Computer News Middle East November 2015

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PERFECT FOIL Esam Hadi moulds Aluminium Bahrain’s IT automation

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EDITORIAL

Publishing Director Rajashree Rammohan raj.ram@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 5685

Redefining security

Editorial Group Editor Jeevan Thankappan jeevan.thankappan@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 5678

Should you plan to fail? Now, that seems to be the only option available for CSOs and CISOs, fighting the avalanche of cybersecurity challenges. Despite all the best detection technologies, organisations continue to be breached on a daily basis and the dirty secret no one wants to admit in the industry is that no security solution is 100 percent effective. Technologies such as anti-virus, firewalls, IPS and SIEM have failed to keep attackers at bay, and the only choice for CSOs is to minimise the impact and mitigate risks. All along, the focus of IT security has been on preventive technologies, and with the new breed of attacks, enterprises need to radically rethink their approach to security because the old methods aren’t working anymore.

The onus is now on security vendors to provide technologies that are not based on static, predefined rules, to deal with the ever-changing threat landscape. With security budgets on the rise, CSOs are also becoming more demanding, and more open to innovation. Security technology refresh cycles have shrunk to three The onus is years, and users want to replace solutions that are now on security not performing. No one is willing is to bet longvendors term on any particular technology, which means to provide vendors have their work cut out to deliver on their technologies that promises. Users, on their part, will have to extend are not based on their focus from technology to include people and static, predefined processes as well. If you want to stay ahead of the rules, to deal threat curve, any defense mechanism will have to with the everdovetail governance with a security architecture that addresses prevention, protection and changing threat remediation at the same time. Developing a holistic landscape. security approach needs to involve ontology, advanced machine-learning capabilities and analytics that can cut through the noise and pinpoint the source of attacks.

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PERFECT FOIL Esam Hadi moulds Aluminium Bahrain’s IT automation

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Our events

EDITORIAL

Sowing the seeds If you couldn't make it to GITEX Technology Week, or didn’t catch a glimpse of the CNME team, we were either tucked away, publishing our newsletter, 60 Minutes, or power walking from one interview to the next, trying not to knock over stands or our fellow attendees.

All in all, we published over 200 interviews throughout the course of the five day event and I can safely say that if anyone can attest to the overall feel of GITEX Technology Week 2015, it is us at CNME. The two things that stood out to me were large scale mergers and acquisitions and start-ups making good. My thoughts on each turn to, of course, Dell and EMC coming together, and Pure Storage going public.

Closer to home, on the start-up front, I recently attended the launch of Google AstroLabs, the start-up incubator backed by our benevolent search engine overlords. The seed box provides nice, clean work spaces, meeting rooms, bean bags and a single-source, fair-trade coffee counter featuring rose flavoured lemonade. Pretty much all you need for a successful venture.

As a University of Texas alum, I am well-versed in the mythos that make up the story of Michael Dell.

By 1985, Dell had There, so legend would have it, a young Dell toiled away in room 2713, a dimly lit off-campus dormitory dropped out of school and risked it at the University’s Dobie Center. It was 1984, and by 1985, Dell had dropped out of school and risked it all, all, a few decades a few decades later to be at the helm of history’s largest later to be at the technology acquisition. helm of history’s In contrast, Pure Storage, founded in 2009, raised a largest technology whopping $5 million to get things started in their first acquisition Series A round, and are now one of the fastest growing storage companies in history and recently filed for its IPO. Is one path more difficult than the other – I would say not.

Though Dell might have started in a dank dorm room, and startups now raise millions of dollars from established investors, I’d say that the crowded landscape of the start-up world presents its own challenges. Only a few unicorns survive in the start-up showdown.

Now, we are seeing companies that we would have called startups a few years ago, enter the public space and come into their own as established companies. This means, I believe, that we are witnessing a moment in which the new 'big boys' of the tech scene are emerging. The difference being that this time, they may arise with a cup of that fair-trade coffee in their hands and a great deal of organised support behind them.

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ISSUE 286 | noverber 2015

28

khalifa butti bin omeir group

20 32

Aluminium Bahrain's Esam Hadi

16 Cloud in the clouds amwaj rotana hotel

17

CNME joined EMW and Juniper Networks for a CIO roundtable on cloud and virtualisation.

Digital digest

Industry veteran and Infor CEO Charles Phillips discusses cloud ERP with James Dartnell.

58 Fresh streams

What lies ahead for the telecoms industry? We look at future revenue opportunites.

62 Managed network services

36

ict achievement awards 2015

www.cnmeonline.com

Getting the best out an enterprise network isn't easy, and can be best left to a skilled third party.

Delivering end-to-end solutions within the data centre is a key step in ensuring enterprise security.

74 Robotic realm

Regional IT decision-makers came out in force to join CNME, Smartworld and Cisco for a digitalisation discussion.

26 Resource reach

68 Centred security

Expert analysis on the potential of 'robo-bosses' - machines who will drive business decision-making.

80 Plugging the gaps

Infoblox CEO Jesper Andersen discusses how to ward off the damage posed by DNS threats.

88 Product watches

Huawei's luxury Mate S smartphone and flagship Watch releases take centre stage.

90 Protecting public data

Five ways to prevent sensitive citizen data from getting into the wrong hands.

november 2015

7

Bytes Into Grams A visualisation of data’s size

1 megabyte (MB) = 1 gram (g) 3.5 inch

Data Conversion Chart in Decimal Format 1 MB (megabyte) = 1,000 KB (kilobyte) 1 GB (gigabyte) = 1,000 MB

(1.4 MB) Floppy Disk

1 TB (terabyte) = 1,000 GB

8 MB

PlayStation 2 Memory Card

1 PB (petabyte) = 1,000 TB

1 ZB (zettabyte) = 1,000 EB

7 peas

1 EB (exabyte) = 1,000 PB

(8 GB)

3 hummingbirds

31 pomegranates

Amazon Kindle Fire 2nd generation

1 YB (yottabyte) = 1,000 ZB 25 GB

Single-Layer Blu-Ray Disc

40 fullsize mens basketballs

x40

The contents of the US Library of Congress (20 TB)

NASA ‘s “Lou” mass storage system unique data stored (34 PB)

A single gram of DNA (455 EB theoretically)

World Wide Web (24.5 ZB estimated as of 2015)

The weight measurement of the objects provided is per single unit.

17 Model T Cars (544 KG)

x17 41 international space stations (37,000 KG)

x41

35 great pyramids of Giza (7.7 million metric tons)

x35

24,500 Burj Khalifa buildings (453,600 metric tons)

Bite into bytes If 1 MB was equal to 1 calorie, here’s how the numbers would shake out.

3.5 inch

1 Gigabyte (GB) = 0.5 KG

(1.4 MB) Floppy Disk

8 MB

PlayStation 2 Memory Card

Apple iPod Classic 1st generation (5GB)

(64 GB)

Apple iPad Air 2

Each calculation is approximate. Caloric value provided is per single unit.

1 Radish (1 calorie)

1 slice of apple (8 calories)

9 McDonald’s Big Macs (550 calories)

x9

1,488 slices of Pan-Fried Bacon (43 calories)

Source: Experian Data Quality

James Dartnell Deputy Editor, CNME

Column

No set path A

ny vendors hoping for a namedrop in this month’s musings will be disappointed – this time I’d like to give a big hand to the CIOs/ directors of IT/IT managers of the Middle East, and their diversity in background and attitude.

What has always intrigued in my role, which affords me the pleasure of engaging with the Middle East’s IT end-users and hearing their stories of success, is the pronounced differences in character and professional philosophy across this group.

We are talking about a collection of extremely sophisticated intellectuals, who have not only garnered formidable technical knowledge throughout their careers, but have also mastered the crucial level that is being a savvy businessperson. www.cnmeonline.com

It may seem obvious to many, but this contrast has become more pronounced for me over the last two years since I joined CNME. Many people who have been successful in any walk of life will tell you that there is a set path, a proven formula that must be followed for business – and lifestyle – success. I personally don’t believe this to be 100 percent correct.

There’s no doubt that many of the fundamentals hold true. Hard work, ambition and talent will always be key ingredients for hitting targets, and standing out above the crowd – barring pure genius, everyone needs a dash of those three.

But what continues to fascinate me is the broad range of working ethos’ I hear through our ‘CIO Spotlight’ and case study interviews. These can be everything from “make others smile” to “encourage creativity” and “lead by example”.

It is fascinating to note how information technology, a topic which the uninitiated often stereotype as comprising bookish, self-doubting introverts as its students and professionals, actually attracts such a diverse and imposing collection of interesting and complex characters.

True, for many, the geekiness that was born out of a youth filled with Star Trek and Commodore 64s continues to endure, and endear.

Although I am not a CIO, the message is clear for those who aspire to be a successful one – don’t let others dissuade you from your passion and way of working.

That is not to say don’t learn and adapt, but if you hold dear a belief, habit or quirk that has always served you well, then don’t let others chisel it out of you.

Don’t let others say there is only one path to success - there are many. november 2015

11

Trevor Moore, CIO, Qatar University

{

CIO Soundbites Will Chief Digital Officers be a common feature of Middle Eastern C-suites?

}

Yes and no, CIOs can fulfill the role of CIO and CDO in SMEs, but in larger enterprises a dedicated CDO is needed to lead the transformation to digital.

Thameem Rizvon, IT Director, Kamal Osman Jamjoom Group I think it will take some time, as businesses are still understanding the value of data. It will really depend on how companies utilise data in the future.

Mazen Chilet, Director of IT, Abu Dhabi University CDOs will be tasked with taking traditional business into the digital era. This person needs to prepare the business for a future generation that is naturally digital. There have already been a number of innovations in e-services in the Middle East, for example in e-government. While we may see a bit of a lag in digital adoption, we stand just as much to become a leader in the arena. Only time will tell.

12

november 2015

www.cnmeonline.com

short takes

Month in view

Microsoft reports decline in revenues Microsoft has reported declines in revenue for Windows, its Surface line of hardware and its smartphones, all key components to the new More Personal Computing group.

Total revenue for MPC during Q3 was $9.4 billion, a 17 percent decline from the same period in 2014. While the group accounts for 46 percent of the company’s total revenue of $20.4 billion, its operating income, which includes cost of goods as well as sales costs, wages and depreciation was just 17 percent of its revenue, making it the least profitable unit by far.

According to reports, much of the problem with MPC could be traced to Microsoft’s smartphone business, which declined by $1.5 billion in revenue as the company retrenched from a more expansive portfolio after it wrote off most of the setbacks from the Nokia acquisition.

Meanwhile, the Surface line of tablets also dropped, down 26 percent from the same quarter in 2014. Microsoft refreshed the Surface Pro and introduced the Surface Book, its first-ever laptop. Revenue from sales of the new devices won’t show up on Microsoft’s books until January 2016.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood both highlighted Microsoft’s Bing search business, and credited the 23 percent increase in its revenue. The company has long featured Bing as one of the ways it planned to monetise Windows 10, especially the free upgrades it will give away through July 2016.

Company-wide, Microsoft’s Q3 earnings were mixed, with revenue down more than 12 percent yearover-year, but its profits are up by two percent.

14

november 2015

Dell-EMC merger creates tech behemoth In what will be the largest tech deal in history, Dell is set to acquire EMC for a record value of $67 billion.

Reports from the company state that the deal will help the world’s third largest PC maker tap into the faster-growing and lucrative market for managing and storing data for businesses, amid waning global demand for personal computers.

In addition, under the terms of the deal, EMC shareholders will receive cash and shares in VMware tracking stock, though the latter will continue to operate as an independent company.

“The combination of Dell and EMC creates an enterprise solutions powerhouse,” Michael Dell said. He was, however, reluctant to comment about the prospect of layoffs at either companies.

Basil Ayass, Regional Marketing Director, Dell Middle East, said, “This will help Dell offer end-to-end solutions and bolster our strategy to be the only IT vendor with a full set of products from PC to data centre to cloud. We have a number of synergies with EMC, as they have diversified from the core storage business with the launch of their Federation model. Even our products are complementary, and the only overlap is in the area of storage SAN.”

Dell has spent years making the leap from PC vendor to a company with a full set of products for large enterprises.

“This is where the EMC deal can help us with because they have an existing relationship with the top global 1000 companies, and Dell has been driving volumes on PC and servers side. EMC complements our go to market strategy,” Ayass said.

$ 170.21 billion – projected value of global cybersecurity market by 2020

Source: Cyber security market – global forecast to 2020 by Markets and Markets research

www.cnmeonline.com

The US Senate recently approved a cybersecurity bill, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (S.754), which passed with 74 votes, despite opposition from major tech companies and privacy advocates. With its passage through the Senate, the bill will now head to the House of Representatives.

UAE IT market sales to reach AED 22 billion A Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry analysis predicted that sales in the UAE IT market are expected to reach almost AED 22 billion by 2019, with per capita spending to reach above AED 2,000 by 2018, while yearon-year market growth is expected to be at 3.5 percent in 2015.

According to the analysis based on Business Monitor International reports, the software and IT services segment sales are set to continue registering positive and resilient growth, while hardware sales are expected to grow only marginally until at least 2019.

The analysis also underlined that for all

AstroLabs opens first Googlepartnered MENA tech hub

AstroLabs has inaugurated the Middle East and North Africa’s first Googlepartnered tech hub, AstroLabs Dubai.

The firm was founded by local entrepreneurs Louis Lebbos and Muhammed Mekki, and according to them, AstroLabs Dubai aims to offer scalable tech start-ups a custom co-working space, mentorship, and business licences to start operating in the UAE. Based in the DMCC Free Zone, the tech lab also aims to give start-ups the opportunity to take advantage of Google for Entrepreneurs’ global network and resources.

AstroLabs members can also join an exclusive Google for Entrepreneurs Passport Programme, allowing them to access over twenty Google-partnered hubs across the globe, from Seoul to San Francisco. www.cnmeonline.com

“We are delighted to be expanding our international tech hub network by partnering with AstroLabs in Dubai, which has a track record of helping founders grow and thrive in an inclusive community,” said David Grunwald, Senior Manager, Google for Entrepreneurs, Europe, Middle East and Africa. “We look forward to connecting their members to our global partner network and seeing the magic happen.”

During the launch, keynote speaker H.E. Mohammed Al Gergawi, UAE Minister of Cabinet Affairs, reaffirmed the government’s commitment to entrepreneurship and the importance of the AstroLabs Dubai tech hub in this national Year of Innovation.

AstroLabs is set up in a 6,500 ft2 co-working space and features a Google mobile device lab, five meeting and video conferencing rooms and a training and events facility, situated in Dubai’s Jumeirah Lakes Towers district.

The tech hub is currently hosting start-ups from across 15 industries with founders hailing from 27 countries.

segments, 2015 will be the lowest growth year, with hardware sales even decreasing slightly, from AED 8.43 billion in 2014 to AED 8.37 billion in 2015, while in the mid-term, hardware revenues will grow by one percent per year, to reach about AED 8.7 billion in 2019. Software sales will hit AED 4.7 billion in 2019, while IT services spending will reach AED 8.4 billion in 2019.

The analysis further predicts that this growth will be highly supported by the government sector, through many IT projects it is involved with directly, or indirectly through government backed enterprises.

Intel Security to discontinue McAfee SaaS products Intel Security has announced plans to decommission select McAfee software-as-aservice products.

According to reports, on 11th January 2016, Intel Security will stop selling McAfee SaaS Endpoint and SaaS Email Protection and Archiving.

Although new sales will cease next year, existing customers can continue renewing their subscription and receiving support until 11th January 2019, said Intel Security.

Moreover, depending on certain subscription types, limited support will be available for some services until 2021.

McAfee SaaS Endpoint products that will be discontinued include McAfee Security Centre, Browser Protection and Content Filtering, Antivirus/Anti-Spyware Protection, and Firewall Protection. Customers will have to switch to the new McAfee Endpoint Security platform for client protection technology.

McAfee SaaS Endpoint and Security Centre customers will move over to ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) Cloud for managing endpoint security. november 2015

15

EVENT

EMW roundtable

A cloud in the clouds n 18th October, after the first full day of GITEX, a number of leading CIOs from around the region gathered in the Conrad Hotel to discuss the current state, and perhaps inevitable future of virtualisation and cloud offerings. The event’s hosts for the evening were Serjios El-Hage, CEO and founder of the award winning systems integration outfit EMW, and Mark Hosking, DC Sales Lead from networking giant Juniper Networks.

The topic of the evening was cloud services. IT professionals in attendance were prepared to discuss what path they had taken in terms of their organisations' cloud solutions, where they stand now, and where they believe their companies and the overall market are headed in terms of cloud and virtualisation. CIOs hailed from companies throughout around the Gulf – Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE. The diversity of the group carried over into their respective industries as

O

16

november 2015

well – from port authorities to banks to universities, each sector presented its own success and challenges in terms of cloud adoption.

Dr. Jassim Haji, Director of IT, Gulf Air, attended the roundtable off the back of his company’s recent implementation of various cloud-based solutions, and recounted his team’s success utilising new technologies. When asked who was leading this digital transformation, Haji praised his team for the success, and added, “The CIO must, of course, play a key role in any move toward cloud and digitalisation.” The group quipped that Haji had created a “cloud within the clouds.”

Mubarik Hussain, Head of IT at Petroserv Limited in Qatar discussed his approach to a common pain point when moving into the cloud – legacy systems. “I just started afresh,” he said.

“It may have seemed like a drastic move at the time, but I started with a clean slate and modernised as much of the infrastructure as possible.”

However, many CIOs expressed that their industries may not give them the freedom to take such drastic measures.

The question of who is leading - and who might be pulling back - on the adoption of cloud services was a hot topic. “I have been trying to move forward with cloud adoption,” said Deepu Thomas of Kuwait International Bank. “We have had some success, but the lack of regulation in the region has made many of us hesitant.”

Trevor Moore, CIO of Qatar University and the winner of CNME's coveted CIO of the year award, said that adoption of cloud services in the university was unavoidable. “Our student body simply demands it,” he said. “They are studying round-the-clock, and their services need to be available whenever the students need; providing whatever they need.”

Also present for the roundtable were Emmanuel Steve Dulvin, Head of Technology Operations, FGB; Ahmed Al Ahmad, CIO, Nakheel; Prasanna Rupasinghe, Director of Information Technology and AV, Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates; Mohammed Jameeluddin, CISO of General Civil Aviation Authority; Tariq Alusaimi of KCB; and Vinay Sharma of Gulftainer. www.cnmeonline.com

smartworld roundtable

Digital digest In association with CNME, Smartworld and Cisco joined forces to host a roundtable discussion on the jump to digital models and Smart Cities, and garnered fantastic responses from a selection of some of the Middle East’s most esteemed CIOs. T executives from across the Middle East shared their concerns and existing plans for digital strategies, mobility, as well as the combination of the two against the backdrop of the Internet of things. The conversation branched out to encompass a number of topics within modern technology, including cloud, open data and security, and how they could all tie together to drive effective digital and IoT strategies.

Rabih Dabboussi, Managing Director, Cisco UAE, discussed how some of the strongest companies to have emerged in recent years are not bogged down by owning physical assets, but instead rely on digital platforms. “Facebook is the world’s largest media company, and doesn’t own IP,” he said. “Uber is the world’s largest taxi firm and owns no vehicles, and Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, but owns no

I

www.cnmeonline.com

real estate. This is a sign of where things are going.”

Akshaya Gaur, CIO, Mashreq Bank, highlighted how the real benefits of digitalisation would be felt in the way that new businesses are created. He said that Mashreq already has a strong digital strategy in place. “There’s a saying in the industry, that any bank that moves to the cloud will be struck by lightning,” he said. “But the value of technology is in the goods it helps to create.”

Ahmad Al Nasser, IT Director, Ministry of Labour, highlighted the need to present clear information to customers and for collaboration among public entities in driving digitalisation and overall IoT adoption.

“There’s always something new – new solutions, hardware, the IoT,” he said.

“We need to think about customers – IoT is a vague term even for some IT people, but the customer needs strategy. The UAE government has

EVENT

put forward a national strategy to unite organisations and emirates, but we still need to engage customers to see the best possible results.”

Ahmad Al Mulla, SVP, IT, Emirates Global Aluminium, highlighted how transitional times are putting more strain on the CIO, and overall integration issues are barriers that must be overcome before full digitalisation can occur. “The technology is there, but is very complex,” he said. “Our role has changed; we now need to be legal and business people as well,” he said. “In technology, we want to innovate and redefine processes, and although the front end may be there, the back end is not up to standard.”

Saeed Al Ghailani, Director of Infrastructure and Telecoms, Department of Transport Abu Dhabi, said how the challenges of open data and information security had to be taken seriously in the bid to become digital. “Digital will undoubtedly save a lot of cost, but security will have to be given due consideration for it to be fully beneficial.”

Smartworld CEO Abdulqader Obaid Ali presided over the discussion, and said, “The work all of you are doing to drive your businesses is admirable. We want to help public and private companies make a seamless, secure transition to the age of IoT and digitalisation.” november 2015

17

Insight

Daniele Loffreda, State/Local Government, Education and Healthcare Industry Adviser, Ciena

The keys to a Smart City I n major metropolitan areas and smaller cities alike, governments are adopting software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualisation (NFV) to deliver the agility and flexibility needed to support adoption of 'smart' technologies that enhance the liveability, workability and sustainability of their locale.

Today, there are billions of devices and sensors being deployed that can automatically collect data on everything from traffic to weather, to energy usage, water consumption, carbon dioxide levels and more.

Once collected, the data has to be aggregated and transported to stakeholders where it is stored, organised and analysed.

These latest advancements bring a seemingly endless list of potential 18

november 2015

benefits. Transportation departments can make informed decisions to alleviate traffic jams. Sources of water leaks can be pinpointed and proactive repairs scheduled. Smart payments can be made across city agencies, allowing citizens to complete official payments quickly and reducing government employee time to facilitate such transactions and so on.

Of particular interest is how healthcare services can be improved. There is already a push to adopt more efficient and effective digital technology management systems to better store, secure and retrieve huge amounts of patient data. Going a step further, a Smart City is better equipped to support telemedicine innovations that require the highest quality, uninterrupted network service.

The Smart City of today While the Smart City is expected to become the norm, examples exist today. Barcelona is recognised for environmental initiatives - such as electric vehicles and bus networks city-wide free Wi-Fi, smart parking, and many more programs, all of which benefit from Smart City initiatives. With a population of 1.6 million citizens, Barcelona shows that Smart City technologies can be implemented regardless of city size.

How do cities become smart? The most immediate need is to converge disparate communications networks run by agencies to ensure seamless connectivity. To achieve this, packet optical based connectivity is proving critical, thanks largely to the flexibility and cost advantages it provides. Then atop the packet optical foundation sits www.cnmeonline.com

technology that enables NFV and the applications running on commercial off-the-shelf equipment in some form of virtualised environment.

SDN and NFV allow for the quick and virtual deployment of services to support multiple data traffic and priority types, as well as increasingly unpredictable data flows of IoT. Decoupling network functions from the hardware means that architectures can be easily adjusted as IoT requirements change. Also, SDN and NFV can yield a more agile service provision process by dynamically defining the network that connects IoT end-devices to back-end data centres or cloud services.

The dynamic nature of monitoring endpoints, location and scale will require SDN so that networks can be programmable and reconfigured to accommodate moving workloads. For example, allocating bandwidth to a stadium for better streaming performance of an event as the number of users watching remotely on-demand goes up - this sort of dynamic networkon-demand capability is enabled by SDN. Additionally, NFV can play a key role where many of the monitoring points that make the city ‘Smart’ are actually not purpose-built hardwarecentric solutions, but rather software-based solutions that can be running on-demand.

With virtual network functions, the network can react in a more agile manner as the municipality requires.

This is particularly important because the network underlying the Smart City must be able to extract high levels of contextual insight through real-time analytics conducted on extremely large datasets if systems are to be able to problem-solve in real-time. www.cnmeonline.com

SDN and NFV may enable the load balancing, service chaining and bandwidth calendaring needed to manage networks that are unprecedented in scale. In addition, they can ensure network-level data security and protection against intrusions – which is critical given the near-impossible task of securing the numerous sensor and device endpoints in smart city environments.

Smart City business models In their Smart City initiatives, cities large and small are facing issues regarding planning, infrastructure, systems operations, citizen engagement, data sharing, and more.

The scale might vary, but all are trying to converge networks in order to provide better services to citizens in an era of shrinking budgets. As such, the decision on how to make this a reality is important. As defined by analysts in a report by Frost & Sullivan, titled ‘Global Smart City market a $1.5 trillion growth opportunity In 2020,’ there are four major Smart City business models to consider: Build, Own, Operate (BOO): In a BOO model, municipalities own, control, and independently build the city infrastructure that they need, and deliver the Smart City services themselves. Both the operation and maintenance of these services is under the municipality’s private control, often headed up by their city planner.

Build, Operate, Transfer (BOT): Whereas in a BOO model, the municipality is always in charge of the operation and management of smart city services, in a BOT model that is only the case after a little while – the Smart City infrastructure building and initial service operation is first handled by a trusted partner appointed by the

city planner. Then, once all is built and in motion, operations are handed back over to the city.

Open Business Model (OBM): In an OBM model, the city planner is open to any qualified company building city infrastructure and providing Smart City services, so long as they stay within set guidelines and regulations.

Build, Operate, Manage (BOM): Finally, there is the BOM model, which is where the majority of Smart City projects are likely to be categorised.

In this model, the Smart City planner appoints a trusted partner to develop the city infrastructure and services.

The city planner then has no further role beyond appointment – the partner is in charge of operating and managing Smart City services.

SDN and NFV: The keys to the (Smart) city With the appropriate business model in place and the network foundation laid out, the technology needs to be implemented to enable virtualisation.

Virtualised applications allow for the flexibility of numerous data types, and the scalability to transport huge amounts of data the city aims to use in its analysis.

SDN and NFV can reduce the hardware, power, and space requirements to deploy network functions through the use of industrystandard high-volume servers, switches and storage. They both enable network applications to be portable and upgradeable with software; and grant cities of all sizes the agility and scalability to tackle the needs and trends of the future as they arise. Like the brain’s neural pathways throughout a body, SDN and NFV are essential in making the Smart City and its networks connect and talk to each other in a meaningful way. november 2015

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Spotlight

Heavy metal

Enamoured with futuristic technology, Esam Hadi has a passion for innovation. Aluminium Bahrain’s Senior IT Manager has used the power of IT automation to convince the firm’s senior management of calculated tech risks, and is determined to empower a new crop of the company’s rising stars.

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I’m a geek,” Esam Hadi confesses, his sharp appearance betraying his words. “Ever since I was a kid I fantasised about science fiction, and the prospect of touch-free automation.” Born in 1960 in Bahrain, Hadi takes pride in the mercurial time period in which he grew up. “It was a mix of the good and the bad in terms of technology, which I believe was for the best on the whole,” he says. “Major new innovations were emerging – we had colour TVs and a telephone in the house – but we could still enjoy the simple things.”

Hadi graduated from high school in 1979, and joined local firm Batelco.

The company was keen to further his education, and encouraged him to undertake a period of study at the University of Bahrain. The stint was enough to inspire him to move beyond the Kingdom.

Young and ambitious, in 1980 Hadi opted for a move to Dubai to work for the emirate’s Health Authority - where he was largely based in Al Maktoum Hospital - whose patient administration system was in

"

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development. “Back then, Dubai was much less complex, and everything was in Deira,” he recalls. “My Auntie lived in Rashidiya, so I stayed with her for a while. Very few Bahrainis left the country at the time, but I was a bachelor who was keen for new experiences.” Passing his free time in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi and Khor Fakkan, Hadi’s passion for core aspects of enterprise IT was fossilised in the UAE. “I fell in love with programming and mainframes,” he says. “I worked as a developer and system programmer, and helped create a payroll system for the organisation.”

Hadi returned to Bahrain in 1985, headhunted by local carrier Gulf Air to work on CICS and Cobol programming projects. The company had purchased software packages from Delta Airlines, and Hadi’s prior experience would ensure a productive one-and-a-half year stay at the firm, until Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) came knocking for his services. With only an initial diploma under his belt, Hadi joined the firm as a chief programmer.

A year into his tenure, the firm sponsored him for two years of study in a BSc degree in informatics.

He spent years enhancing his IT knowledge while at the company, and oversaw the wholesale arrival of the PC. “We had always used mainframes until then, but users loved the change,” he says. In 1995, six months after the birth of his daughter, Hadi was once again endorsed for further education, as he undertook a course at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom.

“It was the best

time of my life,” he says. “I learned a completely different culture of working.

I collaborated with a lot of Chinese and Malaysian students, who both work incredibly fast.” He also bettered his knowledge on the technology front.

“I garnered a great deal in terms of project and business management,” he says. “I also learned how to hack and jailbreak devices, which in turn gave me a completely fresh view of how to protect yourself from such threats.”

Years after returning from Portsmouth, Hadi’s opportunity to shine came in 1999, when he decided to introduce SAP to Alba.

The change had a profound not only on the company’s IT, but also in convincing key stakeholders that technology – and calculated risktaking – were key elements in success.

“It was the biggest jump I’ve made in my lifetime,” he says. “It allowed us to customise and configure our IT, which has subsequently influenced our methodology and transformed the user perception of technology and systems.” The implementation soon served as a platform for Hadi to deliver a warehouse management system that proved to be a huge valueadd for the company.

In 2002, Alba sponsored Hadi for a two-month stay in Chennai, where he would train to become an SAP consultant. As a result, in the years since, he has been named director of the board for the MENA SAP Users Group.

The training served as a springboard for pastures new, and in 2003, Hadi was asked to undertake a slightly different role within Alba, working more on the operations side of the business, overseeing the manufacturing execution system. This was an eye-opening experience. “At november 2015

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CIO

Spotlight

“The management were delighted this point it really hit me, that if I made with what we could do, and that only a mistake with technology, the whole reinforced the idea that Alba should be manufacturing process would come to a technology innovator.” a standstill,” he says. “That brought an The innovation strategy within added pressure to the job.”

Alba was not the only philosophy Hadi’s boyhood passion for that changed in 2010. In that year, sci-fi and all things automated and Hadi was to experience the first of futuristic has had a lasting impact his two heart attacks, and since then on his professional ethos. Since the his outlook on life has evolved. “I was day he joined the company, Hadi has out jogging when the first one hit,” he been enamoured with the culture of says. “I used to think I was in control innovation at Alba. “There have always of everything, but I soon learned that been fantastic opportunities in IT,” couldn’t be further from the truth.” he says. “The senior management are The second one happy to give the followed in 2011. green light for "At that point it “I was blessed, and almost anything managed to come as long as it adds really hit me, that it,” he says. value, which if I made a mistake through “I learned to look isn’t something with technology, after people more, you get at most to smile and do companies. They the whole what you love in let you do what manufacturing life.” Hadi has now you believe you process would come fulfilled an ambition need to in order to be a motorcyclist, to drive positive to a standstill." and owns a Harley change.”

Davidson, with In recent his next personal ambition to travel years, things have stepped up a notch the world. “Sheesha is not a good when it comes to thinking outside the stress relief,” he says of the need for box. “Until 2010, 80 percent of our wholesome hobbies. time was spent on maintenance in Impacting positively on others is IT,” he says. “Now I’d say 70 percent clearly something Hadi holds dear. He of our budget and time is dedicated takes immense pride and pleasure in to innovation. Allowing systems to collaborating with Alba’s 39-strong IT become obsolete is expensive, so team. “I always think I’m incredibly things need to run more efficiently fortunate to be where I am, and I to save cost. IT security issues are at want to give something back,” he says. the back of my mind 24/7, but where “I like sharing my experience with risk isn’t high, we are always happy to others to make their lives easier, and be leaders.” One particular instance to ensure they don’t make the same of technology’s value lives clear in mistakes I did. I’m incredibly proud of the memory. “I created a BlackBerry my energetic team, who I wouldn’t be approval service that could go straight successful without.” to the CEO’s smartphone,” Hadi says.

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TIMELINE 1979 Graduates from high school

1980 Joins Dubai Health authority

1985 Returns to Bahrain

1987 Joins Alba

1995 Begins University of Portsmouth studies

2000 Finishes SAP implementation

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5 ¼-inch floppy disk

The original floppy disk. How many times did we have to pop in a new disk when running a simple programme or playing a gritty 8-bit game on a PC? The original floppy was a thin and flexible magnetic storage medium lined with fabric. The original 5 ¼ inch disks were the ubiquitous form of data storage from the 1970s onwards. First produced by Shugart Associates in 1976, by 1978 there were more than 10 manufacturers producing floppy disks in their most recognisable incantation. In 1984, IBM one-upped the game and introduced the 1.2 MB duel-sided floppy disk. IBM started using double-density microfloppy on its laptops in 1986 and the 1.44 MB high-density version in 1987.

By the early 1990s, the limitations of the floppy were more than apparent and by the middle of the decade, the 5 ¼ inch versions had been all but completely replaced by the new 3 ½ inch floppy. In 1998, Apple introduced the iMac with a CD-ROM drive, but no floppy drive, essentially ending the reign of the floppy.

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INTERVIEW Charles Phillips, CEO, Infor

Resource reach

Charles Phillips is an industry heavyweight. The Infor CEO was a member of Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board and a highly-rated Wall Street enterprise software analyst for a decade. He discussed the potential of cloud-based ERP and an integrated supply chain with James Dartnell.

H

ow do you perceive the Middle Eastern market; does the US really believe the region is catching up in terms of technology adoption?

I would say it’s progressing faster than the US market, which presents a fantastic opportunity for us. Sometimes it can be a good thing to start off later in terms of technology adoption, as you have clean infrastructure and don’t make the same mistakes of the previous three generations. The region can skip legacy systems which is a bonus. We’re investing in the region and are meeting with a number of customers and investors here.

What importance does the Saudi Arabian market have for you?

We’ve just opened our office in Riyadh which is obviously a big step forward.

Now that we’ve learned the market better, we can start to build a team as well as work with partners so that we can accelerate our investment.

Off the back of your GT Nexus acquisition, do you believe that e-commerce in the cloud is the future?

The reality of global commerce is that more and more is being done through value chains of partners, particularly in the US and Asia, so what was once done by one company is now done by a collection of companies. The problem is that things still have to be run as 26

October 2015

one company in terms of visibility and efficiency. Even small companies are now doing it. This network allows you to be connected to your suppliers, your shippers, ocean carriers and transportation companies so you know where your products are at all times. Once they’re delivered, you have visibility, which produces less inventory, and that saves costs. I need to know when my product is coming. Is it in a distribution centre? When do I pay the supplier? We build collections of companies that are integrated through our network. Very few ERP firms understand the complexity of multienterprise ERP. Customers have wanted this for a while, they want to know what generates demand so they can plan ahead. Orders constantly change, so this needs to be communicated between buyers and suppliers, and this network provides that visibility.

Against the backdrop of digital disruption, how do you plan to collaborate with SMBs? They can receive the sophistication and complexity of our solutions, but without the deployment difficulties. We get most of our enhancements through listening to customers so that’s always key for us. The complexity of small businesses surprises people. They’re going international much quicker than they used to, but don’t have the IT staff.

We usually start off with a blank slate to ask them what’s working and what

isn’t for them to generate new ideas and business models, and from that comes technology.

What kind of acquisitions will you be looking to make in the near future?

We’re looking for innovators who want to be early adopters and consider advanced concepts before competitors do. The industry is changing, and a lot of larger companies have moved into legacy territory. Scale platforms like Amazon and Google, and technologies like cloud and Hadoop are making things faster and better than what we had before. A lot of newer technologies are cheaper, or free, and architectures will change over the next five years. In terms of the Middle East, it’s about betting on what’s lasting and what’s fading. We don’t own data centres or a database, we run on Amazon and don’t want to make money on infrastructure. That’s the business model of the future, the serverless world.

Will the technology industry change now more than any time over the last 10 years?

It’s accelerating. Newer technologies are now mainstream, and companies are now spending again after the financial crash of 2008. There’s a supercomputer on demand for everybody who wants one, which opens the door to new types of applications and processes.

Architectures will change and machine learning opens new opportunities.

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case study

Khalifa Butti Bin Omeir Group

Information investment With its companies siloed and speaking different IT languages, Khalifa Butti Bin Omeir Group needed a fresh solution that could unite its finance and HR operations. Samir Mayani, IT Director, KBBO, opted for a Cloud-based ERP solution to drive the change. eading Abu Dhabi investment firm Khalifa Butti Bin Omeir (KBBO) Group has made its mark on the Middle East, and the globe.

With a diverse portfolio of interests, the firm has a proven track record of success, KBBO's objective is to amplify growth by injecting capital and restructuring debt in already successful companies. In line with the Abu Dhabi 2030 Economic Vision to achieve effective transformation and global integration of the emirate’s economy, KBBO's mandate is to bring about sustainable growth and enduring benefits to the region.

Established in 2004, KBBO has since expanded its reach into investment, real estate and development, oil and gas, healthcare and facilities management and information technology, and has grown dramatically both in terms of sectors serviced and geography.

With the company’s investments across such diverse industries, and an ever-expanding portfolio, Samir Mayani, IT Director, KBBO, knew that he would have to keep his IT design and overall footprint agile

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and forward-looking, to support the company’s rapid growth.

In 2013, the group housed multiple companies, with different IT architecture and accounting systems.

Process standardisation, accounting, reporting and tracking intercompany transactions were difficult, with each company essentially “speaking” a different language as a result of diverse systems and business processes. “We needed to increase efficiency throughout our operations,”

“We needed to increase efficiency throughout our operations, and to do that we needed our systems and processes to be streamlined and unified.”

says Mayani, “and to do that we needed our systems and processes to be streamlined and unified.” The firm needed to bring together its many Group companies based in the UAE and the UK, including KBBO Group, One Financial Markets, One Prepay, Bin Butti Real Estate Development, Bin Butti IT Solutions, Bin Butti General trading and Brokerage House Securities onto a single ERP platform by replacing siloed accounting, human resources and payroll systems.

An extensive plan ahead of them, KBBO would have to automate and integrate most of their finance, payroll and procurement processes to increase efficiency and productivity. This would give increased transparency in their financial transactions as well as their HR records and processes. “Our prerequisites for an ERP software vendor included a financially solid global provider, with enterprise solutions as its core business, and with a strong roadmap for product development," Mayani says.

The KBBO team went on a search for an effective solution for their business needs. They also needed to keep their IT infrastructure and manpower lean and agile, which led them to consider the cloud. “We shortlisted Microsoft, SAP and Oracle, and engaged in detailed discussions with all of them to evaluate which solution was the best fit for the group companies' requirements and had the lowest total cost of ownership over five years,” explains Mayani.

After detailed discussions and product demonstration with all software vendors, Oracle ERP Cloud emerged on top at the conclusion of a thorough RFP process. “It was the right option for us,” says Mayani. “It is secure, easy to use, managed by experienced engineers from Oracle, requires zero hardware investment www.cnmeonline.com

and is 20 percent cheaper than competitors’ solutions.”

After selecting Oracle ERP Cloud, the next challenge was the implementation. The product was new, and KBBO Group was one of very few companies that would implement the complete suite across multiple companies and countries. Prior to the start of the implementation and prior planning, the KBBO team focused on defining and documenting business requirements, standardising business processes and designing the master data. Most importantly, says Mayani, this included the most critical “Chart of Accounts” to ensure a seamless transition later on.

“The next step was to work with an implementation partner who was flexible and willing to invest in our growth - that is something we found in Oracle Platinum Partner Hexaware," he says. "Their consultants invested a lot of time before the project started to make sure they fully understood our business requirements. Their skills meant we could fully rely on them to internationally standardise and streamline our business processes with Oracle Cloud.”

With all the right ingredients in place, the implementation was smooth and swift. From start to finish, the implementation took five months and was made fully operational on 1st January 1 of this year. Post-live, KBBO has also successfully completed two upgrades within a shorter time frame.

“We were able to standardise financial, supply chain and HR management processes across the group and lay the foundation for www.cnmeonline.com

november 2015

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case study

Khalifa Butti Bin Omeir Group

unified governance and transparency across the companies," Mayani says.

Deploying Oracle ERP Cloud has also benefitted KBBO's IT department, reducing IT staff workloads by 30 to 40 percent by leveraging the real-time reporting capabilities and no-coding customised analytics of Oracle’s business intelligence and financial reporting tools. "It has enabled us to meet the high standards of information security imposed by regulators around the world leveraging compliant and riskaverse security solutions that meet ISO/IEC 27001:2013 information security standards," Mayani says.

"Post-implementation, upgrades to subsequent releases from Release 8 to Release 10 have been completed

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“We were able to standardise financial, supply chain and HR management processes across the group and lay the foundation for unified governance and transparency across the companies.” spending only a third of the time, costs and efforts as compared to an on-premise upgrade. It has guaranteed round-the-clock uptime of applications and no investments in Infrastructure Maintenance including Backs and Disaster recovery,” says Mayani.

“Oracle provides us with a complete solution with integrated

components and excellent transactional and reporting capabilities that fully address our business requirements. The Oracle Cloud solution also ensures that we can scale cost-effectively to meet scheduled business growth, and offers the lowest total cost of ownership over five years,” says Mayani.

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case study

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Amwaj Rotana

november 2015

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Five-star access In the hospitality industry, service is everything. When the quality of Internet wasn’t up to the Amwaj Rotana’s high standards, IT Director Rabih Merhy sought a new solution that could keep business and leisure guests connected throughout the facility. itting on the southern end of Jumeirah Beach Residence’s ‘The Walk’, the Amwaj Rotana sits in one of the most popular districts of the United Arab Emirates.

Restaurants, shops and The Beach Mall adorn the strip, while the Arabian Gulf sits a stone’s throw away from the hotel. With 301 rooms and a host of facilities, including three restaurant outlets, a spa and pool,

S

“In a serviceoriented industry like ours, every minute counts and delays in dealing with any mishaps that inconvenience guests can cause a lot of grief on their part.”

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Amwaj sits as one of the top five-star resorts in Dubai, and has created a platform for itself to expand beyond the Middle East and Africa region.

The hotel receives a mix of leisure travellers and business guests, including a large number of GCC nationals. One thing unites them – their need for high-quality Internet.

“For many people, it is the most important thing when choosing a hotel,” Rabih Merhy, Director of IT, Amwaj Rotana, says. “For others it’s a factor, but for everyone, it’s a means of communicating with friends and relatives elsewhere. The guests feel the benefits of high quality Internet.

In a service-oriented industry like ours, every minute counts and delays in dealing with any mishaps that inconvenience guests can cause a lot of grief on their part.”

Over the course of the last two years, the Hotel had been facing problems as a result of its lower quality Internet services. “We had received a number of complaints from guests, which is never good news,” he says. “This had a negative impact on market metrics, and ultimately affects november 2015

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case study

Amwaj Rotana

financial results as well.” Guests had experienced a loss of connection on far too many occasions, and ultimately, the Internet infrastructure needed to be redesigned to keep Amwaj competitive in the space.

In November 2014, Merhy and his IT team conducted a test on the guest’s usage of devices within the Hotel, and found that 71 percent of double occupied rooms had two or more devices requiring an Internet connection. The high demands of guests holding business meetings in conference rooms, often requiring video conferencing services, placed additional demand on the network, as did guests using VPNs to access foreign sites. In addition, considering that those with two or more devices would be running four concurrent Internet sessions on average, a change was needed.

The hotel had been using Aruba ‘n’ standard wireless technology in its rooms and public area since 2012.

The previous network consisted of fewer access points (APs) which consisted of two categories – AP92 and AP-93. The vendor’s prior relationship with Amwaj served it well in winning an upgrade contract.

“We considered other vendors like Cisco and Ruckus, but we decided to continue our relationship with Aruba,” Merhy says.

The main obstacles that Merhy and his team would have to overcome in the implementation were the issues of effective testing and potential downtime. With occupancy levels high, the situation had to be carefully managed so that guests’ Internet was interrupted. Merhy ensured that tests were conducted when rooms did become vacant, and although this 34

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“It’s early days, but this is already producing tangible ROI which is sure to increase.” provided delays, he draws satisfaction from ensuring services remained constant. “We monitored the situation for almost two weeks, and that convinced us that the project could go ahead successfully,” he says.

With the help of Aruba, Merhy opted for – in addition to the current 243-AP infrastructure – 96 AP-205’s, four, more powerful, AP-215’s and a 7210 wireless controller. The AP-215’s were used for public spaces within the hotel - including the lobby, pool and gym - and the AP-205’s for rooms.

The execution of the project itself was relatively swift, beginning in May 2015, with the new Wi-Fi solutions fully implemented in the second half of June. The benefits of the project have been easy to quantify – facilitating the project’s initial justification – with a survey in user satisfaction revealing a 15 percent increase. The rate at which connections would drop off has decreased, while there has been a vast increase in Internet speed.

The controller also allows APs to be managed centrally, providing ease of use for the IT department. “To have recorded this in such a short space of time since the project began equals great success for us,” Merhy says. Meanwhile, Internet coverage throughout the hotel has increased from a rate of 75 to 92 percent, covering all areas that guests use, except stairways and staff service areas. This increase has help reduce

frustration among guests, and means that quieter spots of the hotel are now equipped with a quality connection.

As well as offering complimentary Wi-Fi in the hotel lobby and in its restaurants and facilities, Amwaj has also seen an increase in its range of paid rates for higher quality Internet service. “We have hourly, daily, weekly and monthly packages,” Merhy says.

“It’s early days, but this is already producing tangible ROI which is sure to increase; the apps that are most commonly used are social media ones like Facebook, WhatsApp and Skype, and guests are willing to pay for a higher quality service, especially for the latter.” Network access is also segmented between guests and Amwaj IT administrators for effective security.

The strong enhancements to Amwaj’s network infrastructure have laid the base for the hotel to move forward with further IT strengthening. Merhy plans to add more AP-215 access points to the hotel’s arsenal, and an additional controller for greater redundancy. He also has big plans which could even more interactive enhancements to the IT and audiovisual offerings. “We’re investigating the prospect of Internetenabled TVs,” he says.

Merhy was more than satisfied with the level of support he received from Aruba. “They provided us the APs for the testing phase, and gave us support on price,” he says. “They treated us more like VIPs than customers.” www.cnmeonline.com

excellence honoured The sixth edition of CNME’s ICT Achievement Awards celebrated and honoured IT initiatives from around the region that have generated business value through the creative and innovative use of technology.

The companies selected for this year’s Awards ranged from SMBs to multibillion-dollar conglomerates, and they came from every industry. These companies had to demonstrate not only that they were able to create new value using technology, but also that they did so in uncommon, innovative ways. Be it pioneering a new technology or applying an existing technology to a new purpose, these frontrunners have set the bar high.

Spanning 21 different categories, including deployment, vendor and individual awards, all of our winners were selected after a rigorous application and review process by a panel of judges comprising highly experienced end-users, academics and consultants.

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Panel of judges Ghazi Atallah Managing Director, neXgen Advisory Group

Ghazi has over 20 years of experience in the IT and telecommunications industry.

He is the MD of neXgen Group, a management and technology consulting company focused on helping telecom and Smart City customers realise business value through technology investments.

He takes an active role in projects with leading customers in the MENA region to develop nextgeneration business models, technology strategy and go-tomarket strategies as well as within key regional government entities to develop Smart City and national ICT and digital strategies.

www.cnmeonline.com

Ian Wakeford MD, DW Consultants

With over 20 years of business and IT experience in various senior management roles, Ian Wakeford is now Managing Director at DW Consultants.

His strengths lie in quickly analysing, understanding and delivering viable and costeffective solutions. Ian has strong technical knowledge in IT and all related practices from mainframe to mobile, and has managed numerous projects in the IT, distribution and commercial environments.

Dr Jassim Haji Director –IT, Gulf Air

Dr Haji has been instrumental in implementing key innovations to Gulf Air’s IT systems and processes. He has participated as a speaker and chairman in over 35 technology conferences in the Middle East and Europe to cover latest technologies such as cloud computing, Big Data, information security and business intelligence.

He has also published articles on these topics.

Dr Haji received his Doctorate in Business Administration (PhD) from the University of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK in 2010. He graduated with a degree in telecommunications from the famed Cable and Wireless College, Cornwall, UK.

MN Chaturvedi Director of IT, Oasis Investment Co. MN Chaturvedi is the director of IT for Oasis Investment Co., the holding company of Al Shirawi Group, which employs over 6000 people. He set up the IT division of the group with a clear mandate from the board to provide IT services to 30 companies under the group, and help CEOs of these companies to leverage IT to support excellence. He has also set up a software development support centre company, Oasis TechnoSoft in India, which is a technical excellence centre and technical wing to develop and implement ERP applications. november 2015

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Hardware vendor of the year: Dell Dell continues to deliver on its commitment to help regional customers realise their technology visions through the deployment of innovative and effective hardware solutions. Customers in the Middle East have benefited from an approach that touches many aspects of IT - applications, infrastructure and management. Additionally, Dell solutions are based on open architecture, flexible delivery models and unified support.

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november 2015

Finalists: Cisco, D-Link, Ericsson, F5, Huawei, Rittal, Riverbed

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Software vendor of the year: Microsoft Considered as the first real software company that made computing accessible to the masses, Microsoft is now delivering software to customers in a cloud model.

Microsoft’s cloud product portfolio has expanded this year to include Office 365, Azure, Intune, CRM Online and Enterprise Mobility Suite. It is probably the only vendor that has been able to package cloud services in familiar licensing offerings such as packaged software and volume licensing.

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november 2015

Finalists: Avaya, Commvault, Dell, Focus Softnet, HP Software, Nexthink, SAP, VMware

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VISIBILITY INTO NETWORKS HAS NEVER BEEN MORE CRITICAL...

188

THE MEAN NUMBER OF DAYS FROM INITIAL INTRUSION TO DETECTION*

AVERAGE NUMBER OF DAYS FROM INTRUSION TO CONTAINMENT OF A BREACH*

111

! !

97%

!

OF ORGANISATIONS IN THE STUDY WERE BREACHED DURING THE TEST PERIOD**

75%

OF ORGANISATIONS HAD ACTIVE COMMAND & CONTROL (C&C) COMMUNICATIONS**

*Trustwave Holdings, Inc. “2015 Trustwave Global Security Report.” 2015. **FireEye. “MAGINOT REVISITED: More Real-World Results from Real-World Tests.” 2015.

Modern threats demand the ability to see inside networks; unfortunately, increasing network complexity and an ad hoc approach to security appliance deployments have resulted in blind spots, extraordinary costs, security devices competing for access to traffic and too many false positives.

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SEE MORE. SECURE MORE

Security vendor of the year: Fortinet Fortinet has been making strides in the region with growth initiatives and the launch of a range of products covering every industry size and sector. The vendor was selected as number one in the regional network security appliances market by IDC for the first quarter of 2015.

Finalists: ESET, Cyberoam, Cisco, Dell, F5, FireEye, HP, Intel Security, Kaspersky Lab, Palo Alto Networks, RSA

Storage vendor of the year: NetApp NetApp has invested in a data fabric architecture and framework to make hybrid cloud computing simpler, faster and more secure in the region. The company's latest backup and archive solutions help customers take advantage of hybrid cloud to gain flexibility and reduce cost.

Finalists: Dell, EMC, HDS, Pure Storage, Western Digital

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Managed Services Provider of the Year: Orixcom Orixcom has launched a new service for storage, dubbed STaaS, providing enterprisegrade SAN and NAS redundant storage on dedicated drivers for customers, paid for in a consumption model, without any CAPEX costs. The service is available to customers in two flavours – an on-premise service or delivered from the MSP’s cloud platform located in the UAE. Finalists: eHDF, Ericsson, Finesse, Unlimited IT

System Integrator of the Year: GBM Gulf Business Machines (GBM), who recently celebrated its 25th anniversary in the region, has achieved strong performance across all lines of its business, riding on partnerships with the likes of IBM and Cisco.

The SI has recently launched its VersaStack solution, an integrated infrastructure based on the IBM Storwize family of virtualised storage technologies and Cisco UCS. Finalists: Al Futtaim Technologies, Al Moayyed Computers, Condo Protego, CNS, EMW, Finesse, Help AG, Intertec, STME

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Government deployment of the year: Dubai Customs To cater for the exponential increase in current and projected trade volumes as a result of the fast-approaching Expo 2020, the role of IT in Dubai Customs is becoming more and more critical for business competitiveness.

To address this, Dubai Customs has completed an infrastructure transformation project in two phases to reduce operational costs, improve productivity and efficiency, while mitigating risks.

Finalists: Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority, Abu Dhabi Police, Ajman Municipality, DEWA, Dubai Municipality, EGA-RAK, Ministry of Justice (KSA), Ministry of Labour (UAE), Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation, RTA

BFSI Deployment of the year: Kuwait Credit Bank With more Kuwait nationals applying for personal loans for homes and business, KCB has fully automated the loan application process, reducing the processing time from two days to 90 seconds. The initiative has also enhanced employee productivity by 95 percent, reduced human error in input and processing and enhanced customer service.

Finalists: DIFC, Dubai Financial Market, Mashreq Bank, National Bank of Kuwait, National Commercial Bank (Saudi), Waha Capital

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Education Deployment of the year: Al Nahda National Schools Al Nahda National Schools leveraged a number of cuttingedge education solutions such as the Moodle Learning Management System, LiveText strategic planning tool as well as eResources, an online teaching and learning environment. The school also equipped its classrooms with the latest smart-boards and projectors, and encourages BYOD among students and the faculty.

Finalists: American University of Kuwait, Ankabut, Qatar University, Rabdan Academy, UAE University

Construction and Real Estate deployment of the year: Meraas Holding Meraas' top management needed visibility on tasks and project status at project, portfolio and PMO level. To tackle this, the IT organision of Meraas implemented multiple integrated systems including business intelligence, project management information systems, and building information modelling.

Finalists: Al Jaber Engineering and Contracting, Deyaar Development, Gulf Precast Concrete Company, Nakheel, TECOM

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Telecom Deployment of the year: Detasad Detecon Al Saudia (Detasad) is a licensed VSAT and Internet service provider. It also offers colocation, managed services and DR services from its own tier 3 data centre.

The service provider was also the first in Saudi to launch a fully features and automated cloud computing platform, offering SaaS and IaaS portfolios. To meet the requirements of public cloud services, Detasad has overhauled its IT infrastructure to achieve scale, stability and performance, with high levels of automation.

Finalists: du, Mobinil

Retail deployment of the year: Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons From a single store in the 1950s, today Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons' portfolio consists of over 50 prestigious brands and 52 locations in the UAE. A major player in the luxury watches segment, catering to highprofile clientele, the retailer has implemented many IT tools in its stores to enhance customer experience, including apps that are integrated with the back-end database in real time to reduce processing and invoicing time.

Finalists: Al Safeer Group, BinHendi Enterprises, Ebrahim Kanoo, Landmark Group, Majid Al Futtaim Ventures, NAPCO

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Hospitality and tourism deployment of the year: Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates Kempinski MOE rolled out the hotel’s services on a deviceagnostic digital platform that supports any mobile device with end-to-end integration across all guest-facing technologies.

The launch brings the luxury of Kempinski’s five star guest services to more than a million mobile devices checked in by the hotel guests every year, on a world class interactive platform.

Finalists: Anantara, Dubai Culture and Arts Authority, Flydubai, Gulf Air, Jumeirah Beach Hotel, KFC Americana, Sheraton Doha

Healthcare deployment of the year: Healthcare MENA Healthcare MENA (HML) was established with a vision to create one of the largest healthcare networks in the region comprising medical centres, niche surgical facilities, and tertiary care centres. HML has recently implemented a centralised hospital information management system, coupled with ERP and picture archiving and communication system, leading to increased levels of productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Finalists: Al Noor Hospitals Group, Canadian Specialist Hospital, King Fahad Military Medical Complex, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, NMC Healthcare, Prince Mohamed Bin Abdelaziz Hospital, Saudi German Hospital, Zulekha Healthcare Group

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Energy deployment of the year: GASCO GASCO implemented a business intelligence platform to offer meaningful analysis of data to the management team. It also put in place a centralised data warehouse, integrating the complex array of data sources, harmonising master data and enabling cross-functional, enterprise-wide and strategic reporting, allowing the business to access its data where needed, when needed.

Finalists: ADMA-OPCO, ENOC, Petroserv

IT Team of the Year: Emirates Global Aluminium Emirates Global Aluminium was formed in 2014 by integrating Dubai Aluminium and Emirates Aluminium. EGA’s IT department, which has over 110 professionals spread over five sub-divisions, effectively consolidated multiple IT divisions of DUBAL and EMAL into a single entity that could support technological needs and provide sufficient capacity for EGA’s ambitious growth strategies.

Finalists: ADFCA, Aluminium Bahrain, AWRostamani, Deyaar Development, First Gulf Bank, Gulf Air, Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Nakheel, Qatar University

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PTP 820 offers • Environment-friendly, with half the form-factor of conventional radio terminals • 50% less power consumption using innovative dynamic power management • Single core and dual core all-outdoor Ethernet links • 2048 QAM, 80MHz channels and compression support multi Gigabit throughput • Easy design, verification and BOM creation with LINKPlanner tool

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Publisher’s choice Mohammed Amin, Senior Vice President and Regional Manager, EMC Turkey, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Middle East.

Amin, a 25-year veteran of the IT industry, is credited with the success of EMC in the Middle East and Emerging Africa regions. Under his leadership, the company has successfully driven its mission to help customers in the region to accelerate their journey to the cloud. Amin’s relentless focus on excellence in customer service and on being an effective supporter of EMC’s channel partners has been a catalyst of the growth of its market share and acquisition of key regional customers in a number of industry sectors, including telecoms, financial, government and healthcare. He is committed to delivering qualitative service level agreements to EMC customers and to meet customers’ expectations.

Prior to joining EMC, Amin held Middle East-based management positions with major hardware and networking vendors.

He brings in depth knowledge of emerging markets and the active role of governments to his role as EMC Senior Vice President.

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Editor’s choice: AWRostamani The AWR Group is a leading conglomerate in UAE operating with over 3,000 employees, and has established a portfolio of companies managing leading multinational brands in sectors of automotive, real estate, retail, logistics, IT and consultancy.

The Group’s 45-member IT team is led by Sebastian Samuel, and provides business entities with IT services to enable and deploy reliable IT solutions. The group’s IT organisation effectively optimises the cost of IT operations through efficient management of projects and SLAs. It also optimises the use of business applications to minimise operating costs, maximise process efficiency and increase personnel productivity.

Editor’s choice: Juniper Networks Juniper has recently combined its hardware and software units to better align product development and share technology across product lines for cloud and intelligent networking. This has enabled the vendor to offer end-to-end systems that crush operational expense through automation, optimisation and analytics.

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Future CIO of the year: Deepu Thomas Phillip Deepu Thomas has contributed significantly to the development of Kuwait International Bank. Within a tenure spanning nine years, he grew from an auditor to his current role as the head of IT infrastructure and planning.

Thomas joined KIB in 2006, when was the bank was transforming from a specialised bank into an Islamic bank. Though he was recruited as a lead auditor, he leveraged his skills to streamline IT policies and procedures.

His extensive domain knowledge was instrumental in driving the bank’s IT infrastructure transformation, quality control and governance.

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Finalists: Ameena Abdulraheem, Engineering Office Emmanul Steve Dulvin, First Gulf Information Technologies Major Rashed Al Shamsi, Abu Dhabi Police Mohammed Ali Al Abdooli, Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre Mohammed Yousif Al Hammadi, Dubai Culture Saeed Al Ghailani, Department of Transport, Abu Dhabi Wissam Mattout, Nextcare

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CIO of the year: Trevor Moore Trevor Moore was hired to be the first CIO of Qatar University in 2012. He took over the reins during a time of massive growth for the university from 7000 students and 2000 staff to 18,000 students with 3500 staff now.

When Moore joined the university, the IT department needed to deliver a complete transformation of IT infrastructure and governance to meet the expectations of the University customers. In the last three years, Moore has been responsible for delivering over 150 projects, all focused on enhancing user experience. Within this time span, Moore was also responsible for upgrading QU’s key applications, implementing around 60 projects on the applications front.

Some of the projects spearheaded by Moore were relatively new for the region, including SDN, hyper-converged infrastructure and an EBS upgrade. With the successful implementation of these projects, Moore has transformed the IT organisation from a passive department to a proactive trusted partner of the business.

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Finalists: Ahmed Ebrahim Al Ahmad, Nakheel Ajay Rathi, Meraas Holding Akshaya Gaur, Mashreq Bank Alaeddin Al Badawna, ADMA-OPCO Alok Srivastava, Deyaar Development Andrew Murphy, First Gulf Bank Esam Hadi, Aluminium Bahrain Dr. Jassim Haji, Gulf Air Dr. Mustafa Qurban, King Fahd Military Medical Complex

Fady Sleiman, Waha Capital Jawed Akhtar, Ebrahim Kanoo Mazen Chilet, Abu Dhabi University Mohammed Abuagala, Al Jazeera Media Network Sami Al Shammari, Oryx GTL Mubarik Hussain, Petroserv Sebastian Samuel, AWRostamani Vinay Sharma, Gulftainer Thameem Rizvon, KOJ Group www.cnmeonline.com

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Telecoms World NEW REVENUE OPPORTUNITIES

Onto pastures new

As voice and SMS streams decline, telecom operators are increasingly looking for revenue through OTT and data services. What revenue sources will emerge in the near future, and which ones will be phased out altogether?

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in association with

ike in any industry, trends come and go, and once-surefire sources of revenue gradually die out. The telecoms industry is in such a current transition, with certain cornerstone services that were seen as revolutionary several years ago now becoming increasingly less used. The rise of over the top (OTT) providers, cloud services and the colossal increase in data consumption has left the industry at a crossroads. Telco providers who fail to embrace this shift will likely fall by the wayside, while the importance of leveraging fresh partnerships cannot be understated.

“The industry is going through a transformation that is changing the dynamics of the service provider and operator, and how they compete and position themselves in the value chain,” says Gamal Hegazi, Regional CTO and technical lead, Alcatel-Lucent and Chair of Technology, FTTH MENA. “The Internet and OTT have created a data storm that operators are trying to catch up with in order to provide adequate capacity and better consumer experience. Also, voice and messaging are now under more pressure from OTT applications that are utilising the Internet and data to bypass traditional voice and

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“Whilst we can make assumptions on what is declining or about to decline, I truly believe there are opportunities coming up in the next 18-24 months that haven’t been created or commercialised yet.”

Andrew Hanna, Chief Commercial Officer, Viva Bahrain

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messaging SMS applications.”

Andrew Hanna, Chief Commercial Officer, Viva Bahrain, is in no doubt that the rise of mobility is an unavoidable disruptor in the field.

“The increase in the volume of devices and data – along with innovative and exciting applications of mobile technology – are driving new revenue opportunities for the companies that are ready to embrace change,” he says. “First and foremost, I believe we can’t ignore the opportunities that exist from data and broadband and the convergence of the usage from larger screens onto smaller mobile screens which is certainly an area of growth globally.”

Although voice and SMS may be under threat, that is not to say they are becoming redundant. Reinvention of the services, as well as looking for other new streams, is a way to turn a potential threat into an opportunity. “It is hard to predict what services will be phased out, but it is fair to say that SMS and voice are under considerable pressure and they have to be re-invented,” Hegazi adds. “Data remains king, but its economic value depends on how much the operators can capture and retain from the OTT domain. Continuous investments are to be made to keep up with the data tsunami but the re-commercialisation and re-bundling and packaging of traditional service like voice and SMS are essential to keep the revenue stream sustained.”

One particular sector that a range of Middle Eastern countries are seeking to exploit is banking and financial services. With a range of financial centres in the Middle East recovering in the midst of the financial crash, the likes of Dubai International Financial Centre and King Abdullah Financial District are dependent on high quality telecoms services that ensure their businesses can run around the clock. Mahmud Awad, Chief Business Officer, Vodafone Qatar, november 2015

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sees a range of continuing opportunities in the sector for big telco players.

“Although invisible to the public, telecom solutions probably have the biggest impact on the financial sector,”he says. “It is only through telecom services that financial institutions are now able to connect with their own branches in or outside the country, and with other institutions worldwide. Telecom solutions provide security, connectivity, backup and disaster recovery facilities, without which none of current financial institutions are able to grow and expand.”

However, Awad believes that the real value of telecom services can now be found in security solutions. Tying in with the need for 24/7 communication in the BFSI sector is the need for watertight security, and this applies for any vertical where cash or private data is at stake.

The search for the right solutions is sure to spur a range of competition and new services in the space. “Security is the most popular telecom trend now,” Awad says. “Years back, it was connectivity, with the need to be connected with all destinations, but security is now the most important element, especially with the increasing number of cyber-attacks worldwide.”

One revenue stream that will have to be accounted for in coming five years is the Internet of Things (IoT). With billions of connected devices set to spread across both homes and the enterprise, the IoT, if approached with the right strategies, presents a great opportunity for the telco industry. However, it still remains something of an unknown, with operators still exploring the right channels and models that will best serve the market. The main challenges are making the jump from machine-to-machine communication up to a fully integrated Smart City, and at the same time competing with OTT services to ensure that their services are not bypassed. ”There are numerous new models like M2M, Smart Cities, Smart home, telematics and digital media distribution that provide potential for new services to consumers and subscribers,” Hegazi says. “Also, various vertical applications in the www.cnmeonline.com

“Data remains king, but its economic value depends on how much the operators can capture and retain from the OTT domain.”

Gamal Hegazi, Regional CTO and technical lead, Alcatel-Lucent and Chair of Technology, FTTH MENA

realm of M2M can be provided in B2B or B2B2C types of models to create new revenue streams to add in the top line of operators, and change their position in the value chain.”

In the same vein as the IoT, the quantities of data requiring analysis will dictate a new demand for faster telecoms services. Big Data arguably has the potential to be the biggest game-changer for the enterprise in the ‘third platform’ of IT, and with businesses everywhere seeking the hidden details that can make the difference, new revenue streams are sure to open.

“Companies have an opportunity to think laterally when it comes to areas like Big Data; aiming to find ways to process and analyse large amounts of customer data quickly and in real-time in order to engage with customers effectively,” Hanna says. “By analysing varied and unformatted digital data from digital channels like social media and through mobile phones, there is an opportunity for new sources of business economic value to be revealed and provide fresh insights into customer behaviour.”

Hanna concludes by admitting that a great number of unknowns remain in the industry, which leaves the door open for a range of players to capitalise on fresh opportunities. “The great thing about our industry is its sense of unpredictability,” he says. “Whilst we can make assumptions on what is declining or about to decline, I truly believe there are opportunities coming up in the next 18-24 months that haven’t been created or commercialised yet. That’s the exciting part. To be able to look at what is happening and what may happen with a keen eye on the changing behaviours of the customer.” november 2015

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network World MANAGED NETWORK SERVICES

Holding the fort A company’s day-to-day operations rely on its IT function to run smoothly - maintaining a healthy network infrastructure and keeping downtime to a minimum is critical. To date, more and more organisations are turning over certain IT functions to managed service providers, freeing internal IT staff to focus on strategic IT projects.

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very business aspires to have IT networks that can bring about better integration with its employees, partners and customers. Higher productivity demands leave most organisations facing a fork in the road of prioritising network management and progressing other business functions.

As industries and the technologies accompanying them grow more complex, managed network services give organisations the opportunity to keep their focus on having more efficient business processes. “With managed network services, an enterprise can offload up front and recurring tasks to the service provider while maintaining the infrastructure according to their availability, performance and budget requirements,� says Sunil Paul, COO, Finesse.

As more and more businesses realise that staying on top of a sophisticated network infrastructure is a pivotal competitive advantage, many of them opt to out-task the management of their network functions.

According to Paul, while the network is a key foundation of a business, organisations may face issues on accessing extra capacity and tapping into new functional capabilities. “Added budgetary pressures and lack

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network World MANAGED NETWORK SERVICES

“Organisations tend to be uneasy about relying on managed network service providers with critical information and business infrastructure that are crucial to its business operations. They also feel that managed services offer less flexibility and take away the choice of being able to use specific applications for certain requirements resulting in a combination that may not be suitable for that business.”

Sunil Paul, COO, Finesse

of in-house technical expertise are also predominant reasons why they choose to look for a managed network services provider. They also have to deal with skills shortages.”

Rajesh Abraham, Director of Technology and IT Operations, eHosting DataFort, seconds this, explaining that manpower and maximising business productivity and continuity tops the list of challenges that both the enterprise and the SME sector are faced with in their IT requirements. “With evolving needs and limited in-house IT professionals and skills, companies are moving towards engaging the services of managed services providers (MSP) who have the ability to provide different models in IT services,” he says. “With fixed in-house IT departments, the team may not be able to cope with high peak activity, and on the other hand, lower workloads may not justify the manpower spends.

MSPs therefore provide a great amount of flexibility to ensure that IT functions are economically run with high levels of technical expertise.”

However, permitting a third-party firm to access your network is often perceived as a big deal, hence concerns are par for the course. “Organisations tend to be uneasy about relying on managed network services providers with critical information and business infrastructure that are crucial to its business operations,” www.cnmeonline.com

explains Paul. “They also feel that managed services offer less flexibility and take away the choice of using specific applications for specific requirements, resulting in a combination that may not be suitable for that business. Security is a key concern as service providers usually store information outside of a business' own infrastructure; this is especially true in businesses where compliance is mandatory.”

When looking for the right partner to manage their networks, IT leaders should ensure that this provider is fully adept in giving secure end-to-end network infrastructure services that are compatible with an organisation’s business objectives.

A range of factors need to be considered when selecteing a managed network services provider, including latency and user experience, reputation and domain expertise of the service provider. By the same token, physical location of the data, standards and certifications, SLAs, disaster recovery, pricing and flexibility in plans, are all essential considerations.

In terms of adoption in the region, Abraham points out that the managed services market is seeing strong growth.

“A 2012 report by Frost & Sullivan indicated that the UAE managed services market would grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17 percent for five years,” he says. “This holds true, as we have seen a huge uptake for managed

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network World MANAGED NETWORK SERVICES

“At the strategic level, having a managed network service provider allows companies to focus and leverage their resources towards their core business activities, rather than spending too much time on operational activities.”

Rajesh Abraham, Director of Technology and IT Operations, eHosting DataFort

IT and cloud infrastructure services by both enterprises and SMEs. Traditionally, large businesses have been relying on the expertise and services of managed hosting providers to offer secure, flexible and scalable solutions. However, over the last few years we have been seeing a growing trend amongst SMEs choosing to work with service providers for their data centre requirements.”

Paul seconds this notion, highlighting that businesses in the region are beginning to understand the worth of modern communication and infrastructure and its effect on business in the lines of helping them achieve efficiencies. “Organisations are also adopting these services to live up to the expectation of the modern business atmosphere of ensuring high productivity, minimising capital investment, saving costs and keeping abreast with competition,” he says.

Managed network services offer companies multiple benefits. This enables www.cnmeonline.com

a focus on core competencies without having to worry about maintaining their internal IT environments.

“At the strategic level, it allows companies to focus and leverage their resources towards their core business activities, rather than spending too much time on operational activities,” says Abraham. “At the operational level, it offers the skills and expertise of a service provider to competently manage complex data centre requirements.

And, at the financial level, managed IT services reduce total cost of ownership and provide the benefit of a subscriptionbased OPEX model.

“This means that companies can continue to focus on their strategic business objectives, relocate funds on developing new applications and innovation and indirectly win access to skilled resources, latest technology and best-in-class IT infrastructure,” Abraham adds.

Paul believes that a good service provider will help an enterprise to realise improvements in productivity rapidly, leading to cost efficiency. “Network infrastructure needs to be globally competitive and should be able to deliver optimal uptime and reliability whenever it is required," he says. “In addition to that, it should also offer the options of diversity in access, allowing employees to connect to the corporate network and access information that is required to do their job effectively – irrespective of time and place. Information which is accessed is invariably secure, reliable, seamless and cost-effective. This increases efficiency and productivity. Businesses get a resilient, robust and secure infrastructure.

Typically, a focused managed network services vendor can provide their clients with the specialised services which may be required at times, which would be hardly possible to maintain internally.”

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Security AdvisEr Data centres

Centred security From SDN to cloud, the transition to any modern technology requires careful management. This all starts in the data centre, where carefully chosen solutions can give the enterprise the best chance of success in terms of security.

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odern data centres are moving to sleeker, more agile designs.

However, with new technologies and new environments comes the potential for security issues. Whether protecting from physical breaches or data leaks, creating a secure data centre is paramount. When creating or upgrading a data centre, IT professionals need to keep a few important points in mind in regard to staying safe.

Moving forward with new technologies inherently involves risk.

To mitigate that risk, companies can start by becoming aware of existing problem areas before they address their need for new technologies. With that in mind, Stuart Hatto, CISSP, EMEAR Field Product Manager, Cisco Security, discusses potential pain points faced by technology enterprises. “The exponential increase in volume and complexity of data is putting a strain on the organisation’s existing technologies and IT budgets,” says Hatto. “This mix of structured and unstructured data adds to the complexity in a network’s infrastructure, since different technology stacks are required to handle the diversified types of information.”

This business-critical and sensitive information requires modern data centres to constantly evolve to meet the needs and expectations of the enterprise. Not least among these needs is security, which can pose a problem, as disruptive technologies such as cloud, virtual resources and BYOD are introduced.

Traditional data centres offered the benefit of security controls applied to each physical system. This meant that the most sensitive data could be www.cnmeonline.com

physically separated and different levels of security applied to each accordingly. “This is no longer the case for next-generation data centres,” says Garreth Scott, Director of Sales, Credence Security. “Virtual resources cannot be compartmentalised in the same way and security controls can no longer be tied to physical resources. As capacity expands, data centre managers are forced to find new ways of securing critical data in an evolving threat landscape.”

Untethering data centres from their tangible and more easily secured physical sources proves to be one of the biggest challenges facing current IT enterprises. Tom O’Reilly, CTO, Turkey, Europe East, Middle East and Africa, VCE, explains one developing trend that seems to be addressing this new challenge to data security.

“We are seeing more customers moving to converged infrastructure solutions in order to satisfy their application and business requirements,” O’Reilly explains. “These converged solutions reduce the risks of running your own data centre by providing secure engineered and manufactured systems. They provide a single point of management, a single support and a methodology for keeping the infrastructure up-to-date and compliant.”

Most industry experts agree there is an overall shift towards SDN. Along with its many benefits, SDN will further complicate security issues during this transition, requiring enterprises to stay vigilant to the increases in attack vectors and potential threats. Aditya Girish, Territory Manager Middle East, Koenig Solutions, explains why this shift towards SDN requires caution and a hard look at companies' existing security policies.

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Security AdvisEr Data centres “Because an SDN data centre is one where all infrastructure has been virtualised,” Girish says, “the management of that infrastructure is completely controlled by software that is driven by policies. Companies must analyse their existing security policies with scrutiny. Security threats continue to evolve in step with SDN's potential, and enterprises will be required to analyse these new threats and create new effective policies to deal with these new threats.”

Nicolai Solling, Director of Technology Services, Help AG, points out the key areas that companies should pay attention to when securing SDN data centres. According to Solling, “Most of the security risks of SDN centre around visibility and control of the traffic within the hypervisor.” He also explains that companies should pay close attention to firewall capabilities, especially in concerns with virtualised networks.

“Many firewall vendors today have firewall components that integrate directly to the hypervisor,” Solling explains, “but when you look closely at the features offered, there is a vast difference in features between physical and virtual designated firewalls.”

CIOs and data centre architects must build in proper security controls, policies and processes to address and mitigate these new security risks. Simon Mullis, Global Technical Lead, Strategic Alliances, FireEye, explains the need for an intelligent and nuanced response to security threats. “In a modern data centre,” Mullis explains, “CIOs need to be

“As capacity expands, data centre managers are forced to find new ways of securing critical data in an evolving threat landscape."

Garreth Scott, Director of Sales, Credence Security

“In a modern data centre, CIOs need to be able to understand the severity and criticality of the thousands of security events hitting their SOC." Simon Mullis, Global Technical Lead, Strategic Alliances, FireEye

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able to understand the severity and criticality of the thousands of security events hitting their SOC.” Once these threats are identified and understood, Mullis believes the next step is learning how to react.

“It isn’t enough to respond with a broad policy. We need to understand how to appropriately respond to an event and gauge whether or not it should be seen as a breach.

It’s the matter of being tactical in response to security events, and targeting the specific characteristics of a particular campaign,” Mullis says.

Recent high profile cyber-attacks point to the emergence of bad actors using targeted attacks against specific enterprises. This clearly raises the stakes in protecting data in transit, stored on active drives and after devices have been retired. Girish offers an effective solution to such attacks, explaining the need for data encryption.

“Technology that makes it easier to encrypt stored data makes the process itself faster while mitigating the risk of a costly breach.

Solutions such as self-encrypting drives (SED) are especially valuable in the highly dynamic environments of today's data centres. Drives that leave the data centre without protection put business data at significant risk of being stolen, and even when the information is erased, there is a chance for recovery. SED technology ensures that even if an unauthorised entity gains access to the hardware, the stored data is unreadable.”

Even with the continued virtualisation of the modern data centre, it is important for enterprises to invest in and practice effective physical security measures as well. “It’s not all high-tech,” explains Scott. “Proper www.cnmeonline.com

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Security AdvisEr Data centres door locks, the quality of construction materials, power supply concepts and even environmental controls like water drains and pressure control are all important.”

Hatto also supports the need for physical security measures. “Attackers who can gain physical access to a computer can almost always take advantage of that access to further their efforts,” he says. “Any device connected to the network must be protected to ensure that it cannot be turned into a tool for an attacker. Location, surveillance and access controls are just a few measures that can help secure critical physical components of a data centre.”

In spite of a company’s best efforts, the truth is that attacks still happen. It is equally important for an enterprise to have strong policies for recovering from attacks as it does for preventing them.

Solling says, “The primary aspect of disaster recovery is keeping business going. This

www.cnmeonline.com

“Location, surveillance and access controls are just a few measures that can help secure critical physical components of a data centre.”

Stuart Hatto, CISSP, EMEAR Field Product Manager, Cisco Security

requires understanding business continuity requirements. It is important to map critical applications and assets, recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives, in order to respond and recover from an attack.”

The risks of developing technology can be great, but so can the benefits. With a solid understanding of problematic areas and a vigilant approach to security policies, CIOs can reach for the clouds with a certain degree of confidence.

november 2015

75

ANALYST VIEW

The Digital Future

Gartner’s Top 10 Predictions herald what it means to be human in a digital world.

How will the introduction of 'robo-bosses' transform the job market and bring new opportunities to the enterprise?

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NOVEMBER 2015

Daryl Plummer, Vice President, Analyst and Gartner Fellow.

H

ere’s a scene from our digital future: You sit down to dinner at a restaurant where your server was selected by a 'robo-boss' based on an optimised match of personality and interaction profile, and the angle at which it presents your plate, or how quickly it smiles.

Or, perhaps you walk into a store to try on clothes and ask the digital customer assistant embedded in the mirror to recommend an outfit in your size, in stock and on sale. Afterwards, you simply tell it to bill you from your mobile and skip the checkout line.

These scenarios describe two predictions in what will be an algorithmic and smart machinedriven world where people and machines must define harmonious relationships. www.cnmeonline.com

Gartner’s Top Predictions

Robo-writers create content By 2018, 20 percent of business content will be authored by machines.

Content that is based on data and analytical information will be turned into natural language writing by technologies that can proactively assemble and deliver information through automated composition engines. Content currently written by people, such as shareholder reports, legal documents, market reports, press releases and white papers are prime candidates for these tools.

Things will need help By 2018, 6 billion connected things will be requesting support.

In 2021, 1 million new IoT devices will be purchased every hour of every day. What happens when they require help and support? Organisations will need to develop strategies and mechanisms for responding to things in different ways than when communicating and problem-solving for people.

Agents get independence By 2020, autonomous software agents outside of human control will participate in 5 percent of all economic transactions.

Algorithmically driven agents already participate in our economy, but are tethered to mechanisms controlled by humans in our corporate, legal, economic, and fiduciary systems. In what Gartner calls the programmable economy, new autonomous software agents will hold value themselves and be set free on the blockchain, capable of banking, insurance, exchanges and all other types of financial instruments.

You work for a robo-boss By 2018, more than 3 million workers globally will be supervised www.cnmeonline.com

by a 'robo-boss'.

Some performance measurements can be consumed more swiftly by smart machine managers - robo-bosses - who will perform supervisory duties and make decisions about staffing or management incentives.

Smart buildings are vandalised By year-end 2018, 20 percent of smart buildings will have suffered from digital vandalism.

Digital vandals will plunge buildings into darkness or deface signs in exploits that may be more nuisance than threat, but which require adequate perimeter security and a strategy that links building security with the larger organisational security process.

More smart machines go to work By 2018, 45 percent of the fastestgrowing companies will have fewer employees than instances of smart machines.

It will happen with startups and new companies first, but the speed, cost savings, and productivity improvements of employing smart machines means that some companies will use machines over human workers, such as in a fully automated supermarket, robotic hotel, or security firm with drone-only surveillance services.

Customer digital assistants hold conversations By year-end 2018, customer digital assistants will recognise individuals by face and voice across channels and partners.

Multichannel customer experience will take a big leap forward with seamless, two-way

engagement between customer digital assistants and customers in an experience that will mimic human conversations, with both listening and speaking, a sense of history, in-the-moment context, tone, and the ability to respond.

Employees wear trackers By 2018, 2 million employees will be required to wear health and fitness tracking devices as a condition of employment.

For people whose jobs can be dangerous or physically demanding, wearable devices can provide remote monitoring of heart rates, respiration, and potentially, their stress levels, to send help immediately if required.

Smart agents manage our tasks By 2020, smart agents will facilitate 40 percent of mobile interactions, and the post-app era will begin to dominate.

Instead of using discreet apps, we’ll rely on smart agents in the form of virtual personal assistants or newly built business agents to predict our needs, build trust, and act autonomously on our behalf.

Customers cause cloud failures Through 2020, 95 percent of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault.

Many organisations still harbour security concerns about use of public cloud services. However, only a small percentage of security incidents impacting enterprises using the cloud have been due to vulnerabilities that were the provider’s fault. Customers will increasingly use cloud access security brokers' products to manage and monitor their use of SaaS and other forms of public cloud services.

NOVEMBER 2015

79

Opinion

Emil Sayegh, CEO, Codero Hosting

Dispelling hybrid hosting myths

W

hen the Amazon Web Services platform failed recently, some of the Internet’s biggest players suffered extended outages. The culprit?

AWS’s NoSQL database DynamoDB, where increased error rates led to increased errors and latency in more than 20 AWS services.

However, problems brought by this incident could have been avoided with hybrid hosting. Hybrid hosting lets businesses set up their databases on dedicated servers, put their front-end Web apps in the cloud, then tie everything together with a single click.

While many companies recognise that hybrid hosting and the hybrid cloud are ‘the next big thing’ in hosting, some are intimidated by what they don’t know.

Because hybrid cloud adoption is still nascent, there remains a lot of confusion about the technology. The following are some of the myths surrounding it: Hybrid cloud is only used for cloud bursting. When an application running in a private cloud gets a sudden demand for computing capacity, it can ‘burst’ to a public cloud to handle that spike. This cannot be a reactive measure, though, and it is difficult to run applications on traditional, dedicated servers and then swap that same workload to the cloud at will. For cloud bursting to work properly, applications must be designed from the ground up with that in mind; the vast majority of applications are not built this way.

Hosting on a hybrid infrastructure does not magically make an application cloud burst; the application must be designed for that. Furthermore, the hybrid cloud must allow for the cloud 80

november 2015

burst at the networking level, which requires integration of hybrid at the networking level.

Combining an adequately designed application with a hybrid cloud infrastructure, however, would enable an organisation to build up an auto-scaling and burst-capable application on hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Hybrid cloud is complicated to implement. This is only true if hybrid cloud is done in a non-automated, nonproductised manner. If an organisation attempts to build its own configuration, things can get complicated quickly and it can take weeks to implement.

However, when hybrid cloud technology is implemented through an automated platform, it can be done in less than a few hours, if not minutes.

Hybrid cloud is more expensive.

Hybrid cloud can be less expensive than a purely dedicated or purely cloud configuration with the proper setup – namely, if cloud servers are leveraged for variable workloads and dedicated servers are leveraged for fixed workloads.

There is a possibility for hybrid cloud to run up the costs, but that’s only if bridging devices are used. Done correctly - and without these devices - a business can cut its costs with a hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Costs can run up when businesses pay premiums for resources that should be fixed commodities like bandwidth or storage. A proper strategy utilises each element of a hybrid cloud set-up to gain operational and cost advantages.

Hybrid cloud is only for enterprises. Organisations of all sizes can reap the benefits of hybrid cloud – start-ups and SMBs are even more

primed than enterprises to benefit from the hybrid cloud.

Enterprises have the most legacy apps that require a dedicated infrastructure and can gain a lot from the hybrid cloud by integrating existing environments with new ones. However, changing applications, migrations, and IT approvals can take a long time. Start-ups with fixed workloads (like databases) and variable workloads benefit from the hybrid cloud, too. In fact, we’re seeing greater adoption of hybrid among startups and SMBs than enterprises due to the agility of decision-making in smaller organisations.

Because on-demand hybrid hosting is easy to set up and requires minimal configuration, it is ideal for businesses that have small IT teams.

Hybrid is good for data redundancy.

‘Traditional’ hybrid cloud is NOT good for data redundancy. Consider an organisation that stores critical data on its local dedicated server environment.

This company runs a redundant system on a public cloud for live failover or immediate data recovery. In the traditional hybrid cloud model, this organisation is reliant upon a single physical network device to bridge the cloud and dedicated infrastructures. The purpose of redundancy is to eliminate points of failure, not add potential network failure scenarios. A traditional hybrid architecture with a ‘connect’ device is a single point of failure.

In conclusion, there is a high potential for hybrid cloud to be the future and to dominate IT for the next decade. The beauty of enabling the on-demand hybrid cloud infrastructure is it’s customisable to the unique needs and usages, while optimising costs. www.cnmeonline.com

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Opinion

SD-WAN opportunities

C

ommunications Service Providers (CSPs), including carriers, managed service providers and cable providers, are challenged to maintain business services revenue and profit streams in the face of bandwidth commoditisation.

With this in mind, software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) solutions open up possibilities to enable CSPs to increase the value of their managed services for business customers.

CSPs make about $40 billion per year selling WAN services such as MPLS, frame relay, Ethernet, Internet, T-1 and leased lines to business customers.

These companies have been willing to pay a premium for highly reliable, low latency, secure links from their data centres to branch offices and between data centres.

The problem is that increased use of cloud and SaaS applications has significantly altered WAN traffic flows in distributed organisations. Remote users require direct access to SaaS/ cloud-based applications such as Salesforce, Office 365, Lync, WebEx, and off-premise storage. Traditional managed network services such as MPLS, which link branches to a centralised data centre, can’t offer low latency, high performance access to cloud applications. www.cnmeonline.com

Seeing an opportunity, a plethora of product suppliers, including Cisco, Riverbed, and Silver Peak among others, have introduced SD-WAN technologies that allow organisations to better leverage Internet circuits to solve WAN traffic challenges. SD-WAN uses software and cloud-based technologies to simplify delivery of WAN services to the branch office, and softwarebased virtualisation enables network abstraction that results in simplification of network operations.

But that approach requires customers to acquire and manage the gear, which leaves the door open for CSPs to march in with a managed alternative, an opportunity they desperately need. After all, CSP revenues for managed business services have peaked and will slowly decline due to the commodisation of bandwidth services and, as mentioned, services like MPLS are threatened by the ability of customers to use SD-WAN technologies to leverage Internet circuits.

Internet circuits (Ethernet, DSL, cable, etc.) typically are 1/3 to 1/2 of the cost of comparable speed MPLS links. And Internet services have the advantage of higher speeds - 100MB to 1 GB - wide availability and rapid provisioning times as compared to MPLS. The ability of SD-WAN to

minimise the disadvantages of the Internet is the key threat to traditional managed business services provided by leading CSPs. CSPs need to adopt SD-WAN technologies to remain competitive in the market for managed services.

SD-WAN can also be instrumental in delivering flexible, cost-effective managed services that meet customers’ current and future needs.

Another service that CSPs can deliver is hybrid WAN. Hybrid WAN allows current MPLS customers to add managed Internet bandwidth to their branch network. The Internet circuits handle non-critical traffic flows to the data centre and the increasing amount of direct to cloud traffic. CSPs can offer customers managed, secure hybrid WAN services – a key benefit for those aspiring to outsource complex WAN management to a business partner. CSPs can market the reliability, security, and traffic handling benefits delivered via SD-WAN technology.

CSPs can drive the adoption of SD-WAN by reducing the risk of introducing new technology, assisting in the migration to hybrid WAN, and by providing professional and support services. By leveraging SD-WAN to deliver new, valuable services to their business customers, CSPs can avoid the likely disintermediation to their managed service business via the inevitable increased used of Internet circuit for business traffic. november 2015

83

INTERVIEW Jesper Andersen, CEO, Infoblox

Taking control

Each day, cybercriminals find more ways to exploit gaps within enterprise systems. Jesper Andersen, CEO, Infoblox, speaks with CNME about the threats surrounding DNS and how the company can help address the issue.

W

hat have been the major highlights for Infoblox during the last 12 months?

I think we have done really well over the last year in terms of building our market momentum in DDI. We have got some great quarters under our belt now, where we have managed to exceed our own expectations in terms of growth.

We have also significantly accelerated our growth in the security space. I believe this is due to the trend around DNS increasingly becoming an important attack vector. Recently, DNS attacks have become more and more sophisticated, whether it's redirection or data exfiltration, it is now a predominant issue in the market. Being able to provide solutions for issues regarding DNS is an area where we have progressed. We have grown from having almost no security revenue to having a considerable portion of our revenues coming from security.

Also, in terms of offerings, we were able to introduce cloud solutions where we have integrated frameworks and automation suites from players such as VMware, OpenStack and Cisco among others. We have also launched our own solutions for Amazon Web Services and created a comprehensive cloud solution portfolio.

Your company specialises in developing solutions that can protect the DNS infrastructure of 84

november 2015

enterprises, among many things.

With the increasingly evolving threat landscape, how prevalent are DNS attacks as a cybersecurity problem in the market? Is this gaining steam in the Middle East region as well?

The issue is prevalent in the region. We have done 700 security assessments in the last year and over 80 percent of those we have evaluated showed proof of malware on their networks. That statistic is also applicable in the Middle East region as well.

DNS threats are prevailing in sectors such as government, education, telcos and enterprise. These are the industries we have demonstrated strength in and where our team here is continuously improving .

In the most recent DNS Threat Index that Infoblox released, you have identified that DNS threats are up by 58 percent from last year. What do you think has prompted this increase?

The cybersecurity space is like a cat and mouse game. What I mean by this is that the bad guys find a vulnerability and the good guys come up with solutions to solve this, and then it starts over again. If you think of it, a couple of years back, there were a lot of vulnerabilities within the perimeter, but over time companies such as Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet were able to create better defences for companies.

However, cyber attackers today are

exploiting weaknesses brought by the BYOD trend in organisations. The threat landscape has definitely changed, leaving organisations with gaps that they need to be able to address. Lately, cyber attackers have found that DNS is an attack vector, and this is where Infoblox can assist organisations.

What kind of advice do you give enterprises to help them prepare against these kinds of attacks?

DNS has been among our primary focuses recently. Now, depending on the level of conversation between Infoblox and a company, we usually tell them we can conduct a security assessment for them and give them a fully confidential report. Through this, we are able to provide them with proof of what malware is sitting on their systems. With the assessments that we conduct, not only do we detect the kinds of malware they have, we also find out which machine and user caused it.

We often do this free of charge, and without asking for any commitments from them. At the very least, they will become wiser about the potential threats in their domain, and will be able to find out how they can take control of the factors that contributed to this problem.

Is there really a difference between the cybersecurity landscapes in the Middle East and other regions like Europe?

In my opinion, the geopolitical issues in this region are a big factor affecting the security landscape. So, if in the Western regions, cyber-attacks are being used primarily for financial gains, here in the Middle East they could be more than that. They could be utilised to rupture the political stability of governments in this part of the world and that presents a huge challenge.

www.cnmeonline.com

Insight

Up to code

A

s organisations turn to containers to improve application delivery and agility, the security ramifications of the containers and their contents are coming under increased scrutiny.

Container providers such as Docker and Red Hat are moving aggressively to reassure the marketplace about container security. Earlier this year, Docker delivered Docker Content Trust as part of the Docker 1.8 release, which uses encryption to secure the code and software versions running in Docker users’ software infrastructures. The idea is to protect Docker users from malicious backdoors included in shared application images and other potential security threats.

Ultimately, it is about cryptographically signing Docker deployment images, an approach also employed in Linux kernel development and by many embedded systems developers and OEMs to ensure that only signed images can boot.

However, this is only one aspect of container security. If organisations don’t keep software stacks and application portfolios free of known, exploitable versions of open source code, such measures only amount to a partial solution. Without open source hygiene, these tools will only ensure that Docker images contain the exact same bits that developers originally created, including any vulnerabilities present in the open source components.

Establishing a holistic approach What’s needed is informed open source technology selection, vigilance by users and integrators of open source code, and ongoing code maintenance. It’s about 86

november 2015

Bill Ledingham, EVP, Engineering and CTO, Black Duck Software

knowing your code, because you can’t manage what you can’t see.

Having visibility into the code inside containers is a critical element of container security, even aside from the issue of the security of the containers themselves. New vulnerabilities are being constantly discovered which impacts older versions of open source components. Hence, knowing the container is free of vulnerabilities at the time of initial build and deployment is necessary but far from sufficient.

The security risk posed by a container depends on the sensitivity of the data accessed via the container as well the location of where the container is deployed, for example, behind a firewall or Internet-facing.

Internet-facing web and cloud apps are prime targets for cybercriminals and obviously represent the highest potential exposure. A publicly available attack exposes these apps to a range of threats, including cross-scripting, SQL injection, and denial-of-service. The prevalence of open source frameworks and other cloud or web application components, also benefit significantly from open source hygiene to address vulnerabilities in those components.

Why open source hygiene is necessary today With the use of open source software increasing throughout the enterprise, and with recent high-profile open source security vulnerabilities raising alarms, open source hygiene has become an essential component of an effective application security strategy. Just as physical hygiene involves neutralising sources of infection, open source hygiene entails keeping software stacks and application portfolios free of known, exploitable versions of open source code. This is just as important for containers as for every other element of the software stack.

Detection and remediation of vulnerabilities in open source, such as in the case of high-profile vulnerabilities are increasingly seen as a security imperative and a key part of a strong application security strategy. And for many organisations today, application security is tied more closely than ever to container security.

The good news is that for companies developing an end-to-end open source security strategy, innovative tools are available today to get a tactical head start. These tools can catalogue all open source in software portfolios – from whole platforms such as Linux, Android and Hadoop, to individual code components, all the way down to the level of code snippets cut and pasted into internally-developed application code.

It’s critical to develop robust processes for determining the following: • Exactly what open source software resides in or is deployed along with an application • Where this open source software is located in build trees and system architectures • Whether the code exhibits any known security vulnerabilities, and • Creating an accurate open source risk profile.

Will security concerns slow container adoption?

Enterprise organisations today are embracing containers because of their proven benefits: improved application scalability, fewer deployment errors, faster time to market, and simplified application management. Just as organisations have moved over the years from viewing open source as a curiosity to understanding its business necessity, containers seem to have reached a similar tipping point. And, just as with open source, the question now is whether security concerns about containers will inhibit further adoption. www.cnmeonline.com

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Insight

Idan Tender, CEO, Fortscale

UNCOVERING WEAK LINKS

T

he industry has recently been witnessing how interconnections with thirdparty vendors can turn a flexible environment - where devices, services and apps are routinely engaging and disengaging - into a dangerous space filled with gaps that can give hackers the opportunity to infiltrate an enterprise’s network.

Here are some of the most common mistakes organisations make when working with third parties: Shared credentials. This is one of the most dangerous authentication practices encountered in large organisations. Imagine a unique service, not used very frequently, requiring some form of credentialbased authentication. Over time, the users of this service change, and for convenience considerations, a single credential is often used. The service is now accessed from multiple locations, different devices and for different purposes. It only takes just one user to make a mistake and fall victim to one malware or phishing attack to compromise that particular service.

Shared organisational services, from databases to communication protocols, could become a prime target for a malicious actor seeking to expand their reach and gain improved access along a target network. Continuous user behaviour monitoring enables system admins to prevent this kind of service misuse by enforcing an individual authentication protocols map and correlating all anomalous user access events. Whether shared credentials are a common sight in your network or not, identifying it in near-to-realtime could become a single sign 88

november 2015

of potential compromise in your corporate network.

Irregular access. Companies granting insider credentials to partnering companies must understand they are committing to a long and serious relationship.

Managing and monitoring trusted outsiders could result in ongoing difficulties when trying to resolve whether an account has been compromised. Erratic and frequent changes of account and resource usage combined with unfamiliarity of IT policies and regulations leads to a spike in alerts and alarms setting off.

Trusting a partner company or an important content or service provider should begin with complete assimilation with the end-user’s company. This means joint employee training sessions, tightly monitored and fixed user lists, and predefined engagement use-cases. All of these will help ensure that if a compromised credential becomes suspect of improper use, your SOC will have the capabilities to understand and fix the problem.

The joint cloud. Many companies are taking their first steps in deploying cloud-driven security solutions. While cloud-app usage regulation has received most of the attention, we are seeing more complex relations forming between our traditional environments and newly established clouds, which forms another under-addressed space. In line with this, adopting cross-environment authentication protocols and measures that will enable more fine-grained monitoring over these evolving attack surfaces is recommended.

Understanding the inherent vulnerabilities of allowing trusted outsiders access to the network, these surfaces will require unique attention from SOCs. Public Internet exposure. A device that is both connected to the Internet and enables third party remote access is an external attacker’s prized desire. Using social engineering and other deceptive methods, attackers can gain initial access to your shared workstation and work their way through the network based on this initial foothold.

Using secure remote connection protocols and applying extra layers of monitoring to these workstations will mitigate the possibility of external, unauthorised access, and could potentially identify if an outsider is trying to build a stronghold inside your perimeter.

Proximity to privileges.

Privileged accounts provide both rogue insiders and malicious outsiders the access-level they need to approach sensitive resources securely and/or modify their own access level. That’s exactly why privileged accounts should be kept hidden and away from shared access workstations like the ones provided to trusted outsiders.

Although this is not always possible due to the fact that most outsider access is given to parties who possess a service or a skill that requires some kind of elevated privilege, we advise forming goalspecific access groups to these devices to ensure both domaincontroller regulations and other agents can assist in identifying anomalies in real time. www.cnmeonline.com

Quick pulse

5

questions for Big Data engineers

Big Data engineers are in-demand and difficult to hire, making salaries skyrocket. Answering these 5 questions the right way will help you land the job.

B

ig Data engineers work to understand business objectives and translate them into data processing workflows. These professionals are typically responsible for gathering and processing raw data, evaluating new data sources for acquisition and integration, and designing and implementing relational databases for storage and processing.

Often reporting to the CIO at midsize companies or to the database manager at larger companies, Big Data engineers are in high demand and compensated well. IT staffing firm Robert Half Technology named this position one of the top-five highestpaid tech jobs of 2015, with a salary that ranges from $119,250 to $168,250.

Here are five questions you can expect hiring managers to ask during the interview process and tips for answering them the right way.

1

Tell me about how you used data to execute a recent project quicker or under budget.

Big Data engineers often work with huge data sets - anywhere from petabytes to exabytes - and need to demonstrate expert analytical skills, RHT’s John Reed says. Hiring managers might pose this question to gauge how well you understand the broader impact of your work, he says.

In your response, detail your role and the project’s objective. Call out how your use of data led to a significant benefit, www.cnmeonline.com

and how you arrived at the solution you did. Hiring managers are just as interested in your thought process and reasoning as they are in your results.

2

What are some issues or challenges you faced while working with data?

While hiring managers value how well a project is executed, they’re also keen to learn how you deal with projects riddled with roadblocks and slip-ups.

This question gets to the heart of that.

“Not every project goes smoothly from start to finish - you’ll always have some challenges,” Reed says. “Hiring managers want to know how you worked with others on your team to face these unanticipated pitfalls.”

Because Big Data engineers communicate directly with business users and data scientists to understand objectives and create data processing workflows, focus your answer on your teamwork skills and problem-solving tactics. They want to know that you can dive in quickly and clean up a messy situation, all while working collaboratively with others.

3

What is one security issue a company like ours should know about?

Hiring managers use this question to gauge your awareness of data security issues that businesses currently face, Reed says. “Data is very sensitive and confidential, so naturally security has to be a big part of a Big Data project or initiative,” he says.

While Big Data engineers don’t usually deal with security on the same level that a data security analyst might, you still need to have a strong foundation in and understanding of best practices for protecting a company’s data.

4

Talk to me about an instance where you were able to foresee a security issue.

Not only are hiring managers interested in how you might secure the company’s data, they want to know how you’ve put your security background to use to prevent or anticipate issues in the past.

“With this question, they really want to know whether you will help them foresee issues and resolve them once they’ve popped up,” Reed says.

Detailing how you anticipated a security issue helps the hiring manager assess both your security aptitude and you problem-solving skills. Be sure to discuss both: how you uncovered a particular vulnerability or potential problem, and how you arrived at the solution to fix or prevent it.

5

How do you get up to speed on new technologies?

Like other tech professionals, Big Data engineers will encounter technologies they’re not familiar with: Maybe it’s a programming language they haven’t used before or perhaps it’s a new software. Hiring managers ask this question to gauge your learning process - how you personally stay up-to-date on the latest and greatest technologies, and how you approach a situation that calls for skills you may not be proficient in.

“You could find yourself working with tech that you’re not familiar with. Hiring managers want to know what steps you’ll take to overcome the knowledge gap to ensure you’re up to speed and can still finish a project in a timely manner,” Reed says. november 2015

89

Opinion

Hadi Jaafarawi, Managing Director, Qualys Middle East

EVOLUTION OF SECURITY COMPLIANCE

I

T security seems to revolve around a calendar of events, marked by milestones such as Patch Tuesday, Cyber-Security Awareness Month, and staple events such as Black Hat and RSA. But we all know that the status of cybersecurity will only improve once we are able to move from an event-driven, reactive security programme to one marked by processes and systems that reflect the persistent nature of the threat we face. Our enemy operates from safe havens present in the Internet, and takes advantage of automated tools and a growing cybercrime economy.

Thus our calendar is irrelevant to this adversary.

Awareness of the need for ‘continuous security’ has been growing due to the recent sharp increase in the frequency and cost of attacks. The UAE’s National Electronic Security Authority declared cybersecurity as one of the biggest economic and national security challenges facing countries in the 21st century. One of the biggest attacks to happen in the region was the Shamoon malware attack that cost Saudi’s Aramco $15 million in losses in 2012.

Hackers are becoming more and more sophisticated with common cyber-attacks now including distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, phishing/spear-phishing emails, data theft, ‘zero-day’ software 90

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assaults, web application exploits, and website defacement.

So how did we get here? This could be because we have been slow to evolve out of the ‘batch mentality’ that has historically dominated security practices. This has caused us to focus on cycles that are measured in months. But thanks to newer consumer platforms such as the iPhone and Android, continuous update cycles have become wellknown and advocates of the faster cycles of monitoring and remediation are gaining more attention.

Of course, the issue has not been a lack of desire, but rather the real constraints of time, people and money. Using traditional security appliances, we would exhaust all of our staff’s time before we came close to complete coverage. These tools were architected during the era of the network as a walled castle, and just do not scale to a dynamic world of shadow IT, cloud applications and mobile devices.

But these obstacles are being overcome. First, new services deliver security from the cloud, which reduces the reliance on specialised equipment and centralises management to a single point, allowing global implementations with a minimum of setup. The cloud also allows you to probe from the outside, just like an attacker, and to discover and evaluate assets outside

the corporate firewall, including those provisioned without your knowledge.

Second, rules-based automation is being incorporated into an increasing number of products and services. This shift to real-time alerts rather than batch reports is critical if we are to avoid drowning in the data created by pervasive and frequent security monitoring.

The third key trend derives from the first two - analytics-based intelligence. Pervasive and frequent scanning enabled by the cloud and alerts give us a treasure trove of data, and to this we can apply sophisticated statistical techniques. Information about assets, vulnerabilities and threats can be aggregated anonymously across a customer base, and then correlated to identify patterns that indicate trouble spots more quickly, so we may prioritise action in a more automated and intelligent way. In the same way that we use crowd-sourced ‘Big Data’ to predict commute traffic, we can use the law of large numbers to get us a step ahead of the cybercriminals.

So while reactive security has been necessary in a world marked by insufficient resources and antiquated equipment, new tools and techniques allow us to improve our visibility and responsiveness to threats. I encourage companies to consider the steps that they might take to move to a more continuous model of security in the near future. www.cnmeonline.com

Data Centre Spending Trends Survey 2015 The face of the data centre is changing. The world - and the region - is moving on from the traditional data centre buildout and is looking to innovate with more capacity, streamlined infrastructure, lower power costs and greener solutions. As many organisations begin to transform their data centres, we investigate what is driving growth and change in the industry and what is needed to create a modern data centre.

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Security Spending Trends Survey 2015 Last year, the CPI Research Hub released its inaugural report on IT security spending trends and driving forces in the Middle East. A great deal has changed over the last year – XaaS is a reality in all aspects of computing, storage has moved into the cloud, and attacks on businesses have become more frequent and more damaging. We look at what has changed over the last 12 months, and what lies ahead in IT security.

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PRODUCTs OF THE MONTH

PRODUCTS

Launches and releases

Brand: Huawei Product: Mate S

Product: Surface Pro 4 Brand: Microsoft What it does: Powered with Windows 10, the latest version of the Surface Pro transforms from a tablet to a laptop in a snap with its multi-position kickstand and improved keyboard. Equipped with Intel’s Core i5 or Core i7 processor, it can be configured with a lower or higher amount of storage and RAM. It’s 12.3-inches in diameter, weighs 1.69 lbs. and is just 8.45mm (0.33 inches) thick. The industrial design retains the iconic look and feel of the last generation.

What you should know: Surface Pro 4 sports the PixelSense display which can give users extremely high contrast and low glare. It can also run the full suite of Office products. It also features one USB 3.0 port, a Mini-DisplayPort and a Micro-SD card slot. Users need to separately purchase the new Surface Pen which comes in five different colours and supports 1,024 levels of pressure, features a tail eraser, connects magnetically and also has interchangeable tips. The new TypeCover is optional as well.

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What it does: Chinese firm Huawei’s latest smartphone packs a range of slick features. The lightweight 156g Android device comes in ‘luxurious gold’, ‘titanium grey’, ‘mystic champagne’ and ‘rose gold’ colours and is sized well at 5.5”, with a metal unibody and curved back and round edges, and is only 2.65mm thick.

What you should know: Targeting the high-end market, the phone features an impressive 13MP video camera, 3GB of ram and fingerprint recognition.

Huawei’s tagline ‘The power of touch’ hints at the Force Touch and knuckle gesture recognition technology that allows for a range of shortcuts to be accessed via knuckle drawings.

Product: Huawei Watch What it does: With a 42mm round case, the Huawei watch complements the Huawei Mate S well. Coming with leather, link or mesh watch straps, the 400x400 AMOLED display device has day-long battery life, 1.2GHz Qualcomm processor, standard fitness trackers and Google Fit. What you should know: As tech and fashion firms battle it out to design a user friendly yet stylish smartwatch, Huawei have raised the stakes of sleekness. The Android Wear operating system may still need work, but smartwatches will never take off unless true elegance can be achieved, and they’ve taken a huge step in this direction.

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ways to protect public sector data

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hen considering a public sector employee, if their device is lost or stolen, it could put very sensitive data at risk. Organisations should be prepared to ensure this information is safeguarded, especially when accessible remotely. Arthur Dell, Director, Technical Sales and Services, Middle East, Africa and Turkey, Citrix, outlines five ways public bodies can boost productivity while mitigtating these risks.

Be clear about roles and ownership Who in the organisation will own enterprise mobility? Mobility continues to be addressed through an ad hoc approach, often by a committee overseeing IT functions from infrastructure and networking to apps. Given the strategic role of mobility, and the complex matrix of user and IT requirements to be addressed, it’s crucial to clearly define the organisational structure, roles and processes around mobility. People should understand who is responsible for mobility and how they will manage it holistically across different IT functions.

Mobile device management (MDM) is critical MDM enables organisations to manage and control mobile devices used to access resources. Before a device corporate-owned or personally-owned 94

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– accesses the public sector network, it must be verified that it hasn’t been jailbroken or otherwise compromised.

Encryption, remote lock and wipe, mobile virtual private network, app blacklists and the ability to selectively disable native device capabilities all enable this.

Avoid the ‘quadruple bypass’ The quadruple bypass represents the worst-case scenario for enterprise mobility: a BYOD user on a consumergrade device using sensitive public data and going directly to the cloud for sharing, storage or editing. This approach completely bypasses the control and visibility of IT - and it’s alarmingly common in today’s organisations. There are good reasons for this, of course. Cloud apps can help people save time and get their work done more easily, and they can also drive value for the organisation. The problem comes when cloud apps are used in the wrong way with sensitive data, compromising security and compliance.

Prepare for the Internet of Things Organisations shouldn’t just write policies for today – they must keep in mind what enterprise mobility will look like in the coming years. Wearable technologies like smart watches

continue to change the way people use mobility. The public sector should be prepared for employees exploring how they could be used for work. These consumer items will reach the office. It’s just a matter of time. It may be sooner rather than later for some countries. The GCC has declared that Dubai is to be the smartest city in the world by 2017. Since the vision is heavily influenced by the IoT, enterprises in the region must be all the more mindful when drafting policies.

Protect sensitive data above all else Finally, in many organisations, IT doesn’t always know where the most sensitive data resides, and so ends up treating all data with the same top level of protection - an inefficient and costly approach to security. Mobility provides an opportunity for the public sector to protect data more selectively based on a classification model that meets their organisational and security needs – keeping sensitive data confidential, without unnecessary controls for publicly available information.

Providing adequate mobility at work is critical for the public sector to perform its duties but it must protect its data while doing so. This is an opportunity for the public sector to empower a more dynamic and flexible workforce, while safeguarding its data and – crucially keeping costs down. . www.cnmeonline.com

Here’s an idea: Design the smallest, fastest, smartest LaserJets ever.

The all-new HP LaserJets.

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We started with a blank page and asked “What do businesses need now?” The result is the all-new HP LaserJets, built around a breakthrough in toner chemistry. Thanks to new Original HP Toner with JetIntelligence, the new LaserJets are up to 40% smaller, up to 40% faster and use up to 53% less energy.1

The world’s most preferred printers: Worldwide printer market share, and HP printer brand awareness, consideration, and preference study in 9 markets 2014.

Based on HP internal testing of predecessor devices completed 1/2015 or published information and subject to device settings. Actual results may vary. Faster refers to First Page Out Time (FPOT). For energy efficiency, the HP M252 is 15%, HP M277 is 16% and the HP M553 is 53% lower versus predecessor. For details see hp.com/go/ljclaims © Copyright 2015 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.

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