to all DEWA stakeholders; as Moro Hub manages all its information technology operations, IT support, data management, monitoring operational efficiency, maintaining the highest security standards and state-of-the-art technologies in data centres as well as providing support around the clock.

“The migration from on-premises to SAP HEC at Moro Hub is a qualitative shift in digital solutions. DEWA is proud to take the lead in this achievement, which aligns with its efforts in shaping and anticipating the future. This is in accordance with the UAE Centennial 2071 to make the UAE the best country in the world; the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2031; the Dubai 10X initiative, and the UAE Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, launched by His Highness Sheikh Moham-

Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer MD & CEO, DEWA

med bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to make Dubai a city of the future, putting it 10 years ahead of other global cities. It also supports the Dubai 2021 plan to position Dubai as the preferred place to live, work, and visit. DEWA supports the digital transformation in the UAE and consolidating the position of Dubai as a global digital platform. Moro’s launch is part of DEWA’s projects to use innovative solutions and technologies for different government organisations. This supports the National Innovation Strategy, launched

by His Highness, to make the UAE one of the most innovative nations in the world,” said HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA. “This project achieves DEWA’s vision as a globally leading sustainable innovative corporation and Moro’s strategic vision to be the most preferred choice and destina-

“Digital transformation and real-time solutions are optimizing DEWA’s costs, scalability, and customer experiences,” said Gergi Abboud, Senior Vice President and General Manager, SAP Middle East South.

“We are exchanging global best practices in digital utilities for DEWA to reach visionary heights as a sustainable and innovative world-class utility. We will continue to support UAE Vision 2021’s government-led transformation agenda.”

“EY is proud to support DEWA’s migration to the SAP HEC Enterprise Cloud in Moro Hub. The volume and complexity of the project required a huge amount of coordination between various groups within DEWA to ensure a smooth transition for the business and its customers.” said Abdulaziz Al-Sowailim, MENA Chairman and CEO, EY.

March /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 11

NEWS INSIGHT

EXTREME NETWORKS EXPANDS ITS FOOT IN MIDDLE EAST Extreme Networks doubles its investments in Middle East to help their partners and customers with their cloud-driven, end-to-end networking solutions Extreme Networks, a cloud-driven networking company, is expanding its reach in Middle East. Following the appointment of Maan Al-Shakarchi as Regional Director for Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META) back in October 2019, Extreme Networks has embarked on an expansion journey of its operations and investments in the Middle East.

The company is set to grow its sales, channel, and marketing teams in the region.

The company is also working on several partnerships and alliances which will be announced in due course through 2020. “In addition to it, Extreme is also placing emphasis on strengthening its relationships with regional distributors and engaging new channel partners. As a channel-centric organisation, Extreme is committed to providing both VAR and MSP end-users in the META region with cloud-based, endto-end networking solutions that meet their needs—and those of their customer,” said Mr Al-Shakarchi.

The company is also placing emphasis on strengthening relationships with its regional distributors and engaging new channel partners. The company already has an impressive roster of clients in the region, which are part of over 50,000 customers globally who rely on Extreme Networks’ cloud-driven networking solutions. This includes leading names in banking, hospitality, retail, government, healthcare, and manufacturing.

The past 12 months has seen a rapid growth of cloud implementation in the ME region, with the public cloud services market in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) projected to grow to $1.9bn (AED7.97bn) by 2020, double what it was in 2016. “We believe there is a great opportunity now for Extreme to strengthen relationships with its regional distributors and engaging new channel partners by clearly outlining Extreme’s unique value proposition for regional businesses.

Over 50,000 customers globally trust our end-to-end, cloud-driven networking solutions and rely on our top-rated services and support to accelerate digital transformation – we are now excited to further expand our operations and footprint across META at a time of such huge business transformation,” added Mr Al-Shakarchi.

Extreme announced a new cloud-enabled retail solution, Extreme Retail Select, curated cloud technology packages designed to remove the cost and complexity associated with selecting, buying, building, deploying, and managing network services at retail locations. The turn-key net-

12 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

Maan Al-Shakarchi

Regional Director, META, Extreme Networks

work solutions give retail chains and franchises the ability to quickly and easily automate set-up and management of network connectivity from one to thousands of sites, maximize operational efficiencies, and deliver consistent services and experiences at scale.

Mr Al-Shakarchi added, “In January 2020 we announced availability of Extreme Retail Select curated cloud technology packages designed to remove the cost and complexity associated with selecting, buying, building, deploying, and managing network services at retail locations.

With Extreme Retail, businesses have a cloud-driven flexible and scalable solution that meets their specific operational and customer-facing needs.”

INTERVIEW

ENABLING THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE Microsoft offers Microsoft Teams, which is a chat-based digital workspace for Office 365 that has been built and designed to make collaboration and group work easier and more efficient.

Please elaborate on the functionalities of Microsoft Teams The value that Businesses service from Teams goes beyond video conferencing. It is a modern chat-based collaboration workspace. It enables integration of apps and of course enables video calling and conferencing. At Microsoft, we have always maintained that work is not a place you go to necessarily but rather what you do and which is truer today than ever before. Teams enables you to travel with your work, serving as a hub for your workspace.

Beyond the fact that it enables get together with your colleagues, it allows work with features like transcription for instance- as you speak, automatically transcribing and translation of the talk so little is lost in terms of listening and understanding by all colleagues. So, it includes some AI features like transcribing/translation and settings like blurring of the background, helpful when operating out of home environments. So the objective with Microsoft teams is to provide a hub for your workspace.”

Previously as well, we have been seeing strong adoption with customers like Emirates Airlines, adopting Microsoft teams as workspace of their choice. We have seen over the past a strong adoption across the board- possibly one of our fastest rates of adoption across product lines. Recently, we have a seen a sharp spike and had published recently about a 500% increase in adoption in China. We are seeing a real sharp increase because of the current challenges and are focused on helping partners and customers in terms of adapting. We recently announced a free trial version for anybody without a Microsoft license. We are constantly innovating, adding new capabilities.

What is the value proposition

that stands out?

The defining value proposition is that you can bring in all applications you work with generally into Teams as tabs. It integrates with the entire Microsoft office 365 portfolio so you can edit Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point within Teams adding them. You can have One Note and even integrate with third party applications. It its a platform that you can continue to add what you need for your workflow. This is a space where you can get all applications within Teams and get work done, without the need for shuffling between different applications.”

Please discuss how Microsoft is placed well to provide these services in line with the regulatory requirements?

We are global cloud provider and we have a lot of services companies across the spectrum use. There have been requests from government side customers and Financial sector customers especially about how they would like to leverage the cloud but in compliance with regulatory requirements of the need for data to reside locally. We announced the local datacenter last year and made investments and have seen a great momentum generated further to that for cloud adoption.

Tell us about some deployments in the region?

The Ministry of Education has a plan around rolling out Microsoft Teams as a tool for enabling distance education for students. The federal government has announced the plan to use Microsoft Teams to enable employees to work remotely. We are encouraged by the fact that these segments from education to government are looking to us for the support

Mohammed Arif

Business Group Director, Modern Workplace and Security, Microsoft UAE

in this hour of need. Public health of customers, partners is our top priory now. We are here to support them to enable and support remote working. That said, what differentiates us is the ability for organizations to meet data residency requirements and the fact that we are the office productivity solutions vendor of choice for many means that they are able to leverage the deep integration of Teams with Microsoft office 365, setting us apart.”

Will this this spike in current demand also to likely fashion a longer-term change in workforce engagement even after normalcy returns?

At this point, how we are focused on helping customers, partners, students & teachers adopt and overcome challenges. This phase will likely accelerate a larger number of people to familiarize with the concept of remote working and how Technology enables that effectively.

March /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 13

INTERVIEW

ADAPTING TECHNOLOGY TO MEET THE NEED Saymaad Mansoor, the Head of IT at Speed House Group elaborates on the business and digital transformation journey of Speed House Group — By Arya Devi

 Explain your role as Head of IT in Speed House Group?

My role at Speed House Group is multi-dimensional, and my responsibilities include ensuring IT process implementation to improve the work proficiency, creating a strategy and overlooking performance management to move towards achieving our business goal. I am also responsible for implementing IT infrastructure to support international business expansion and work towards ensuring Speed House Group being ISO 27001 certified by the end of 2020

 What are the most recent technology implementations done in Speed House?

In terms of IT or IT enabled implementation, we have scripted a remarkable success story by going paperless. Today, we have come very close to match up to our international partners with several noteworthy digital features. We are migrating to a Scalable Cloud Enabled ERP in order to support planned expansion, increase transparency and tractability. We are providing live video stream of production lines to our customers, enabling them to monitor the production and execution processes of their projects, resulting in higher customer satisfaction and a more Transparent relationship. We have a platform to download all marketing materials from the website and avoid paper consumption. There is a webbased enquiry portal to monitor enquiries and help maintain contact with the clients. We have been strengthening our online presence with Google Organic listing that help customers to reach to Speed House without following traditional method of marketing or distributing printed material

14 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

Saymaad Mansoor

IT Head, Speed House Group

INTERVIEW

Speed House?

We have put our best foot forward to unshackle Speed House Group from the outdated stereotypes which construction or manufacturing sectors are associated with. In the GCC region, we are one of the few Modular Construction companies which realized the importance of 3D Printing very early. With the passage of time, 3D printing has become a name of the game in Prefabrication and Modular Construction Industry. It has enabled us to deliver convincing business reports and presentations to the main contractors, consultants, architects and other stake holders.

At Speed House we believe that the tide once again is shifting, hence we have already introduced the strategies to implement robotics and IoT, and different AI features to provide our clients with a quicker turn around period for their Enquiries, as well as monitoring our upcoming projects while ensuring that Health & Safety issues of our on-site deployed manpower can be addressed in a far better way.

 Elaborate on the digital

transformation journey of Speed House.

Although we have seen so many ups and downs, the digital transformation journey of Speed House Group has been very interesting. Until recently, we remained one of the most traditional companies in the UAE and operated without a functioning website. Later on, we shook this idea and started to grow our presence be it offline or online. For that to happen, we focused on hiring qualified and skilled people who need negligible or minimal supervision in the areas assigned. Today we are close to being 100% paperless with our Cloud Enablement Initiative. We conduct internal meetings using video conferencing, all business processes are being transformed defying geographical barriers and promoting deskless workforce. At the time when there is so much hue and cry about Coronavirus, these ideas should be embraced by every industry, irrespective of the products or services they are in.

 Which IT implementation

do you say has revolutionized the organization? Explain

In my opinion, such conclusions vary from industry to industry. There are some industries like e-commerce, insurance, banking;

just to name a few where digital transformation has been playing a significant role.

Furthermore in marketing, the role of digital interference is undeniable as we spend more and more time on mobiles, tablets and laptops. When it comes to the magnitude of services Speed House provide, the idea to create campaigns and connect with the customers available on various social media platforms has lead the path for the brand to establish itself as a front-runner. Moreover our ERP implementation combined with the Customer Controlled Monitoring System is definitely an exemplary model on how modern businesses should operate.

Engineering wise the recent implementation of BIM Software in our engineering department has definitely been a game changer for the whole engineering, manufacturing and installation process related to our works.

 Which technology accord-

ing to you is the most over hyped in the UAE market?

And which is the one that you wish the market recognized more? Elaborate.

Blockchain is the talk of the town in the local market now a days. The mains cases why it is overhyped in the UAE market is – hassle-free customer verifications, accumulation of financial data, smooth flow of supply chain and asset digitization. Despite all that, I strongly believe AI based cyber security is more important with the ever increasing number of cyber-attacks including ransomware and data theft cases. IT security deserves more attention and recognition due to growing reliance on WiFi, Bluetooth and Smart Devices.

,,

 How technically ready is

TODAY WE ARE CLOSE TO BEING 100% PAPERLESS WITH OUR CLOUD ENABLEMENT INITIATIVE. WE CONDUCT INTERNAL MEETINGS USING VIDEO CONFERENCING, ALL BUSINESS PROCESSES ARE BEING TRANSFORMED DEFYING GEOGRAPHICAL BARRIERS AND PROMOTING DESKLESS WORKFORCE.

 As a diversified business,

what challenges do you plan to overcome in future with the help of IT? We anticipate a consolidation of our Group’s industries that require real-time process control, asset integrity management, traceability and agility. Every technology we implement is aimed at attaining an integrated framework catering the needs of each industry to bring about a comprehensive and agile solution with the accurate functionality for our specific requirements.

Moreover, to assimilate processes our engineers require divergent manufacturing and monitoring capabilities in this framework, with quality management and traceability inbuilt right from the raw material supply chain through to the finished product shipped to an individual customer, in the most economical method.

 As the Head of IT, what is your mission for 2020?

Speed House is committed to adapting Technology to meet the latest engineering and construction requirements, it is highly unlikely for the Digital Transformation of the organization to end anytime soon.

We thrive to compete with the developed markets and are in the process of exploring Cloud Based AI Solutions from leading technology providers along with IoT to continue providing exemplary levels of service that our customers come to expect from us. Mission 2020 for IT at Speed House is a complete overhaul of the organization’s business processes and obtaining the ISO 27001 certification.

March /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 15

COVER FEATURE

With behavioral science and AI being implemented to ease the journey of customers into brand journey, Customer Experience (CX) market is seeing new technologies and new trends. — By Arya Devi

16 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

COVER FEATURE

O

ne of the key objectives of digital transformation rollouts is enhancing the customer experience. Integral to that objective is having a customer experience (CX) software platform in place, which will help manage and enhance customer experience. It does this by extracting information about individual customer interactions with the company at various transactional touchpoints It helps to analyze and interpret outcomes and responses.

CX is a term that encompasses a diverse array of software tools from different vendors and therefore any technological development designed and implemented specifically for the ease of customers can be termed as a customer experience (CX) software. Some CX software are also implemented to ease the workloads and pressure on the employees.

“Used loosely, customer experience is a broad term. Any interaction with a brand could be considered a customer experience,” says Subhi Farah, Co-founder and CEO of Kanari, one of the leading CX insights and analytics platforms based in UAE. Used widely in retail, CX deployments with AI, help cater to customer profiles and expectations more precisely, helping save the customer precious time and therein delivering better customer satisfaction. With customer overview available from a single window, retailers can take more informed decisions regarding the customer journey. In shopping for instance, new technologies let shoppers be aware of the total amount to be paid for the items in the shopping cart even while physically shopping with a cart. Amazon has unveiled technologies that let shoppers grab without having to scan and pay; which in short eliminates even the idea of checkout line.

Enhanced outcomes Year on year, new data comes out that indicates customer service and the customer experience (CX) are more important than ever. A Forrester study shows that 72% of businesses say that improving the customer experience is their top priority. Studies also show that companies lose more than $62 billion due to poor customer service.

According to the new Mulesoft 2020 Connectivity Benchmark Report, 92% of organizations are undertaking digital transformation initiatives or planning to in 2020 worldwide. However, 85% of organizations face integration challenges – stalling digital transformation and negatively impacting revenue, speed to market, and customer experiences. Companies are realizing the need to be ahead in the customer experience game, understanding quite well that

Thierry Nicault

Regional VP, EBU, MEA & Central Europe, Salesforce

they cannot afford to be a laggard in customer service unless they are willing to lose some customers along the way. In countries like the UAE which has a very competitive retail segment, the importance of having a dynamic CX strategy in place cannot be ignored.

“Customer experience is important in the UAE, where 88% of shoppers buy from retailers, brands, and online marketplaces, according to our 2019 Connected Shoppers Report. Integrated CX is vital where customer touchpoints are increasingly fragmented.

51% of shoppers use mobile wallet, 48% use social media, and 28% use messaging apps,” said Thierry Nicault, Regional Vice-President for Enterprise Business Unit (EBU) - Middle East, Africa, and Central Europe, Salesforce.

As high as 96 percent of the region’s IT decision-makers, according to a recent YouGov survey agree that Customer experience is a top

GCC business priority in 2020. “As the UAE embraces the Experience Economy, organizations can no longer deliver only products and solutions – they need to deliver enhanced experiences. By combining the customer “x-data” with operational “o-data,” organizations can better listen, understand, and act on customer beliefs, emotions, and intentions. As a result, organizations can become Intelligent Enterprises with greater business visibility, focus, and agility – and focus on transforming citizen, customer, and employee experiences,” says Abdallah Saqqa, Head of Customer Experience, SAP Middle East North.

AI and ML: or better or for worse Companies have started setting a higher bar

March /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 17

COVER FEATURE in terms of the enhancements in customer engagements and ensuring their transactions or even enquiries are an effortless digital experience and seamlessly integrated with the physical over the counter/POS experience as well. Unless a company wants to be recognized or differentiated only as a low-cost provider, the value proposition of good customer service can make prices less relevant.

That’s how smaller independent retailers compete against big box stores.

CX brings to the fore an integration of several new powerful technologies. Technology is being used to track customer preferences and history. Big data gives us trends and insights with uncanny accuracy. Customer experience market is seeing all the major technologies being implemented in them including Big Data Management, IoT, AI etc. Artificial Intelligence is coming to the forefront of how a company creates a better CX. ML and AI is put to its optimum use in CX software development. AI and Intelligent Assistant (IA) is expected to positively impact the customers.

“AI is key for Middle East organizations to offer real-time customer insights, especially in shopping. AI-powered search and product recommendations drove the 2019 winter holiday season. Our 2019 Holiday Shopping Report shows 10 %of digital orders and 5% of digital revenue came from AI-powered recommendations,” adds Nicault.

To add to this point, Saqqa said that conversational AI and the use of text and voice-based messaging apps automate communications between businesses and their customers. As consumers continue to make greater use of these channels, GCC organizations can seize the opportunity to integrate conversational AI technologies. He further said, “Powered by AI, smart chatbots are designed to automatically mimic a human response. These chatbots can message back and forth with customers throughout their commerce journey while also gathering data and generating a more personalized experience.”

AI is increasingly a part of every new technology and every business and has had its significant impact on CX platforms as well.

“AI is going to revolutionize everything, simplify processes and make them smoother and more seamless. AI has become a fact of life,” adds Farah.

AI has done wonders in transforming traditional chatbots, making them a lot smarter.

With Machine Learning and AI, Smartbots have replaced the role of human in the first entry enquiry stage. The best chatbots are able to not only respond to requests and questions, but also recognize when the cus-

18 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

Subhi Farah

Co-Founder & CEO, Kanari

tomer is confused and seamlessly hand off the conversation to a live customer support representative.

This then extends the journey beyond customer experience towards “customer success”, making customers use your product to solve their problem for themselves or their business and making sure that customers are satisfied every time they interact with your company, at all touchmpoints.

Enabling “Customer Success” Since all products are not the same, there are certain that would need higher level of customer support or in turn gets frustration.

For example, the idea of self assembling of a furniture from IKEA. The goal of a customer success program is to ensure that the customer has success with the company’s products.

Companies provide with online tutorials or coaching classes for these kinds of special attention required products. This eliminates the frustration which might be faced by the customers while getting acquainted with the products. Such proactive customer success

programs eliminates a good majority of the need for customer support calls and enquiry.

There are various challenges though in CX software deployment. The major challenges faced by organizations in their CX deployments would be in having successful ways of collecting customer feedback across touchpoints, and then leveraging that customer experience feedback to optimize experiences.

Saqqa says “In the YouGov survey, barely half (52 percent) of GCC organizations successfully collect customer feedback, though two-thirds (66 percent) of organizations say that they are effectively leveraging customer feedback. One way that GCC organizations can solve this customer experience gap is by working with specialized and authorized channel partners to identify the business cases and the CX solutions.

Organizations also need to train staff in digital skills. Not everyone needs to be a data scientist, but employees do need data science skills.”

Working in real time is another major challenge faced with the CX deployment.

Worldwide, 69% of customers expect connected experiences that raise the bar for

COVER FEATURE

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE LEADERS EXPECT BUDGETS TO RISE IN 2020 Customer experience (CX) efforts remain inconsistent in many organizations, but there are signs of greater commitment and execution for 2020, according to according to Gartner’s 2019 Customer Experience Management Survey revealed earlier this year.

More than two-thirds of CX leaders expect budget increases in 2020 . This is a considerable change compared with the 2017 survey where only 47% of CX leaders expected budgets to increase.

The survey revealed that CX leaders who know how customer satisfaction drives business results get a larger budget. Those respondents whose firms have established a positive relationship between improving customer satisfaction and business impact are more likely to expect significant budget increases.

Abdallah Saqqa

Head of Customer Experience, SAP, Middle East North

engagement, and 71% of customers expect companies to interact in real time.

Nicault says, “Middle East organizations need to prioritize constant innovation, with 75% of customers worldwide expecting companies to use new technologies to create better experiences. Worldwide, 76% of customers are using connected devices, and 62% are open to using artificial intelligence to improve their experiences.”

Experience and Management Tracking, mapping, understanding, predicting and managing customer experience are various steps in the overall strategy of Customer experience management (CEM). CEM, is in other words, the practice of designing and reacting to customer interactions to meet or exceed their expectations, leading to greater customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy. There’s tangible business value in managing the customer experience effectively.

Good customer experience management can strengthen brand preference through differentiated experiences. It can further boost

revenue with incremental sales from existing customers and new sales from word of mouth.

With CEM, there would be an improved customer loyalty (and create advocates) through valued and memorable customer interactions.

To positively demonstrate success and prove the value of CX to business results, Gartner recommends CX leaders take the following actions:

Pointing out the importance of CEM, Farah says “We look at customer experience from a holistic perspective; at how we can collect any type of data and feedback from customers and turn it into actionable insights and improvements for a business.” He further added, “We mostly focus on helping companies measure the customer experience and as a result identify dissatisfied customers and their specific areas of dissatisfaction within the business."

Use customer data to demonstrate CX’s business impact: One of the keys to sustain attention from leaders and collaboration from peers is to make CX matter in terms of the results that are important to them.

Prove how satisfied customers drive up revenue, lower churn, reduce costs and grow the business by combining customer satisfaction data with transaction and operational data.

More companies are going in for a transformation in its CX strategy, especially as online commerce picks up. The ROI on an enterprise-wide CX transformation scenario are quite significant but the best approach would be to start with smaller projects and then and use the resulting ROI model to fuel a winning business case for wider scale CX transformation. It is said that “Customer service represents the heart of a brand in the hearts of its customers.” Businesses are striving to brand their products into the hearts of the customers nevertheless.

Budget for effective CX execution in the future: Developing a CX budget isn’t just a once-a-year process. Always monitor budget and performance and consistently promote the organization’s CX successes and impact. Plan ahead for the annual budgeting process by collaborating with key stakeholders, gathering data and drafting a persuasive budget to accomplish the organization’s CX goals.

March /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 19

IN FOCUS

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION TO BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION The digital transformation journey of Al Masah Capital resulted in not just centralizing IT across all its verticals but invest in IT to be a profit center sector.

Ashith Piriyattiath, Group CIO of Al Masah Capital and CEO of Guardian One Technologies gives us an insight on the journey. — By Arya Devi

Al Masah Capital is one of the leading independent advisory and asset management firms in GCC. It provides an array of investment offerings and advisory solutions tailored to the needs of client. The company is an alternative asset management firm (Private Equity, Hedge Funds, Real Estate) incorporated in the Cayman Islands, headquartered in Dubai and focusing on investments in the MENASA region. Being a customer, Al Masah has seen the need for a special focus Vendor or an SI and has moved on to be a solution provider under the brand, Guardian One Technologies.

20 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

Ashith Piriyattiath, joined Al Masah Capital as the group head of IT in January 2016 but is now the Group CIO of Al Masah Capital and CEO of Guardian One Technologies.

During the time Mr Piriyattiath joined Al Masah, it had around four different revenue verticals, which were private equity, asset management, corporate advisory and real estate. Being venture capitalist, the investments were further invested in their own private equity companies. Under private equity there was healthcare (Avivo Healthcare), logistics (Gulf Pinnacle Logistics), education (Al Najah education), F&B division

(Diamond Lifestyle) and BFSI. The company had over 50 hospitals and clinics under Avivo healthcare and in and around 50 educational institutions under Al Najah education. The Johnny Rockets burger chain belonged to the F&B chain named Diamond Lifestyle. The Gulf Pinnacle Logistics comprises of 2 logistics company, 1 courier company and 1 school transport division. There were also multiple BFSI companies as well including Al Masah Capital, Al Masah Capital Management Limited, Future Capital, Allied Investments Private Limited etc. Even with so

IN FOCUS have Network Operation Center (NOC), Security Operation Center (SOC), Center of Excellence (COE) team, who are taking care of business application, digital innovations team, who are working on to the emerging technologies like Block chain, AI, RPA etc. We also have our help desk team in India,” he said.

In January 2019, Guardian One Technologies was registered in DMCC and started its cloud datacenter in Singapore in May 2019. The company also has a datacenter in JLT, Dubai as well because certain customers wishes to keep the data in country. Presently they are catering to 138 internal customers and have started extending support to external customers since July. The company has also reached its break even point.

Ashith Piriyattiath

Group CIO, Al Masah Capital & CEO, Guardian One Technologies

many sectors and companies, the IT was not centralized.

“The time I joined IT, it was completely deshuffled and there was no structure. I have asked the management to consider centralizing IT across the verticals. But, being into private equity, the board has declined my suggestion,” said Ashith Piriyattiath.

“Whenever entities are matured, we exit from it. Either we will put it in stock exchange or we will sell it to some other party, so that our investors will be getting more revenue out of it.

That is the business model. The boards said it is not wise idea to go for a centralized IT because whenever we are exiting from this private equity segment, whatever arrangements we have done maybe overheard,” added Mr Piriyattiath.

Later the IT was centralized segment wise.

For example, healthcare had its own IT division, so did education, logistics etc. and all the heads of IT were reporting to Mr Piriyattiath.

As part of digital transformation journey, Al Masah migrated to IBM cloud, did AI and Blockchain related projects etc. Later, the company realized the need to centralise IT be-

cause of the expenses being spend on it. “By 2018, when we were looking at the commercials, we could identify that we were spending around $2.1 million for IT operations. Then I went back to the board saying that it is high time to centralize IT as we were spending this much amount in IT operation expense, excluding the capital expense,” said Mr Piriyattiath.

“The board approved and asked to not just centralize but change IT to profit center. IT was a cost center before, as it was spending money.

Then we decided to change IT as a profit center and has restructured the team completely. More skilled resources came in picture and the areas we were outsourcing to third party vendors were done in house,” he added.

The birth of Guardian One Technologies thus came into being. With further analysis, the team realized that the amount spend on IBM cloud was high. They further decided to have private and public datacenter as part of cost cutting in the long run.

“Guardian One Technology is currently having huge private datacenter in Singapore and we have our back office in India and head office based in Dubai, JLT. In back office team we

The core services offered are cloud services (including private cloud environment, public cloud environment and cloud consultancy services) and security and forensics. “We do understand that the highest level of security is the Layer 7 security which is required for banks and financial organisations. We bought in a new concept called ‘SOC in a BOX’.

The major feature in this is there is support 24*7*365, where we monitor the environment. It is a kind of a box concept where customers can decide what level of security or products is required. Then we will pack it in a box and deliver that services to the customers and there will be a monthly billing. Normally any security solutions will provide only threat detection and reporting, but we provide this and mitigation control, post internal analysis and the compliance and regulatory requirement. This is not delivered by any products in the region,” said Mr Piriyyattiath.

Mr Piriyattiath working in the customer side for over 19 years uses his knowledge to understand what a customer requires from a solution provider. This is how he came up with the products like ‘School 360’ and ‘Healthcare 360’. ‘School 360’ covers the on premise infrastructure, cloud infrastructure, disaster recovery and business continuity plan, school management system, e-learning system and all tablet based curriculum system. This is a bundled one stop solution for education sector. Similarly ‘Healthcare 360’ is a complete solution for healthcare sector.

From a customer, they became a vendor or an SI who are managing internal and external customers. The CEO who understand the need of a customer with the knowledge of a customer CIO runs the business to be the best in the region.

March /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 21

CIO INSIGHTS

BLOCKCHAIN AND AI CONVERGENCE Tabis Asifi,Group IT Governance Lead of MAF Holding, Dubai, along with his colleague Farrukh Munir, Enterprise Senior Architect, MAF Holding, elaborates on Blockchain and AI Convergence in this expert opinion article Many enterprises have plenty of data but don’t know how to make it available to the world. Dormant value of data stalks everywhere. Conversely, many startups know how to turn data in to value using AI, but they’re starving for data. A few companies Google, Facebook, Baidu, Alibaba and the like, have both massive datasets and the AI knowledge to turn it into significant business value. These companies are not purely AI companies, rather they’ve used the combination of data and AI to become the most powerful companies in the world.

We are in 2020 and our social order runs on data, yet much of it is controlled by a handful of companies with more power, resources, and reaches than most nations.

How can we equalize access to data with strong privacy, and therefore opportunity to make the most of upcoming technology enablers like AI.

Tabish Asifi

Group IT Governance Lead, MAF Holding, Dubai, UAE

22 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

This is where blockchain can provide complimentary value. Blockchain is a data structure that distributes trust across many nodes instead of one. One popular example of blockchain is Bitcoin. If “A” wants to send Bitcoin to “B”, then all the miners (nodes) in the bitcoin network are requested to validate that transaction. If the majority of the miners validate that transaction to be viable then the transaction is executed and added in the blockchain , which is essentially a shared ledger. These blocks in the shared

CIO INSIGHTS

We already know that blockchain is great for facilitating digital transactions, but it can also be used for formalising digital relationships through smart contracts.

Smart contracts are to compare the technology to a vending machine. Ordinarily, you would go to a lawyer or a notary, pay them, and wait while you get the document. With smart contracts, you simply drop a money into the vending machine (i.e. blockchain ledger), and your escrow, driver’s license, or whatever drops into your account. More so, smart contracts not only define the rules and penalties around an agreement in the same way that a traditional contract does, but also automatically enforce those obligations.

Integration of Blockchain and AI Bringing these two technology enablers together in complementary ways is what is now being explored. There is a ying and yang relationship between both these technologies.

• Educated guess work is done by AI where Blockchains are more about validation, permanence and greater degree of certainty and control • Cataclysmic risks of AI can be limited by smart contracts. Smart Contract can limit catastrophic actions of AI in real-time and record all actions whichever is taken by AI Algorithm which go unchecked.

• Blockchain offers high degree of trust.

Transparent immutable records enable bots and humans to trust each other.

• Blockchain creates a clear audit trail and provenance that we can use to trace the data and understand how data was used to make decisions by AI algorithm. Blockchain and its ledger record all data and variables that go through a decision made under machine learning. Blockchain provides high degree of canonical reference of data for who did what, when, why and for how long.

• Blockchain organizes data on a decentralized ledger at scale and allows participants in the network to determine how their data should be monetized, so, monopolization of data is mitigated.

Here are the examples of real use cases that point out what blockchain and AI can do together.

Decentralised Data Marketplace OpenMined , an open-source community has created a decentralised marketplace for data. In terms of AI and Blockchain, this is a great example. OpenMined has de-

,,

ledger are immutable. You would need to have more computing power of around 500 super computers in the world combined to create a fake transaction. This assurance of immutabikity of trsnaction is what provides bitcoin its USP. That’s one of the reason why Bitcoin has $165 Billion market cap at the moment. This also shows the potential of blockchain as a technology to unlock business value in the existing market.

BRINGING THESE TWO TECHNOLOGY ENABLERS TOGETHER IN COMPLEMENTARY WAYS IS WHAT IS NOW BEING EXPLORED. THERE IS A YIN AND YANG RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BOTH THESE TECHNOLOGIES.

veloped a platform to facilitate the decentralised ownership of data and intelligence by providing a peer to peer network which allows any new company or person to train their AI models on someone else data.

Blockchain based peer to peer network ensures the transaction between two strange parties, where one party say a start-up or Data Scientist can train their AI model and the other party gets paid while using her data without sacrificing the privacy.

Let’s say, if I own an Algorithm and want to train my algorithm, and I need your data to train my algorithm. If there is a third party involve like a central server, then three different people are involved in this transaction and they can steal from each other. If I give you my model, there could be a high degree of probably that my algorithm can be compromised or if you give your data to me in order to train my model your data can be stolen and its privacy can be compromised. Third party, who is ensuring a trust and make a transaction in between us, can also steal my algorithm and your data. So, we end up having a less than optimal scenario.

Your data, my model and I pay you for your data in order to train my model and after getting it trained, I get back my model without giving up the IP (Intellectual Property) of my model. How this transaction can happen without trusting each other? This is the problem OpenMined attempts to solve.

OpenMined is trying to solve two fundamental issues while using AI and Blockchain together.

• OpenMined decentralised Blockchain platform facilitates to allow large groups of individuals to train the algorithms without needing to ever reveal the contents of their data.

• OpenMined seeks to allow individuals to continue to retain ownership and privacy of the AI algorithms that are trained on someone else’s data.

The fundamental difference between OpenMined and other projects, is their ability to capitalise on the idea that intelliMarch /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 23

CIO INSIGHTS gence and data between two non-trusting parties can be brought together without compromising the privacy and intellectual property of either.

Self Driving Car network Another excellent example is self driving car network. Pretty soon, we are going to see lots of self driving car on the roads , essentially giant , autonomous and fast moving machines. We have to be very careful how we architect this self driving car network. One way to do it is to design the centralised server which will control every other car on the road. Just think about the security implication of this approach. If someone hack this server then every single car is vulnerable to attack.

We need a better system. These autonomous cars would be communicating to each other and sharing massive information in real time e.g. during changing the lanes, sharing congestion information to each other etc. If instead of a centralized system, we could let these machines cross talk to each other directly in real time, in a secure and trusted way without the need of a centralized trusted third party. This builds up a case for the use of blockchain network as a possibility.

Whenever we use a Blockchain, it encourages a data sharing which leads to more data which leads to better AI model.

Ideally we would want to have an audit trail as well in case there is a car crash happened. Anyone can verify that what the AI model is thinking at that point in time once accident happened. As we have mentioned above, Blockchain records all the actions and decision whatever are being taken by AI algorithm and we can limit some action if we have to through smart contract as well. Hence here , the rules on the blockchain also helps to control the end result and behaviour of the AI’s model.

Benefits of Blockchain and AI

AI is probabilistic we don’t know what 24 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

Farrukh Munir

Enterprise Solution Architect, MAF Holding, Dubai, UAE

outcome is going to be as AI algorithm is constantly updating and changing its learning based on training data being fed and the algorithm guess what reality is going to be. But Blockchain on the other hand is deterministic; we know what the outcome is going to be. It is permanent and immutable. Blockchain’s data does not change at all. Algorithm and cryptography record in real time. AI and Blockchain are different technologies but are very complimentary to each other. There is a lot of synergy in between these two technologies.

it has received attention of researchers but projects and use cases related to this innovative combination are still scarce.

No doubt, each technology has its own individual degree of complexity, but both AI and Blockchain are in situations where they can benefit from each other and help one another.

We know that AI can be incredibly revolutionary, but AI based system should be designed with due diligence and blockchain can provide great the assurance factor in order to achieve that goal. In my opinion, this convergence would likely help build innovative value propositions through use of AI and machine learning on shared data over blockchain.

Conclusion The convergence of these two technologies is still undiscovered area, although,

These two technologies have potential to use data in way which may not have been possible before, because, convergence ensures that data, and Intellectual property would not be compromised.

Data is the key element for continuous improvement of AI algorithm, and blockchain facilitates to secure this data, maintain end to end audit trail of all the steps which are taken by AI.

CASE STUDY

EPICOR ERP TO AID EPOCH COSMETICS & TOILETRIES UAE-based manufacturer drawn to manufacturing-centric and multi-region capabilities of market-leading solution Dubai-based Epoch Cosmetics & Toiletries produces aerosols, deodorants, air fresheners and cosmetics for markets all around the world—including its native United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, India, West Africa, Egypt, Oman, the UK, France, and the US. The company supplies major brands—such as Elegant, Inspire, Pleasure, Hot & Cold, Mehas and The Scent—to distributors, and also offers contract manufacturing to other brands.

Epoch Cosmetics & Toiletries has selected enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, Epicor ERP, to improve manufacturing and warehousing operations and streamline information flow across the company.

Epicor partner, Cork Information Technology, will work with Epoch Cosmetics & Toiletries’ stakeholders to bring the full power of the Epicor platform to the company and its employees.

Having grown from a handful of employees to a monthly production capacity of more than two million products in just 10 years, Epoch Cosmetics & Toiletries realised they would need to replace their existing ERP solution to continue to expand and grow.

“As we grew, our legacy system was not catering to our needs, especially in manufacturing, warehousing and sales,” said Abbas Hamid, director at Epoch Cosmetics & Toiletries.

The company’s warehousing issues stemmed from a lack of real-time accuracy and visibility for on-hand stock levels from the front-end system. The necessity to implement manual workarounds was impacting productivity, and inaccuracies were affecting stock valuation. In addition, stock retrieval was employee-driven, rather than system-driven, leading to further inaccuracies if goods were not correctly stored. Other complications existed based on the absence of a stock-taking module in the legacy ERP, requiring warehouse employees to perform an entirely manual reconciliation.

“In addition, the manufacturing module within the legacy system only captured the cost of materials, so labour costs and direct costs were never captured. These had to be generated through manual calculations and estimations, which affected our financials,” added Hamid.

Reporting was also cumbersome, with pending PO reports and shipment tracking requiring manual preparation, and the system offered no capability for real-time reporting.

Amel Gardner

Regional Director, MEAI, Epicor

Epoch Cosmetics & Toiletries decided it needed an ERP system that was tailored to their business operations, was easy to deploy and use, and would be flexible enough to allow the company to grow unimpeded. After considering four major ERP vendors, Hamid and his team selected Epicor ERP due to the manufacturing-centric focus and native functionality of the solution.

“While we obviously needed some level of customisation, we were very clear that we wanted to adapt to a system and be in line with best industry practices, rather than the other way around—where the system has to adapt to us,” added Hamid.

Epoch Cosmetics & Toiletries’ stakeholders were particularly drawn to the real-time reporting functionality of Epicor ERP, as well as its multi-region capabilities, so that future expansion plans would not be hampered and that consolidated reports could be easily compiled.

Implementation is expected to be completed by May 2020, and the company’s project team is currently working with regional Epicor partner, Cork Information Technology, to deploy the new solution to more than 40 users in the UAE. Supply chain, sales, CRM, manufacturing, finance and asset management will all be key areas of functionality that are expected to help enhance Epoch Cosmetics & Toiletries’ operations.

Epoch Cosmetics & Toiletries’ management team is hopeful that, with Epicor ERP in place, its operations will be streamlined, allowing it to expand as needed and implement international best standards in manufacturing. Also, given the ability for Epicor ERP to integrate with multiple third-party solutions, the company plans to work with Epicor to integrate modules for business analytics and intelligent manufacturing.

“All across the Middle East and North Africa region, manufacturing companies are trying to digitally transform, so that operations are optimised continually,” said Amel Gardner, regional director, Middle East, Africa and India (MEAI), Epicor. “Processes that are overly manual impede growth, so digitisation is the key to agility. Epoch Cosmetics & Toiletries realised its legacy architecture was holding back the fulfilment of its regional ambitions. When you have the vision to shake off the old and embrace the new, extraordinary things can happen. We are confident that with Epicor ERP in place, the company will march quickly towards a new horizon.”

March /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 25

INTERVIEW

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION FOR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE Umesh Moolchandani, Group IT Head of Bin Dasmal group elaborates on the digital transformation journey need to enable digital operating model.

— By Arya Devi

Elaborate your journey in Bin Dasmal as the group head of IT.

What is the most recent technology implementation done in Bin Dasmal?

I’ve been associated with Bin Dasmal Group for almost 3.5 years. I’m working as Group IT Head, heading the ICT function of the Group at Head Office in Dubai and its subsidiaries globally. My responsibility is to ensure maximum value creation for business by aligning IT capabilities and priorities with strategic and operational business priorities, ensuring resource optimization and maximizing the IT cost efficiency, ensuring optimal level of IT support services and IT service delivery among the different LOBs in the group. Bin Dasmal Group has always been keen and proactive in adopting modern and innovative technology to get competitive advantage in the market.

This can be established with the fact that the group is one of the early adopters of cloud computing environment. My initiatives after joining the group have been to provide a strategic direction and clear roadmap for Digital Transformation for the organization, consolidation and integration of IT Infrastructure, Business Applications and various other IT resources, explore and implement innovative technologies in the areas including but not limited to IT operations, information security, governance based on cloud and AI for sustainable future growth.

Bin Dasmal Group recently upgraded the legacy ERP application to a more agile, modern and cutting-edge web-based application in a cost efficient and secure manner. The main objective of ERP upgrade project was to shift from legacy client-server-based architecture to modern web and mobile enabled application to help the organization in tracking its supply chain activities from inventory purchase to production to processing and final shipment to customers.

26 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

The infrastructure for ERP

Umesh Moolchandani

Group IT Head, Bin Dasmal Group

INTERVIEW application is deployed in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure using Oracle IaaS and PaaS Services. The database server, application servers, report server and other utility servers were setup in the cloud and configured with highly secure network design and secure access connectivity using cloud based firewall and firewall/load balancer between On-Premise Network and Oracle Cloud to access mission critical ERP Application for all Group Companies of Bin Dasmal Group.

The web-based ERP application is a browser-based application with Oracle 12c as database, Red Hat JBoss as Middleware and Java as frond-end uses the cutting-edge technology and leverages APIs for integration with other business applications for data interchange. The application also provides accessibility through mobile platforms for reporting, quick access to information and good applications for workflow and other services. The upgraded ERP also provides access of KPIs and Analytics Dashboards to the senior and mid-level management for the timely decision making.

ture, the objective was to host the servers in Oracle Cloud instead of investing in on-premise hardware. The key objective was to host the application securely in the cloud environment with no / limited public exposure while keeping the optimal performance, infrastructure resiliency and data redundancy.

How is the digital transformation in Bin Dasmal benefiting the business?

The deployment of ERP in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure has been done considering a secure network design, data and application security.

Since starting the digital transformation journey, the organization has taken up multiple initiatives and projects which have provided benefits in different dimensions.

Initiative of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for ERP application deployment has allowed the organization to adopt OPEX cost model instead of CAPEX resulting in enhanced cashflows and improved TCO and ROI. Similarly, deployment of web enabled ERP has Increased collaboration among various functions of the organization, improved supply-chain efficiency and customer engagement, provided the business analytics for the management from the data integrated from various sources.

The innovation in production and supply chain has resulted in increased levels of customer service and enhanced collaboration with suppliers and customers.

Which IT implementation would you say has revolutionized the organization? Explain.

With more companies opting for remote working in the present scenario, how will technology adoption affect people’s jobs in the long run?

Among various IT initiatives undertaken during the last 3 years, I would say that upgrading of ERP has revolutionized the organization. The upgrade has allowed the business to optimize the total cost of ownership by deploying serves with highest standards of security in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and shift the cost model from CAPEX to OPEX. Furthermore, the integrated view of company data in a web enabled architecture has improved information sharing, collaboration across functional and corporate boundaries and improved decision making for the management using advanced analytics based on single view of data. This has to be achieved by investing in the latest available technologies with lower Total Cost of Ownership and maximizing the Return on Investment. For setting up the infrastruc-

As technologies like artificial Intelligence, automation, and robotics reach maturity level with lot of work being done in these fields, the job market is going through a major shift. I strongly believe that both the government and the job workers are required to prepare themselves for the upcoming challenges and they should adapt themselves according to the demand of new emerging technologies by upgrading their knowledge and skillsets. Governments are taking up initiatives which are directed at narrowing the skill gap which has been created by the ever-changing technological landscape.

Which technology according to you is the most over hyped in the UAE market? And which is the one that you wish

the market recognized more?

Elaborate.

I feel that cryptocurrency and the underlying blockchain technology is the most overhyped as of now. As far as blockchain is concerned, this could be down to the fact that the so far, the application of this technology is limited and complex and many organizations aren’t yet using blockchain widely, so even IT professionals haven’t seen enough of its benefits. Cloud Computing including IaaS, SaaS and PaaS with security and AI has gained lot of traction and momentum in UAE market in recent times as we can see that there is a balance between the perceived importance and implementation with no or very little gap.

What is your vision for 2020 as the Group Head of IT at Bin Dasmal?

As the Group Head of IT at Bin Dasmal Group, my vision for 2020 is to continue the digital transformation journey which will help the organization move toward a digitally enabled operating model that will provide competitive advantage and change how customers, partners, employees and other stakeholders experience and interact with the business. The robust roadmap for this journey includes disciplined IT investment decisions for adopting new technologies like Cloud Computing, RPA, IoT, Blockchain and AI, building IT platform instead of products for future growth sustainability, using data beyond business intelligence for predictive and prescriptive analytics, focusing on cloud and information security. The execution of this is to focus upon the four paths of people, process, technology and content. Needless to say, to achieve all these objectives our focus would be for the empowerment of team with the skills and knowledge required to continue the digital transformation journey. With the strong support from the management, I believe, we will continue to innovate and ensure that solutions with latest technology are in place for sustainable growth of the business. We have laid the strong foundation and embarked on digital transformation journey and our goal is to continue working with the business units and move towards industry 4.0 leveraging technologies like IoT, AI, autonomous systems and big data.

March /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 27

COLUMN

REMOTE WORKING DUE TO CORONAVIRUS? HERE’S HOW TO DO IT SECURELY Paul Ducklin, principal research scientist, Sophos, gives tips on securely working from home Many if not most organisations have already crossed the “working from home”, or at least the “working while on the road” bridge.

If you’re on the IT team, you’re probably used to preparing laptops for staff to use remotely, and setting up mobile phones with access to company data.

But global concerns over the current coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak, and the need to keep at-risk staff away from the office, means that lots of companies may soon and suddenly end up with lots more staff working from home and it’s vital not to let the precautions intended to protect the physical health of your staff turn into a threat to their cybersecurity health at the same time.

Importantly, if you have a colleague who needs to work from home specifically to stay away from the office then you can no longer use the tried-and-tested approach of getting them to come in once to collect their new laptop and phone, and to receive the on-site training that you hope will make them a safer teleworker.

You may end up needing to set remote users up from scratch, entirely remotely, and that might be something you’ve not done a lot of in the past.

So here are our five tips for working from home safely.

1. Make sure it’s easy for your users to get started Look for security products that offer what’s called an SSP, short for Self-Service Portal.

What you are looking for is a service to which a remote user can connect, perhaps with a

28 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

brand new laptop they ordered themselves, and set it up safely and easily without needing to hand it over to the IT department first.

The three key things you want to be able to set up easily and correctly are: encryption, protection and patching.

Many SSPs also allow the user to choose between different levels of access, so they can safely connect up either a personal device (albeit with less access to fewer company systems than they’d get with a dedicated device), or a device that will be used only for company work.

Encryption means making sure that full-device encryption is turned on and activated, which protects any data on the device if it gets stolen; protection means that you start off with known security software, such as anti-virus, configured in the way you want; and patching

COLUMN

means making sure that the user gets as many security updates as possible automatically, so they don’t get forgotten.

Remember that if you do suffer a data breach, such as a lost laptop, you may well need to disclose the fact to the data protection regulator in your country.

If you want to be able to claim that you took the right precautions, and thus that the breach can be disregarded, you’ll need to produce evidence – the regulator won’t just take your word for it!

sure you review those warnings too, and let your users know what they mean and what you expect them to do about any issues that may arise.

Don’t patronise your users, because no one likes that; but don’t leave them to fend for themselves, either – show them a bit of cybersecurity love and you are very likely to find that they repay it.

4. Make sure they have somewhere to report 2. Make sure your users security issues can do what they need If you haven’t already, set up an easily reIf users genuinely can’t do their job without access to server X or to system Y, then there’s no point in sending them off to work from home without access to X and Y. Make sure you have got your chosen remote access solution working reliably first – force it on yourself! – before expecting your users to adopt it.

If there are any differences between what they might be used to and what they are going to get, explain the difference clearly – for example, if the emails they receive on their phone will be stripped of attachments, don’t leave them to find that out on their own.

They’ll not only be annoyed, but will probably also try to make up their own tricks for bypassing the problem, such as asking colleagues to upload the files to private accounts instead.

If you’re the user, try to be understanding if there are things you used to be able do in the office that you have to manage without at home.

membered email address, such as security911 @ yourcompany DOT example, where users can report security issues quickly and easily.

Remember that a lot of cyberattacks succeed because the crooks try over and over again until one user makes an innocent mistake – so if the first person to see a new threat has somewhere to report it where they know they won’t be judged or criticised (or, worse still, ignored), they’ll end up helping everyone else.

Teach your users – in fact, this goes for office-based staff as well as teleworkers – only to reach out to you for cybersecurity assistance by using the email address or phone number you gave them. (Consider snail-mailing them a card or a sticker with the details printed on it.)

If they never make contact using links or phone numbers supplied by email, they they are very much less likely to get scammed or phished.

5. Make sure you know 3. Make sure you can about “shadow IT” solusee what your users tions Shadow IT is where non-IT staff find their are doing own ways of solving technical problems, Don’t just leave your users to their own devices (literally or figuratively).

If you’ve set up automatic updating for them, make sure you also have a way to check that it’s working, and be prepared to spend time online helping them fix things if they go wrong.

If their security software produces warnings that you know they will have seen, make

for convenience or speed.

If you have a bunch of colleagues who are used to working together in the office, but who end up flung apart and unable to meet up, it’s quite likely that they might come up with their own ways of collaborating online – using tools they’ve never tried before.

Sometimes, you might even be happy for

them to do this, if it’s a cheap and happy way of boosting team dynamics.

For example, they might open an account with an online whiteboarding service – perhaps even one you trust perfectly well – on their own credit card and plan to claim it back later.

The first risk everyone thinks about in cases like this is, “What if they make a security blunder or leak data they shouldn’t?”

But there’s another problem that lots of companies forget about, namely: what if, instead of being a security disaster, it’s a conspicuous success?

A temporary solution put in place to deal with a public health issue might turn into a vibrant and important part of the company’s online presence.

So, make sure you know whose credit card it’s charged to, and make sure you can get access to the account if the person who originally created it forgets the password, or cancels their card.

So-called “shadow IT” isn’t just a risk if it goes wrong – it can turn into a complicated liability if it goes right!

Most of all, if you and your users suddenly need to get into teleworking, be prepared to meet each other half way.

For example, if you’re the user, and your IT team suddenly insists that you start using a password manager and 2FA (those second-factor login codes you have to type in every time)… …then just say “Sure,” even if you hate 2FA and have avoided it in your personal life because you find it inconvenient.

And if you’re the sysadmin, don’t ignore your users, even if they ask questions you think they should know the answer to by now, or if they ask for something you’ve already said “No” to… …because it might very well be that they’re asking because you didn’t explain clearly the first time, or because the feature they need really is important to doing their job properly.

We’re living in tricky times, so try not to let matters of public health cause the sort of friction that gets in the way of doing cybersecurity properly!

March /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 29

COLUMN

WHY ENABLING REMOTE WORKING ISN’T THE ONLY REASON YOU SHOULD CONSIDER VDI Assaad El Saadi, Regional Director - Middle East, Pure Storage elaborates on the reasons for adoption of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

As organizations across the Middle East look to quickly enable and scale remote working environments, there has been an uptick in the adoption of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

This is not surprising given the benefits of VDI for remote working. For one, integrating new users, user devices, businesses, and even applications is made easier with VDI. Secondly, developers can respond faster, users can utilize a rich desktop environment, and organizations can truly enable the business by incorporating a completely virtual desktop ecosystem. Last but not least, VDI scales from the datacenter and into the cloud as well. This means users can access intelligent systems monitoring their performance, utilization, and even licensing while still pushing out a rich VDI environment.

However, the benefits of VDI extend far beyond just enabling a remote and mobile workforce. Here are eight more reasons why you should consider VDI.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Application virtualization aside, delivering desktops via BYOD can be a great solution for end-users as well as IT. Whether they’re working from home, internally or even internationally, users can access a desktop with all of their settings intact. Increased demand for mobility and IT consumerization has led to a rise in BYOD. This is where VDI can help.

The endpoint never retains the data, and both the desktops and applications are always secure and controlled at the datacenter level.

30 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

Assaad El Saadi

Regional Director, ME, Pure Storage

COLUMN

to

Some organizations have numerous contractors working within an organization. A great way to control contractor access is through a private cloud VDI platform. This gives users access via controlled active directory (AD) policies and credentials and allows them to connect to a virtual desktop. From there, administrators can quickly provision and de-provision desktop resources as needed for a given contractor.

Testing and development There is no better way to test out an application, service or new product than on an efficiently provisioned VDI image. Administrators can deploy and test out new platforms within “live” environments without having to provision hardware resources. Once the testing is complete, they can simply spin down the VDI instance and rollout the new update, application or desktop environment.

Centralizing and securing the datacenter New delivery capabilities allow organizations to completely centralize management of the virtual desktops. This creates a new security paradigm where nothing is stored at the endpoint. More so, HTML5 allows for complete clientless delivery so that sessions

traditional spinning disk or hybrid storage.

Organizations no longer need to worry about big endpoints and lost resources. IT teams can create true datacenter efficiency by controlling all resources connected into the virtual desktop delivery architecture.

Optimizing resource controls VDI allows organizations to dynamically shape the entire user experience. Is the application lagging? Is the user requiring more resources due to the workload type? How quickly can you adjust to user and market demands? VDI allows entire workloads to be re-provisioned with resources that allow the user to be productive wherever and whenever they choose to work. By moving from a spin-

,,

Providing access third parties

desktops and applications with sub-millisecond latency, allowing the enterprise IT to deliver true performance from the datacenter to any user on the network. Now organizations can place more heavy resource users on multi-tenant blades, network, compute, and storage architecture. This opens up new possibilities for those users that historically needed a very expensive endpoint.

THANKS TO ADVANCEMENTS WITHIN THE NETWORK, COMPUTE AND THE STORAGE LAYERS, THERE CAN BE GREAT BENEFITS TO AN ORGANIZATION IF THERE IS A DIRECT FIT FOR VDI — REDUCED DESKTOP IT COSTS, Application compatibiliIMPROVED SECURITY, INCREASED CONTROL, ty and delivery AND EXPANDED CONNECTIVITY. Recent updates within organizations have forced some applications to adopt 64-bit technologies. Some apps, however, won’t run on these platforms, forcing administrators to get creative. This is where VDI can help. For those select, finicky applications, VDI within a private cloud environment can be a lifesaver. Virtual desktops can run within 32-bit or 64-bit instances and allow administrators to continue to support many older apps.

Accelerating heavy desktop compute workloads New technologies are allowing for powerful resource sharing while still optimizing the user experience. Solutions with 100% NVMe all-flash storage systems accelerate virtual

are completely controlled within the datacenter. This means organizations can isolate VDI sessions, geo-fence users, and create a proactive VDI security ecosystem.

ning disk architecture to flash storage, IT can enable greater end-user performance, higher resiliency, and powerful scalability at a lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

Creating new levels of datacenter economics

In the past, technologies like VDI were seen as heavy, forklift projects that required long time frames, resources, dedicated infrastructure and big budgets. But that is a thing of the past, thanks to advancements within the network, compute and the storage layers. There can be great benefits to an organization if there is a direct fit for VDI — reduced desktop IT costs, improved security, increased control, and expanded connectivity. This allows organizations to support new business models and improve both IT operations and user satisfaction, critical success factors in today’s digital economy.

VDI and virtualization allow organizations to control their own cloud environment and how they provision resources. The ability to dynamically provision and de-provision resources gives organizations unparalleled flexibility when it comes to virtual desktop delivery. Data reduction technologies such as deduplication and compression enable IT to deliver all-flash solutions with increased performance, at the same price or lower, than

March /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 31

COLUMN

6 CRITICAL REMOTE CAPABILITIES FOR THE MODERN SERVICE DESK With IT help desks facing complex environment, Karl Lankford, Director – Solutions Engineering, BeyondTrust elaborates on the critical remote capabilities for the modern service desk IT help desks face an increasingly complex support environment, requiring flexible remote support options that scale, adapt, and continue to meet rigorous security requirements. Whether you’re a small IT business owner or part of a large enterprise organization’s technical support team, choosing the right remote support software is pivotal to the productivity and security of your service desk.

But that is easier said than done. Today, IT professionals seeking remote support software should not only be looking for a solution that helps them troubleshoot technical problems, but also one that bolsters remote access security, is easy-to-use for technicians, enhances the customer experience, and fits into their existing infrastructure.

Broad Platform Support Modern remote support solutions should enable technicians to provide support regardless of either their platform or the end-user’s platform. When support technicians are on the go, they should be able to seamlessly provide support via their mobile device. Sometimes support technicians need to quickly connect through a web browser, such as Chrome. In these in32 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

stances, having an HTML 5-based console can be particularly beneficial.

kill processes and uninstall programs on remote PCs or mobile devices.

The broader the platform support, the better you will be able to standardize support using a single tool to improve incident handling time, technician productivity, and reap other efficiencies.

Integrations

Collaboration Support systems should come with intelligent collaboration features that are central to the customer support experience and help drive faster incident resolution.

These capabilities should include ability to provide chat support, define escalation paths, enable screen sharing and remote camera sharing with live streaming, provide canned scripts, scale management of unattended access, enable troubleshooting beneath the operating system, allow secure access to the command line for troubleshooting, security and auditing, provide access to the remote registry editor on Windows PCs without interrupting the remote customer or requiring screen sharing, allow secure usage on remote networks without requiring VPN tunnelling or firewall changes, create and administer surveys to employees and customers and

You've already invested in solutions for your service desk or support center to more efficiently track issues and end-user requests. Your remote support software should fit seamlessly into your environment and unlock synergies with the other solutions in your ecosystem.

Remote support solutions that come with out-of-the-box integrations for the leading ITSM, CRM, and systems management solutions reduce administrative burden.

Powerful remote support and ITSM integrations enable organizations to deliver services more efficiently, reduce demand on operations, and manage processes, workflows, and service experiences. For a seamless incident resolution and management process, your technicians should be able to launch a remote support session directly from the support ticket or change record, automatically update tickets with details from the support session, and include the chat transcript and session recording in the ticket. This requires integrating your remote support tools with

COLUMN your incident and case management systems.

The higher the interoperability and the stronger the integrations of remote support with the rest of your service desk, the better the experience for both your service desk people and its customers.

Security, Auditing and Compliance As remote work has increased, so too has the number of data breaches through point-to-point remote access tools like pcAnywhere, RDP, VNC, and free non-secure access tools. The limited use cases for these tools are frequently stretched beyond what is safe or efficient and their security features (or lack thereof) should be a red flag. Problems with these tools are manifold. The most pressing shortcomings are the dangerous lack of visibility into remote access sessions and the inability to apply the principle of least privilege for access.

Service desk technicians are often required to use admin credentials with elevated privileges to resolve support issues.

Although privileged account credentials are a common target for hackers, credential management best practices are commonly sacrificed trying to quickly resolve issues. In fact, many service desk teams share and store credentials in plain text.

It’s imperative to provide technicians with the credentials and authentication they need quickly for expedited access to IT systems, while always enforcing credential management best practices.

Today’s threat environment and regulations demand that enterprises be able to identify and record the who, what, where, and when around remote access activities. These are questions only the best enterprise-class remote support tools are purpose-built to answer. Yet, even amongst enterprise tools, there can be substantive differences in security maturity and capability completeness.

Whether you’re subject to PCI, ISO, GDPR, NIST, or other stringent regulations, the right solution should help you easily produce the detailed attestation reports to prove compliance. Security features that support those measures include advanced encryption, least privilege en-

Karl Lankford

Director – Solutions Engineering, BeyondTrust

forcement and granular control of access to sensitive data (such as PII), audit logs, and recordings of all sessions.

Branding and customization Support customers can be wary about allowing a remote connection to their devices. One important way for support organizations to reinforce positive brand awareness and foster trust is by branding and customizing the support experience for their customers. Ideally, your remote support solution should allow you to create custom portals for each customer, group, and/or product your users support.

Flexible Deployment Options Seek out a solution that offers the deployment and licensing options that best fit the

needs and requirements of your organization. Common deployment options include cloud subscriptions as well as physical and virtual appliances. Some vendors may offer only a single option. Other vendors may offer several options. However, sometimes capabilities and features may vary or be lacking across different deployment scenarios from the same vendor, so verify that the deployment model you choose includes the features and capabilities that you expect.

There are many different remote support use cases, but no matter who or what you are supporting, remote support technology users want a solution that is easy to use, reliable, and secure. The right remote support solution enables users to quickly access and fix nearly any remote device, running on any platform, located anywhere in the world. It should also provide absolute visibility and control over internal and external remote access, secure connectivity to managed assets, and a complete, unimpeachable audit trail for compliance.

March /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 33

COLUMN

A CEO’S 5 GOLDEN RULES IN MANAGING A CYBERSECURITY CRISIS Haider Pasha the regional chief security officer, Middle East & Africa region, for Palo Alto Networks elaborates on the five golden rules that should be followed by a CEO while managing a cybersecurity crisis A cyber breach can cause untold damage to a company’s operations, sales, reputation and stock price. It can also suddenly end the successful career of a CEO or CSO, as happened with some cyberattacks in recent years.

In fact, Allianz Risk Barometer 2020 – the largest risk survey worldwide – recognized critical business interruptions caused by cybersecurity breaches as the most severe risk to organizations.

Even for the best prepared, a cyber crisis could hit anytime. What should you do if you are the CEO of a hacked company?

Rule 1: Take command.

This is personal.

Roll up your sleeves. Merely delegating the work to the IT team during a cyber breach can be dangerous for the company and for you personally. A number of CEOs of large companies recently learned this the hard way. Cyber risk does not affect only your IT network but also your overall business.

Operational disruptions and litigation costs have an immediate effect on your reputation if not prioritized correctly. Hence, it’s not surprising that shareholders are starting to seek personal consequences for companies involved with a cyber crisis. Effectively management of a cyber crisis involves board level engagement at both the COO and CFO level. But a CEO is often the best person to manage it.

Rule 2: It’s all about communication.

When hit by a cyberattack, nobody wants 34 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

Haider Pasha

Regional Chief Security Officer, MEA, Palo Alto Networks

COLUMN to be in the news and challenged by the public and press. Was it poor cybersecurity or a nation-state hacker? Do you really understand the full extent of leaked data? Are there any further backdoors the attackers might use for sabotage activities?

A cyber crisis is almost always very complex. It can take months to years to answer all those questions. However, the right communication strategy will determine public opinion about how professionally you have managed the incident. So, what are you going to do? Secrecy, full transparency, or the dangerous way in between?

Reporting of the crisis and technical analysis can likely be done more effectively by external companies that have dealt with similar situations or the same threat actor.

For instance, most companies often lack legal experience or are not familiar with the Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) of the threat actor.

• Security vendors: Most companies are shy to consider security vendors as partners. The reality is that security vendors are perhaps the best partners to help you mitigate the threat given their experience with your security controls.

While we can only speculate about the success rate of incidents that were kept secret, there’s enough evidence to show this: Most large enterprises that tried to keep a cyber crisis secret and were busted afterwards failed big time with their reputation.

• Peers: Cybersecurity is a team sport, so we have to be humbler when working with our peers or even competitors. Most of the threats your organization faces have already hit some of your peers. Engaging peers and asking for help is critical.

Moreover, you have to manage all relevant internal stakeholders and vendors to comply with potential regulations for obligatory reports. Some regulators ask for extremely fast reports, such as the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) that demands notification within a few minutes.

• Law Enforcement: In many countries engagement of law enforcement is more of a formal act to register the incident. However, some countries have strong capabilities that focus not only on investigation of the threat actors but also help defend your networks. To address the problem of cybersecurity in a sustainable way, it is always good to engage with law enforcement during or after an incident.

But there are many technical variables you can’t control. For example, a range of impactful cyber breaches such as Stuxnet were reported by security researchers who identified evidence of a compromise based on external telemetry and malware samples.

Treating your cyber crisis transparently will bring you benefits such as public support by authorities, researchers and customers.

But you need to be ready to take the pressure in communication and execution.

Rule 3: Access cybersecurity expertise Most companies employ their own CISO and security staff who will respond to the cyber crisis. But, let me ask you a question: Did your staff really see the full cyber crisis and experience it end-to-end? If you have not run proper tabletop exercises yet and your team has never dealt with a cyber crisis, don’t try to work it out alone. Instead, consider using the following stakeholders in the crisis process: • Cybersecurity incident and crisis experts:

Rule 4: Use smart containment Containing a cyber crisis could take years if you randomly follow all recommendations available out there. How do you challenge your CISO on the balance between incident containment and keeping the business going and avoiding panic mode?

Instead of doing everything, your task force can apply a risk-driven containment approach addressing the most important questions: 1. Why were we hacked? 2. What are our crown-jewels and were they impacted?

3. How do we mitigate the threat?

In order to understand how to mitigate the threat, you have to triage the first and second question properly. Sometimes, it is even required to keep the attacker for a while in your own network in order to determine his true motivations. If the motivation is destructive you better get him off the network asap.

For all targeted attacks aimed specifically at your company and with a defined purpose, such as trying to steal information for espionage or to sabotage the IT system, there is one key question you should always ask your CSO: Have we identified patient zero?

Similar to virus outbreaks in our human world, patient zero can help you reconstruct the path of attack and identify potential hidden backdoors the attacker created as a backup in your network in case he gets identified. If your task force can’t identify patient zero, they won’t be able to confirm if the attacker is still in the network or determine the full scope of the attack.

Rule 5: Be safe, don’t be sorry How has the cyber breach impacted your business from a reputational, legal, financial and technical point of view? Have you lost money because you weren’t able to run a server for the last 20 hours?

Estimate the overall cost of the attack.

Look for an ongoing operational impact if time was lost working on important projects. This analysis is not only required in case you have hedged your cyber risk with insurance but will also help you derive your investment required in cybersecurity.

In the end, most organizations that experience a cyber crisis make a significant increase in cybersecurity investment. Focusing on principles such as Zero Trust, improving cyber hygiene, and simplifying security process and technologies are some of the most important – and basic – things to do.

Cyber resilience in a nutshell No matter your industry, a proper cyber resilience plan is a must if you want to be prepared for the worst-case scenario.

Reducing the scope of damage caused by a cyberattack is the primary aim of a cyber resilience plan. Attempting to secure the network is one thing. But activating a well-thought out and stress-tested business-continuity plan in the event of an attack can save your organization enormous money and time. So be well prepared.

March /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 35

NEW TECH

QUALYS OFFERS FREE REMOTE ENDPOINT PROTECTION SOLUTION Provides instant security assessment, visibility and remote computer patching with zero impact on VPN bandwidth for both corporate and personal computers

Qualys, a pioneer and leading provider of cloudbased security and compliance solutions, today announced a cloud-based remote endpoint protection solution at no charge to its customers for 60 days that allows IT and security teams to protect the computers of remote employees.

within hours from the cloud with one click of a mouse without using the limited bandwidth available on VPN gateways. Realize visibility in device hygiene by tracking common misconfigurations that leave the endpoints exposed to exploits.

It will initially be available for Qualys customers. Delivery to others will be prioritized based on their signup date.

In summary, the free Cloud-based Qualys Remote Protection solution allows security teams to gain instant and continuous visibility of remote computers, easily see missing patches for critical vulnerabilities and deploy them from the cloud.

The patches are delivered securely and directly from vendors’ websites and content delivery networks to ensure there is little to no impact on external VPN bandwidth.

The Qualys remote endpoint security solution allows security teams to leverage the lightweight Qualys Cloud Agent to complete an up-to-date inventory of all their remote endpoint hardware and the applications they are running. Gain a real-time view of all critical vulnerabilities impacting the operating system and applications posing a risk to these devices and remotely patch these systems

36 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020

If you are a Qualys customer who already has the Qualys Cloud Agent, these systems can be easily enabled to deploy patches via the

Qualys Cloud Platform, without the need to touch the client systems. Alternatively, a lightweight Qualys agent is deployed to the remote computers.

“The entire Qualys team is pleased that during these critical times, we can offer a real solution that will allow companies to ensure the security of both corporate and personal computers,” said Philippe Courtot, chairman and CEO of Qualys. “Thanks to our cloud-based implementation, this offer will enable companies to assess in real-time their security and compliance posture and remotely patch employees’ devices with the click of a button.”

The initial version supports patching on Microsoft Windows 7 and above. Patching for Macs as well as the addition of Malware detection and protection will be available soon.

NEW TECH

AVAYA SPACES PROVIDES NEW CAPABILITIES FOR CLOUD-BASED COLLABORATION AND MEETINGS Avaya Spaces is an easy-to-use cloud meeting and team collaboration app, accessible anywhere for teams on-the-go Enabling an increasingly distributed and mobile workforce, Avaya Holdings Corp. has added new capabilities to Avaya Spaces that embrace a multiexperience approach by centralizing voice, video, messaging, chat and task management in one place to improve productivity and increase employee satisfaction.

Avaya Spaces is a cost-effective cloud meeting and team collaboration app that effortlessly integrates voice, video, tasks, sharing and more into one app that can be accessed from any endpoint device.

Avaya Spaces is easy-to-use, integrating web meetings and team collaboration and allowing users to create cloud work spaces where they can message, meet, share content and manage tasks from a browser or mobile device, and provides a simple, secure and effective way to get work done in the cloud.

Over the next decade, analysts predict that the user experience for digital workers will undergo a significant shift, adapting new ways to interact, perceive and communicate, moving to a model that connects people with more nuanced information as well as each other, re-

gardless of location, device or communication platform. The way teams interact with data, technology and their colleagues is evolving into a richer environment of converged digital channels and modes of communication. Gartner forecasts that by 2023, fewer than onethird of digital workers will choose the office as their preferred place to work. Organizations need to empower teams to work in more effective and productive ways with their preferred channels and touchpoints, wherever they may be and using whatever devices and platforms they choose.

“The expectations of employees and customers and how they want to engage is driving the shift towards a blended communications model of interactions across a variety of channels, devices and touchpoints, requiring solutions that provide an effortless way to enjoy a uniform experience,” said Savio Tovar Dias, Senior Director – Sales Engineering, Avaya International. “With the new capabilities of Avaya Spaces, we are facilitating this through an easy-to-use app that helps foster enhanced collaboration and communication. Avaya Spaces underscores the company’s commit-

FORTINET UNVEILS NEW FORTIGATE 1800F FortiGate 1800F is powered by NP7, Fortinet’s new seventh generation network processor designed to accelerate security performance in the data center

customers to deploy FortiGate 1800F as an internal segmentation firewall and effectively strengthen their security posture.”

Fortinet, a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, today unveiled the FortiGate 1800F Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) powered by NP7, the company’s seventh generation network processor, to enable today’s largest enterprises to achieve true internal segmentation as well as unprecedented scale, performance, detection, and enforcement capabilities.

John Maddison, EVP of Products and CMO at Fortinet “The FortiGate 1800F powered

by NP7 has a Security Compute Rating ranging from 3x to 20x faster than the comparable product from our competition. This allows our

Digital Innovation is disrupting enterprise organizations, creating new services and business opportunities while also causing increased risk across all industries.

Explosive adoption of IoT and mobile devices, as well as applications and services from multiple clouds, are pushing the attack surface beyond the traditional network boundaries.

An expanding and fragmented attack surface is undermining the ability of network security leaders to maintain network performance, security, reliability, and availability.

In today’s data centers, many enterprise architectures have been built on a high-performance routing and switching infrastructure without integrating security. To facilitate flexibility and

ment to delivering a multiexperience environment that is blending unified communications, contact center and collaborations capabilities to empower teams and improve customer engagement.”

Avaya Spaces enables users to create a work space or digital work hub where they can collaborate via messaging, meetings and share content. It offers a converged environment of meetings and team collaboration for a simple, economical, and secure way to communicate and work through a multitude of channels. agility in this type of environment, networks have become progressively flatter and more open, which means security implementation within the internal network is, in most cases, basic and limited to Virtual LANs and Layer 4 access lists. Therefore, in the event of a security breach, once beyond the security perimeter, hackers can easily move about and freely gain access to credentials, resources, and data.

More, the lack of security infrastructure within the internal network also significantly limits the enterprise’s visibility into suspicious traffic behaviors and data flows, which hinders the ability to detect a breach.

A new challenge has emerged for enterprises trying to successfully segment their network: security performance. Today’s enterprises face unprecedented performance demands on their infrastructure that often cannot be matched by existing security solutions. For a majority of enterprises, traditional security appliances that are built with off-the-shelf CPUs and hardware to process security traffic have become an infrastructure bottleneck, resulting in degraded user and application experience. Simply put, yesterday’s security performance is no longer enough to secure and enable enterprises at the pace of today’s business innovation.

March /April 2020 | CIO ONE - 37

MARKET SPACE

PUBLIC CLOUD SERVICES IN MENA REGION TO GROW 21% IN 2020 Public cloud being one of the major investments in digital transformation, Gartner forecasts it to grow up to 21% in 2020 Public cloud services revenue in the Middle

In addition, small and midsize businesses

software will represent 15% of total public

East and North Africa (MENA) will total

(SMBs) in MENA have started to increase their

cloud service revenue in MENA in 2020. This

nearly $3 billion in 2020, an increase of 21%

spending in public cloud services. SMBs in the

figure will continue to go up as businesses

year over year, according to Gartner, Inc.

region are focusing their investments in cloud

keep enhancing their customer experience.

deployments that will enable faster business ana“Government initiatives such as Smart

lytics and artificial intelligence, both of which are

ERP accounts for 12% of the overall public

Dubai, Smart Abu Dhabi, Israel’s Cloud

key growth drivers for public cloud in the region.

cloud service revenue forecast in MENA in

Strategy and Bahrain’s Cloud First Policy of

2020. “This is due to the fact that most in-

2019 have bolstered cloud adoption among

Software as a service (SaaS) accounts for

dependent software vendors have converted

large organizations in the region,” said Sid

53% of the total public cloud service reve-

their ERP applications from on-premises,

Nag, research vice president at Gartner.

nue forecast in MENA and is set to total $1.6

license-based offerings to cloud-based SaaS

“The move to digital business by organiza-

billion in 2020 (see Table 1). “SaaS products

offerings,” said Mr. Nag.

tions is driving cloud spend, where cloud is

are typically sold via subscription, allowing

a key enabler and the platform that supports

companies to avoid large up-front licensing

Business intelligence (BI) applications is an

digital technologies.”

fees and capital costs. The cost-effectiveness

emerging growth area for public cloud services

of SaaS is one of the motivations for MENA

in MENA. Revenue is on pace to total $29 mil-

Organizations are also increasingly moving

organizations to increase their spending in the

lion in 2020, an increase of 37% from 2019. This

their applications and workloads to the pub-

segment,” added Mr. Nag.

segment is the fastest-growing segment among

lic cloud as concerns around security and

SaaS offerings in the region in 2020. “While BI

governance dissipate further. The collective

CRM and ERP Remain Growth Drivers

revenue is currently low in MENA, it is expected

economic goal of the MENA region to be-

Customer relationship management (CRM)

to achieve 30% growth over the next three years

come more technology- and data-centric has

and enterprise resource planning (ERP) re-

as local businesses leverage BI-based analytics

been a cornerstone to this rapid acceptance

main the top two segments driving the growth

to make smarter decisions and optimize their

of both the private and public cloud.

of SaaS in MENA. Gartner predicts that CRM

business operations,” said Mr. Nag.

MENA Public Cloud Service Revenue Forecast, 2019-2021 (Millions of U.S. Dollars SEGMENT

2019

2020

2021

Cloud business process services (BPaaS) total

388

440

495

Cloud application infrastructure services (PaaS) total

352

434

524

1,312

1,585

1,895

Cloud management and security services total

182

214

251

Cloud system infrastructure services (IaaS) total

226

313

421

2,460

2,986

3,5

Cloud application services (SaaS) total

GRAND TOTAL

Source: Gartner (February 2020)

38 - CIO ONE | March /April 2020