Computer News Middle East December 2014

issue 275 | december 2014 WWW.CNMEONLINE.COM

Know your enemy

Rinaldo Ribeiro, Security Head of CBD, talks banking risk

PLUS:

strategic ICT partner

a healthy approach NMC’s infrastructure upgrades mean a fitter future

ahead in hospitality

Prasanna Rupasinghe, Kempinski MoE IT Director, wishes you a pleasant stay

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EDITORIAL

Innovate or die trying

Jeevan Thankappan Group Editor Talk to us: E-mail: jeevan.thankappan@ cpimediagroup.com

GROUP Chairman and founder Dominic De Sousa GROUP CEO Nadeem Hood

I am writing this note on the sidelines of ITU Telecom World in Doha, where service providers, regulators and other stakeholders come together to debate the future of telecom industry, which is truly at an inflection point. The ITU has called for a ‘mindset shift’ among operators and increased collaboration, most notably with the OTT players, to fuel the next wave of growth in the industry. The most notable among the topics discussed was the need to drive customer experience and find ways to monetise the big, fat pipes many service providers have built over the years. While telcos have literally sunk in millions of dollars into rolling out these pipes, it’s the OTT players who have made most of it, and the biggest challenge for the telecom industry is stave off this threat and find a level-playing field.

All over the world, fixed telephony is a state of terminal decline with mobile-cellular subscriptions tipped to reach almost seven billion by the end of 2014, with a majority of mobile broadband subscriptions in the developing world. The telecom market in the Middle East has been unique in many ways. The market growth was largely driven by mobile, and voice is still the king. Many operators still enjoy healthy ARPUs in the region but that is going to change sooner than later. With competition getting fierce and markets reaching near saturation, these telcos will have to look beyond voice and SMS to digital services to keep their bottom lines healthy. They will be left with no choice but to follow in the footsteps of their counterparts in the developed world where operators are reinventing themselves to stay afloat. While your network still plays a key part in driving the customer experience, the daunting task before the industry is how to find ways to cut down operational costs and find new ways to differentiate from competition.

Thanks to technologies such as SDN and NFC, operators now have an option to decouple software from hardware, and focus on the top application layer to innovate by collaboration. The regional regulators and governments will also have to play their part by making spectrum available and speed up national broadband network roll outs. Figures from ITU indicate there will be three billion Internet users by the end of the year. That still leaves us with another 4.3 billion people who aren’t connected yet. Amidst a din of hype and expectations about Smart Cities, we often forget there exists a huge digital divide with rural broadband still remaining a distant dream. The challenge before the industry now is to find new investments in networks and low-cost innovations that can ensure rural connectivity.

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GROUP COO Georgina O’Hara

Publishing Director Rajashree Rammohan raj.ram@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9131 Editorial Group Editor Jeevan Thankappan jeevan.thankappan@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9133 Editor Annie Bricker annie.bricker@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9116 Online Editor James Dartnell james.dartnell@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9140 ADVERTISING Senior Sales Manager Michal Zylinski michal.zylinski@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9119 Circulation Circulation Manager Rajeesh M rajeesh.nair@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9142 Production and Design Production Manager James P Tharian james.tharian@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9136 Designer Analou Balbero analou.balbero@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9132 DIGITAL SERVICES Digital Services Manager Tristan Troy P Maagma Web Developer Jefferson de Joya Photographer and Social Media Co-ordinator Jay Colina webmaster@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9100

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Know your enemy Rinaldo Ribeiro talks security in banking

PLUS:

a healthy approach

Regional partner of

NMC’s infrastructure upgrades mean a healthier future

ahead in hospitality

Prasanna Rupasinghe wishes you a pleasent stay

deLL worLd forUm | 2015 oUtLookS | AtP Network SecUrity coNfereNce | XAAS

© Copyright 2014 CPI All rights reserved While the publishers have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of all information in this magazine, they will not be held responsible for any errors therein.

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EDITORIAL Our events

Looking to the future

Annie Bricker Deputy Editor Talk to us: E-mail: annie.bricker@ cpimediagroup.com

The year is coming to its end and you likely have a few minutes to reflect on the innovations, technology and breaking news that we have seen over the last year. From cloud leaks and heartbleeds to mergers and conferences, the industry has certainly kept us on our toes in the past few months. We hope that CNME has met our brief in bringing you the latest word in the Middle East’s technology industry this year.

The close of this year also marks the end of my first 12 months at CNME, and in the UAE. I have been privileged to get to know many key players in the technology industry here, and have been continually impressed by the forward-thinking attitudes and passion that drives this community. As well, I now have no doubt that this region is fast becoming a global technology leader.

The Middle East has been ‘leap frogging’ other regions in terms of technology – moving from outdated solutions to cutting-edge innovations in enormous strides. The future is bright in the region, and consumers and vendors alike are hungry for change and innovation.

With January just around the corner, the time has come to look to the coming year. Experts in the technology industry will be making predictions, companies will give sneak peaks into their new designs and everyone will ask – “What is next?” The truth is, we don’t know. No one knows. The fact is that the industry is simply a moving, ever-adapting and changing target. Sure, we can all make some educated guesses, but with one gear effecting the next this machine, what is predicted today could be completely moot in six months.

What I feel I can predict with confidence, is that the Middle East stands to benefit from technology innovations in the coming year. The region is attracting more visitors than ever, and companies are quickly moving their offices here or expanding their existing operations. That kind of positive attention is sure to bring positive change.

What is truly interesting is the potential for these visitors, citizens and companies to all connect to local governments via e-portals and m-government innovations. When dealing with local government in other regions, citizens expect only outdated communications and painfully slow service. In the Middle East, however, government agencies seem to be wanting and willing to engage with their citizens, visitors and businesses using the latest technologies.

The specifics of the future of technology may be a bit hazy, but the overall picture is bright. Citizens and government are coming together in ways never before seen, and commerce is thriving in the region and the we all stand to benefit. It has been a great year, and I can only predict that the next one will be even better.

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Contents

Our Strategic Partners Strategic ICT Partner

Strategic Technology Partner

Strategic Innovation Partner

ISSUE 275 | december 2014

24

hospitality headhunt

know your enemy

30

70 8

healthy future

Sourcing talent on the digital frontier

Computer News Middle East

december 2014

74

10 Fortified frontiers

Experts at the APT Network Security Conference in Riyadh set an agenda for protection against Advance Persistent Threats.

34 X-citing news

Everything-as-a-Service is the new way forward. With most types of hardware, software and more available as a service, what will the IT future look like?

14 A Different Dell

Thousands decended on Austin, Texas for Dell's annual World Forum to check out the company's new offerings.

52 Storing for the future

As cloud storage becomes the new norm and storage capacity demands ever on the rise, what is in store for the coming year?

16 Data differentiation

Teradata's annual Partners Conference underlined the importance of data usage in the modern organisation.

58 A safe new year

The last year has been fraught with IT security breaches. Though the past may look grim, there is hope for the future.

24 Hospitality Headhunt

Prasanna Rupasinghe, Director of IT, Kempinski Hotel, Mall of the Emirates discusses what it takes to keep high-end guests happy.

64 Calling the operators

Telecom industry leaders know that the name of the game is user experience.

The future of telephony is bright.

30 Healthy future

NMC's Devender Manral, CIO, discusses the challenges and rewards of a new infrastructure roll-out that has changed how patients receive care.

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76 The New Norm

In today's hybrid cloud enterprise the CIO's role is the creation of seamless business flows that bridge cloud and onpremises infrastructure to help business operate better.

Lumeta Signs Up ComGuard

as Value Added Distributor in MENA Region New partnership adds Network Situational Awareness to networking and IT security portfolio

About Lumeta Corporation

“Lumeta is very pleased to have ComGuard on board as a strategic VAD of our network situational awareness solutions,” - Pat Donnellan, Chief Executive Officer of Lumeta Lumeta Corporation, the leader in network situational awareness, today announced a distribution agreement with Dubai-based ComGuard, a leading Value Added Distributor (VAD) in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region. The partnership was launched earlier this quarter (12th October) at GITEX in Dubai.

ComGuard will add Lumeta IPsonar and Lumeta Enterprise Situational Intelligence (ESI) to its networking and IT security product portfolio to provide organizations across the region with network situational awareness. By crawling a network and listening (via active and passive techniques) to discover and understand, Lumeta is the authoritative source of the current state of a network’s infrastructure – detecting all connections, devices and potential leak paths within on-premises equipment, virtual infrastructure and cloud instances.

“We are continuously evaluating new and complementary technologies to add to our portfolio; Lumeta’s network situational awareness products enhance our vulnerability management solution, providing our customers with comprehensive visibility into their network,” said Ajay Singh Chauhan, Chief Executive Officer of ComGuard. “We see exciting new possibilities in this partnership with Lumeta across the MENA region. It enables ComGuard to better address customer needs in today’s environment of ever-increasing network security vulnerabilities.”

ComGuard will offer Lumeta’s full line of network situational awareness solutions to the MENA market via its extensive network of local resellers. Comguard will focus on developing, enabling and empowering the channel through technical and sales training workshops. The distributorship agreement allows large and mid-size organizations in the region to benefit from Lumeta’s advanced discovery technologies while at the same be assisted by ComGuard’s team with specific tailor-made security solutions.

“Lumeta is very pleased to have ComGuard on board as a strategic VAD of our network situational awareness solutions,” said Pat Donnellan, Chief Executive Officer of Lumeta.

“ComGuard’s reseller channel partners will be better aligned to provide their customers with superior network visibility as a foundation for any security risk management program.”

Lumeta’s network situational awareness solutions identify and map every IP connected device on a network and discover inbound and outbound leak paths, giving IT management a clear, comprehensive assessment of network vulnerabilities, cyber-threat risks and policy violations from network edge to core. Lumeta provides foundational intelligence required to make decisions impacting security, compliance and availability. Lumeta’s products deliver an efficient and cost-effective process to streamline network consolidation (M&A) projects, as well as address today’s security initiatives associated with BYOD, Mobility, Cloud, Outsourcing, SDN, Access Control and Big Data which increase the complexity of a network and compromise traditional security defenses. Lumeta optimizes other network and security product investments with accurate and fact-based network intelligence.

Headquartered in Somerset, New Jersey, Lumeta has operations throughout the world.

More information is available at www.lumeta.com

About ComGuard ComGuard is a leading value added distributor in the IT security space reaching across the Middle East and North Africa region. The company was established in 2002 and is headquartered in Dubai, UAE. ComGuard is a part of Spectrum Group, which is engaged in IT networking and security training, and consultancy services. For its discerning ability to provide value addition to product offerings, ComGuard has received much industry recognition and awards, including Security Distributor of the Year from Reseller Middle East (RME) and Security VAD of the Year from The Integrator (ICT Champion Awards).

More information can be found at www.comguard.net.

in depth Fortinet

Fortified frontiers CNME, in association with Fortinet, organised the Advanced Threat Protection Network Security Conference in Riyadh last month to highlight some of the challenges and set an effective agenda for protection against today’s sophisticated attacks.

T

he regional threat landscape is evolving and changing rapidly, with attacks becoming more targeted and sophisticated. The success of advanced targeted threats is reportedly so pervasive today that detecting and defeating them requires a fundamental rethinking of security strategies.

CNME and Fortinet’s network security conference gave an overview on how network security fits in the broader IT security environment of companies, the main network security related challenges that enterprises face, and also provided

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insights and points users need to keep in mind while building their defence strategies.

The conference kicked off with Javed Abbasi, Principal Consultant, Gisba Group, who defined some of the trends shaping the local security landscape. It is important, Abbasi said, that objectives for information security need to be defined, measureable and account for requirements, risk and results communication. Security is increasingly becoming a specialised area and many SMEs in the region are looking to outsource security desks. "You can outsource

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the work in terms of responsibility but not accountability; it should always remain within the organisation,” he said.

This was followed by a presentation from Fahad Al-Hussein, Director of Information Security Administration, King Fahad Medical City, who provided a CISO’s perspective on security challenges today. “Enterprises in the region hesitate to invest in information security because the management often doesn’t realise that it’s a business issue and executives don’t realise that information security is a corporate governance responsibility.

2013

www.datacenterfuture.com

in depth Fortinet

“If security is seen as an IT issue and not discussed at the board level, you need to highlight tangible cases of security invasions, followed by a comprehensive risk assessment and you need to make sure that your information security strategy is aligned with business strategy. Creating overall awareness campaigns and programmes to the employees, contractors, and visitors towards importance of information, and increase their information security awareness level to ensure the proper protection of these critical data is very important,” he said.

Riku Valpas, Senior Systems Engineer Manager, Fortinet, outlined a strategic approach to sophisticated threats, illustrating the anatomy of an attack in his presentation.

“Today, the threat landscape is worse than ever. You can easily download malicious software from the Internet or go to a website, use your credit card and order a DDoS attack.

Hackers are using multiple attack vectors and techniques to gain access into systems with a consistent motivation. A major chunk of attacks today are motivated by cybercrime, followed by hacktivism and cyber espionage.”

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He added that there is no silver bullet to prevent advanced targeted attacks. “Your solutions need to be quite sophisticated to protect against this new breed of threats and you need a collaborative approach that ties in networks, payload and endpoints. You need to focus on three actions. Mitigate threats before they enter your network, discover threats that have or tried to enter your network, and respond to any threats that have breached your network. A structured approach for maximum protection that includes access control, continuous monitoring, threat detection, prevention and incident response.”

The event also featured a panel discussion around some of the burning security issues that organisations face today. One of the points debated by the panelists was the vexing question of taking a best-of-breed versus a single vendor approach to build security infrastructure.

“Every security infrastructure has three pillars – products, processes and people. To achieve the most secure infrastructure, you need to find the right balance of the three.

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When you focus only on technology, not the bigger picture, you will end up with more than five to six vendors, which makes it very difficult to operate and maintain your security infrastructure. This is where we recommend a consolidated approach that can simplify management and integration,” said Emad Abu Jazar, Country Manager, KSA, Fortinet.

Another important point discussed during the panel was the need to test and validate security solutions before they are implemented. “It is very important to test your systems before you implement. We test solutions by simulating a real-world environment and real attacks so that you can see all the aspects of a solution and how it would behave before implementation,” said Pascal Marchi, Regional Sales Manager – Southern Europe and MEA, Ixia, which was the technology partner of the event.

in depth Dell World

A different Dell The 2014 Dell World Forum, held from November 4-6 in Austin, Texas, was met with some unseasonable weather. In spite of the rain, thousands gathered to see what Dell has in store and the company did what it always does in uncertain times – adapt.

I

n a business world often defined by riskaversion, Dell is shaking things up. This year’s Dell World Forum – held in Austin, Texas from November 4 to 6 – was a testament to the company’s drive to keep things cutting-edge.

Though Austin may seem like an odd locale for such a conference – similar events are usually held in Las Vegas or San Francisco – the venue should be no surprise. Austin is the birthplace of the company, and is home to a population that is dedicated to the city’s motto, “Keep Austin Weird.” In spite of the conservative politics and attitudes of the rest of the state, Austin remains a city motivated by progress. In the same vein, Dell is not afraid to stand out among its competitors.

Both Dell and Austin have no problem being the “blueberry in the tomato patch.”

As such, Dell is moving bravely forward.

A year after the company went private, by

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the looks of the 2014 Dell World Forum, it is doing just fine. Over 5,000 attendees packed into the Austin Convention Center to see what the hometown tech giant has up its sleeves. In his keynote speech, Michael Dell addressed the current technology business landscape. “A lot of big companies are going through major organisational transformations. They’re splitting themselves up every which way and you have to wonder who is this for? Does it help their customers and partners? Does it advance the research and development agenda or create better products and services?” he said.

Jeff Clarke, President of the Client Solutions group, noted that Dell’s global PC sales grew nearly ten percent year over year, and that its PC sales in the U.S. grew 25 percent in the past quarter. This growth is occurring as Dell’s competitors are doing damage control or shying away from their PC

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branches – Dell, instead, is doubling down.

In addition to a healthy PC offering, Dell is also striving to be the leader in end-to-end enterprise solutions. As such, they have recently introduced their 13th generation PowerEdge server, the R730XD, the Dell Network Function Vitualization Platform, the SC4020 All Flash Array and the Dell DCS XA90 among many other new solutions and service offerings from the company. “When you look at things like the trends in security, Big Data, cloud and mobility, there’s always something evolving from a technology perspective and our customers and partners are looking for ways to leverage that and get business advantage from it,” said Bryan Jones, Vice President, Dell Marketing, North America.

Other solutions and products were on display at Dell World Forum. Though the company has put more emphasis on their end-to-end enterprise solutions, they are by no means ignoring their robust PC and tablet selections. Much of Dell’s hardware message centred around enabling the mobile workforce through notebooks and tablets. According to Dell top-brass, the PC is not on its way out, and will increasingly become a strategic cog in the overall business machine.

The forum itself was packed with panel discussions and a truly varied array of speakers.

From Dell executives to end-users and experts ranging from Erik Brynjolfsson, Director, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy to Jessica Jackley, Founder and former Chief Marketing Officer of KIVA, the world’s first peer to peer microlending website, everyone was out to sing Dell’s praises.

It has been a busy and profitable year for Dell, and the positive outlook was reflected at this year’s Dell World Forum. There are clearly some big ideas on the horizon for the company. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO, X PRIZE Foundation, asserted his vision of this future in the closing keynote. “We’re heading toward an extraordinary world — a world in which we’re going to be able to meet the needs of every man, woman, and child on this planet,” he said.

Even the unusual rainy weather did not manage to damper Dell’s enthusiasm. It is clear the company is confident in its recent decisions, and though it may go against the grain sometimes, it is comfortable standing out.

in depth Teradata

Data differentiation At Partners 2014, an annual event held by Teradata, transforming businesses to be data-driven was the key theme.

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artners 2014, Teradata’s annual conference, which brings together the company’s customers and technology partners on a single platform, reflected the data evolution by sharing best practices and case studies. Held at Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, the event hosted about 4000 exhibitors and customers and held more than 200 sessions, more than half of which were led by speakers from the customer base.

The theme at the event’s 29th edition was ‘being data driven for a data-dependent world’.

Businesses can optimise operations by leveraging the relevant information from the collected data through analytical tools. When we speak about data in a business, it is key to understand that there are various aspects to it. The first step is to collect and store data, then manage and put a relevant context to the wide-ranging data, automate it for future use, secure and protect the analysed information and finally create backups in order to retain the data in case of an emergency. With niche technologies available to help in each of these steps, organisations need to prioritise business goals and identify the areas where having the relevant information can help in delivering better services more efficiently.

Eric Joulié, President of Teradata France and VP, Southern Europe and MEA, said, “If you want to have a 360 degree view and

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communicate efficiently with your customer, then you must have enough knowledge about them. How are they transacting and interacting with you, which medium they prefer and the like.

For an omni-channel approach, you must have maximum information about your customer.”

How to be data-driven Today, customers might know the incredible potential analysing the right data can offer to their businesses. But the challenge is ensuring the business heads down the right path in this drive. The first step is to create an analytic roadmap. For this, organisations need to identify business goals and the kind of data required to meet those goals.

“The biggest change in data is that it has moved from being passive to being current and active,” said Jeff Seacrist, VP, Product Management, Webtrends. “So instead of looking at reports of what happened in the past, you are using live data to actually change the experience for your clients in real-time. The more you can use data to inspire those customers to act by providing them more customised information, the better your conversion rates will be.”

Applications must also be identified and deployed to make use of the collected data.

Identifying infrastructure that is needed to leverage the data and support the applications is also a critical step in this process. In terms of

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investments, it really depends on the company’s size and the complexity of the task it is trying to achieve, said Seacrist. The idea is to use data analytics as a long-term tool to deliver seamless experiences to the customer.

“Organisations are leveraging a much broader spectrum of data to drive better and more proactive decision making. In the last two to three years, the economics and the capabilities to leverage things like unstructured and raw data have greatly come down, so more people are able to process and leverage that broader spectrum,” said Don Tirsell, VP, Worldwide Technical Alliances, Informatica.

Challenges to a successful strategy One of the barriers to be a data-driven company is often the ‘disconnect’ between IT and business.

But to have an effective strategy in place, organisations must realise that all divisions are key. In one of the sessions during the event, Kimberly Choate, Director, Business Intelligence and Data Quality and Governance, IHG, along with Dan Denenberg, Partner, Teradata, explained how important it is for IT to integrate data with everyday activities of the business.

They discussed that another reason for unsuccessful data-driven strategies was the lack of a top-down approach. Choate said, “Make sure you get the support from the leadership”.

This is something Stephen Brobst, CTO, Teradata, reiterated in his talk on data science.

“Data-driven decision-making comes from top-down. However, it might be difficult to get the first-generation CEOs on board as they have achieved the position in an era that lacked the benefits of data science. It is a culture that needs to be developed and this will get easier going forward.”

Sometimes the technology can be the easy part but ensuring that divisions within an organisation are on the same page can be the bigger challenge. Experts at the event agreed that this is one of the first things businesses need to determine – allocating who will be responsible for collecting, overseeing and owning the data – before diving into implementing the technology.

The key takeaway from the event was if organisations do not take the steps required to adopt data driven approaches, they run the risk of being left behind in important decisionmaking processes over the next couple of years.

And as technologies are becoming disruptive at a faster rate, time and speed also play a significant role.

Information is the key to protecting information. That’s why our security solutions are backed by world-class intelligence to help you identify threats in real time and keep your information safe.

Learn more at symantec.com/security-intelligence When you can do it safely, you can do it all. #GoKnow

Go ahead, you’ve got

For more information contact Alia Hussain, Business Unit Manager, Symantec Tel: +971 4 369 7111 Ext: 274 | Email: alia@aptecme.com Copyright © 2014 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec, the Symantec Logo, and the Checkmark Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries.

short takes Month in view

Intel to combine PC and mobile divisions

ME trio join ‘Networked Society’ index Ericsson has published the 2014 edition of its Networked Society City Index report, ranking Cairo as number three in terms of ICT maturity improvement from 2013 to 2014.

The report ranks 40 cities and measures their ICT maturity in terms of leverage from ICT investments in economic, social and environmental development – the “triple bottom line” effect – and has added Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Muscat amongst nine new cities in this year’s report.

One of the key findings from the report is the fact that cities with a low ICT maturity tend to be improving their ICT maturity faster than high performing cities, indicating a catch-up effect. A regional example of this is Cairo, where, despite low ICT maturity levels, plus several social, economic and environmental challenges, there is significant progression on all ICT dimensions of the Index: infrastructure, affordability, and usage.

Many cities also have the opportunity to leapfrog others by avoiding expensive and increasingly obsolete physical infrastructure and instead moving straight into innovative applications using advanced mobile technology.

Intel will combine its PC and mobile processor divisions under one roof, reflecting a changing market in which the line between tablets and laptops has blurred.

The chip maker will form a new division at the start of next year called the Client Computing Group, which will include the teams that develop its Core processors for desktops and laptops, as well as those that

Dubai Police scoops UN award Dubai Police has been announced as the UAE winner of the UN-based World Summit Award, mobile edition (WSA mobile), a global initiative that selects and promotes the world’s best in mobile content and innovative applications.

The Dubai Police app was selected amid 480 submissions from over 100 countries.

Tianhe-2 tops supercomputer list again

WHAT’S HOT?

The most recent Top500 compilation of the world’s most powerful supercomputers revealed the Chinese National University of Defense Technology’s Tianhe-2 as the world’s fastest system for the fourth time in a row.

Tianhe-2 is as powerful as when it debuted atop the list in June 2013; in a Linpack benchmark, it offered 33.86 petaflop/s of computing power; one quadrillion floating point operations.

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develop its Atom chips for smartphones and tablets.

Until recently, Intel served the PC market with its powerful Core processors and the smartphone and tablet markets with its lowpower Atom chips, but those lines are no longer so clear. The emergence of hybrid computers, which can switch between a laptop and a tablet, has done much to blur the boundary.

december 2014

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Unveiling mobile innovation efforts in the mGovernment & Participation category, the Dubai Police app will be honoured in front of UN representatives, ICT ministries and the private sector, at the WSA mobile Global Congress in Abu Dhabi, hosted by the Abu Dhabi Systems & Information Centre (ADSIC) from 1st to 3rd February, 2015.

Ovum: Mobile data worth $50 billion by 2019 Mobile data will bring in $US50 billion by 2019 and make up 56 percent of global roaming revenues according to analyst firm Ovum.

Uptake of smartphones and SIM-enabled tablets and deployment of LTE is driving the growth. Ovum said users increasingly want to use the same services, whether they are at home or travelling overseas.

Yahoo dethrones Google as Firefox search tool Mozilla has picked Yahoo to be the default search engine for its Firefox browser in the U.S., deposing Google in a new fiveyear partnership.

Google has been the default search tool in Firefox since 2004 but its agreement came up for renewal this year and Mozilla said it was making the change to promote “innovation and competition.”

Android browser all dominant.

Still, the deal will put Yahoo’s search engine in front of more users and is a win against Google in that regard. Firefox users search the Web more than 100 billion times per year globally, the companies said.

The deal also opens the door for other integrations with Mozilla in future, Yahoo said, though it didn’t provide details.

FT: EU initiating Google split

EMC: 88 percent of UAE values third platform Collected among registered attendees of the Dubai EMC Forum, the company’s research polled a total of 315 business and IT management and executives, technical architects, data scientists and storage/infrastructure managers from a range of UAE businesses.

Although the results largely indicated that the UAE’s IT leaders are looking to embrace the third platform, there still remain a number of decision makers who remain unmoved.

79 percent of respondents in the report that their CXOs consider IT as a strategic lever to grow the business, now more than ever before, yet 64 percent of companies believe that spending for technology was outside of IT's control.

88 percent of respondents expect next-generation technologies such as mobile, social, cloud and Big Data to give their organisation a competitive advantage.

Firefox’s share of the browser market has been in decline, and in the past year it slipped behind that of Google Chrome, according to figures from Net Applications.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is still way in front.

On smartphones and tablets, a critical growth area for Yahoo, Firefox barely registers, with Chrome, Safari and the

Members of the European Parliament are readying a motion calling for the breakup of Google, by separating its search engine functionality from other commercial services, according to news reports.

A draft resolution has been finalised, according to a report from The Financial Times. While the European Parliament has no formal power to break up the company, a vote to split Google could put pressure on the European Commission, the EU’s executive body.

The motion is backed by several German politicians and by the Parliament’s two largest political blocs, the European People’s Party and the Socialists, according to the newspaper.

Google currently faces a long-running antitrust investigation in the EU.

Etisalat launches ‘Business in a box’ SMB solution Etisalat has announced the launch of ‘Business Quick Start’ – the first in a series of Etisalat’s integrated ‘Business in a Box’ solutions that offer SMBs high-speed fixed broadband Internet, free voice minutes and a free Smart device on a single, converged bill.

This business bundle is available for all existing and new SMB customers and offers over 25 percent savings on their existing

Fortinet: CIOs under increasing board pressure Ninety percent of CIOs and CTOs believe the job of keeping their enterprise protected is becoming more challenging according to new research from Fortinet.

Pressure to keep the enterprise secure has also jumped almost one-third in the last 12 months.

This comes from a survey of over 1,600 enterprise IT decision makers from around the world.

communications and equipment spend.

For AED900 per month, customers get a fixed broadband Internet connection starting from 10Mbps, a fixed voice connection with 200 minutes of free usage and a free smart device of choice between a laptop, tablet or phone. Minutes included in the business bundle offers 100 minutes of local and 100 minutes of international voice calls.

Iranian hackers hit ME infrastructure for 2 years

WHAT’S NOT?

A team of Iranian hackers has compromised computers and networks belonging to over 50 organisations from 16 countries, according to research from IT security firm Cylance.

The victims include airlines, defense contractors, universities, military installations, hospitals, airports, telecommunications firms, and more across the region.

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Anatomy of a Modern consumers are sharing more personal information than ever before and expect closer, more relevant connections with brands in return. This infographic highlights key qualities that define today’s connected consumer to help you better understand and foster valuable relationships with your customers.

Connected Consumer listening

PERsonalisation 40% of consumers buy more from retailers who personalise the shopping experience across channels.

73% of consumers surveyed said they prefer to do business with retailers who use personal information to make their shopping experience more relevant.

90% of consumers say their purchase decisions are influenced by online reviews.

74% rely on social networks to guide purchase decisions.

40%

90%

73%

74%

70%

SHAring

40%

70% of millenials say it is their responsibility to share feedback with companies aſter a good or bad brand experience.

42% of consumers believe brands should respond to their questions or concerns within an hour on any given day, including weekends.

trust

Relationship

77% of online shoppers would trust businesses more if they explained how they use their personal information.

79% of consumers state that their relationships with brands are more personal than ever before.

Over half of US consumers worry about their information being compromised every time they login to a business website, and 29% have abandoned logging in or buying on a website due to these concerns.

68% of consumers agree that shopping today is less about brands of products themselves and more about what they are feeling and needing.

79%

77%

68%

29% omni-channel 45% of consumers prefer a crosschannel combination of online, mobile, and in-store shopping.

engagement 8 in 10 millennials want brands to entertain them by allowing them to co-create products, responding to their questions and comments via social networks, and providing online content like videos and games.

GamiďŹ cation increases consumer commenting by 13%, sharing by 22%, and consumer activity feed engagement by 68%

Over 20% of consumers aged 18-49 visit websites from 4 dierent devices each week.

8/10

45%

68%

location Over 50% of adults under 34 are willing to share their location for more relevant content.

74% of US smartphone users use location-based services.

50%

20%

74% SOURCE: GIGYA

CIO Spotlight Prasanna Rupasinghe

hospitality headhunt With a wealth of hospitality IT experience under his belt, Prasanna Rupasinghe, Director of IT and AV, Kempinski Hotel, Mall of the Emirates, knows what it takes to keep his guests happy. His reputation for accomplished projects has ensured that he has always had an array of Middle Eastern companies chasing his services.

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R E T N U H E BE TH

RSA SECURITY ANALYTICS AND RSA ECAT GIVES SECURITY TEAMS AN EDGE IN THE HUNT FOR CYBER ATTACKS

CIO Spotlight Prasanna Rupasinghe

B

orn and raised in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Rupasinghe’s initial interest in IT was spawned through the use of “magical” 16 MHz PCs at his school’s computer lab. He undertook a degree in Computer Science at Informatics University in his hometown in 1990, and bagged an internship at software development firm Computer Information Systems (CIS) during the course of his studies. “My passion for the hospitality industry began there,” Rupasinghe says. “Technology, applications and software were limited back then, but it was an exciting time. We started developing software for hotels in the Maldives and Sri Lanka, and that really stoked my interest.”

He completed his studies at Informatics, and joined CIS fulltime in 1992. Whilst there, he gained a strong grounding in the use of MICROS software - which encompassed point of sale and front entry technologies - and would lay the foundations for a number of projects in his career.

His role at CIS provided the opportunity for some firstclass training, as he took courses in Singapore, Hong Kong and underwent a two-month stint in Berlin. “It was all fantastic experience,” Rupasinghe says. “At that point technology and systems were developing, but I learned a vast amount about Unix and Linux.”

The extra work clearly paid off, as he was promoted several times in his time at the company, “I think the hand I played in delivering mature projects was my greatest strength,” he says.

In 1995, Rupasinghe was headhunted by Dubai firm Key Information Technology (KIT), where he worked in Customer Support. “KIT gave me my first taste of the Middle East,” he says.

“I did a few installations across Dubai, Bahrain and Oman, which gave me some fantastic exposure to international experience.” He enjoyed a year-long stint at the firm, and returned to Sri Lanka in 1996 to join Taj Hotels as Group Systems Administrator. “I was offered the job by accident,” Rupasinghe says. “I ran into a customer from a previous project who offered me a job, and it was too good an opportunity to turn down.”

His position at Taj provided a varied and challenging experience.

“In ’96 a lot of changes were needed to the company’s IT,” Rupasinghe says. “There weren’t proper networks in place; we were only just moving to fibre-based networks and only 10 or 15 people in the company had email, and we were still using dial-up modems.”

Rupasinghe’s expertise was also needed in his role as Project Manager in establishing the IT for the ‘Taj Exotica’ hotel, opened in Sri Lankan city Bentota. He also recalls with a degree of puzzlement the hysteria that surrounded the run-up to Y2K at the turn of the millenium. “In the end, all the fuss was for nothing,” he recalls. “We had to investigate all of our equipment, all of our hardware and infrastructure; all eyes were on us. Of course we were relieved when all was fine but looking back the whole thing was blown out of proportion.”

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“Working for Kempinski in Dubai has been an amazing professional experience.

Dubai is always looking to update its technology and challenge itself to stay ahead, which means I have a range of great opportunities.”

Once again Rupasinghe’s track record of strong networking and robust project implementation put him in good stead, as he was handpicked to join Kuwaiti firm Enhanced Engineering and MultiTechnologies Co. (EEMC), following a meeting with an old customer from his time at KIT. “I was mainly supporting the company’s PMS (Property Management System) and working with Clipper.”

With investment lacking in the Sri Lankan hospitality industry amid political unrest, Rupasinghe was unable to work in his homeland. However, he was not short of options in Kuwait City, as Kempinski Hotels came knocking for his services in 2003. He was once again charged largely with MICROS installation, as well as providing a range of technology services and management. Whilst there, he forged a strong relationship with the hotel’s General Manager, yet another connection who could provide a timely professional springboard for Rupasinghe. In 2005 the GM opened Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates, and didn’t hesitate in asking him to become the hotel’s IT Manager.

The move has proven to be an excellent decision for a fulfilled Rupasinghe, “Working for Kempinski in Dubai has an amazing professional experience,” he says. “Dubai is always looking to update its technology and challenge itself to stay ahead, which means I have a range of great opportunities.” In the midst of his Kempinski MoE tenure, Rupasinghe has found time to complete a three-year Master’s course in Management of Information Technology at the University of Melbourne in Dubai. “I’ve learned a lot from getting the degree,” Rupasinghe says. “It’s given me an improved perspective of the management aspects of IT, in terms of aligning with business objectives and the reengagement of processes.”

In 2007, Rupasinghe was promoted to Director of IT for the

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CIO Spotlight Prasanna Rupasinghe

TIMELINE

“We need the ability to provide an exemplary quality of applications and services, and along with it an ability to scale-up. We have to be able to support applications such as full HD & Ultra HD video, making the network 10GE, 40GE ready.” hotel, a move which he has relished with increased responsibility, “It’s a more senior role, I became closer to the executive committee,” he says. “It’s given me greater leverage in dealing with the owners and senior management.”

Rupasinghe is especially proud of two projects that he has overseen whilst at Kempinski MoE. The first of which is a Fixed Network Infrastructure offering, whereby his team transformed the existing LAN network via end-to-end virtualised capabilities, delivering Network-as-a-Service at the edge. “All of our IT is dependent on our infrastructure; it is our backbone,” he says. “We need the ability to provide an exemplary quality of applications and services, and along with it an ability to scale-up. We have to be able to support applications such as full HD & Ultra HD video, making the network 10GE, 40GE ready.”

He has also recently embarked on an IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) project, which will allow a range of BYOD services for guests throughout the hotel, including TV, games and e-commerce options. Fixed in-room iPads are standard, and Rupasinghe has also used the technology to push marketing campaigns that have been agreed with Mall of the Emirates. As would be expected, the veteran of the hospitality industry knows exactly what his guests expect, and what it takes to keep them satisfied. “They don’t have time to learn how to use a service,” he says. “It has to be simple, comprehensive and always available. Their experience in terms of IT always has to be engaging and reliable. It was easy to gain the buy-in from senior management on this; and I also prefer to invest in areas that are visible to guests.”

Rupasinghe names Steve Jobs as his role model, “His desire to make every detail absolutely perfect, to never give up, and have such passion for what he did is inspirational,” he says. His proudest moment? “I take pride in everything I do,” he says.

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1990 Begins Computer Science degree at Informatics University in Colombo

1992 Joins Computer Information Systems after internship

1995 Moves to Dubai to join Key Information Technology

1996 Returns to Sri Lanka for Taj Hotel role

2000 Joins Kuwaiti firm EEMC

2003 Recruited by Kempinski Kuwait City

2005 Becomes Kempinski MoE IT Manager

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CASE STUDY Healthcare

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Holistic healthcare With its reputation as one of the world’s leading healthcare companies, NMC’s patients demand first-class treatment. Devender Manral, Chief Information Officer, NMC Healthcare, oversaw an elaborate eight month project that would drastically improve the patient experience and save his department vast sums of cash.

I

n an industry where a customer’s health is at stake, services need to be of the highest quality. Devender Manral, Chief Information Officer, NMC Healthcare, knows better than anyone that the provision of IT falls directly under that remit.

Manral and his IT team drew up an ambitious roadmap, which would see the transformation of NMC’s IT infrastructure becoming mature enough to support a range of modern, integrated applications.

The ultimate aim was to streamline IT operations. “We really looked at how we could enhance patient care through the use of applications. Our IT never used to have rigorous processes,” Manral says. “We did not have visibility of incidents, recording and security policies.”

Two of NMC’s nine facilities – its Dubai Investments Park hospital and Brightpoint Royal Women’s Hospital Abu Dhabi – would be recipients of a series of changes that, once complete, would provide a vastly improved patient experience. The project would consist of a number of overlapping phases, all of which would be integral to the end result. Manral looked to build a Network Operations Centre and Security Operations Centre for visibility over the company’s infrastructure, and sought to obtain ISO 20000 and ISO 27001 certifications, which would provide his team with clear standards on IT budgeting, change management, and incident and risk management. “We looked at our guidelines and decided the IS standards were a must in order to bring us up to scratch,” he says.

The NOC and SOC would centrally manage NMC’s ICT Infrastructure from Abu Dhabi. “We needed a way to proactively monitor our infrastructure,” Manral says.

Manral implemented the ManageEngine Service Desk for central support, which would deal with a number of functions, including ticketing, escalation and the configuration management database. He also went to ManageEngine for their OP Manager, which would be used to

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CASE STUDY Healthcare

monitor all critical infrastructure, including alerts, SLAs and escalations.

Aiming to provide seamless transfer of a range of data and applications, including demographics, medical history, laboratory test results and billing information, Manral used Insta HIS (Hospital Information System), which was designed to capture accurate real-time data, and would be integrated with Oracle ERP. “We had a homegrown HIS & financial system, which had outdated technology and was not integrated,” Manral says of the technology’s necessity. “Our doctors needed high quality EMRs (Electronic Medical Records) so that a patient’s data could be tracked throughout their time in the hospital. We needed a solution that could tightly integrate applications that would be needed throughout a patient’s stay; everything that they need from when they arrive to when they leave. This includes our PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) – which controls things such as x-rays FCM, CRM, and back end finance and purchasing.”

Implementing comprehensive Hospital Information Systems and ERP was crucial, so as to centralise all data and applications over a private cloud. “In addition, we also looked to virtualise our data centres, to centralise our infrastructure and reduce our IT operations cost,” he says.

Manral says that finding the right resources was a pivotal challenge on which the major project’s success hinged. “It is always an issue in this part of the world,” he says. “Finding the requisite manpower - the right people to do the job – was difficult, and this led us to outsource our deployment and configuration to vendors.” He also says a lack of collaboration between certain parties was problematic, “They were not participating with end companies directly,” he says.

In line with this, Manral opted to use Open Source technologies in terms of corporate Email and instant messaging systems. At user level, Libre office and Zimbra Emailing solutions were adopted, while at the core level, Linux Operating systems were deployed for critical applications like Insta HIS and the Oracle ERP, Oracle E-Business.

Manral also says that a lack of standardised procedures in transferring information between hospital staff meant that change management was an issue. “The changes had to be pushed from the top, meaning that building up standards and workflows was difficult,” he says.

“Fortunately for us our senior management were always very supportive.”

Over the course of an eight month period, Manral and his team underwent the arduous process of implementing the array of technology.

The HIS and Oracle ERP systems were the most demanding in the juggling act, requiring overlapping spells of four months each to complete.

The overall impact of the project has had a number of benefits both in terms of user experience, and in a sizeable ROI in a number of areas.

Manral’s fully virtualised servers has reduced the cost of server hardware by 40 percent, and has freed up more space in his data centre, as well as reducing the need to refresh hardware.

As far as achieving the project’s utmost aim – improving the quality of patient care and experience – Manral says Insta HIS has been a fantastic addition. “It takes care of everything for us, from when the

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“Before, someone would have to go off and retrieve a patient’s file, but now, doctors have everything at their fingertips.” patient registers to when they leave our facilities, every process is taken care of by the application, including our PACS,” he says. “It provides them with a single registration ID and unique EMR across the integrated NMC facilities. From when patients are seen by the physician to when they go to the pharmacy, everything is integrated. Patient waiting time has been reduced by 15 percent as a result of having one tightly integrated EMR. “Before, someone would have to go off and retrieve a patient’s file, but now, doctors have everything at their fingertips.” Insta HIS has also significantly reduced waiting times for insurance policies, another patient pain point.

Meanwhile, the adoption of Open Source has reduced “20 percent” of all IT costs. “It made sense to use Open Source, as our main users are doctors, who are not IT creators,” Manral says. “They want HIS, collaboration and communication tools, and a decent mail system.”

Manral’s successful introduction of the NOC and SOC now allows more efficient monitoring of KPIs via the issuance of tickets. “Before a user complains that there is a fault with the Internet, we already know about it and are working on a solution,” he says. Full adherence to ISO 20000 and ISO 27001 certifications has now provided his team with clear standards on IT budgeting, change management, and incident and risk management.

With patients now able to give feedback via Insta HIS at registration counters, not only do they have a direct line of communication with their healthcare provider, but NMC’s IT staff also have access to a rich pool of data that helps them to make actionable business decisions.

“Both hospitals are now able to record patient feedback, and this data is tabulated on a monthly basis,” Manral says. “This use of analytics allows us to see which facilities and doctors people are happy with, and things like the age of the patient and which types of specialist they are visiting.

This is valuable in helping us understand where we can improve; which specialists are performing best, and the areas where we are not as strong.”

Looking ahead, Manral is looking to implement the changes across all of NMC’s hospitals. “We consider the overall product to be 60 percent built,” he says. “We currently have the infrastructure and team set up to take everything to the other facilities, where we will be rigorous in ensuring it runs perfectly.”

C

M

Y

CM

MY

CY

CMY

K

*Based on internal Dell analysis in July 2013 based on Dell Compellent flash-optimised vs.spinning disk arrays and an internal test performed by Dell in March 2013 with Storage v6.310 on dual SC8000 controllers running OLIP type workloads using IOmeter with a 100% random, 70/30 read/wirte mix and 8K sector transfer size achieved this IOPS performance.

Actual performance/latency will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability **Based on internal Dell analysis performed in May 2013, comparing similar Dell Compellent offerings to EMC VNX Family, HP 3PAR StoreServ, HP EVA, IMB V7000, IBM XIV, Hitachi Data Systems HUS 100 Family,and Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Family and competitive US list pricing from Gartner Inc, Cp Storage, as of June 2013. Š 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

FEATURE

34

XaaS

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solutions World

With cloud computing having a marked impact on the way IT serves the enterprise, the ‘as-a-service’ model has been a game-changer. Now, most types of hardware, software, IT or business process can be offered as a cloud-based service, and can provide greater agility, higher levels of innovation and lower capex. We look at the models’ prospects in 2015.

T

he proliferation of mobile devices and rise of cloud technology is necessitating a rethink of how IT and business services are delivered.

So, in a sense, Everything-as-aService (XaaS) constitutes something of an overhaul.

With modern CIOs demanding that their costs be usage-based, and that a model have the flexibility to

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FEATURE

XaaS

be delivered either on-premise or in the cloud, XaaS is also offering IT departments a useful tool to redirect focus to more forward-thinking and strategic initiatives.

With the IT needs of different verticals varying, a pay-as-you-go model allows for things such as higher demand in network traffic, saving costs in the process. Companies with broad technology portfolios are able to bundle as-a-service offerings and deliver to CIOs only the products and services they want and need.

“The term XaaS traditionally started with the three layers – Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, and Software-as-a-Service,” says Mohamed Sayed, SGI Cloud Computing Leader MEA, IBM. “However, the term is becoming more general and today covers additional cloudbased solutions like business process as-a-service, solution as-a-service, disaster recovery as-a-service, and marketing as-a-service, to name a few. In the near future I think organisations in the region will find even more offerings added under the XaaS umbrella term.”

The as-a-service model stands to bring huge benefits to the enterprise, including greater business agility; being able to respond quicker to market

In the normal onpremise full licensed model you pay for the asset and the associated elements costs upfront, whereas in an as-a-service model you pay for the service as and when you consume. This leads to the shift of focus from the balance sheet to the P&L statement.”

Biswajeet Mahapatra, Research Director, Gartner

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With the IT needs of different verticals varying, a pay-as-you-go model allows for things such as higher demand in network traffic, saving costs in the process.

Companies with broad technology portfolios are able to bundle asa-service offerings and deliver to CIOs only the products and services they want and need. changes when most needed. This competitive edge, combined with the ability to begin new ventures without the need for capital means the as-a-service model’s adoption may for a number of reasons be slow in the region, but will ultimately become a mainstay of its IT scene. The infrastructure flexibility on offer, providing the option of public, private or hybrid cloud will surely be too great an allure.

“The major benefit of XaaS is the move from Capex to Opex,” says Biswajeet Mahapatra, Research Director, Gartner. “In the normal on-premise full licensed model you pay for the asset and the associated elements costs upfront, whereas in an asa-service model you pay for the service as and when you consume. This leads to the shift of focus from the balance sheet to the P&L statement. Also, if you consume anything as-a-service you have the liberty to play around with the different service levels as and when required. You are less likely to be bothered about the upgrades, maintenance and patching.

Services and service levels vary across verticals and geographies. With new offerings coming up locally, the coming few years will be interesting.”

Sayed believes that XaaS’ key offering will be to allow businesses to home in on the areas that are most needed to them, “Every company has its own specialisation in the business world and will need

FEATURE

XaaS

to focus on that competitive specialisation moving forward,” he says. “As-a-service helps companies to get what they want from different cloud providers with a variety of service levels and required support.

In other words, the as-a-service model helps companies to focus on their core business and give non-core operations to a company to manage and deliver that requirement with elastic pricing, scalable models to start small and grow, as well as a minimal initial investment with incremental payments.”

Although there is a school of thought that says the relative lack of legacy IT infrastructure in the Middle East means businesses are more likely to adopt the latest technology models, there remains a degree of skepticism in the region. Regulations surrounding the geographical location of data could be a pain point for those looking to adopt as-aservice models. Just how mature is the Middle East in terms of aaS adoption?

“Maturity is a relative term,” Mahapatra says.

“Some basic things like chargeback, costing of services, shared services model or methods are basics which help in faster adoption of an as-aservice model. If the IT department happens not to be a cost centre it again helps in faster adoption.

Maturity levels of things like enterprise architecture and vendor management also play a critical role. In these terms this region is not yet ready for anything as-a-service, but in terms of standalone Softwareas-a-Service this region is already seeing some traction. So overall it’s a widespread ‘no’ in terms of anything-as-a-service, but there are good rates of adoption of SaaS.” Sayed is slightly more optimistic about the Middle East’s adoption, citing other as-a-service models as being prevalent, “The Middle East and Africa region has started to adopt the as-a-service concept but with different levels of maturity,” he says.

“While we see small and medium-sized customers adopting IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, we also see enterprises that are more focused on business process as-aservice and solutions as-a-service.” Sayed goes on to cite Gulf countries as being leaders in adoption, “The overall adoption of XaaS is growing on all levels and the percentage of growth is quite high,” he adds. “In particular, we have seen organisations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia rapidly adopting XaaS solutions not only for the cost reduction element, but also because of the simplicity of the solutions which 38

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The Middle East and Africa region has started to adopt the as-a-service concept but with different levels of maturity.

While we see small and medium-sized customers adopting IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, we also see enterprises that are more focused on business process as-a-service and solutions as-a-service.”

Mohamed Sayed, SGI Cloud Computing Leader MEA, IBM

eliminates going through heavy IT investments and complex implementations.”

However, for widespread adoption to take off, there remains an array of obstacles that businesses will need to overcome. Where data resides, and the security that envelopes it are concerns that do not just stop at CIO level, but are prevalent throughout C-level suites. There also remains a degree of ambiguity as to what exactly vendors are providing, with many claiming to provide a variety of XaaS offerings. In these instances, strong SLAs are an absolute must, as well as seeking a vendor that can offer best value, not just the lowest price.

Sayed sees a great degree of scope of a range of non-IT related processes as-a-service, “The regional market is shifting to new buyers and new customers,” he says. “Now we are seeing more traction for as-aservice not only from IT but from other departments like HR, marketing, procurement, and so forth. This shift is largely due to the maturation of the cloud delivery model which focuses on business solutions and not only IT-based solutions. While IaaS and PaaS are still more IT focused, SaaS and business process as-a-service are clearly targeting non-IT units and complement the overall capabilities of an organisation.”

The best laid plans The pressure on CIOs to increase capacity and agility of their network infrastructures has been palpable this last year. The bad news is that this pressure is only going to increase for the next year. The good news is that businesses and organisations stand to benefit greatly – if they have a plan.

F

rom BYOD, to virtualisation, to the advent of the Internet of Things, there is a heavier demand on networks now than ever before.

Users are more demanding and network solutions must be faster and more agile.

End-users will expect connectivity wherever they are, and they will insist that connection be constant and fast. These changes will inevitably lead to an adaptation in network infrastructure strategies. CIOs need to look at their infrastructure strategies for the coming year with new technologies in mind.

The last few years have seen vast improvements in mobility technology which have positively impacted network infrastructure. "Recent research has shown that 20 billion connected devices will be in existence 40

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in the near future, and that mobile data utilisation has already surpassed desktop data figures – thus putting immense pressure on IT to deliver fast, user-friendly and innovated services and applications with different business communication levels,” explains Bassem Al Hajj Hassan, Service Assurance Solutions Practice Manager, CA Technologies.

Though accused of being buzz-words, disruptive technologies like mobility, BYOD and cloud, as well as the rising surge of Big Data will continue to have massive effects on network infrastructure, according to Zeeshan Hadi, Territory Manager, UAE, Aruba Networks. “Mobility, cloud and BYOD will continue to grow even more next year, which will only further increase the heavy demand for bandwidth. Two enduser driven trends that are sure to gain traction in 2015

Strategic Innovation Partner

network WORLD

Technology trends such as Big Data, cloud and pervasive mobility are transforming the way we live and work, and having a dramatic impact on businesses and consumers.”

Yarob Sakhnini, Regional Director, Brocade

are IoT and wearable tech. These will bring with them the need for fast and reliable connectivity and storage anytime, anywhere."

While organisations and businesses stand to benefit in both efficiency and cost-effectiveness from new trends in technology, poor prior planning and shoddy strategies can mean costly setbacks. Mobility solutions and cloud computing specifically mean a heavier demand on network infrastructure, and CIOs going into 2015 need to prepare for a strain on their systems.

“Technology trends such as Big Data, cloud and pervasive mobility are transforming the way we live and work, and having a dramatic impact on businesses and consumers,” explains Yarob Sakhnini, Regional Director, Brocade, “The benefits from these trends are varied and wide ranging, but they all have a common element underpinning them; the data centre.”

Data centres need to be set to take on a wave of new information. Data points will come from the Internet of Things, M2M communications and an increasing reliance on mobile technology. This is not limited to increasing capacity of data centres, but also strengthening security and data resilience in these centres.

Storage is not the only concern for network infrastructure professionals when it comes to Big Data.

Whether the centre is equipped to handle the influx of data is only part of the puzzle. What to do with that data ends up becoming a pain point both in terms of what is done and how the data is analysed. “The biggest issue with Big Data is not so much availability, but how to mine that data effectively. So network solutions that are able to monitor and understand that data and do something comprehensive with it that the average user

NOT IN

FEATURE

Network capacity

Mobility, cloud and BYOD will continue to grow even more next year, which will only further increase the heavy demand for bandwidth.

Two end-user driven trends that are sure to gain traction in 2015 are IoT and wearable tech. These will bring with them the need for fast and reliable connectivity and storage anytime, anywhere.”

Zeeshan Hadi, Territory Manager, UAE, Aruba Networks

or enterprise or government can understand will be much sought after,” says Glen Ogden, Regional Sales Director, Middle East, A10 Networks.

Mobility trends will also dramatically effect network infrastructure strategies in the coming year. End-users expect more from their mobility solution, and are rarely seen without multiple devices. BYOD strives to give users the freedom to choose their device while using it for business.

Beyond employee networks, however, those at the helm of network infrastructures in industries such as hospitality and healthcare are doubly charged. Their clients often come in with many devices, and demand to use them just as they would in their own homes.

“With mobility, you have a lot more end-points that are demanding network resource and bandwidth. That stretches the network, not only from a bandwidth and security perspective, but also from the point of view of management of these end-points,” explains Cherif Sleiman, General Manager, Middle East, Infoblox.

This has, and will continue to, present some challenges for network administrators and IT security professionals alike. “Today, people expect to use both personal and business apps on the same device,” explains Anu Bhatnagar, NettResults Middle East Public Relations, Palo Alto Networks, “Whether it is a personally owned device or a corporate device, there are going to be a mix of non-business apps installed on it as well. As a result, the concern over how to protect data on mobile devices become far more complex, as bad actors cover a gamut of privacy and security behaviours,” he says.

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Network capacity

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FEATURE

Network capacity

With mobility, you have a lot more end-points that are demanding network resource and bandwidth.

That stretches the network, not only from a bandwidth and security perspective, but also from the point of view of management of these end-points.”

Cherif Sleiman, General Manager, Middle East, Infoblox

Changes in network infrastructure will also mean shifts in the overall role of the CIO. The industry has already seen a shift in the CIO’s position in most businesses. In the past, IT professionals have only been tasked with managing and implementing technology. Now, CIOs must function as more of a leader in businesses as well as technology. “Today’s CIO faces challenges, but also promises from innovative technology now widely available. Modern technology has led to greater efficiency, lowering expenditure and potentially reducing the number of hours it takes to staff these highly technical installations. IT leaders must be at the helm of the technology infrastructures they control,” says Adrian Pickering, VP Middle East and Africa, Juniper Networks.

The Middle East in particular is bound to experience some growing pains when it comes to network infrastructure. Almost every industry silo in the region is growing, especially in the GCC region. With that growth will come a higher demand on network infrastructures across industries, and more recently, across borders.

“In the Middle East, providing connectivity to remote workers and branch offices within the region is something that organisations have managed to address. However, as the now begin to expand their footprint overseas, supporting employees and offices across international borders is drastically driving up operational expenses,” points out Taj ElKhayat, Managing Director, Middle East, Turkey, North, West and Central Africa, Riverbed Technology.

The coming year may be full of changes in the realm of network infrastructure, but those changes lie in certainty.

There will be an increase demand on networks due to mobility trends and data trends as well as other disruptive technologies.

All IT professionals can do is prepare for this demand and be ready to meet the needs of a more connected population.

FEATURE

SI outlook 2015

A cloudy forecast With the double-digit growth seen in the market becoming a thing of the past, the regional systems integrators will have to confront technical and business needs to stay in the game next year.

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integration advisor

T

he Middle East’s systems integration markets continue to grow at a steady pace, despite the region’s ongoing turmoil.

Government initiatives and demand for infrastructure solutions in greenfield projects serve as the main drivers behind the local systems integration markets. Â However, globally, the systems integration market is poised for major changes because of the growing popularity of cloud services, which resulted in significant decline in hardware sales and consulting opportunities. This has made it an imperative for SIs to reinvent themselves by partnering with other companies to extend their technical expertise and foray into new opportunities such as managed services. Can the Middle East be far behind?

FEATURE

SI outlook 2015

Security still seems to be a large concern for most organisations in the region. This has resulted in organisations shifting to a private cloud environment. Organisations that are already mature on the private cloud are moving to a hybrid public-private cloud model.”

Stephen Fernandes, Assistant Vice President and Head of Middle East, Cognizant

“System integrators have to evolve their offered knowledge and capabilities beyond their current comfort zone. Being the IT partner that accompanies customers through the journey of virtualisation requires in-depth experience of how customers work internally,” says Murat Nail Erenay, Head of OSS/ BSS, Ericsson Region Middle East.

He points out that virtualisation will change the way customers work, how they orchestrate and measure the success of their business, and this needs to be understood by system integrators in detail to make sure their customers can best benefit from the virtualisation of their environment. “Also, with the increase of these concepts, both security and advanced or uninterrupted support will be key KPIs of the future.”

How are system integrators in the region adapting their offerings to capitalise on trends such as cloud, mobility and SaaS? “System Integrators role is evolving while the cloud adoption accelerates. The challenge of adoption itself opens up new opportunity and a new revenue stream. While the outlook is more for hybrid clouds, the conventional System Integrators’ activities will stay in place. However, System Integrators will also play the role of aggregators who will integrate various cloud offerings as needed by the customers and present the same as a seamless solution. On the other hand, SaaS will open up customisation opportunities to suit client specific needs,” says SM Hussaini, GM, Almoayyed Compters.

Sunil Paul, COO, Finesse, agrees: “New trends such as cloud, mobility, social media, etc bring significant opportunities for System Integrators.

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Most customers are seriously looking for products and solutions which are available on cloud, SaaS or any other Opex model. At Finesse we have already moved beyond ERP and CRM to offer an Opex model and have started providing most of solutions including BI and analytics on cloud and through a SaaS model.”

Some of the largest SIs in the region such as GBM have already moved into the cloud infrastructure area by partnering with Dutch Cloud, a Netherlands-based managed cloud provider.

“Cloud is a big opportunity. We have been helping our customers build private and public clouds in addition to reselling cloud services. The majority of software packages that we represent are already delivered as a service and we are building our own cloud capabilities in specific areas where it will drive value," says Hani Nofal, Executive Director, GBM. Security is another area that will drive the growth of systems integration market in 2015, says Stephen Fernandes, Assistant Vice President and Head of Middle East, Cognizant. “Security still seems to be a large concern for most organisations in the region. This has resulted in organisations shifting to a private cloud environment. Organisations that are already mature on the private cloud are moving to a hybrid public-private cloud model. The fast rate of SMAC (social, mobility, analytics and cloud) adoption in the region is forcing organisations to change. The change is being driven by increasingly diverse demands from customers, employees, partners and even agile peers. This is fueling digital transformation in the region and opening up a lot of new growth opportunities for system integrators.”

While SIs expect to see an increasing demand for application integration projects, not many anticipate a major change in the landscape over the next 12 months, with infrastructure integration still accounting for majority of revenues.

“System Integrators will continue to depend on the infrastructural integration for majority of their revenues. If we look at hybrid cloud as the way forward, on-premise computing needs will continue to grow. Addressing the complexities of business, enhancing decision making or enhancing productivity will continue to keep the demand for infrastructure requirements, particularly for the on-premise needs. In addition, system Integrators will play a key role in deploying private clouds,” says Hussaini.

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SI outlook 2015

Erenay offers another perspective: “Short- and midterm product integration will be the biggest revenue generator, but Managed Services and Consulting will become equally important parts of the business.

Sooner or later, IT assets will be either virtualised or outsourced to achieve economies of scale. System Integration companies who are part of that will see growth, while others will become niche players.”

Most of the major SIs in the region have added managed services to their portfolio and some like MDS have taken the acquisition route to get into this high-margins business. However, the managed services model is still at its infancy in the region.

“Most of the managed services engagements in the region are nothing more than body shopping models.

We are yet to see the MSP model to gain traction as the large enterprises don’t want to let go of control over their IT environments. But, this is changing rapidly and we expect this business to take off next year,” says Nofal from GBM. Industry experts say integrators with low-cost systems solutions template tailored to suit the business needs of specific verticals will grow rapidly next year.

Which verticals should you watch out for? Public

New trends such as cloud, mobility, social media, etc bring significant opportunities for System Integrators. Most customers are seriously looking for products and solutions which are available on cloud, SaaS or any other Opex model.”

Sunil Paul, COO, Finesse

sector, healthcare and education,” says Hussaini. “Be it governance or infrastructure enhancement, the public sector will continue to spend. The adoption of standards and implementing solutions to provide better medical care will help the SIs generate revenues from the healthcare sector. At the same time, the education system is getting modernised, thus offering a growth opportunity. The finance sector in the region, which remained relatively conservative in the recent past, is expected to change course soon.”

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FEATURE

Cloud Storage

2015: What’s in store With storage capacity always on the rise, Middle Eastern IT leaders are spoiled for choice in terms of their options for where to house their company data and applications. CNME takes a look at what technologies will be top of the agenda next year.

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storage advisor

T

he amount of data that is created on a daily basis is mind-boggling.

IBM estimates that 2.5 exabytes (2.5 billion GB) of data was generated every day in 2012. What is perhaps more staggering is that this vast, daunting quantity of information is all a relatively new concept to us; it’s estimated that roughly 90 percent of the world’s data that has ever been created has originated since 2012. As mobile phone

penetration is forecast to grow from about 61 percent of the global population in 2013 to nearly 70 percent by 2017, as well as the rise of the Internet of Things, the rate of data growth will only increase. The list of awe-inspiring stats goes on, but begs one key question in terms of IT storage: where and how will all this data be stored?

Kartik Shankar, Senior Sales Manager, StorIT Distribution highlights existing flaws that have driven the evolution of storage systems. “The

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Cloud Storage

78%

workloads processed by cloud data centres by 2018

lack of standardisation and complexity involved in the management of the storage system were the existing flaws that are being addressed and patched recently,” he says. “The modern data centre architecture has acknowledged the lack of alignment between its most common unit (VMs) and storage management tools.”

Pravin Kumar, Product Manager, ManageEngine, believes that flash arrays hold the answers to a number of problems posed by traditional storage disks. “Managing storage based on an application’s technical requirement while keeping the overall cost down was a problem, which storage tiering solved,” Kumar says. “However, storage tiering comes with its own challenges. Tier 1 storage consists of disks with 15000 RPM, which hosts the most frequently accessed applications.

Tier 2 storage consists of disks with 10000 RPM and stores the relatively less accessed applications. These storage disks have shorter life spans and undergo a lot of wear and tear due to their high rotation speeds. These challenges are solved by flash arrays.

With an all-flash array, enterprises get a device with high throughput, ultra-low latency, and longer life.”

With flash drives providing improved performance and using less power compared to the SAS and NL SAS drives, data centre managers - looking for ways to address the energy drain represented by hard drives - are examining flash storage as a way to achieve green data centre benchmarks. Flash arrays are are generally touted as the best option for high-performance workloads

"Certain storage disks have shorter life spans and undergo a lot of wear and tear due to their high rotation speeds. These challenges are solved by flash arrays. With an allflash array, enterprises get a device with high throughput, ultra-low latency, and longer life.”

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Traditional general purpose SAN storage is slowly being replaced by all flash or hybrid storage arrays. This trend will gain further momentum next year. Globally, we will see more organisations willing to use cloud storage services for archive and disaster recovery purposes owing to the falling prices in cloud storage.”

Santhosh Rao, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner

such as VDI, transactional databases and as storage for high demand virtual servers.

Santhosh Rao, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner also believes that flash will be a prominent technology that in replacing legacy storage.

“Traditional general purpose SAN storage is slowly being replaced by all flash or hybrid storage arrays,” he says. “This trend will gain further momentum next year. Globally, we will see more organisations willing to use cloud storage services for archive and disaster recovery purposes owing to the falling prices in cloud storage.”

Kumar is clear on the two standout technologies that will drive the storage market next year, “Flash arrays and software-defined storage are the two types of storage to watch out for in 2015,” he says.

“Given that EMC saw 47 percent growth in their emerging storage category comprising flash-enabled and SDS products in Q3, it shouldn’t be a surprise when flash and SDS continue to eat into EMC’s disk storage market. Another major development that will take off is the hybrid storage environment.

Enterprises are heading towards hybrid architecture to effectively incorporate storage tiering.”

Rao also sees flash creeping in, “While traditional SAN storage will continue to be the popular choice for mission critical workloads,

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FEATURE

Cloud Storage

$33.89 Billion Estimated converged infrastructure market in 2019

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The lack of standardisation and complexity involved in the management of the storage system were the existing flaws that are being addressed and patched recently. The modern data centre architecture has acknowledged the lack of alignment between its most common unit (VMs) and storage management tools.”

Kartik Shankar, Senior Sales Manager, StorIT Distribution

flash-based storage arrays will gain momentum and slowly replace traditional SAN for workloads that require high performance and low latency requirements,” he says. “On the data protection front, most organisations will continue to rely on tape-based backup. Cloud-based storage services such as cloud backup and file storage will see slow adoption in the Middle East due to high bandwidth costs and connectivity issues.”

Following Gartner’s forecast that, by 2020, 7080 percent of unstructured data will be on lowercost storage managed by an SDS environment, IT’s general move to software-defined everything seems certain to encompass storage. With SDS in its nascent stages, but likely to soon form a major chunk of worldwide IT spending, IT decision makers across the Middle East will be surely be looking at investing in SDS. With benefits of SDS including increased flexibility, automated management and reduced hardware costs, Shankar and Kumar both acknowledge how the underlying infrastructure – indeed the increasingly popular, converged infrastructure – will play a key role in driving these rewards. “The race towards software defined storage is at its peak,” Shankar says. “Converged

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infrastructure becomes the most compelling building block of data centre infrastructure.”

“Managing a complex data centre is always a nightmare and the solution to it is converged infrastructure (CI),” Kumar says. “Data-centre-ina-box is gaining wide acceptance and CI is here to stay. According to a recent report by Research and Markets, the global converged infrastructure market is expected to grow from $11.53 billion in 2014 to $33.89 billion by 2019.”

The emergence of cloud is also transforming the data centre, featuring lower-cost, moreoptimised open architectures that are driven by software. For cloud service providers, data centres are their source of profit, with software-defined storage having the potential to be revolutionary, transforming business. Many of these providers utilise traditional solutions from the large OEMs but are increasingly moving to software-defined storage technologies, which can be much less expensive to buy and operate than traditional systems. This includes lower capital expenses associated with building new or upgrading existing data centre architecture. Designing in-house software or leveraging open source communities has enabled cloud providers to do more with less.

According to Cisco, by 2018, 78 percent of workloads will be processed by cloud data centres.

With public cloud on the rise, there is an additional huge scope for object storage to increase its foothold. IDC also forecasts that revenue generated by object storage will pass $38 billion by 2017.

The increased volume and complexity of data and applications puts increased pressure on disaster recovery and backup vendors to produce cuttingedge solutions. Christian Assaf, Senior Sales Manager, MEA, Seagate, believes that evolving infrastructure has made the Middle East a ripe market for these players. “We currently see the market for data recovery and backup solutions as being very healthy in the Middle East,” he says.

“When you consider the advanced IT infrastructure being deployed in areas like the Gulf, for many companies a ‘disaster’ can mean losing your complete company - much more so than in the past. Overall we see cloud services having a positive impact on the traditional data recovery and backup services market as it actually gives companies the choice to leverage this as a ‘service’ rather than just a capital expenditure.

FEATURE

Cyber security

The threat intelligence market, and the world of IT security more generally, may be the fastest growing and changing aspects of the technology industry. In a never ending game of move and counter-move by cybercriminals and protective elements, it is difficult to predict who will come out on top, if anyone. The gap between those in the know and those still desperately trying to catch up in terms of security know-how is growing ever wider.

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security advisor

I

t is clear that the variety and frequency of attacks are on the increase. However, the concern is not limited to the number of attacks. IT security professionals are also concerned with the nature and “quality” of new threats. “The methods of attack are not only increasing, but also becoming more sophisticated, specific and targeted. Once determined to launch a targeted attack, your opponent can, and will, create a customised method of attack to compromise your environment, and will eventually succeed,” says Ghassan I. Alkahlout, Regional Director, Nexthink.

The last year has been tumultuous in the world of IT security. Though IT security is always host to a changing landscape, it seems that this year, more than ever, hackers and other technology villains have been top news. From hacktivists to cloud leaks and buggy code, it seems each week there is a new headline about IT security. On the surface, the future may seem grim - however, hope remains.

According to IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Worker Population Forecast in 2012, there will be 1.3 billion mobile workers by 2015 – which is approximately 37 percent of the world’s workforce. Thus, security concerns in 2015 are likely to turn mobile. As the work force becomes more mobile and companies www.cnmeonline.com

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Cyber security

adopt BYOD policies and other initiatives that mobilise their employees, the frequency of threats on mobile infrastructure will increase. In short, with freedom comes risk.

For some IT security professionals, the answer to avoiding threats presented by mobility is an exercise in Occam’s Razor – simply don’t employ things like BYOD in the workplace. “BYOD isn’t going away, but it is critical that CIOs acknowledge it may not be for everyone. It calls for tough choices – but it does not mean organisations need to compromise on productivity for their employees,” Nader Henein, Advanced Security Solutions, Advisory Division BlackBerry Middle East.

In addition to workplace mobility, things like mobile payment methods and M2M communications will be flooding data centres with precious and valuable information. As such, IT professionals will be hunting for new ways to protect their data centres.

The threats created by disruptive technology, however, will not go unanswered. “Data analytics will be deployed across security solutions for threat

BYOD isn’t going away, but it is critical that CIOs acknowledge it may not be for everyone.

It calls for tough choices – but it does not mean organisations need to compromise on productivity for their employees.”

Nader Henein, Advanced Security Solutions, Advisory Division BlackBerry Middle East

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Once determined to launch a targeted attack, your opponent can and will create a customised method of attack to compromise your environment, and will eventually succeed.”

Ghassan I. Alkahlout, Regional Director, Nexthink

detection and for remediation activities,” says Firosh Ummer, MD EMEA, Paladion Networks, “Enterprises will create architecture to break the silos of security data so that uniform decisions can be made. Enterprises will deploy more mobile applications and cloud applications, which will see increase in attacks on such infrastructure.”

Glen Ogden, Regional Sales Director, Middle East, A10 Networks, agrees that 2015 will be all about protecting the data centre. “In 2015, organisations will be looking to deploy next generation Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) that help organisations safeguard their data centre infrastructure. Deployed in the heart of the data centre ADCs can block attacks, intercept and inspect encrypted traffic and prevent unauthorised access to applications.”

The data centre is not the only point of vulnerability when it comes to 2015’s IT security scene. While the data centre may be the end-point for many cyber criminals, access to information more generally is the name of the game. According to Shireig Nosseir, Security Solutions Regional manager, Eastern Europe Middle East and Africa, CA Technologies, the creation of multiple identities will open the doors for potential hackers.

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FEATURE

Cyber security

“The new wave of threats focus on targeting identities, particularly privileged identities such as IT administrators, service accounts, embedded passwords in scripts, as well as business related identities for people in key roles with access to sensitive information such as executives, finance, HR, research and development and more,” he explains, “As we say in the IT security world, privileged identities hold the keys to the kingdom.”

In addition, our means of communications are rapidly becoming prime targets. The news headlines are rife with stories of DNS related exploits. “Recently, the weak-point being exploited – independent of the region and specific technologies that have been deployed –has been the foundation of the internet itself – when we look at this foundation, we are talking about Domain Name Service, or DNS. DNS fundamentally allows people and organisations to communicate, transact and conduct business in the most intuitive way possible,” Cherif Sleiman, General Manager, Middle East, Infoblox.

The Internet of Things and M2M

Shrink attack surfaces by eliminating platforms like Java where you don’t need them. Stay up to date with patches, because most attacks are aimed at old vulnerabilities.”

Chester Wisniewski, Senior Security Consultant, Sophos.

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communications will also increase the potential attack surfaces of businesses and consumers.

Simply put, more transactions will translate into a greater vulnerability as well as a higher payoff for successful cyber-criminals. DDoS attacks are also on the rise. “The positive news in regard to DDoS attacks is that while prediction may be difficult, protecting against one is less so. The priority is to keep applications, services and network protected without stopping legitimate traffic,” says Gary Newe, Technical Director, F5 Networks.

The good news is that IT professionals, CXOs and, for that matter, all end-users seem to be becoming more informed when it comes to IT security. Chester Wisniewski, Senior Security Consultant, Sophos agrees that education and awareness are key in the prevention of cyberattacks and, ultimately, data loss. “Whether you are an IT professional, entrepreneur, or individual user, chances are you are getting smarter about security too,” he says, “You should be making sure all your systems are protected, whatever conventional or mobile platform they are running on. Shrink attack surfaces by eliminating platforms like Java where you don’t need them.

Stay up to date with patches, because most attacks are aimed at old vulnerabilities.”

Though security firms are fast coming out with responses to the increase in threats, the best prevention remains learning and implementing best behavioural practices. While best practices may adapt in response to changing threats, IT professionals need to stay abreast of changes in best practices and, moreover, work on educating their employees on the best ways to protect their weak-points.

In all, it seems like 2015 will be an amplified version of 2014 when it comes to IT security.

Attacks against individuals and businesses will increase, of course, and IT security firms will come hard and fast with breach prevention technology.

There will be new technologies that will alter the methods of cyber-attacks and, in turn, response protocol and technology will adapt. The back and forth between attackers and IT security professionals is never going to end. The best thing to do is maintain a keen awareness of changes in the threat landscape for 2015.

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2015 outlook

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in association with

telecoms WORLD

Upping T the ante The future telecom industry will hinge on who can provide the best customer experience and converged services.

he rapid growth in mobile telephony coupled with broadband services has made the Middle East one of the fastest growing telecom markets in the world. The operators across the region have invested aggressively into backhaul networks and latest mobile networks, and the roll out of advanced service bodes well for the industry.

The Middle East telecom industry has undergone significant structural changes over the last decade; how will it evolve over the next 12 months?

“In numerous emerging markets, mobile was many consumers’ first screen for Internet access. In the Middle East and Africa, according to e-Marketer estimates, more than nine in 10 web users go online via mobile phones. For that reason, emerging LTE rollouts and licensing will be an important driver in 2015. The increase of expanded mobile broadband availability, due to the competition between service providers, is a big opportunity for many of Middle East residents to access the Internet and Internetbased services at a reasonable cost. But, this situation is also creating pressure on service providers’ financials, as well as on technology infrastructure expenditure,” says Rakesh Lakhani, Head of Mobile Broadband, Ericsson Middle East.

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2015 outlook

He adds next year will see operators take advantage of the tremendous potential of OSS/ BSS, managed services, and M2M, especially in the more developed telecom markets. Managed services will optimise networks and customer experience, and solutions such as M2M will provide alternative revenue streams for operators.

James Wu, President of Carrier Business Group, Huawei Middle East, expects the extension of mobile broadband services to contrinue at a fast pace in 2015 as cities become more intelligent and the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes a reality in more industries and countries within MEA. “Greater industry standardisation in areas such as spectrum and technology will help reduce the cost of R&D, network deployment and operations. To achieve lower TCO and enhance operational efficiency, operators and enterprises will be migrating existing IT infrastructure and applications into virtualised cloud environments, with open API projects likely to gain momentum across a wider diversity of industries.”

The telecommunications markets of the Middle East present a dynamic combination of mature and developing environments, says Balakrishnan Shanmugham, Vice President and Business Head, Communications Practice, Cognizant. The telecom operators in the region are considering nextgeneration infrastructure investments in response to increasingly competitive mobile markets. The penetration of mobile subscription is expected to

The telecom operators in the region are considering nextgeneration infrastructure investments in response to increasingly competitive mobile markets.”

Balakrishnan Shanmugham, Vice President and Business Head, Communications Practice, Cognizant

To achieve lower TCO and enhance operational efficiency, operators and enterprises will be migrating existing IT infrastructure and applications into virtualised cloud environments, with open API projects likely to gain momentum across a wider diversity of industries.”

James Wu, President of Carrier Business Group, Huawei Middle East

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be at 109 percent—1.1 mobile subscriptions per person—and subscriptions are expected to rise to 352 million by the end of 2016. Effective customer segmentation, ARPU (average revenue per user) growth and the introduction of new content and media services are critical issues for service providers, he adds.

Rise of the machines According to a recent global survey published by Vodafone, global M2M adoption has increased by over 80 percent in the past year to reach 22 percent. The adoption rate in Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa is higher than the global average, reaching 27 percent.

Globally, three sectors have emerged as front runners in M2M – automotive, consumer electronics, and energy and utilities. Automotive is the most mature sector as M2M is now seen as an enabler for additional services such as remote maintenance and infotainment.

“M2M is another area that has been on the table of operators for a few years. We are noticing a yearly volume growth rate of 30 percent in this area. In the region, there are around 6-8 million M2M-specific SIM cards, while the industries most attracted to the technology are automotive, utilities and health care. Some of the region’s leading operators already understand the importance of handling M2M traffic management and finalized their investments, thereby starting to position themselves as a real M2M service provider. We can expect the same trend to expand between local service providers in 2015,” says Lakhani.

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FEATURE

2015 Outlook

Wu from Huawei echoes a similar opinion: “The region is witnessing many devices and machines linking to networks to help aid us in our daily lives. The Internet of Things will see hundreds of billions of devices connected to the Internet. The global M2M market is healthy and expanding, so there are endless opportunities for all parties in the value chain. Today industries like healthcare, transportation, security, energy and utilities are all using or planning to use M2M applications.”

However, he cautions, before the emergence of massive M2M applications, we need to first analyse the impact of M2M on operators’ networks and develop corresponding solutions in order to guarantee the highest efficiency and lowest cost when a large number of M2M devices access the underlying telecom networks.

M2M connectivity will go hand in hand with the Internet of Things, says Adrian Pickering, VP Middle East and Africa for Juniper Networks. “These two trends are hard to ignore in this part of the world, especially if we consider the current push by the Dubai Government to promote Smart City services to its citizens. The UAE is currently at an exciting turning point, pioneering multi-faceted and state-of-the-art mobile technologies that can address different components and city systems, such as Intelligent Transportation, Connected Healthcare, Public Safety and Security, Emergency Services, Smart Grid and Smart Metering. All of these services will require agile networks that are not only scalable and flexible, but also secure.”

The increase of expanded mobile broadband availability, due to the competition between service providers, is a big opportunity for many of Middle East residents to access the internet and internetbased services at a reasonable cost. But, this situation is also creating pressure on service providers’ financials, as well as on technology infrastructure expenditure.”

Rakesh Lakhani, Head of Mobile Broadband, Ericsson Middle East

New game, new rules The focus of operators is slowly shifting from network coverage to customer experience as a key differentiator. Most industry experts agree that new avenues for revenue stream expansion will be in the digital services business and telcos will have to foster innovation in their offerings to fuel growth.

“Cloud/virtualisation is one of the biggest, most promising opportunities for operators to speed up their time to market for new services,” says Lakhani.

“With today’s working methodology, an application’s implementation and integration into an operator ecosystem is a multi-months activity that comes with HW, SW and SI investments. Within this time frame, an operator could lose market attraction or the best launch timing for the optimum benefit. If the application is not successful enough, the loss of money and time are the key disadvantages that 68

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increase the risk of new service implementation.

In a cloud environment that supports standardised APIs, multiple applications can run over a pooled infrastructure. Implementing a new application is just the creation of virtual machines and downloading the applications on those virtual machines. Time to market is incomparably quick and easy to integrate.”

Shanmugham from Cognizant says infrastructure readiness will also be key. “Customers are increasingly becoming bandwidth-hungry in view of complex service bundles and multiple parallel sessions. To meet this demand, it is important that telecom operators provide high bandwidth and seamless hand-offs between the networks while the customer is on the move. The network has to support high data capacity, low packet drop, and high quality of service. Operators need to deploy fiber as a fixed and LTE/4G as a mobile technology. Additionally, operators should prepare their infrastructure to handle fixed and mobile convergence.”

Though everyone expects telecom operators to remain committed to investments in next-gen network projects and advanced services, the scale and timing of capex projects is likely to be reviewed.

Retention and customer care will become the industry focus – service providers that get this right have a real opportunity to win market share.

Analyst corner Human resources

Sourcing talent on the digital frontier

Linda Price, Group Vice President, Gartner Executive Programmes, discusses the IT talent gap.

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Analyst corner Human resources

T

here is no denying the many positives of the move to digital business, but an abundance of talent is not one of them. In fact, Gartner’s Talent on the Digital Frontier survey found that almost 90 percent of digital business leaders found the competition for talent to be one of the biggest inhibitors to success. So how can you go about putting together your digital business ‘dream team’?

For many CIOs, digital business is a daunting new frontier fraught with as many risks and challenges as opportunities. Chief among those challenges is finding suitably talented people to help navigate the frontier.

Selecting the right people for the right purpose at the right time is crucial, but also where most businesses fall short. Concerned about falling behind, CIOs might be tempted to lasso knowledge, expertise and skills indiscriminately without truly understanding when and how to apply them.

Staffing the digital business is more than just identifying technical skills. To be successful, CIOs need to design and build dream teams – talented and qualified multifunctional experts inside and outside the business – who can supply the necessary skills, knowledge, and expertise. But how do you find them?

Four stages of activity Digital business leaders and CIOs need to analyse talent across four stages of activity: discover, design, pilot and build out.

The early stages (discover and design) encourage experimentation and exploration, focusing on the ‘what’ and the ‘when’. Variability is expected to be high, while levels of control are low. Businesses need their best innovators, imagineers and brainstormers in domains such as marketing, digital anthropology, emerging technologies and customer experiences. At this stage, ideas fly, architectural trade-offs become understood and possibilities abound.

In the later stages (pilot and build out), the level of control begins to rise and the variability declines. Too much variability at this stage wastes time and erodes scalability.

Businesses need their best program managers, change leaders, and information integrators as structure, scale, and complexity rise, and architectural guidelines define what’s practical.

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For many CIOs, digital business is a daunting new frontier fraught with as many risks and challenges as opportunities. Chief among those challenges is finding suitably talented people to help navigate the frontier.

Manoeuvring these stages is a balancing act, with variability and control acting as counterforces. Race too quickly to institute control and ill-formed ideas may solidify before they are ready. Wait too long to reduce variability and people may become indecisive.

Six areas of expertise Once you have figured out the stages of activities, it is time to fill the expertise gaps.

Gartner sees these as the six key skill areas needed for digital business: Business expertise – knows what makes the company, industry or market tick. Think product developers, industry gurus, business strategists, innovation teams, customer experience masters, business process experts and scenario artists.

Technology expertise – knows how 21st Century technologies combine to drive revenue, and harness competitive advantage. Think enterprise architects, information architects, external experts, emerging technology groups, advanced service providers, system and information integrators and digital technology leaders.

Behavioural expertise – knows how people act, react and respond to changing stimuli, can manipulate the behaviours that drive digital business programs forward, and can differentiate individuals, groups and markets from one another. Think organisational change experts, workforce designers, global program leaders, sociologists, social network analysts and talent orchestrators.

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Strategic expertise – knows which core enterprise capabilities feed strategy, and which capabilities affect digital business performance.

Think business strategists, competitive analysts, M&A experts, partnership leaders, and digital marketing leaders.

Discipline expertise – knows the activities, exercises and regimens that develop or improve skills in accord with rules of conduct, and maintain behaviours and order through training and control. Think project managers, business process experts, intellectual property experts, copyright gurus, regulatory experts, financial analysts and investment experts.

Frontier domain expertise – knows advanced technologies, capabilities, and trends appearing on the edge of the digital radar, which can materially raise competitive advantage.

Think advanced technology leaders, trend watchers, industry analysis and competitive intelligence analysts.

There are no hard and fast rules for staffing a digital business. A combination of the stages of activity and areas of expertise comes as close as possible to sourcing a digital dream team.

Aggressive competitors go even further, combining internal staff, external ecosystems of expertise, microsourcing, small company acquisitions, contests and competitions to quickly find and orchestrate expertise.

But then trail blazers have been pioneering frontiers for thousands of years. Unfortunately, that leaves conservative businesses daunted and paralysed as they continue to rely on outdated talent practices that have no place on the digital frontier.

Face to face Rinaldo Ribeiro

Know your enemy With customers’ hard-earned cash in their custody, banks need vigilant, vigorous IT security teams to thwart opportunist hackers. Rinaldo Ribeiro, Head of IT Risk and Governance, Risk and Compliance, Commercial Bank of Dubai, discusses the role of incident visibility and employee education in guarding CBD’s crown jewels.

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I

s last year’s RAK Bank/Bank of Muscat theft a microcosm of weak banking security within the region, or was it a one-off case of opportunism? Do cybercriminals view the Middle East as an easy target?

I do not believe it was a “one-off case of opportunism”. These are planned and targeted attacks; searching for weaker links leading to maximised returns, and I certainly don’t see the Middle East as an easy target.

If you consider the malware case of Target in the U.S., that had a huge impact on the company. They had made large investments in all this technology but not in processes. The malware that was used against them was not that sophisticated. They had all these alerts, but no one was paying attention to them. This lack of proactive monitoring is what costs many businesses in this respect, and the Middle East region is no different in this respect.

What is your greatest challenge as an IT security professional?

The pressure from the business to move faster with business solutions whilst addressing security threats is always tough. The threat landscape is changing, but with innovation on the agenda this becomes a trickier obstacle.

IT security professionals have to ensure that there is a 100 percent clear strategy that is aligned with - and is able to satisfy the needs of - the business. Delivering solutions in shorter projects that ensure effective security is a difficult balancing act.

What kind of fraud is most common in the region? Has the sophistication of the new breed of attacks made it difficult to detect and prevent threats?

In terms of the threats posed by well-funded, state-sponsored groups, you have to expect that you will be compromised at some stage.

We know that malware, phishing and zero-day attacks are inevitable, so proactive monitoring and intelligence feeds are key. The average company’s infrastructure is not at risk, but as a bank you will always expect an above average level of risk to your business. Having said that, we know exactly what we have to protect. It’s all about assessing your risk, preparing for

who will attack you and gaining a buy-in from the business – knowing your enemy. From the internal user standpoint, the threats that they create are easier to stop, but the press and vendors do contribute to a certain degree of hype around this.

What do Middle Eastern banks need to improve on in terms of their security?

I think there is a lack of collaboration between banks in the region. When it comes to sharing data about attacks and threats there is not enough of that here. There’s a lot of access to global data but unfortunately not here, as it would be useful in contributing towards a proactive approach.

To what extent can incident visibility prevent attacks?

Having visibility on hacking attempts and incidents is vitally important. We have to be as confident as possible in our security without being complacent. The threat landscape is changing so you have to assume you will be compromised, but the ability to react quickly is key. Given that hackers can remain on your network for an average of 230 days before they are detected, controls need to be in place for visibility, but the challenge is often how to access encrypted traffic. There’s no easy answer, but we need the right technology, people and processes to give ourselves the best chance.

Is there fundamentally anything banks can do protect themselves from hackers, or are they undermined by flawed architectures that render them inherently unsafe?

In terms of design, it is very difficult to alter the underlying - and flawed - architectures behind systems, applications and networks; recalling so much of what is out there is a mammoth task.

What compounds things is knowing that the IT security community has been failing for all this time, and the fact that there are some incredibly talented people who still can do nothing to stop attacks. In a sense, doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is a form of madness so in the IT security sense we have a problem in this respect.

The challenge is to segment critical, corporate data from user data so that it is not

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compromised. We also need to find a way to provide the necessary training and design that can work even if traditional safeguards fail.

We will be forced to consider new approaches with the introduction of trends such as BYOD and cloud, which don’t have traditional networks. With BYOD, there is a diverse mobile setup where data travels across different devices and geographies, and data is moving to a device that IT departments don’t always control. At Commercial Bank of Dubai we have rejected BYOD altogether as a precaution.

What kind of steps can a bank take to ensure their approach to fraud prevention is proactive rather than reactive?

There are three main ways to take a proactive approach: through threat intelligence; effective monitoring and improved communications.

‘Threat intelligence’ is a concept that is easier said than put into practice. Improved communications falls into two main categories: communication with customers and employee education.

Thorough employee education must be provided; you cannot depend on employees to comply with IT regulations. Are employees unaware of security policies or just non-compliant and apathetic? From that standpoint regulations need to be enforced where they are penalised for IT misuse, to convey the risks that they pose to the business. It’s useful to think of threat monitoring as minimising the window of opportunity for attackers, but employee naivety as the open door through which problems can arise.

Can better security education amongst employees help prevent attacks against a company?

It can, but it is important to conduct internal exercises without bombarding employees with messages. IT leaders need a clear focus on strategies and programs that can benefit them, potentially rewarding compliance with regulations. It’s not as if education will act as a magic wand though, you can’t solely rely on education as a deterrent. Having said that, you need to assess the maturity of your user base; you may not have to be that strict with a more educated base. With that kind of group, you can be more flexible, and maybe allow the use of websites like Facebook.

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insight Hyrbid

The New Norm F Forget viewing yourself as a cloud services broker. In today’s hybrid cloud enterprise the CIO’s truly high value role is the creation of seamless business flows that bridge cloud and on-premises infrastructure to help the business operate better, says Intel CIO Kim Stevenson.

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or most CIOs, a hybrid environment - a combination of on-premise and cloud-based infrastructure and applications - is, or soon will be, a fact of life. The real trick, she says, is to understand that hybrid isn’t about cost. It is about innovation cycles and where you, as a CIO, can deliver innovation faster at better value.

Innovation that allows the business to get a product to market a quarter sooner is almost certainly of much higher value than saving some cost by choosing the cheapest cloud service.

insight Hyrbid

Core Apps Headed to the Cloud “The premise that most CIOs are operating under, and which I personally believe is true, is you’re going to have to think about your company in terms of separating your workloads,” she says. “All of what we call core enterprise workloads - ERP, CRM, supply chain, messaging, service management, HR those are the workloads that are going to the cloud.”

“They’re going to go primarily for innovation reasons,” she explains. “A company that is innovating for the masses can innovate a lot faster than you can inside your core.

HR is a great example. If I have a dollar to spend as a CIO, and my dollar can go to make design/engineering better or to make HR better, I’ll always choose design.”

Buying vs. Building For Intel, design and engineering are core profit centres. They are literally Intel’s business. Since CRM or HR are not Intel’s core differentiator, it makes much more sense to buy innovation and efficiency in those spaces rather than build it. Today, that means software-as-a-service (SaaS). And it goes without saying that infrastructure-asa-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) play a significant role in the delivery of these services as well.

“At Riverbed, we’re 80 percent hybrid enterprise,” says Ginna Raahauge, CIO of Riverbed, a specialist in optimizing the performance of networks and network applications. “Eighty percent of our business applications are running with a combination of SaaS; I use AWS and Azure as elements of my infrastructure and platform layer to deliver my services and we’re probably at about 50 percent or 60 percent at those two layers. We use a combination of private and public assets to deliver that essential business service.”

Riverbed has about 1,000 employees. Intel tops 100,000 employees. But the CIOs of both companies are facing the reality of today’s hybrid enterprise. There are differences that have to happen in execution, of course, but they’re making the same journey.

“Every company also has core workloads

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“Eighty percent of our business applications are running with a combination of SaaS; I use AWS and Azure as elements of my infrastructure and platform layer to deliver my services and we’re probably at about 50 percent or 60 percent at those two layers. We use a combination of private and public assets to deliver that essential business service.”

-- the workloads you run that differentiate your company,” Stevenson says. “They make your profit. At Intel, those workloads are design/engineering and manufacturing. Those are the workloads that will primarily stay onprem and we will invest and innovate there for competitive advantage. That’s what gives rise to the need to integrate these things from inside and things from outside.”

While you might be able to divide your workloads into enterprise and core buckets with surgical precision, the reality is that separation isn’t simple or clean.

Manufacturing needs information about orders. Sales needs to know the status of their customers’ orders. Information needs to flow efficiently between those worlds even though some of it is in a SaaS application in the cloud and some of it is on-premises.

“That’s why you have to have this integrated, hybrid enterprise,” Stevenson says. “You have to be assured that your data is secure and there’s visibility in those transmissions.”

4 Norms of Hybrid Enterprises Most of the IT processes we’ve gotten used to in the past few decades have been designed to centralize control. But that’s not really possible in a hybrid cloud environment.

Once you start aggregating multiple clouds with your on-premises environment, pieces

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of your IT processes are no longer under your control. Stevenson and Raahauge say IT processes need to adjust to the “four norms of the hybrid enterprise,” noting that CIOs must embrace them if they’re to flourish in a hybrid world: • Your IT environment is controlled chaos.

• The user experience is highly distributed.

• Your operational performance is now reliant on external systems.

• Optimizing performance requires visibility.

It may be controlled chaos, but the trick is the controlled part. And that comes from visibility that extends from all the components of the network layer, through the data to the app and out to the end user, she says. With that visibility, you can seamlessly orchestrate the information flows, even if you don’t have control over every element. You have to follow the traffic.

“The really key element that you have to have to orchestrate anything is visibility,” she says. “You’re not going to have control necessarily, but you need to have visibility to orchestrate.”

“The perimeter of a company is artificial nowadays,” Stevenson adds. “There’s a lot of ways into companies today, so knowing those and having visibility on those paths is what’s really important in the next decade.”

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PRODUCTS

Launches and releases

PRODUCT WATCH A breakdown of the top products and solutions launched and released in the last month.

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

Product: Desire EYE Brand: HTC What it does: The latest member in HTC’s ever-growing family of smartphones is the photographer-friendly Desire EYE. Though the new smartphone is supposed to be part of the company’s mid-range line of products, the only things that seem mid-range are the price and the casing. HTC has put a great deal of effort into bringing their consumers the best camera experience, with 13MP cameras on both the back and front-facing sides as well as LED flashes on each. In addition to the powerful camera set up, the Desire EYE comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC, 5.2” 1080p display, IPX7 certification, and BoomSound stereo speakers.

The device is so loaded it is difficult to call it ‘mid-range.’ The Desire EYE works with the HTC Dot View case, which allows users to see notifications while still protecting the device.

What you should know: To be fair, the Desire EYE isn’t its cousin – the HTC One M8 – at least when it comes to design. Perhaps to keep the retail price low, HTC opted to case the Desire EYE in plastic, rather than metal, giving the set a decidedly less serious look. The physical specs of the Desire EYE are quite similar, measuring 151.7 x 73.8 x 8.5mm, while its weight is quite reminiscent of the HTC One M8 at 154 grams. The matte plastic casing does come with an advantage – it makes for a more ‘grippy’ surface, preventing potential drop disasters. Truly, the Desire EYE is a welcome addition to the HTC line, and give more confirmation to the idea that smartphones in the coming year will be all about the cameras.

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Product: Zenbook UX303 Brand: ASUS

Product: Connect Wireless Flash Drive Brand: SanDisk

What it does: The Zenbook UX303LN and UX303LX models aim to be the answer for those who need the portability of an ultrabook but still crave the style and customisations of a full-sized laptop. Though it is designed to be sleek and slim, end-users of the Zenbook like can pop off the bottom panel and replace the internals – a very rare privilege indeed for ultrabook owners. The Zenbook UX303LA has a 13.3” IPS full HD 1920 x 1080 display. It has an impressive 344 nits of brightness and it can reproduce 96 percent of sRGB and 76 percent of Adobe RGB. This is as bright as most full-sized laptops, so Zenbook owners shouldn’t feel like they are missing out in regard to graphics or display. Intel 4th generation Haswell U series Ultrabook CPUs power the Zenbook UX303 models.

What you should know: The Zenbook UX303 is one of the only 13.3” ultrabooks with upgradable RAM. This is great for those who want an inexpensive and easy upgrade. Out of the box it has 4 GB of RAM soldered to the motherboard, however, you can add RAM, and bring the total possible RAM to 12 GB. At a scant 3.2 lbs, the Zenbook UX303 has met the brief of portability as well. However, for those with a little patience, Asus will soon release the Zenbook UX305. It may not offer faster performance than the UX303 but it will be thinner and lighter.

Product: Lumia 730 Brand: Microsoft What it does: This mid-range offering from Microsoft Devices is a significant upgrade from last year’s Lumia 720. The Lumia 730 offers a fair range of features including a 6.7 MP primary, back camera and a 5 MP, 24mm wide-angle front-facing lens. It’s Qualcomm processor supports a relatively fast and smooth user experience with the latest version of Windows Phone 8.1, including one swipe notifications from Action Center and the fast Word Flow keyboard. The physical specs haven’t changed much from its older brother – the only notable difference being its range of colour options that includes bright orange, bright green and neutrals such as dark grey and white.

What you should know: The new Lumia comes with 1GB of RAM, which is quite the upgrade compared to the rather light 512MB on its predecessor. In addition, users can add up to 128GB of storage space using a microSD card. Both the SIM cards can connect to 3G networks. The other wireless connectivity options include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v4.0 and NFC. To further cut the cord, the Lumia also comes with wireless charging to package, which will surely become the norm in smartphones. This is a great phone for current users of the Windows OS – the price is right and while the features may not be as robust as some other high-end phones, the Lumia 730 has everything an end-user needs.

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What it does: The SanDisk Connect line of products is designed to alleviate storage capacity limitations that consumers experience with their mobile devices. Data from the SanDisk Memory Zone memory management app for Android devices, which recently surpassed 1.5 million downloads, indicates 44 percent of users have less than half of their mobile device’s internal storage capacity free, and nearly one quarter of users are at more than 80 percent utilization. As such, the Connect Wireless Flash Drive is addressing a storage problem that most mobile users experience.

What you should know: The new 64GB drive from SanDisk extends they company’s popular line of wireless flash memory storage products. The new offering brings users more wireless memory expansion for their mobile devices.

In addition, recently released software updates aim to enhance the performance and functionality of both the SanDisk Connect Wireless Flash Drive and Wireless Media Drive. The SanDisk Connect product line enables consumers to wirelessly stream and store content on-the-go without Internet access. For the Wireless Media Drive, updates also include a web app that enables wireless access from PCs and Mac computers, as well as Windows 8 based tablets, and the ability to play back movies purchased on iTunes.

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Column The word on the street

James Dartnell

Time for action R

CNME’s man about town gives his spin on the latest IT news and trends.

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evelations from IT security firm Cylance could cause waves in the Middle East.

For the past two years, a team of Iranian hackers has allegedly compromised computers and networks belonging to over 50 organisations from 16 countries.

The attacks have thrust GCC IT into the spotlight, with Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates all targeted by a country who, seemingly, has vastly strengthened its cybercrime capabilities.

Collectively dubbed ‘Operation Cleaver’, after a string found in various malware tools used by the hacker group, it is considered to be a blanket retaliation by Iran for malware attack Stuxnet, which was initiated by the U.S. and wiped out a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.

The Tarh Andishan - the entity to which IP addresses were registered in Tehran – hackers allegedly used common SQL injection, spear phishing or watering hole attacks to gain initial access to one or more computers of a targeted organisation.

They then used privilege escalation exploits and other tools to compromise additional systems and move deeper inside networks.

The group’s primary tool is a custom Trojan program called TinyZBot that was created by its developers.

The revelations pose a series of questions, but two stand at the top of the list: how much, if at all, did the

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affected countries know about any of the cyber activities against them, and what cyber-based manoeuvres await the Middle East?

The answer to the first question is certainly a worry, with the compromise of airlines and airports in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan being Cleaver’s standout gain, with Active Directory domains fully compromised, along with entire Cisco Edge switches, routers, and internal networking infrastructure.

Iranian mission to the United Nations spokesman Hamid Babaei has branded the allegations “baseless and unfounded”, and Cylance has yet to release evidence of the attacks.

All of this doesn’t necessarily say that the region has now been exposed as particularly vulnerable in terms of IT security - the likes of China, England and Germany were also victims - but it will surely trigger a change in security spending and practices at regional government level.

Who knows, hopefully greater international IT security collaboration could be on the cards throughout the GCC. Following the recent decision by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain in to reinstate their ambassadors to Qatar, one can only hope that the region’s IT security community is also buoyed into unity following the alleged attacks.

Perhaps, with greater communication across the GCC, the threats posed by Cleaver could have been detected and allayed sooner.

Improved intelligence sharing can only stand to benefit the region, and ultimately could be an invaluable stepping stone in ensuring the safety of the region’s civilians.

The way things are going, with cybersuperpowers Russia, China and the U.S. boasting formidable resources, GCC collaboration will be a necessity in ensuring the region’s physical as well as IT security.

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