Computer News Middle East January 2014

WHERE TECHNOLOGY MEANS BUSINESS issue 264 | january 2014 WWW.CNMEONLINE.COM

big data and cloud Cutting through the confusion of the past 12 months

EXpo 2020: what to expect innovation management

in with the new Emirates Gas’ massive infrastructure overhaul

predictions gone wrong Digital dreams

How the Canadian Specialist Hospital plans to go paperless

FAMILY VALUES How MBC’s Ali Radhi used his passion for technology to keep up with a high-achieving family

PLUS: telecoms for the smb | blackberry: sink or swim? | the evolving role of ethernet

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EDITORIAL Chairman Dominic De Sousa

A mandate for innovation

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

CEO Nadeem Hood

As 2014 kicks off, it’s time to gaze into the technological crystal ball and see what is to come over the next 12 months. For the last couple of years, we have been writing about the cautious optimism prevailing in the industry and this year the outlook is a bit more positive as the economy improves. Predictions from various analyst firms also indicate we can expect more confidence in 2014.

IDC predicts worldwide IT spending will grow by 5 percent year over year to $2.1 trillion in 2012, driven by cloud spending, Big Data, mobile computing and social technologies. Forrester, more or less, is forecasting the same figures while Gartner’s projection is a bit on the conservative side. The research firm’s numbers, which includes telecom services, are to the tune of $3.8 trillion, with enterprise software spending driving the growth.

What is for sure is that 2014 is going to witness a continuation of trends we have seen last year, mainly around cloud, mobility, security and analytics. If you go by the predictions from all these major industry experts, cloud is all set to surge this year. The buzzword is hybrid, with all major cloud computing vendors such as VMware, Microsoft and HP rolling out software that runs both public and public clouds in a seamless manner.

And cloud is also slated to help the cause of Big Data, undoubtedly one of the major disappointments of 2013. IBM predicts a shift from hype to action for Big Data as companies look to glean meaningful insight from data sources to make better decisions. The Big Blue says this trend will be accelerated by the offerings around analytics in the cloud.

Networking is probably going to be another bright spot for the tech industry this year. As infrastructure becomes increasingly virtualised and mobile, networking is becoming crucial to application performance more than ever. As the need for speed increases, 10G is all set to find mainstream adoption among regional enterprises, with 40G in the not-so-distant future. However, despite all the hype and hoopla, SDN is likely to remain in the oven as it is still in a very nascent stage.

Whatever might be the dominant technological priorities for Middle Eastern enterprises, one can expect CIOs to focus on innovation rather than cost cutting, which has been the prevailing trend in the industry for last couple of years. As Forrester says, it’s going to be a brave new world for IT―an exciting time albeit a chaotic one.

Remember the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times?” It might actually be a good thing!

Here is wishing you a happy new year.

COO Georgina O’Hara Editorial Group Editor Jeevan Thankappan jeevan.thankappan@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 1513 Editor Tom Paye tom.paye@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 1499 Online Editor James Dartnell james.dartnell@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 375 1501 Contributors Randy Bean Mary Brandel

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big data and cloud Cutting through the confusion of the past 12 months

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eXpo 2020: what to eXpect innovation management

in with the new

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predictions gone wrong Digital Dreams

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Emirates Gas’ massive infrastructure overhaul

How the Canadian Specialist Hospital plans to go paperless

FAMILY VALUES

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How MBC’s Ali Radhi used his passion for technology to keep up with a high-achieving family

PLUS: teLecomS for the Smb | bLackberry: Sink or Swim? | the evoLving roLe of ethernet

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EDITORIAL

You get what you pay for

Tom Paye Editor Talk to us: E-mail: tom.paye @cpimediagroup.com

4

When it comes to telecoms, I’ve always assumed that the UAE was home to some of the most expensive services to be found anywhere. And it was annoying because, as far as I could see, there wasn’t any tangible reason why we were paying so much.

My anger might have been justifiable around five years ago. Back when I had my first iPhone (a lowly 3G), I was paying Dh145 per month for 1GB of 3G data―and that gave me nothing by way of calls and texts, which I had to pay for separately. What’s more, the network wasn’t all that, particularly in the more out-of-the-way areas of Dubai.

Compare that to the iPhone package that I had in the UK while at university―I was on a two-year contract that cost around Dh180 per month.

The package included the price of the iPhone, unlimited 3G data, 600 local minutes and 2,000 local texts.

So, yes, I was paying a little more in the UK, but the operator gave me so much more for my money.

Now, though, things are changing. For one thing, the UAE’s operators have reduced their data costs significantly. What’s more, the services have improved greatly―I get LTE connectivity almost everywhere I go, and I don’t have to pay anything extra for the speed. Meanwhile, voice and text costs have also been reduced, and business services have gone in the same direction.

Compare that to the UK now, and it’s obvious where you’d rather be.

Having been there last month (have a look at page 10 to see what I was doing), I found that the operators couldn’t hold a candle to what the UAE offers now. For starters, data costs have gone way up, yet data services have hardly improved. The only carrier still providing reasonably priced data services is 3, a trendy up-start that first differentiated itself with mobile Internet packages. However, because 3 isn’t such a big player, it struggles to offer the same coverage as the other operators do. What’s more, outside of London, there’s no LTE. Yes, the UAE can move more quickly when it comes to things like deploying LTE, because, let’s face it, it’s much smaller geographically than, say, the UK. But the technology behind these deployments is top-notch― networks here can be compared to the best in the world. And while we’re still paying a little bit more than customers in Europe do, we’re at least getting a premium service in return.

What I’m saying is that you get what you pay for. That much is true when it comes to telecoms here, and it’s certainly true where wider IT is concerned.

When it comes to new technology implementations in the enterprise, a lot of the procurement choices come down to cost. But CIOs are beginning to realise that cheap doesn’t necessarily mean cheerful. Have a look at the two case studies in this month’s issue to see what I’m on about―both of the organisations featured had cheaper options on the table, but because they chose their technologies based on merit, they were able to glean much more value out of their implementations.

Isn’t it worth spending a little more if you’re going to see more value?

Computer News Middle East

january 2014

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Contents

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ISSUE 264 | January 2014

28 Broadcast the passion

12

Healthy fruits

24

Stepping on the gas

10 Cutting through the confusion

At an intimate roundtable in London last month, SAP made compelling cases for its cloud- and Big Data-based products, lifting the fog of confusion surrounding the two mega-trends.

12 Healthy fruits

After another quarterly earnings call in which BlackBerry announced large losses, bosses at the vendor are looking forward to a more promising 2014. Will the company find itself in better health over the next 12 months?

28 Stepping on the gas

Having struggled with an ageing legacy system for almost 35 years, Emirates Gas, a subsidiary of ENOC, recently decided to rebuild around 75 percent of its infrastructure. In two short years, it's already seen a significant ROI. 30 Digital dreams

As part of a directive from Dubai Health Authority, the Canadian Specialist Hospital in Dubai has spent the last two years building a digitised healthcare system, which should result in a completely paperless hospital.

6

Computer News Middle East

january 2014

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Our Strategic Partners

Contents

Strategic ICT Partner

Strategic IT Transformation and Big Data Partner

Strategic IT NetworkingPartner

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ISSUE 263 | december 2013

34

expo 2020 outlook

Features 34 Expo 2020 outlook Following Dubai's successful bid to host the World Expo 2020, CNME takes a look at the important IT trends that will shape the show.

38 Different flavours of Ethernet

Enterprises, cloud providers and carriers all rely on Ethernet.

What's next for this 40-year-old ubiquitous technology?

48

44 Are you at risk?

The pressure is mounting on regional enterprises to ensure their disaster recovery plan is ready to protect their networks critical infrastructures from the worst.

Prevention is better than cure

48 Prevention is better than cure

Cyber-criminals are keen to exploit vulnerabilities, but do businesses pay enough attention to software updates when there are hundreds of other issues to address?

54 Blurred lines

A number of small, specialised resellers are now rubbing shoulders with large systems integrators. But which is best for your next project?

64

58 Targeting the SMB

Can operators be doing more to help small businesses, or is there simply not a case for the lowmargin services they desire?

Predictions gone wrong

Blurred lines

Regulars

54

20 Short takes

We round up the top stories to take our eye in the last month.

62 Interview

Hicham Abdessamad, Executive Vice President, Global Services, Hitachi Data Systems, talks all things storage.

64 Insight

Predictions gone wrong: Losing bets analysts made for 2013.

68 Product Watch

We cover the mid-range Lenovo Vibe X, Sony's latest convertible laptop, and Acer's new Ultrabook.

70 Column

CNME’s man about town, James Dartnell, wonders why so much fuss has been made over wearables.

8

Computer News Middle East

january 2014

www.cnmeonline.com

22907

You’re thinking, who makes the network work for the Fortune 500?

We’re doing ...

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in depth SAP

Cutting through the confusion At an intimate roundtable in London last month, SAP made compelling cases for its cloud- and Big Data-based products, lifting the fog of confusion surrounding the two mega-trends.

C

SAP's idea of augmenting with cloud services has been taken on by

PepsiCo 10

Computer News Middle East

january 2014

loud and Big Data are two topics that have been shrouded in confusion over the past 12 months. Quite apart from the neverending hyperbole surrounding the two mega-trends, their reputations have taken something of a battering over the past year.

Cloud’s credentials as a genuine enterprise enabler were sullied in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations that the United States National Security Agency had access to huge amounts of data stored online.

Meanwhile, enterprises have grown weary of Big Data before it has even caught on, simply down to confused marketing messages from various vendors.

However, at its ‘Innovation for a Better World’ event at the Hospital Club in London, United Kingdom, last month, SAP sought to cut through the confusion surrounding both trends. Made up of a short series of roundtables, the event featured end-user speakers from companies that had gleaned real business value out of SAP’s nextgeneration solutions that leverage cloud and

www.cnmeonline.com

Big Data. Certainly, the vendor managed to make more of a case for these two trends than most have been able to in recent years, but perhaps, SAP opined, this was because many people were thinking about cloud and Big Data in the wrong way.

Coming to terms with cloud As an example, many are championing cloud as a revolution―a way for IT to be out with the old and in with the new. But SAP’s opinion of cloud in London was that cloud-enabled technologies should in no way replace existing infrastructures and systems. Instead, the vendor focused on the idea that cloud should be used to augment and improve business processes, rather than replace old ones.

“Certainly, cloud delivers cost advantages but the benefit comes with innovation and agilty. It’s a fast-paced business world with constant change, so companies need to predict the future and adjust their businesses very quickly in response to the market. They also need the agility to allow line managers to change

and adapt their processes as they need to,” said Tim Minahan, Chief Marketing Officer, SAP Cloud.

Indeed, one of the biggest arguments for cloud revolves around cost―or the ability to turn CAPEX into OPEX. And while Minahan conceded that some companies could reduce their total cost of ownership by adopting cloud-based technologies, he argued that more value could be gleaned by combining cloud applications with existing infrastructures.

“We encourage customers not to look to the cloud just to adopt a new delivery model or pricing model, but really to adopt it as a platform for innovation,” he said.

“Ultimately, the cloud not only becomes a way to enable new business processes but sometimes allows you to create entirely new business models. Companies like Netflix or iTunes have business models that would have been impossible without the cloud.”

Later on, Minahan explained to CNME that there were plenty of other use cases for combining cloud-based technologies with existing infrastructures. For example, PepsiCo―a huge SAP shop end-to-end― recently adopted SuccessFactors, a cloudbased SAP application that enabled PepsiCo to much better manage talent through its core HR system. What’s more, before the implementation, local PepsiCo offices around the world used different systems, but with the cloud-based talent management system, everything could be standardised across the company.

The business case for cloud computing seems well-founded, then, but security remains one of the biggest talking points

when it comes to cloud. Minahan agreed that security is a major issue when dealing with cloud, explaining that it was up to vendors to ensure the safety―and privacy―of their customers’ data. However, he was quick to point out that, given the investment SAP puts into cloud security, the vendor could probably offer greater security than many business might be able to provide themselves.

“As a cloud provider, you really need to truly provide superior security. In fact, a lot of customers, particularly as your talk about your SMBs, realise and recognise that they can’t, on their own, provide the same level of security that a cloud provider can. They don’t have the scale, they don’t have the investment or the complete focus on that― even when it comes to large and mid-sized businesses. Their focus is on the business, not on the infrastructure,” he said.

Beating the Big Data blues With cloud being a relatively proven technology, it was always going to be easy for any vendor to make a compelling case for its new, cloud-based solutions.

Making a compelling case for a Big Databased technology, however, is much more difficult, simply because Big Data has been termed, in recent months, as one of the most over-hyped technological trends of the past few years.

Despite this, SAP was at pains to explain that, with its HANA platform, real-world applications for Big Data were being put to use by its customers.

“Big Data means substantially more than just the volume, the velocity or the variety of data; it’s really what services you can put

"SAP's real intrinsic value to Big Data is that we have a substantial footprint in terms of the applications. Many of them are traditional business apps like ERP, but with the new generation of business apps that are being created, we are looking to infuse the concept of Big Data directly inside of those applications." www.cnmeonline.com

Irfan Khan, Senior Vice President and General Manager, SAP Big Data

on top of that,” explained Irfan Khan, Senior Vice President and General Manager, SAP Big Data.

“SAP’s real intrinsic value to Big Data is that we have a substantial footprint in terms of the applications. Many of them are traditional business apps like ERP, but with the new generation of business apps that are being created, we are looking to infuse the concept of Big Data directly inside of those applications.”

Thanks to a growing list of enterprise applications that leverage the HANA platform, Khan said that more SAP customers than ever were now able to use Big Data to glean customer loyalty and business value. Perhaps the most impressive use case, however, came from Dr Tim Conrad, Professor, Proteome-based Cancer Diagnostics, Freie University Berlin, who explained that he had been able to accelerate the rate of his research into disease thanks to the HANA platform.

“HANA changed the game for us,” he said. “Without this new technology, we were spending the same amount of time processing information, but it was much less data. If you wanted to do what we do now, it would take us three hours compared to five minutes." january 2014

Computer News Middle East

11

in depth BlackBerry

Healthy fruits After yet another quarterly earnings call in which BlackBerry announced large losses, bosses at the vendor are looking forward to a more promising 2014. Is BlackBerry simply clinging onto false hope, or will the company find itself in better health over the next 12 months?

B

lackBerry’s latest financial results, which were announced midDecember, show that the company has a lot to do before it gets back to any level of solid footing.

Revenue in the September to November quarter was $1.2 billion, down 56 percent on the same quarter of 2012. The company recorded a net loss of $4.4 billion against a net profit of $9 million in the year-earlier quarter.

The figures represent a turbulent year for the company, which once ruled the 12

Computer News Middle East

january 2014

mobile messaging market. The company’s new BlackBerry 10 operating system received a cool response from consumer and enterprise users, who are increasingly turning to smartphones based on Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating system.

Later in the year, BlackBerry’s board said it was talking with several companies regarding an acquisition of the company.

Those talks ended in November when the board said it had decided to take a $1 billion loan from a consortium of companies led www.cnmeonline.com

by Canada’s Fairfax Financial Holdings and delist its stock.

Chen, former CEO of Sybase, was named to head the company at the same time.

Cautious optimism Despite the doom and gloom, however, BlackBerry hopes to begin 2014 on a positive note.

“Going forward, we have a reasonable plan to invest, a clean balance sheet and we’re strong in cash. We’re no longer worrying about whether we are going to be around,” Chen said after the earnings call.

His words echo a blog post that he wrote shortly after his appointment, when he said that BlackBerry has “significant financial strength for the long haul”, and that the vendor would leverage its BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 mobility management platform, as well as a new device strategy focused on enterprise users.

“We are also leveraging our tremendous assets, including BlackBerry Messenger, our network and QNX,” the BlackBerry kernel

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in depth BlackBerry

behind the BlackBerry 10 OS used in the Z10 and other devices, he said.

In mid-November, BlackBerry also released the latest BlackBerry 10.2.1 operating system to developers to help them make Android apps as “compatible as possible” with BlackBerry devices. Blackberry hoped that developers would repackage their Android apps to submit to BlackBerry World for sales.

The new 10.2.1 release will be available to the public sometime in 2014, a spokeswoman told Computerworld in December.

A major criticism of the BlackBerry OS has been a shortage of apps that will run on BlackBerry devices, especially when compared to Android apps, which number more than 1 billion in the Google Play store. By comparison, BlackBerry World has more than 130,000 apps, a BlackBerry spokeswoman said last month, about the same amount reported by BlackBerry in late September.

Some IT managers believe Android support is critical to BlackBerry’s future success. “BlackBerry should make a bigger push to accept Android apps, since right now you have to essentially side-load them and compatibility issues abound,” said Andrew Shattuck, a senior technical support analyst at Rocky Mountain Human Services in Denver.

Blackberry “has to plan to compete in a two-sided market,” comprised of Android and iOS, Shattuck said. “It’s their only direction.” As smartphones get faster processors, Shattuck said HTML 5 and Java Script developers will surely build more cross-platform apps that can work with BlackBerry and other operating systems.

BlackBerry, in the latter part of 2013, fell to fourth place in smartphone shipments, trailing behind third-place Windows Phone, each with less than 5 percent of the market, according to IDC and other analysts. Android dominates smartphone shipments globally, with Apple’s iOS in second.

Rocky Mountain recently decided to deploy 300 Z10s to its work force by the end of January, and will support them with the BES 10 management platform. Shattuck said a major incentive to sticking with BlackBerry, despite recommendations to

“Going forward, we have a reasonable plan to invest, a clean balance sheet, and we're strong in cash. We're no longer worrying about whether we are going to be around. We are also leveraging our tremendous assets.”

John Chen, Interim CEO, BlackBerry

seek alternatives, is that BES 10 will also manage iOS and Android devices. Atop of BES 10, Rocky Mountain will use Citrix Receiver software to allow Z10 users to access sensitive patient records directly on their smartphones, with the data kept securely behind the corporate firewall.

Rocky Mountain serves 7,500 people with brain injuries and other cognitive impairments and is required to be HIPAAcompliant, meaning users and IT managers must take a number of security steps, including frequent password refreshes.

Shattuck said the BlackBerry Balance feature on the Z10 will allow workers to keep all their work-related data partitioned from personal data.

Because of the BES 10 support for Android and iOS, Shattuck said there’s further inducement to stay with BlackBerry.

“If BlackBerry were to go under or have financial difficulties and we couldn’t use their handsets, we could still use the phone infrastructure to access other phone models,” he said.

“That being said, people have really had negative predictions about BlackBerry for a long time, but when it comes to a corporate phone, there’s more to it than getting the latest and greatest device. We’re interested in a bug-free phone. Our organization has been long committed to BlackBerry,” Shattuck said.

Despite a Gartner recommendation made to enterprises in September to consider alternatives to BlackBerry within six months, some analysts have been more moderate. www.cnmeonline.com

“We see little risk of BlackBerry simply closing its doors and leaving customers in the lurch,” said Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates, in a report issued last month.

“We evaluate the overall risk of working with BlackBerry as low, and companies should feel comfortable in doing so.”

The Foxconn deal Meanwhile, BlackBerry is turning to Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronics, to jointly develop and produce some models of handset, the two companies said the day of BlackBerry’s latest earnings call.

Working jointly with Foxconn, which also manufactures devices for Apple and Samsung, the partnership will begin with joint development of a handset for the Indonesian market, said Chen. Indonesia is one of BlackBerry’s most important markets.

The phone will be produced at a new factory that Foxconn is building in Indonesia and is expected to be available in the country in March or April 2014, said Chen.

“I’ve already held one in my hand that runs our BB10 software,” he explained, referring to the company’s latest operating system, BlackBerry 10.

But going forward, Chen said he wants to shift more design and development work to Foxconn, especially for handsets aimed at developing markets.

“We’re taking advantage of their efficiencies, their parts, their ability with logistics,” he said. “Over time, I’d love them to design more handsets for us and I’d just do some really cool, high-end devices.” january 2014

Computer News Middle East

15

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in depth Bitcoin

Is Bitcoin’s luck already drying up?

Recent regulatory developments could slow the pace of investments in 2014, according to at least one expert on the digital currency.

B

itcoin: What is it, really? A digital currency? An investment? An Xbox game? For many people, it’s not clear, but that hasn’t stopped venture capitalists from going gaga over it.

Since earlier this year, start-ups dealing in the technology known as Bitcoin have grabbed millions of dollars from some very prominent Silicon Valley VC firms. The amount totals at least some $50 million, all for a technology that could be gone, or pushed deep underground, if financial regulators decided to ban it.

Half of that $50 million went to Coinbase in December, in a major funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Coinbase acts as a Bitcoin bank of sorts, providing a suite of services including an exchange for buying and selling bitcoins, a payment processor, and a socalled wallet service for storing bitcoins.

Other start-ups attracting investor interest since May include BitPay, another payment processor that lets online merchants accept payment in bitcoins; Circle, which offers its own payment acceptance tools and an exchange; itBit, yet another marketplace for trading bitcoins; and BTC China, which has been described as the country’s largest exchange but was recently

forced to stop accepting deposits after banking regulators took action.

During one particularly manic period in late November, Bitcoin was trading on some exchanges for well over $1,000 - now it’s down to about $625, according to CoinDesk, which measures its per-minute value based on various criteria.

Some bankers and regulators appear to be on the technology’s side as well. In an early December report, Merrill Lynch said the technology could become “a major means of payment for e-commerce and may emerge as a serious competitor to traditional money transfer providers.”

And in Washington DC, federal officials in November offered cautionary support for the technology, partly for its potential to promote more efficient global commerce.

But BTC China’s recent setback sent Bitcoin’s value plunging, as other governments around the world have offered varying levels of support for it. In recent weeks, authorities in New Zealand, Denmark and the European Union have all issued warnings against the technology and have questioned its viability.

Consumers are not protected through regulation when using virtual currencies as a means of payment and may be at risk of www.cnmeonline.com

losing their money, the European Banking Authority said in a statement.

Given these concerns and the volatility, it could become harder for start-ups to raise money, and the investments are riskier, too, one expert said.

Earlier in the year, the feeling among some investors was that they had hit something big, “but hype alone isn’t good enough anymore,” said Mark Williams, a finance professor at Boston University who has been tracking Bitcoin. “The honeymoon is over.”

In the venture capital world, timing is everything. Had China blocked BTC China’s deposits two months earlier, “VC funding would have been more difficult to land,” Williams said.

Increased regulation, oversight and restrictions are also fundamentally at odds with one of Bitcoin’s primary purposes - to be a currency free of any central authority. And if the red tape makes it harder to get hold of Bitcoins, that could reduce the profit opportunities for startups. Consumers will be less likely to buy something with BitPay, for example, if they don’t have any Bitcoins to buy it with.

Therefore, start-ups may now face more pressure to demonstrate to VC firms that their investments will pay off. january 2014

Computer News Middle East

17

2013 NORTON REPORT DANGEROUS LIASON

Nearly half of all smartphone users sleep with their phone… …but

nearly

1/2

Don't take precautions like passwords, security software or back-ups

SMARTPHONES, UNWISE BEHAVIOR Mobile device users score lowest when it comes to security IQ. TEST

As a result...

1. __________ _____________ _____________ X

38%

2. __________ _____________ _____________ X 3. __________ _____________ _____________

X

of smartphone users have been a victim of cybercrime

Source: 2013 Norton Report

27% have lost or had their mobile devices stolen

LOWER RISK, HIGHER STAKES While the total number of victims decreased The total cost of cybercrime and cost per victim increased

$113

$298

Billion

Billion

Total cost up from $110 billion last year

41%

Average cost per victim up from $197 in 2012 50% Increase

Percentage of victims down from 46 percent

WORKING HARD, PLAYING HARD HELPS THE HACKERS

1/2 of working adults use their personal devices (pcs, laptops, smartphones, tablets) for work-related activities

30% of parents using mobile devices for work admit to letting their children use those devices

1/4 of file storage users say they use the same online file storage account for both work and personal documents

THREE TIPS TO STAYING SAFE ONLINE

Think of mobile devices as mini-computers Use a password and security to protect against theft, loss and cybercrime

Defend your data Caution in the cloud A comprehensive security Use caution before suite provides a strong intermingling personal and defence against online threats work documents in the cloud

short takes Month in view

Cisco: Dubai can be a global leader of smart cities At a roundtable detailing its Smart+Connected City Wi-Fi and sensor technology held in Dubai last month, Cisco said that the emirate has the power to be a technological world leader.

Cisco’s Smart City blueprint is focused on three main spheres: smarter life, smarter economy, and smarter tourism, which it hopes can make “everything in the city smarter”.

Rabih Doubassi, Managing Director, Cisco UAE, sees an enormous market for the technology: “We can deliver the intelligent network-a network that listens, learns and respondson a scale like never before,” he said. “The rise of the smart city is ultimately linked to Cisco’s IoE [Internet of Everything] strategy, which we estimate has a value of $14.4 trillion.

“The era of inert buildings, unresponsive citizen services, and lack of logistical transparency is over.”

Polycom VVX 600 now supports Arabic Polycom has announced that its VVX business media phones, including the latest VVX 600, now support Arabic.

The recent unified communication software update 5.0.1 automatically updated all existing Polycom VVX lineof-business media phones with Arabic language support, in addition to various other enhancements.

Daniel Schmierer, ASVP, Polycom Middle East, said, “We are excited to announce the launch of Arabic support for our successful line-up of VVX business phones. As Polycom further strengthens its presence in the Middle East, this enhancement to our next-generation of business phones will enable our regional customers to fully utilise our technologies and provide a more intuitive user experience.”

The VVX 600 delivers the tap-andswipe usability of smart phones and tablets to the desktop, while offering UC&C features and a new optional video camera.

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Computer News Middle East

Apple last month signed a deal with Chine Mobile that could see it offer the iPhone to over 760 million Chinese customers from January.

China Mobile is the world’s largest carrier, though its business had eluded Apple for some time, partly because it uses a different wireless telecoms standard from its competitors.

Apple Microsoft now has 200,000 apps available for download in the Windows Phone store, the company announced last month. The milestone is certainly significant as Microsoft’s mobile OS continues to take market share, but users still struggle to get the myriad high-quality apps that can be found on the Apple App Store or Google Play store.

Microsoft

DSO to be first 24/7 wireless free zone

ACQUISITION WATCH

Cisco last month acquired Collaborate.com, a Bostonbased developer of mobile collaboration applications. The vendor’s products provide unified document sharing, task management and team communication capabilities.

WHAT’S HOT?

After guiding HP through one crisis after another, CEO Meg Whitman is now earning more than $1 in annual salary. Her base pay went up to $1.5 million a year, starting November 1, reports said.

january 2014

Dubai Silicon Oasis has agreed a deal with Emirates Wi-Fi to implement wireless Internet throughout the technology park, and will become the first free zone in Dubai to deploy 24/7 wireless Internet. The move marks DSO’s first step towards becoming a smart city, in accordance with the directives of the emirate’s government.

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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was forced to apologise to Yahoo Mail users after the service suffered an outage in December. Reports surfaced that the company had major issues with Yahoo Mail, one of its most important services, which serves around 100 million daily users. “We really let you down this week,” Mayer wrote on Tumblr.

Yahoo The European Commission has rejected Google’s latest proposals aimed at settling a threeyear antitrust dispute. Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said, “The latest proposals are not acceptable in the sense that they are not proposals that can eliminate our concerns regarding competition.”

Google

WHAT’S NOT?

ACQUISITION WATCH

Oracle is set to acquire business-to-consumer marketing software vendor Responsys for $1.5 billion. The move is seen as a bid to flesh out its own capabilities as well as strike back at rivals such as Salesforce.com and Microsoft.

IDC announces regional IT predictions for 2014

Syria, Lebanon channelling Russian 'bulletproof' hosting A Russian-speaking group is advertising “bulletproof” hosting for cybercriminals from data centres in Syria and Lebanon, an apparent effort to place new services in locales where Western law enforcement has little influence.

The advertisement, for a service called “WebHost”, was found on a members-only forum called “Korovka.name”, according to IntelCrawler, a Los Angeles-based security start-up that specialises in profiling the cyber-criminal underworld and malicious networks.

Since most ISPs (Internet service providers) diligently monitor their networks for malicious activity, some cyber-criminals look for so-called bulletproof hosting, or network connectivity from entities that ignore law enforcement and security companies.

The data centre in Lebanon was set up two years ago, and the one in Syria came online some time during the country’s civil war.

“These countries have negative relations with Europe,” said Andrey Komarov, IntelCrawler’s CEO. “That’s why it is a great platform for bulletproof hosting.”

Sony signs 3G broadcast contract with Al Jazeera

Sony Professional Solutions MEA has signed a $143 million project with Al Jazeera Media Network. The project involves building a 3G broadcast infrastructure, including a network-wide broadcast IT project, providing unified, file-based workflows for news and programme planning, production, transmission and archiving.

Arbor: Average Middle East attack is 2.376 Gbps

IDC has released its predictions for the Middle East’s IT industry in 2014, saying it believes that Middle East spending will exceed $32 billion in the coming year.

The research house predicts that the region’s IT market will see a 7.3-percent year-on-year growth, one of the highest rates in the world for emerging markets.

Qatar is predicted to make the highest growth in the region with 5.3 percent, with Bahrain’s growth the lowest at 3.2 percent.

Consumers, the public, communications and financial services sectors are expected to be the biggest IT spenders in the region, contributing to nearly 74 percent of total Middle East IT spending in 2014.

IDC said that Middle Eastern governments will focus heavily on protecting national information assets, expanding agencies that monitor cyberattacks, with banks, financial institutions and government information at risk.

Citing the UAE’s National Electronic Security Authority, IDC said that other Middle East countries will follow suit in setting up protection agencies.

Arbor Networks’ 2013 research of DDoS activity in the Middle East has revealed that the average size of attacks in the region is 2.376 Gbps and the average duration of an attack exceeds an hour and 10 minutes.

Arbor said that services such as e-banking, government eservices, as well as mission-critical production systems have been prime targets for attackers.

Civil unrest in the region has given rise to organised cyber-crime and seen an escalation in cyber-attacks.

Mahmoud Samy, Area Head, Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Arbor Networks, said, “Despite the evident evolution on the part of hackers, those that are under attack are not nearly as prepared for cyberattacks as they could or should be. This was pointed out in the eighth annual Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report by Arbor, which clearly highlights this very point: Just over half (51 percent) of network operators surveyed don’t regularly perform preparedness drills for cyber-attacks.”

FireEye: Syria-themed emails infiltrated European ministries before G20 Hackers infiltrated computers belonging to the foreign affairs ministries of five unnamed European countries ahead of the G20 Summit in September, according to security researchers at FireEye. Researchers from the security firm analysed the attack campaign, which it dubbed Ke3chang, and gained temporary access to one of the command-and-control (CnC) servers used by the hacker group.

After gaining access to their targets’ computers, the hackers moved through internal networks infecting other systems and performing reconnaissance, according to a FireEye report.

The researchers lost access to the CnC server they were monitoring before attackers started extracting sensitive information from the compromised systems—an operational phase known as data exfiltration. However, they believe this was the end goal of the attackers.

The attack campaign, which the attackers tracked on their servers using the tag “moviestar”, began in August and used spear-phishing emails with a malicious attachment called US_military_options_in_Syria.zip.

www.cnmeonline.com

january 2014

Microsoft board member John Thompson recently said that the company needed more time to find a replacement for outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer, though the board has now narrowed it down to a shortlist of 20 candidates.

Computer News Middle East

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Analysis:

Reviews: Lab tested: New Mac Pro is the speedster we’ve been waiting for

Google’s recent hires and buyouts point to a robot-filled future

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Security weak spots

HP Spectre 13 review: A welcome return to the basics

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Blogs:

Insight:

10 steps to a highly effective IT helpdesk in 2014

Why are so many IT projects failing?

Kumaravel Ramakrishnan, Marketing Analyst, ManageEngine

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The ‘Uncertainty Index’

Chinese chip makers ride wave of low-cost tablets

Michael Goedeker, Director, Pre-Sales ESG, CEEMEA

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ComputerNewsME Using #HANA, scientists in Europe are able to analyse many times more proteins than they were able to before. http://bit.ly/19arCVr 17 Dec 13 · reply · retweet · favorite

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CIO Spotlight Ali Radhi

Broadcast the passion Striving to keep up with a high-achieving family, Ali Radhi, Head of IT, MBC, has relied on his relentless passion for technology to find professional success.

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T

hroughout his life, Ali Radhi has had little choice but to strive for excellence. Not only is his father a professor of law, who worked at the Universities of Paris, Baghdad, UAE and Jordan, but his mother is also a judge. Factor in his wife’s side of the family, which is saturated with high-achievers, and it’s easy to see why the Head of IT at Media Group MBC is kept on his toes.

“Including my in-law family, there are nine professors and doctors in my family. One of four siblings, my brother is a bone marrow transplant professor and one sister is a neurologist, while the other sister has a PhD in law,” he says. “It becomes very easy to look at yourself and think, ‘have I done enough?’ But then you remind yourself you do something you love.

“In Iraq, people were always judged by their level of education, so it was paramount that I could prove myself to be well-educated from a young age.”

Born in Baghdad in 1966, Radhi has since travelled far and wide, all in the name of IT. He’s held high-profile industry jobs in Iraq, Jordan, New Zealand and the UAE, and the self-confessed ‘Kiwi’ has spent a large part of his career journeying other parts of the world to stay in control of business.

He recalls having an early fondness for ATARI computers, and the 1980s British best-selling computer Sinclair ZX80. On a visit to the US as a 10-year-old with his uncle―who was studying for a PhD at Georgia Tech University at the time―his eyes were opened to the opportunities of working in technology. “I remember seeing some IBM mainframes back in those days and thinking the technology was mind-blowing. It was unlike anything I’d seen back in Baghdad; it wasn’t part of normal life. I remember thinking to myself then that I wanted to be part of this world,” he says.

After working his way through Baghdad College high school, Radhi graduated from the University of Baghdad in 1987 with a degree in electrical engineering. After finishing in the top five of his college, his efforts did not escape the attention of the department.

He rejected their offer to work as a teacher in order to found computer supplier and programme developer Engineering House with four colleagues.

“We were one of the first privately owned computer companies in Iraq,” Radhi says. “We used to supply a lot of equipment for universities and we built the software that structural engineering companies needed for design. Coming out of university, I immediately realised there was a lot I had to learn about the wide world, and Engineering House was a real springboard to begin that journey.”

His next move suggests his quest was on track. After the 1991 Gulf War, Radhi moved to Jordan to assume the role of IT Director

at BAR trading, which dealt with multiple products, including computer parts for the consumer sector.

“My background working for a private company proved an advantage,” he says. Gaining high-level experience aged 25 at BAR propelled him to his first job outside of the Middle East―he joined computer specialist International View in Auckland, New Zealand in 1994. By this point, Radhi’s career was gathering serious momentum.

“At this stage, I’d left the original bubble that I had known before,” he recalls. “Failing in this transition was not an option.

I’d taken what I thought was a massive gamble by moving to New Zealand, so I was 100-percent committed to the job in order to make the move work.”

Radhi began to build a solid pool of contacts, and it wasn’t long before his efforts caught the eye of industry heavyweight IBM. “Thankfully, my hard work at International View paid off. I was head-hunted by IBM in 1995, and took the same job that I had at International View. In my time at IBM, I gained a lot of experience working with customers both in the public and private sectors as well as the banking industry,” he says.

Five years later, one of Radhi’s proudest career moments came after IBM’s New Zealand arm merged with the Australia branch to become IBM Australia-New Zealand. “I had been doing well with the network team around that time, but I can honestly say it was a pleasure to be a part of the IT team working on the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games,” he says. “I was in charge of network support. The whole experience was amazing, and the sense of achievement I had was immense.”

In the meantime, Radhi had been plotting a move away from IBM. The company’s Network Hardware Division had been acquired

by Cisco for $2 billion in 1999, an event that he says “had a huge impact on myself and the company.” Until 2005, within the Cisco/ IBM alliance, he had been leading the data centre migration initiative, but eventually came to a crossroads in his career. He was offered two top jobs―one at Internet service provider iiNet in Perth, Australia, and the other working for Cisco in the EMEA region. A frequent traveller throughout his career, Radhi was conscious of the impact the move could have on his family. “I thought long and hard about which route I would take. In the end, the opportunity to be placed in any number of top locations across the EMEA region―and the opportunity to work directly for Cisco proved too good to turn down,” he says. Within a year of taking the job, he had been moved to the firm’s UAE branch, and was based in Dubai.

According to Radhi, This move laid the foundations for his current job at MBC. www.cnmeonline.com

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CIO Spotlight Ali Radhi

“I was in charge of several strategic accounts whilst at Cisco UAE, including Emirates airline, Dubai Holding―which is a huge client―some big banking clients, and MBC.” His apparently innate skills of shrewd networking and exemplary service led to the broadcaster offering him the role of Head of IT in 2008. “I’d had a good relationship with the people at MBC in the years before I got the job there. They’d been calling me for a while trying to get me on board, and I eventually decided that it was a very exciting time for the television industry in terms of IT―it was an industry in transformation” he says.

Having taken the job, Radhi looks back with a sense that his MBC team were pioneers of IT broadcasting, “We transformed TV transmission,” he says. “We were the first company in the region― if not in the world―to broadcast live TV over IT networks. The last few years have been a major challenge―moving a TV company into an entirely file-based environment has been a daunting task,” he says.

But with hard graft comes results, and Radhi’s toil was recently acknowledged as he scooped IDC’s Middle East CIO Business Leader of the Year 2013 award, where he was up against 80 contenders from the region. He also won the CIO 50 award in 2012 from CNME, and his MBC team won CNME’s Networking Project of the Year award for 2012.

So what has made Radhi’s career such a success? He believes that experiencing a variety of cultures has been essential in moulding him into a versatile leader. “Living in different countries and experiencing their differences in work and social culture has been an invaluable life experience. It develops your awareness of professional expectations around the world, and naturally heightens your own,” he says.

At MBC, having this experience is not only an advantage, but― given the size of his team―a pre-requisite, he says: “I’m in charge of a large IT team at the moment, but within that group are tens of different nationalities―it’s very impressive. But this is Dubai, where people come from everywhere to work. In that respect, I feel lucky to have travelled so much and put myself in a position to relate to as many of those cultures as possible.”

Radhi is responsible for an IT team that is spread across worldwide offices, making him responsible for managing information technology for 15 TV channels, two radio channels, TV production, post production, online media and a news network―all run from Dubai.

Aside from being culturally conscious, relentless work demands and a love of the industry have kept Radhi on his toes and ensured he remains a frontrunner of IT Directors. “In my job there aren’t really any weekends. It is a non-stop industry and I believe the key to remaining in control is to be directly in touch with operations, and that means getting your hands dirty. To be successful in IT you have to work as part of a team; it’s no use just ‘managing’ them. That means you need one key ingredient to achieve constant excellence: passion.”

Success is not a one-man recipe, Radhi says: “I would not be where I am without the support of my wife at home and the IT team we have at MBC. I can truly say, ‘I am standing on the shoulders of giants.’”

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TIMELINE 1966

Born in Baghdad

1987 Graduated from the University of Baghdad with a degree in electrical engineering, founded Engineering House with four friends

1991 After the Gulf War moved to Jordan where he joined BAR Trading

1994 Joined network specialist International View in Auckland

1995

Headhunted by IBM New Zealand

2000

Worked on 2000 Sydney Olympic Games network support team

2005

Joins Cisco EMEA

2008

Assumes Head of IT role at MBC

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On location Emirates Gas

Stepping on the gas Having struggled with an ageing legacy system for almost 35 years, Emirates Gas, a subsidiary of ENOC, recently decided to rebuild around 75 percent of its IT business. And though the costs were high, the company has already made an enormous return on investment in two short years.

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“Obviously, every year, auditors used to come and make a comment. They’d say, ‘What are you doing here?’ So finally, in June 2012, we decided to move the entire system.”

E

mirates Gas is a subsidiary of the Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC). It specialises in compressing cooking gas or industrial gas into cylinders and then selling the gas on. If you’ve ever seen those trucks rolling around Dubai with dozens of red gas cylinders on the back, the chances are that the gas came from Emirates Gas. Until recently, Emirates Gas was struggling with what could have been one of the oldest legacy IT systems in Dubai.

And while the company was coping reasonably well with the ill effects of such an infrastructure, it recently decided that enough was enough, and vowed to completely rethink its ERP

and business process systems, which made up about 75 percent of the business’ infrastructure.

“The entire logistics fulfillment was running on a legacy application from almost 35 years ago. It was on an access database, without a front-end,” says Ram Mohan, Manager, Planning and Performance Management, Group Information Technology, ENOC. In addition to this, the system was put together on a standalone basis, meaning that the head office wasn’t integrated with any of the branches―each branch was running its own, individual version of the legacy application.

“The problem was, every time the data needed to brought in and consolidated, and it was not integrated into the ERP. So, at each point, there was a kind of loss of integrity. When you are consolidating all of the branches into one file, it’s a manual system, and somebody has to ensure that it’s consolidated properly and that the right dates are taken, for example,” says Mohan.

This could lead to terrible consequences, as Mohan explains: “If you get the wrong date, then you might get into trouble.

Similarly, when you are putting in the journal voucher manually, you’ve got 100,000 there but if you, by mistake, write 10,000, somebody has to pull their hair out and work out where the other 90,000 went.”

There were other issues, too – because of the time it took to process invoices, Emirates Gas’s invoice cycle could take up to two weeks, which would affect cash f low. And, of course, because the system was based on an access database, there was very little by way of security. There wasn’t even any real disaster recovery plan in place. Meanwhile, when people accessed the database, they’d have to table-lock it, which locked other people out of the system while the user had the database up. All in all, there were several issues that needed addressing.

“This was 75 percent of the organisation that we were www.cnmeonline.com

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On location Emirates Gas

running! Obviously, every year, auditors used to come and make a comment. They’d say, ‘What are you doing here?’ Finally, in June 2012, we decided to move the entire system,” says Mohan.

Emirates Gas looked at a number of options while considering this massive overhaul. The big decision was around whether to go for an off-the-shelf ERP system that the organisation could adapt, or whether to build a bespoke system.

“ENOC as a group uses Oracle. One of the problems we faced with the ERP is that it’s a fairly strong back-end system, but we use it as a retail system. The guys come with empty cylinders, and they exchange it for a full cylinder. You have to enter the order like a cashier, and then immediately fulfill it and then it goes. That part, you either need to go for a sophisticated retail system, which Oracle has, but it costs and it’s not really relevant for this kind of thing. It’s small transactions but a lot of transactions,” says Mohan.

In the end, Emirates Gas decided to keep the back-end financials with the Oracle system, but then re-engineer the front-end logistics CPOP system into a bespoke solution.

To make the solution robust, Emirates Gas opted for Microsoft’s .NET technology, which Mohan explains helps to provide security and other features. It’s also user-friendly because Emirates Gas was already using a SharePoint portal, which the .NET system can be easily integrated with.

“But at the back-end, we kept Oracle. First of all, communication with our ERP system, which is Oracle, and Oracle is definitely more robust in terms of performance and scalability compared to an SQL server. This is the technology direction we adopted,” says Mohan.

The job of implementing the system was given to a third party, with the project manager on Emirates Gas’s side being Zahed Hussain, IT Systems Manager, Emirates Gas, who had been working with the previous system for so many years, and knew exactly where the pain points would be.

The first step was to consolidate all of the various

“At the back-end, we kept Oracle.

First of all, for communication with our ERP system, which is Oracle, and Oracle is definitely more robust in terms of performance and scalability, compared to an SQL server.”

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standalone systems into one integrated system. The idea was to make everything available to anyone within the domain on the Web, and this was achieved with great aplomb. However, there were some issues that needed to be tackled.

“Yes, we had consolidated everything, but before, because everything was done on a standalone basis, if one system went down, we could just use another one. The f lipside of the consolidation is that if the system goes down, we have nothing,” explains Hussain.

“To mitigate that, we set up two nodes―one disaster recovery node, and then our database servers are different, so it’s a three-tier system.”

Other fail-safes were put into the system. For example, to ensure availability, there’s an automatic system that kicks in 3G connectivity in the event of the wired Internet connection failing.

The numbers of success Happily, all of the issues were resolved, and by the end of the implementation, things were running smoothly. For starters, the system become much more automated, so that customer orders could be entered directly into an integrated billing system.

“Previously, our bulk customers used to place an order online, which they still do, but in the previous system, what was happening was, we would manually write down the numbers that were coming into the portal, and then feed it into CPOP. Today, we have a two-way integration with the portal, so automatically, whatever comes into the portal as an order is pulled down into the CPOP, and then there’s no manual intervention there. There’s no loss of order because somebody’s missed out the order or not copied it properly,” says Hussain.

Because of this new system, Emirates Gas has been able to implement four billing cycles every month, instead of just two― improving cash f low greatly. What’s more, invoices are now sent out over email, rather than by courier. At Dh150 per envelope delivered―and a two-day delivery time―the new system has directly resulted in a saving of Dh86,400 per year. This has also reduced on Emirates Gas’ carbon footprint – the firm used to print 3,900 receipts per month, 19,000 delivery orders, 150 debit and credit card notes, and 1,085. This is the equivalent to printing 24,000 A4 sheets per month, and the need for this has been negated by the automated portal, which means that Emirates Gas has significantly cut down on paper reduction and saved Dh36,620 on paper per year.

All in all, Hussain estimates that Emirates Gas will be making Dh456,761.56 in tangible savings every year as a direct result of the new system. And this isn’t even to speak of the improved security and user experience. If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly, is the old mantra, and Emirates Gas has certainly gone about doing this system upgrade properly.

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On location Canadian Specialist Hospital in Dubai

Digital dreams As part of a directive from Dubai Health Authority, the Canadian Specialist Hospital in Dubai has spent the last two years building a digitised healthcare system, which should result in a completely paperless hospital.

T

he healthcare industry is notorious for the amount of paper it consumes. From lengthy patient records to scribbled prescription notes, hospitals and healthcare organisations are always grappling with the problem of what to do with its masses of paper.

“With around 155 patients, the volume of these files is big.

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the number of patients is also increasing,” explains Ali Ghunaim, Director of Information Technology, Canadian Specialist Hospital, who has taken it upon himself to reduce the amount of paper that his hospital consumes.

Around two-and-a-half years ago, Ghunaim set out to digitise Canadian Specialist Hospital’s records, processes and statements― indeed, he wanted to digitise just about everything that was

previously done through paper. The implementation started with generating electronic healthcare reports for out-patients, and in the coming months, will finish with a mobility system that allows doctors and professionals to access everything they need through tablet computers.

It was always going to be an ambitious project, but according Ghunaim, it simply has to be completed in the next few months, as per directives from the Dubai Health Authority (DHA), which wants patient records, insurance claims and prescriptions to be completely digitised, in line with the push to become a smart city.

“As per the requirements from the DHA, everything has to come through the DHA system and be integrated with it. Also, the insurance companies cannot receive any claim without submitting through the e-claims in the system,” Ghunaim explains.

“From 2010, we started with the test communications, and then we did it for out-patients and two or three insurance companies. The second phase is that, by early 2014, it must be implemented for inpatients and out-patients, and will be interfacing with the DHA and the insurance companies.”

To get the ball rolling, then, Ghunaim spoke directly with Sage, a vendor that specialises in ERP solutions. The two parties decided to interface Sage’s solutions with IDMsys, a set of modular software applications that automates patient management. This is how reports are now generated at Canadian Specialist Hospital. Not only was this the most effective pairing, but it was also part of the requirements from DHA. “Also, I have many, many types of modules, intelligent systems.

We’ve built the dashboard in-house, and we also have some through the Sage company. And everything is integrated with the system, from the beginning,” Ghunaim says.

Instead of writing out physical reports with a pen and paper, then, doctors are now expected to enter names, complaints, diagnoses and treatments into the system, which is also integrated with the billing system. To protect patient confidentiality, only authorised professionals can access records, and an international coding standard is applied to all pieces of information. It’s simple enough to work―when a patient joins the hospital, the doctor simply fills out the electronic form, enters all the pieces of information, and the rest is automated.

Naturally, it took a little while to train up doctors on how to use the system, but after a few months, staff generally began to accept it, according to Ghunaim. “For at least two or three months, it took time to train the doctors and to train them how to use the system, and how to use the international coding. Many doctors aren’t familiar with international codes like ICD10, the diagnostic international code. Doctors know about diagnosis as a description, not as the coding,” he says.

The system takes care of everything―from patient records and e-prescriptions to billing and insurance claims. “Now, when you submit all the billing, it’s not submitted by paper―it’s done through the system. There’s a number for the e-claim, for the diagnosis, for

“As per the requirements from the DHA, everything has to come through the DHA system and be integrated with it. Also, the insurance companies cannot receive any claim without submitting through the e-claims in the system.” the doctors, and it’s interfaced with the lab. It must be everything in an automated system,” Ghunaim says.

To accommodate such a far-reaching implementation, however, Ghunaim had to seriously beef up the hospital’s back end. A yearand-a-half ago, then, he upgraded all of the servers and storage devices, using HP SAN storage and servers, which have been partially virtualised. And for his database, Ghunaim uses Oracle integrated under a Linux operating system.

“The capacity for the images and the archiving and whatever else goes through the system had to be fit for five to six years,” he says.

Already, Ghunaim’s investments in the system have begun to pay dividends. Not only is he in line to meet the early-2014 deadline, but the Canadian Specialist Hospital has also been recognised by HIMSS, a global, non-profit organisation focused on providing better health through IT. HIMSS ranks hospitals and healthcare organisations as they move through the various stages of digitisation, and according to Ghunaim, as of 2012, the Canadian Specialist Hospital was the number-one in the UAE when it came to e-pay prescriptions.

“The survey has stages, from stage one up to stage seven as standard stages. Now the Canadian Specialist Hospital is between stage four and stage five. I hope that, for this year, we’ll be coming in at least stage six,” he says.

Before long, Ghunaim will have implemented a mobility programme that’s integrated with his paperless system. Though he hasn’t yet decided whether he will provide doctors with Android or Windows 8-based tablets, he’s confident that they will find it much more convenient to work through the system once they have their devices.

“The doctor, from anywhere, can see all the history for the patient, and can decide and request procedures for that patient or reduce drug doses, or whatever. You can change the medicine― whatever you like―from anywhere,” he says.

This final phase of the project is expected to be completed by early 2014. That notwithstanding, Ghunaim is pleased with the progress he has made with this paperless project, and he’s confident that his digital dream will come true on schedule. www.cnmeonline.com

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FEATURE

Expo 2020

Expo 2020 outlook Following Dubai’s successful bid to host the World Expo 2020, CNME takes a look at the important IT trends that will help shape the international exhibition.

A

On 26 November, 2013, Dubai was awarded the opportunity to host the World Expo 2020. And with this, the city has been given a chance to make huge developments.

Beating off competition from Brazil’s Sao Paolo, Turkish city Izmir and Yekaterinburg of Russia, Dubai was voted as the city that would stage the exposition, and has become the first city in the Middle East region to be charged with the task.

With over 25 million visitors expected to descend on Dubai for the event, it promises to be a major opportunity for business and IT development.

IDC recently forecast that $7-8 billion could be spent on IT infrastructure build leading up to the event, so it should present a huge opportunity for the region's IT scene to grow.

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Yassine Zaied, Executive Vice President, Sales, Nexthink Middle East, believes that IT services for visitors need to be of premium quality. “Businesses will have to manage and evolve their IT environment to support the increased number of end-users and endpoints and ensure its performance, stability and security,” he says. “These IT investments will better support end-users in preparing the expo and delivering the best services to visitors that will come to Dubai.

Dubai has a fantastic reputation as a business hub in the region and the IT enabling the preparations and supporting the expo itself has to be managed carefully to deliver the fantastic level of services to the visitors that will be drawn to Dubai.”

Heavy infrastructure investment seems inevitable, and along with transport, hospitality and a variety of other public services, IT will almost certainly benefit.

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STRATEGIC IT INNOVATION PARTNER

SOLUTIONS WORLD

“Dubai has a fantastic reputation as a business hub in the region and the IT enabling the preparations and supporting the Expo itself has to be managed carefully to deliver the fantastic level of services to the visitors that will be drawn to Dubai.”

Yassine Zaied, Executive Vice President, Sales, Nexthink Middle East

Pan En, Vice President, Huawei Middle East, feels Dubai’s expo philosophy will stand it in good stead: “The theme of ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’ for the Dubai Expo 2020 is in many ways a recognition of the profound social and economic benefits that ICT infrastructure has already had in the UAE and across the wider region,” he explains.

“While the UAE’s IT sector will definitely benefit, owing to a strong government mandate for encouraging technology innovation on the local level, an event like the Dubai Expo 2020 will also accelerate the deployment of ICT infrastructure regionally by opening up a host of new multinational investment opportunities.”

Several emerging IT trends are seemingly guaranteed to benefit from expo. At the top of that list is the trend of smart cities. Dubai is already in a relatively strong position in this respect, with its E-Dirham, E-Government and E-Commerce offerings all modern smart services, but Expo 2020 will serve to accelerate this development Emirates-wide.

En feels that smart cities will be a huge catalyst for a successful Expo: “Smarter utility grids, intelligent office buildings, alternative energy programmes, and mobile broadband networks will be just some of the avenues through which ICT will empower businesses to grow during the build-up to the Expo,” he says.

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FEATURE

Expo 2020

“While the UAE’s IT sector will definitely benefit, owing to a strong government mandate for encouraging technology innovation on the local level, an event like the Dubai Expo 2020 will also accelerate the deployment of ICT infrastructure regionally by opening up a host of new multinational investment opportunities.”

Pan En, Vice President, Huawei Middle East

“Dubai is already pioneering in its efforts to advance smart city infrastructure, with future mega-projects already being announced by local developers and authorities. Industries such as transportation, healthcare, hospitality, and others will necessarily become more 'digitised' as part of that master planning―giving organisations a realtime view of their expanding operations.”

Zaied believes that smart cities will appear in a variety of environments and technologies.

“Leading up to 2020, homes, businesses and offices will leverage IT to become smarter,” he says. “For example, extensive usage of automation technologies at home will be paralleled with the increase of cloud-based social and analytics technologies in businesses and cities.

“Wearable connected computing will continue to gain momentum. Technology will evolve everyday items such as glasses, clothing, and

“According to the IDC Digital Universe Study, the digital universe will reach 40 zettabytes by 2020, an amount that exceeds previous forecasts by 5 ZB, resulting in a 50-fold growth from the beginning of 2010.”

Habib Mahakian, Regional General Manager, Gulf and Pakistan, EMC

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accessories; we will access augmented reality and be able to receive smarter information everywhere.”

With a huge number of tourists flocking to the UAE, and with increased infrastructure planning for Expo 2020, there'll be a large influx of data. That necessitates a greater need for Big Data analytics.

Habib Mahakian, Regional General Manager, Gulf and Pakistan, EMC, appreciates the need for forward-thinking Big Data solutions: “According to the IDC Digital Universe Study, the digital universe will reach 40 zettabytes by 2020, an amount that exceeds previous forecasts by 5 ZB, resulting in a 50-fold growth from the beginning of 2010,” he says. “This means that the patch of the digital universe that the CIOs and their IT staff need to manage will become not just bigger but also more complex, and enterprises will need more specialised, flexible, and scalable IT infrastructure that extends beyond the enterprise.”

Zaied is also aware of the need to avoid being bogged down by Big Data. “Businesses have to manage this massive amount of information, which is driving IT investments into additional storage, network capacity and end-user driven technologies and applications,” he says. “This massive volume of data and IT services is impossible to comprehend, and IT departments need to leverage real-time IT analytics to understand how applications and IT services are being consumed by end-users, and how the IT infrastructure is operating, to deliver the best quality of service.”

En feels that the current stage of Big Data is the tip of the iceberg, and has huge potential

for all companies large and small. “Today we are only beginning to see how concepts like Big Data intelligence and M2M communication can be applied to our daily lives,” he says. “It will be important for all organisations―from SMEs to large multinationals and public entities―to put even more emphasis on long-term ROI as they plan their ICT strategy leading up to 2020.”

On top of smart city growth and Big Data analytics developments, a consolidation of―and in many cases, wholesale changes to―infrastructure may be necessary, according to a variety of industry experts.

Mahakian feels that organisations will need to evaluate their current architectures. “Endusers will have to revisit their existing technology architecture and reassess how it can aid them achieve their goals,” he says. “For many, this would mean a complete overhaul, for others it would mean a change in their role as end-users in many cases will become service providers for their own stakeholders in addition to becoming service providers for other companies as well.

“Enterprises will need more specialised, flexible, and scalable IT infrastructure that extends beyond the enterprise and will need the skillsets to support these implementations.”

Hussein Hamza, Gulf Cluster Leader, Oracle, believes industry standards must be met: “Businesses need to consolidate the infrastructure― create capacity to store, manage, interrogate and make decisions on accurate, complete information,” he says. “In this way, infrastructure can grow in a manageable, cost effective way.

“They also need to standardise and integrate, to create systems based on open, industry standards, and where possible create one instance of the truth―such as the citizen record or the patient health record―and make them available to multiple departments.”

Given the World Expo’s record of being a platform for unveiling exciting products, Hamza feels Expo 2020 will have a lot in store in terms of innovation: “Past expos have presented new technologies as an integral part of the preparations and of the event itself,” he says. “Broadcast television, the X-ray machine and the diesel engine have all made their debut at expos in years gone. We do expect Expo 2020 to follow the same trend and introduce multiple innovative IT products to the industry.”

FEATURE

Ethernet

Enterprises, cloud providers and carriers all rely on Ethernet.

What’s next for this 40-year-old ubiquitous technology?

Different flavours of Ethernet

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strategic it networking partner

network WORLD

I

The Layer 2-3 Ethernet switch market is forecast to approach $28 billion in 2016, with future growth driven primarily by sales of Ethernet switches optimized for larger data center deployments.

According to Dell’Oro Group, fixed 10G Ethernet will comprise the majority of revenue in Ethernet switching by 2016 due to data center requirements for the higher-speed ports. At the same time, 100Mbps Fast Ethernet, once the cornerstone of enterprise campus backbones and wiring closets, is fading away. Fixed 10G ports are typically found in top-of-rack data center switches, perhaps the hottest growth segment of data center networking. Ten Gigabit Ethernet adoption is driven largely by data centre upgrades, server virtualization and core network build-outs.

Ethernet is projected to broaden its penetration and become further entrenched as a broadband access, cloud interconnect and wide area medium, further distancing itself from legacy TDM services.

“The size of the Ethernet market is growing steadily and customers are migrating to higher speeds for better and faster delivery of services.

Companies are investing huge amounts to move their business into large cloud infrastructures,” says Omar Alsaied, Middle East Carriers Sales Director, Ciena.

He adds that customers will also benefit from the ease of scalability and provisioning of Ethernet services. For example, they could have a future proofed 10Gb physical connection but only use and pay for 3Gb, with upgrades to 4Gb, 5Gb etc, at the touch of a button. High bandwidth, low-latency applications are increasingly critical to their core businesses. The adoption of high-capacity technologies will undoubtedly have some impact on the pricing and drive down the cost per bit, but arguably more on its rate of growth. As Ethernet gathers momentum, the benefits it brings in terms of operational simplicity and reduction in power consumption will start to play a significant role.

Ethernet is also increasingly being used in metro area and wide area networks, and industry experts predict that it is the beginning of the end for TDM as the primary access technology, where E1 will finally give way to Ethernet. “Many customers are shifting toward IP and Ethernet technology. With the introduction of IMS and LTE that are IP based, there will be less E1s over 2014,” says Jasim AlAwadi, VP – Fixed Access

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FEATURE

Ethernet

Network & Operations, du.

Alsaied agrees that E1 adoption is on the decline. “Traditionally, operators have relied on networks to synchronise critical applications that depend on accurate time and frequency information. Traditional TDM based networks provided the distinct advantage that all connection and redistribution points, as well as communication endpoints, could rely on the network’s common awareness of time and frequency. While traditional GPS and overlay TDM (such as SONET and SDH) alternatives can be used to carry out the same role as traditional network nodes, they can often be expensive or risky and unreliable.”

Connecting the clouds One of the expanded markets for Ethernet services is in cloud interconnect. In the case of cloud connectivity, enterprises and service providers alike value Ethernet for its ability to support flexible bandwidth delivery, multiple classes-ofservice and high quality guaranteed performance.

“Likewise, mobile network operators and wholesale backhaul providers rely on Ethernet’s ability to support gigabit-level line rates, sophisticated traffic management, and hierarchical Quality-of-Service (QoS) mechanisms. And of course, Ethernet delivers these benefits at a much lower cost-per-bit than competing services,” says Alsaied.

AlAwadi offers a service provider perspective: “The increase in demand of private cloud service led to a need for a reliable, scalable, flexible and cost-effective connectivity media such as Ethernet.

Having Ethernet for cloud connectivity provides a standard interface to the customer and allow faster service provisioning. We see increase in the cloud connectivity among enterprise customer’s locations and between data centers using Ethernet. We also see an increase in mobile users to connect to cloud services, which is forcing service providers to provide Ethernet connectivity to base stations and wireless access points.”

The distinction between Ethernet LAN and WAN is also continuing to blur, as enterprises are adopting Ethernet services to connect across geographical locations. WAN bandwidth used to be the bottleneck between Ethernet LANs across distances and industry experts say Ethernet will 40

Computer News Middle East

january 2014

Networking trends for 2014

2014 is poised to be a bigger year for networks in the Middle East, says Shabbir Ahmad, Regional Sales Director - Networking, Dell, EMEA Emerging Markets. These are the trends that Dell sees shaping the networking industry this year.

SDN – Its Defining Moment In 2014, customers will want vendors to bring order to the chaos and show the industry how SDN should be implemented. In a fragmenting market with numerous open source and open standards efforts, and competing with vendor strategies, customers will vote with their wallets. Smart vendors will follow. Customers will force networking vendors to agree on a more co-operative, open approach that will make SDN practical and real.

40 Is The New 10 The economics have changed and they are not changing back.

The value in networking is no longer in the boxes – it is in the software. Year after year, fixed-form switches prove to be more power and space efficient than chassis platforms. In 2014, fixed form factor switches will continue to out-innovate the legacy chassis, providing server-like customization, upgrades and economics.

40GbE will go main stream as right-sizing of data centers continues. Customers can get more throughput today for half the cost that they paid just a few years ago. 40GbE holds the key to improved capacity and can provide a smooth upgrade path as the need for speedy network connections increases.

Hardware Silos Crumble for Good Innovation has broken the 20 year old boundaries between server, storage and networking. Next-generation converged systems – both smaller and bigger and more targeted, to mainstream and mid-market – will continue to push the old siloes aside. 2014 is the year of the entire data center, not the year of server, storage or networking.

Lose the Wire – Campus Networks Get Turned Inside-Out Wired switches in networking closets are in trouble. Businesses, schools, hospitals and individuals can’t survive on wired access alone. In 2014 will see a dramatic increase in next-generation WLAN innovation. It is all about wireless now.

www.cnmeonline.com

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Ethernet

FEATURE

“The size of the Ethernet market is growing steadily and customers are migrating to higher speeds for better and faster delivery of services.

Companies are investing huge amounts to move their business into large cloud infrastructures.”

Omar Alsaied, Middle East Carriers Sales Director, Ciena

continue to remove that bottleneck in 2014.

“The distinction between LAN and WAN is increasingly blurring, although this has been achieved by adding carrier grade attributes such as fast protection and SLA monitoring to WAN based Ethernet. Ethernet demarcation devices are now available that allow pro-active management of Ethernet services by operators (sometimes multi-operator services as well), and that provide rapid service turn-up and periodic SLA verification. Scalability limits are largely addressed with “tunnelling” techniques including MPLS-TP and ring-based aggregation mechanisms such as G.8032,” says Alsaied.

How will SDN affect delivery of Ethernet services?

Software defined networking (SDN) offers significant opportunities and challenges for enterprise IT professionals. SDN has the potential to make networks more flexible, reduce the time to provision the network, improve quality of service, reduce operational costs and make networks more secure.

The biggest promise of SDN is the ease of provisioning through automation. Having all the Ethernet service provisioning equipment

“Many customers are shifting toward IP and Ethernet technology. With the introduction of IMS and LTE that are IP based, there will be less E1s over 2014.”

Jasim AlAwadi, VP – Fixed Access Network & Operations, du

orchestrated under one software management discipline will facilitate this. And this facet of SDN will become more prevalent in 2014 and beyond.

“The network is increasingly being defined by the applications it powers and SDN is a key tool which will facilitate efficient and timely delivery of the applications while also optimising the network performance and operations. One use case example is for the delivery of flexible, ondemand bandwidth,” says Alsaied.

AlAwadi from du adds that SDN will bring intelligence to the Ethernet services where centralizing the control layer give operators flexibility to change the network service instantly. “In terms of SDN deployment, it might be early stage to adopt it network-wide but it can be contained in a defined DC area as still the technology is under evolution and not standardized across vendors. However, we believe that within the next few years, SDN will have a major role in Ethernet service deployment.”

What’s next for Ethernet?

Internet traffic will quadruple in five years and the number of mobile Internet connections will exceed the world’s population by 2017, according to Cisco research. The number of Internet users will be a quarter billion greater this year than last and almost three times that of 2005, according to the ITU. Bandwidth requirements in data centers keep rising to accommodate the growth in users and the service levels they demand. We’re seeing it now with the progression from 10G to 40G to 100G Ethernet. Soon, Gigabit Ethernet will go the way of Fast Ethernet.

So with Ethernet speeds advancing by an order of magnitude every 10 years in the past 40, given these trends there’s no reason to expect the progression to cease over the next four decades.

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FEATURE

Disaster recovery

Are you at

risk?

The pressure is mounting on regional enterprises to ensure their disaster recovery plan is ready to protect their networks and critical infrastructure from the worst.

T

o state the obvious, disaster recovery is vital to sustain the business as companies increasingly rely on IT to drive business. Whether terrorist attacks, cataclysmic weather or simply a backhoe severing a power cable, enterprises never know when their operations may be threatened.

So the need for a sound backup and DR plan has taken on increased significance.

However when it comes to DR, regional enterprises have a tendency to under-invest in disaster recovery systems and therefore are not prepared to deal with IT disasters.

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“At the moment the Middle East is not in the same league as the Europe or the US in terms of dedicating resources to deal with disaster recovery. However, I think that this is changing, Middle East companies are starting to see the benefits that come with backup and recovery services and how investing in these resources can ensure that businesses can recover quickly from a disaster and ensure ongoing productivity,� says Gregg Peterson, Regional Sales Manager of Veeam.

Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Sales Director, WD, agrees: “Based on word of mouth in the market and on surveys carried out by several companies on this topic,

Strategic Technology Partner

storage advisor

“Having said that, it’s worth highlighting that there are also firms that are allocating increased proportions of their budgets towards DR.” Abdulla Hashim, Senior Vice President, ICT, Etisalat

it seems that a lot of Middle Eastern businesses still opt for a ‘wait and watch’ approach when it comes to disaster recovery. What this ultimately means is that a number of regional entities are far from prepared to deal with disasters, regardless of what the disaster may be. This is a precarious position to be in and quick action in terms of drawing up comprehensive plans and allocating sufficient budget is recommended.”

Abdulla Hashim, Senior Vice President, ICT, Etisalat, points out that more than 60 percent of the companies in ME have experienced data loss or system downtime in the last year. “Having said that, it’s worth

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FEATURE

Storage trends

“There is far more emphasis and focus on DR/BC in the region now than there was five years ago. This is partly due to worldwide events over the last decade that have driven businesses to think differently about ‘what do we do in the event of’ scenario.

For example, many of the data management conversations, meetings and presentations that CommVault have with end users have an element of DR built into them—it is expected.”

Allen Mitchell, Senior Technical Account Manager, MENA, CommVault

highlighting that there also firms that are allocating increased proportions of their budgets towards DR.” Allen Mitchell, Senior Technical Account Manager, MENA at CommVault Systems, offers a similar perspective: “There is far more emphasis and focus on DR/BC in the region now than there was five years ago.

This is partly due to worldwide events over the last decade that have driven business to think differently about ‘what do we do in the event of’ scenario. For example, many of the data management conversations, meetings and presentations that CommVault have with end users have an element of DR built into them―it is expected.”

Given the human tendency to look on the bright side, many business executives are prone to ignoring “disaster recovery” because disaster seems an unlikely event in the region. But something as simple as a malfunctioning software caused by virus can lead to downtime. So, what sort of eventualities should businesses be prepared for?

There will always be the human factor, says Peterson. “It’s interesting when we think about

“Based on word of mouth in the market and on surveys carried out by several companies on this topic, it seems that a lot of Middle Eastern businesses still opt for a ‘wait and watch’ approach when it comes to disaster recovery.”

Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Sales Director, WD

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what could go wrong? What if a storage network were to completely fail? What if the core network infrastructure has a failure due to a water leak? What if there is a massive theft in the data center? Natural disasters aren’t the only thing to plan for.”

Saifuddin from WD echoes a similar opinion and says natural disasters are only a small fraction of the potential disasters that businesses should be prepared for. “It pays to be paranoid when it comes to drawing up disaster recovery plans. Every business should actively plan for any eventuality given that disasters can include power outages, widespread hardware failure, data corruption, data theft, infection by deadly viruses, employee related issues etc.”

Hashim adds that businesses need to apply redundancy all the way in their network architecture as well as IT infrastructure. Continuous inspections, maintenance, hardware refresh and stringent adherence to global best practices and international certifications is vital to avoid unexpected failures.

Moving to Cloud is the most optimal plan since it provides availability till the application level, he says.

For companies embarking on DR plans, it’s very important to understand how it differs from business continuity. BC refers to maintaining business functions or quickly resuming them in the event of a major disruption. A BC plan outlines procedures and instructions an organization must follow in the face of disasters; it cover business processes, assets, human resources, business partners and more.

Many people think a disaster recovery plan is the same as a business continuity plan, but a DR plan focuses mainly on restoring IT infrastructure and operations after a crisis. It’s actually just one part of a complete business continuity plan, as a BC plan looks at

the continuity of the entire organisation. Do you have a way to get HR, manufacturing, and sales and support functionally up and running so the company can continue to make money right after a disaster?

“DR is one element of Business Continuity which pertains to backing up the data/applications and recovering it in case of disaster. Business Continuity is all encompassing and mandates that overall business operations are up and running as it was before the disaster. This includes, for example, sales operations, customer support, and customers billing with the entire spectrum of predefined processes and procedures being documented, available and rehearsed, says Hashim.

It is also important to tackle storage, which is a critical aspect of DR. “All storage and data management vendors have DR/ BC solutions of varying degree’s to address end user requirements. However, it is often a factor of the investment which determines the solution.

There are some very high end storage solutions on the market that allow for complete BC resilience from a storage, data, automatic application restart and recovery and server point of view,” says Mitchell.

Saifuddin says the storage related portion of disaster recovery plans should be designed around ensuring that mission critical data is protected, and is accessible to the business with as little delay as possible, post disaster. If the data is secure but it takes a long time for the business to gain access to that data after the disaster, it will hinder the organisation’s ability to get back to work and thus generate revenue.

“In terms of storage availability and the respective deployment methods for disaster recovery sites, there are new technologies that can reduce the overhead of deploying the same size of storage for a disaster recovery site,” says Shahab Ahsan, System Engineer, Smartworld.

Establish a downtime threshold When building a disaster-recovery plan, the first objective should be to decide the recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO).

The RPO dictates the allowable data loss, while the RTO is the amount of time applications can afford to be down—the maximum tolerable outage.

60%

of companies in the region have experienced data loss or downtime

If a business has difficulty establishing the RPO and RTO, a business impact analysis (BIA) can help. The basic assumption behind a BIA is that every element of the organization relies upon the continued operation of every other element, but some elements are more crucial than others.

The BIA prioritizes mission-critical data and systems and helps organizations allocate the appropriate resources for each component in case of a cataclysmic event. The BIA can also show IT managers and business owners alike how much money they could lose by not implementing a disaster-recovery plan.

“At the moment the Middle East is not in the same league as the Europe or the US in terms of dedicating resources to deal with disaster recovery.”

Gregg Peterson, Regional Sales Manager of Veeam

If a disaster occurs, how much time can your business afford to lose? An hour? A day? A week?

An organization that requires immediate recovery will need to budget significantly more funds for disaster recovery than an organization that can afford to be down for a few days. In the same fashion, a tight RPO is expensive, but companies must weigh preventative expenditures against the potentially exorbitant cost of significant data loss.

Identifying the RPO and RTO will help you allocate the appropriate resources.

According to Gartner, two out of five businesses that experience a disaster go out of business within five years. Moreover, disasters happen more frequently than you think because 80 percent of application downtime is caused by people or processes failures, not disasters or technology failure. It is an imperative for businesses to establish a DR plan and technologies such as the cloud are giving IT new options for how to deal with backup and DR.

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security advisor

Strategic IT BYOD Partner

Prevention is better than cure With security so high on the agenda, businesses are doing everything they can to safeguard their networks from cyber-criminals keen to capitalise on software exploits. But do businesses pay enough attention to software updates when there are hundreds of other issues to address? And how can businesses plan to accommodate the downtime that some updates require?

“S

oftware is becoming more complex, it contains thousands of code lines written by different developers. That’s why almost every piece of software has some unknown bugs or vulnerabilities. These bugs are discovered by users or by hackers reverse engineering the

software to find weakness they can exploit.”

These words, from Ghareeb Saad, Senior Security Researcher, Global Research and Analysis Team, Kaspersky Lab, illustrate perfectly the need to do regular software updates. That said, experts consistently worry that too many Middle Eastern organisations fail to adhere to regular update cycles, giving cyber-criminals an opportunity to exploit

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Software updates

weaknesses in older software versions.

“When a new vulnerability is discovered or becomes known to the public, software vendors work on them and release updates or patches to fix these vulnerabilities and prevent their exploitation.

That means that old software versions will contain known vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers and used to break the organisation’s security―that’s why using old software versions poses great risks of different kinds to organisations’ security,” explains Saad.

According to the Global Corporate IT Security Risks 2013 survey, conducted by B2B International in collaboration with Kaspersky Lab, software vulnerabilities are among the top three reasons for all internal “incidents”, Saad adds. According to the report, 32 percent of respondents in the UAE said that out-of-date software caused an incident, while 39 percent of respondents in Saudi Arabia said the same. Perhaps most worryingly, while regular patch and software update management is one of the most common measures to minimise security risks, only 62 percent in the UAE and 45 percent in Saudi Arabia regularly implement patches, the report adds.

“Many organisations in the Middle East are starting to pay more attention to updates and patches, but statistics from our Kaspersky security network (or KSN) show that most exploited vulnerabilities in the region are old patched vulnerabilities. That means a lot of organisations are not doing regular updates, and more work needs to be done to improve the awareness on the importance of applying patches and software updates,” says Saad.

Naturally, it isn’t always easy to apply patches

“Knowledge is power and knowing what to do and when to do it is vital for the operations and security of an organisation. Realtime vulnerability intelligence is the key to achieving this.” and updates, especially when the updates require downtime. Pradeesh VS, General Manager, ESET Middle East, explains that, for some organisations, the desire to stay ‘always-on’ could actually contribute to a decision not to apply software updates, even when the security risks are high.

“It’s a factor in any context where downtime has a significant impact on core business processes and the functionality can’t be transferred temporarily to other machines. This has always been a significant factor in SCADA and ICS installations where a critical industrial process, for instance, is carried out using a hardware and software combination, where there is no hardware redundancy, or it’s considered too expensive or disruptive to close down or transfer the process for an update that’s considered non-critical and can’t be applied while the process is running. Similar considerations often

“Software is becoming more complex, it contains thousands of code lines written by different developers. That’s why almost every software has some unknown bugs or vulnerabilities. These bugs are discovered by users or by hackers reverse engineering the software to find weakness they can exploit.”

Ghareeb Saad, Senior Security Researcher, Global Research and Analysis Team, Kaspersky Lab

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Third-party software is where

86%

of all vulnerabilities are found

“There are services for alerting customers to the existence of vulnerabilities and the availability of remediation, so I would suggest using these rather than relying on security solutions to eliminate the need for updates and patches.”

Pradeesh VS, General Manager, ESET Middle East

apply in medical and medical research contexts, too. An additional factor in all these scenarios is the difficulty or impossibility of testing an update before applying it to ‘live’ or critical systems,” he says.

When it comes to servers, however, Nilesh Shirke, Principal Consultant, Security Technology, Tech Mahindra, believes that there are steps that organisations can take in order to minimise downtime when applying patches.

“Downtime can be avoided by limiting the code that actually runs on business-critical machines during normal operation. No production technology has yet been able to reliably patch executable code that is loaded into computer memory and running.

That implies that any patch to running code will

“Many of the biggest and most targeted software providers have an update schedule, but organisations also need to monitor update issues that may not be immediately flagged by the vendor.”

require the code to be stopped and restarted. In the case of the operating system, that means a reboot,” he says.

“It is understood that only a small number could be installed with no fear of a reboot. It’s a useful best practice to think of reboot reduction using the 10-80-10 rule. The data from Windows Server showed that patches not requiring a reboot are about 10 percent of the total. Another 10 percent of patches apply to the Windows Server kernel and thus require a reboot unless there is a workaround.

The remaining 80 percent will only require reboots if the specific executable code being patched is running when the patch is applied. Paying attention to this last class of patches can help increase the time between reboots and even improve the overall security of the server.”

That said, most organisations―particularly small and mid-sized ones―tend to simply prioritise patches on a case-by-case basis, which is perhaps why so many organisations in the Middle East are running on older software versions. According to Simon Azzopardi, Vice President for EMEA and APAC, Secunia, this does excuse some businesses from paying too much attention to patches, but they should still realise that they are putting themselves at risk.

“Most private individuals and even small businesses believe it is too time-consuming and too complex to update their software and do not make it a priority. Many believe that, once they have updated their Microsoft programs when prompted by the company, they have done all that they need to. The problem is that on average, a private PC in the US has 75 programs on it―only 30 of those are from Microsoft, and 45 are from third-party vendors. But third-party software is where 86 percent of all vulnerabilities are found,” he says.

The software numbers are similar in the Middle East. Unfortunately, Azzopardi believes that not enough organisations pay attention to software updates, yet he also says that more businesses are beginning to wake up to the need to do so.

“The fact that this year has been one of the worst years in the Middle East for network breaches proves that the Middle East is still lacking when it comes to taking a proactive approach to network security. However, we are now starting to see that companies are starting to prioritise network security and patching is high on the list of

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“Most private individuals and even small businesses believe it is too time-consuming and too complex to update their software and do not make it a priority. Many believe that, once they have updated their Microsoft programs when prompted by the company, they have done all that they need to.”

Simon Azzopardi, Vice President for EMEA and APAC, Secunia

Vulnerabilities are among the top

3

reasons for all internal incidents, according to Kaspersky Lab

priorities,” he explains.

Unfortunately, for all the talk of needing to update security patches, there is still one large problem – zero-day flaws. These are vulnerabilities that software vendors do not know about themselves, and hackers work hard to try to exploit them for as long as possible before businesses update. According to ESET’s Pradeesh VS, these are possibly the biggest threats facing businesses today.

“It’s the ones you don’t yet know about, the ones that don’t yet have remediation, and the ones for which you haven’t been able to apply remediation yet. Some, unfortunately, you won’t know about because a service supplier only gives information on the vulnerability or breach to its customers, and few organisations have the resources to subscribe to all these services,” he says.

Indeed, this would suggest that it can be nigh-on

“Many organisations are starting to pay more attention to updates and patches, but statistics from our Kaspersky Security Network show that most exploited vulnerabilities are old, patched vulnerabilities.”

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impossible to protect against attacks, and, up to a point, this is true, according to Tech Mahindra’s Shirke. He says that, because no-one can fully protect themselves from breaches, businesses should instead be taking proactive approaches to security―hoping for the best but planning for the worst could be a big mantra in the security world going forward.

“Businesses must be ready to revise their strategies based on proactive measures, and they must anticipate unpredictable attacks. This way, they are armed with the right tools and measures to minimise the damage associated with an unexpected breach without wasting any time,” he says.

“The new approach should be based on the fact that breaches are part of everyday life and it is a matter of time and the aim today is to be ready when the breach happens. So security infrastructure is shifting from point products to an enterpriseintegrated approach based on key foundation elements that allow proactive alerting, real-time monitoring, analytical correlation, predictive threat management and simple management.”

When it comes to patch management, however, there are still updates to watch out for, as there’s no doubting that some exploits are more popular than others among hackers. Kaspersky’s Saad explains which vulnerabilities to pay attention to.

“The most popular and dangerous vulnerabilities are client-side software vulnerabilities: in the Middle East region on the top are those in Oracle Java, VLC Media Player and Adobe Reader. These could be used in targeted attacks to send emails with malicious attachment that would exploit vulnerable software to bypass the organisation security and gain access to their internal network,” he warns.

LEADING EDGE IN

CLOUD EMC2, EMC, and the EMC logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. Š Copyright 2013 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

FEATURE

Blurred lines

Blurred lines As the IT channel has struggled with decreasing margins on boxed products, many resellers have sought to take a services-oriented approach to business. This means that there are now a number of highly specalised value-added resellers rubbing shoulders with larger systems integrators, and they’re all bidding for the same projects.

But as an IT manager, is it preferable to work with a small, specialised reseller, or to take on a fully fledged systems integrator?

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integration advisor

I

For many CIOs and IT heads, this scenario is all too familiar.

Despite even the most meticulous planning, some projects simply seem to have a will of their own, and that will often works against the end-users, throwing up delays and added costs. Sometimes it’s simply a case of overlooking something simple, while other times, problems with implementation come about because of totally unforeseeable circumstances. It doesn’t really matter what kind of technology you’re dealing with – at some point, any project can bring up a nasty surprise.

According to Marc Jessiman, Solutions Director, Dimension Data UAE, the statistics say that the majority of new implementations do not in fact meet time or budget requirements, meaning that most CIOs are often grappling with large problems.

“According to a 2009 study by the Standish Group, only 32 percent of all IT projects ‘succeed’, which means they’re delivered on time, on budget, with required features and functions. Forty-four percent are ‘challenged’ (late, over budget, and/or with less than the required features and functions) and 24 percent ‘fail’, meaning they were cancelled prior to completion or delivered and never used,” he says.

Jessiman explains that there are plenty of reasons for projects going over-budget or taking longer than expected. Indeed, sometimes the issues that arise are often thrust upon CIOs by outside forces. www.cnmeonline.com

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“CIOs find themselves engaged in an on-going struggle to deliver their IT projects in line with expectations. To stay at the top of your game, you need to constantly consider a myriad of new solutions,” he says.

"CIOs find themselves engaged in an ongoing struggle to deliver their IT projects in line with expectations. All too often, this is down to grand promises from an unqualified solutions provider."

“Managing an IT project is very much a juggling act. Information technology is always moving, changing. Limited staff, smaller budgets and fewer resources are some other key reasons for project failure. IT project management is complicated further by shifting business needs and demanding stakeholders, the combination of which creates the perfect storm for project inefficiencies and failures. And the problem only intensifies as IT grows ubiquitous.”

Despite the numbers being against them, however, there are things that IT professionals can do ahead of implementation to avoid falling into the ‘fail’ category. Surprises may come up, of course, but there are at least precautions that can be taken to minimise the effects of them. First and foremost, proper planning should be considered as a cornerstone to any successful project, Jessiman says.

“Successful projects don’t just happen. Without proper planning, organisations have little chance of completing their projects on time, on budget or with the required functionality. These are three common factors for project success,” he explains.

“Planning is critical for all IT projects.

Organisation, rigour and discipline are nonnegotiable. You need to consider the resources you need to devote to a project, the skills required and realistically consider the time it will take to develop, test and implement the project deliverables. Without proper planning, you will have little chance of completing your project on time, on budget or with the required functionality.

Using sound project management techniques and processes will increase the chances that your project will be completed on time, within budget, and to an acceptable level of quality.”

According to Jessiman, no matter what a new project entails, a standard planning framework should be applied so every eventuality can be accounted for. Naturally, it is up to the CIO to adopt the role of project manager, and he or she must establish the rules for going forward, while also managing the expectations of the line-of-business managers. For this, he says, CIOs should adopt what he calls a project management methodology.

“It is critical to adopt a standard approach to managing your IT projects. A project management methodology is a knowledge base containing guidelines, standards, procedures, tools and techniques to support the successful execution of IT projects,” he says.

“By adopting a standard approach to project management, you are able to establish ground rules and expectations for the project team.

You’ll also provide project managers, functional managers and operational staff with a common language around project management that facilitates communication and helps ensure that everyone is on the same page.”

But before the project has even started, Jessiman says that proof-of-concepts and test runs are essential. He says that skipping the test runs is often at the root of many problems when it comes to implementation, adding that it tends to lead to a culture of rushing through things that need to be more carefully considered.

“IT projects often fail because they’re rushed.

Because so many companies today rely on IT for a competitive advantage, they speed through development efforts and systems implementations in order to be first to market with new, IT-based products, services and capabilities. But projects

"You need to consider the resources you need to devote to a project, the skills required and realistically consider the time it will take to develop, test and implement the project deliverables. Without proper planning, you have little chance of completing your project, no matter who you work with." that are tackled without sufficient time being set aside for planning, risk assessment and testing will be doomed from the start,” he explains.

So how do businesses avoid the risk of failure? According to Jessiman, it simply comes down to the project management methodology.

He says that the framework should be built to be applicable to any project, but should also be flexible enough to accommodate the needs of any specific project going forward. According to him, this is the key to successfully implementing something on time and to budget.

“Good IT projects that are delivered on time and to budget are those that build a sufficient degree of flexibility into its project management methodology. The project management methodology must be well-thought-out and customised both in terms of national and organisational culture,” he says.

Jessiman also adds caution when it comes to trying to replicate projects seen elsewhere in the world. After all, things work differently everywhere, so it might not be as easy as it seems to copy and paste ideas across companies.

This makes a personalised project management methodology even more important.

“Remember what ‘fits’ in Europe or in Asia will not necessarily work in other regions, individual countries, economies or industries. It comes down to context. Success requires a project management methodology that applies to all projects, while allowing each kind of project to be performed in accordance to its specific needs,” he says. www.cnmeonline.com

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SMB offerings

Targeting the SMB It’s no secret that economies across the Middle East are dependent on the success of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and there’s no doubting just how large the region’s SME market is. It’s little wonder, then, that telecoms operators are keen to take hold of that market with specialised packages tailored specifically for small businesses.

But could the operators be doing more, and can a real business case be made for making available the lower-margin services that SMEs desire?

I

t would seem that the telecoms world saw something of a shift during 2013. While margins from traditional revenue streams surrounding voice and text continued to fall, demand for data went through the roof, and it continues to climb. Undoubtedly, 2013 was the year of mobile data.

Evidence for this can be found in the UAE market alone, though the country’s operators are hardly the only ones in the region to have seen the shift from voice- to data-driven business models. Operators are capitalising on their investments in LTE, offering more varied data bundles than ever before. When it comes to voice and text, operators have resorted to offering cheap international rates to customers who top up their pay-as-you-go accounts, just to get more prepaid credit flowing. Quite how long such tricks will keep 58

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strategic telecom partner

telecoms WORLD revenues up remains to be seen, but it’s clear that the rising demand of data-driven services has disrupted the industry completely.

That said, already operators have taken the data-driven business by the horns and many are experiencing fantastic growth as a result, according to Omar Alsaied, Middle East Carriers Sales Director Ciena.

“Regional operators are still experiencing massive growth in traffic and data services revenues. The business sector specifically is driving demand and revenue growth for most operators. We are still seeing investments in network access for both residential and business use, in addition to investment in the network infrastructure where fibre optics technology is playing a significant role,” he says.

Over the course of 2014, then, can we expect to see more of the same? Well, it would be difficult to argue that demand for data-driven services will slow any time soon. With smartphone penetration getting higher every year – and with more people buying LTE-ready devices – user demand for on-the-go connectivity is only set to increase.

There are opportunities to be found here, however.

According to Pan En, Vice President, Huawei Middle East, the impact of the apps and software ecosystems in the telecoms industry has been nothing short of astonishing. And as more and more developers bring their products to market, the popularity of data services will continue to skyrocket, pushing operators’ revenues up.

“Today, we estimate that software innovation outpaces network innovation by at least a factor of five.

Application developers often reach the market in only three to six months, while operators often take 18 to 24 months to launch a new service,” he says.

“Behind the popularity of data services in 2014, we believe, will be developers focusing on more specific app categories based on their primary expertise— whether that be for business, media or entertainment apps. Operators, meanwhile, need to tap into the right developers to address their own service portfolio, while developers can distinguish themselves in presently underserved niche markets.”

To cope with this demand for data, it is a reasonably safe bet that operators will turn to LTE networks that can handle the loads and deliver faster download speeds on the go. Tunç Yorulmaz, Executive Vice President and Head of Sales, Ericsson Middle East, believes that a number of operators will begin to view

“Increasingly we see the trend that SMEs want to be prepared beforehand in anticipation of future growth. In this respect, there are many trendsetters who have decided to adopt Cloud-based services. This assures them quick scalability as they grow.”

Vikram Chadha, Vice President, SME Marketing, du

60%

The estimated GDP that SMEs contribute to the UAE economy

LTE as a real differentiator over the coming year.

“On the path to the Networked Society, in which everything that benefits from a connection will have one, we expect to see many new innovations in the telecom industry. LTE can offer a technological edge to operators and it can be a real differentiator to rivals.

LTE can also help acquire new spectrums and avoid many Wide Code Division Multiple Access limitations.

Other operators see LTE as a solution to their 3G networks that are overloaded,” he says.

“With the increasing demand for high data services by customers, who are becoming used to watching their favourite TV shows or movies in HD on their smart devices, we can predict that operators will increasingly deploy LTE / 4G solutions and associated services.”

Aside from the demand for data services going up, new trends are also expected to hit the region’s telecoms market over the course of the next year.

According to Rabih Itani, operators in 2013 realised the benefits of investing in Wi-Fi technology, not only to offload from their congested 3G networks, but also to establish new revenue streams. This is a trend that he believes will gain more traction in 2014.

“The year 2014 will witness the embracement of Hotspot 2.0 services. It is clear that, as Hotspot 2.0 becomes increasingly adopted by Wi-Fi infrastructure manufacturers, device manufacturers and eventually mobile operators, subscribers will feel a drastically improved experience in connecting to Wi-Fi networks, even when roaming. As a result, operators are expected to experience whopping increase in number of Wi-Fi service connected user and their corresponding traffic,” he says.

“During the year 2014, smart operators will start

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FEATURE

SMB offerings

to monetize their Wi-Fi networks beyond 3G offload and towards added value services such as location analytics, security services, and more.”

The next year won’t simply be about providing end-users with Internet access, however. According to Sherry Zameer, Head of Telecommunication Solutions, Gemalto Middle East, 2014 will see a significant rise in the popularity of machine-to-machine services.

“Mobile operators are looking to open up new consumer segments for themselves in a B2B business model or a B2B2C environment for which M2M will look to play a big part. M2M today is a trend that challenges the mobile operators to take a bigger part of the value chain by investing in a ubiquitous ecosystem over which mobile operators can service the same application to multiple enterprises from the same sector,” Zameer says.

Zameer adds that network convergence and mobile payments through near-field communications will continue to shake up the industry over the next

year. However, perhaps the most pertinent issue that operators will need to address going into 2014 is how their infrastructures will be able to cope with the increased demand for all of these new services.

According to Glen Ogden, Regional Sales Director, Middle East, A10 Networks, operators will need to invest in more equipment than ever before – and that they will soon look to other avenues in order to keep their networks running smoothly.

“The increase in smart devices has led to both IPv4 exhaustion and capacity issues with most operators revising their data centre/point of presence (POPs) throughput requirements significantly. Where in 2012 40Gb was considered, even by the most forwardthinking operators, as adequate to meet demand, 2013 has seen those figures rise three-fold with 120Gb being seen as a stop gap whilst switches and routers can be upgraded to 40Gb or even 100Gb fibre interfaces and operators can deliver upwards of 200Gb/s per POP,” he says.

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Face to face Hicham Abdessamad

Hicham Abdessamad, Executive Vice President, Global Services, Hitachi Data Systems

‘Storage is a company’s blood’ CNME sits down with Hicham Abdessamad, Executive Vice President, Global Services, Hitachi Data Systems, for a chat about all things storage and his own firm’s prospects in the Middle East.

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T

ell us about your enhanced infrastructure solutions (Hitachi Unified Storage VM).

A lot of our customers have told us that they love the functionality and the availability of our enterprise storage system but they don’t like the cost. HUS VM is sort of a baby enterprise system;it inherits all the qualities of an enterprise system at a lower price point. It takes everything you know that is great and scales it down for customers to consume.

How will CIOs benefit from these updates, and how are they able to reduce TCO? It stems from a tiering strategy, as you look at data and data growth in general it doesn’t make sense to store your data in one platform, because it’s not all created equal. Data has different value, for example through its life cycle. What CIOs can say is, “I will put my most important and missioncritical appplications on an enterprise system, but there’s some data that’s also important and I want to put it on a modular system, but I still love the qualities of the enterprise system.” I like the functionality, I can replicate it, I can do thin provisioning, there’s a lot of things you can do. We decided that instead of bringing a modular system which is just cheap storage, we would give you a lot of that capability in the modular system and give a better cost point so you can spread data. We’re doing well in that area.

The best way to measure storage value is to look at cost per gigabyte per month, and that includes hardware, maintenance, staff etc. The cost of HUS VM is lower than what it would be in an enterprise system. It has good availability, and all the functionality.

Hitachi Data Systems expects a customer relationship to last

4-5 years

“This region is very slow adapting to cloud. A lot of customers we have spoken to talk about private cloud. I think public is something they don’t see in the forseeable future for whatever reason.”

You can have an enterprise system talking to a modular one, you can set a policy that moves data across based on access rates and business needs so instead of putting everything in one place and paying all this money for it you start to have a tiered storage strategy which is aimed at reducing cost over the long run.

What can you tell us about storage trends in the Middle East? How mature a market is it in relation to other emerging markets?

In the store set I think it’s a fairly mature market, there are a lot of customers that buy enterprise systems, and those customers will buy HUS VM which is the tier 2 format, we have customers that understand the difference between the two and actually like to embrace both. Customers realise that storage is a company’s blood and you have to make sure it’s sitting on the right platform, as it is critical to a business.

What growth has Global Services seen in recent years and what aspects of the business does it look at?

We’ve seen double digit growth, it is one of our fastest growing businesses. The biggest thing fuelling our growth is our manausssss service business, which is providing private cloud services for our customers in our data centres. We have customers that don’t want to go public but like to buy things as a service, who don’t want to buy a piece of hardware and then the software and integrate it themselves where it’s a CAPEX model. Instead they prefer to put it on the data centre and pay for what they use, HDS manage it and ensure that it’s always

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updated and make sure it’s best-of-breed technology, and that way the customer pays per month per GB based on tiers.

That means we become more of a service catalogue, shifting us from CAPEX to OPEX consumption models. Financially it puts all the risk to the vendor but we like it, it gives the customer flexibility and it’s typically a four to five-year relationship.

Can you tell me about the rise of cloud and how that has affected your department?

This region is very slow adapting to cloud.

A lot of the customers we have spoken to talk about private cloud. I think public is something they don’t see in the foreseeable future for whatever reason. I do think in a couple of years we’ll be having a different discussion. It’s not one versus the other, it’s going to be one and the other and it’s just a matter of what you put in private and what you put in public. It’s almost inevitable.

Sometimes people like to compare the two or express a preference, but they will coexist and it’s a matter of how much you put in each.

IT decision makers need to do an analysis on benefits of cloud in general, cloud strategy, they have to figure out whether private cloud or public cloud is best for their business. I think shadow IT will start to happen, business units will go around it and will start to buy their services from someone else. If you don’t control shadow IT you’ll end up with two or three applications and that’s about it. You have to embrace cloud and control it so that people won’t bypass the CIO and buy services themselves. january 2014

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Insight Bad predictions

Predictions gone wrong: Losing bets analysts made for 2013 Analyst forecasts are meant to help IT prepare for the future. But the future doesn’t always follow that script.

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C

ast your mind back to the late 2000s―when the iPhone 3G beguiled consumers and the iTunes App Store began shifting users’ ideas about how they bought and used software, when Microsoft pros saw nothing but clear skies after Windows 7 cleared out the Windows Vista storm, when green technology was touted as a transformative force in IT. In 2008 and 2009, professional tech forecasters made their best guesses about what IT would look like in 2013. These forecasts are often meant to help IT professionals figure out where they’ll get the most bang for the buck in the historical three- to five-year timelines for IT planning.

No company wants to sink a substantial percentage of its IT budget into a flash-inthe-pan technology―and everyone wants to be a low-cost fast follower. Established analysts’ predictions are part of how IT avoids the first fate and achieves the second.

Now that future has arrived. If IT pros had listened to the forecasts in 2008, would they have spent their money wisely or well?

We plumbed the archives for some of the forecasts made about 2013, then tried to see how they held up in a world that’s since seen the iPad and the spread of mobile working, plus the explosion of cloud computing.

Prediction 1: The overall market for green IT services will peak at $4.8 billion in 2013.

What happened: The recession happened, and “our technology is green” went from being a goal to being a side benefit. Public cloud computing providers like Apple, Google, and Facebook may be building cleanenergy facilities, but they’re doing so with an eye toward reducing the bottom lines on energy consumption. In markets such as the United States, “green IT” has retreated as a market.

On the bright side, however, it looks like there’s still a green IT market in India. This year, Gartner is expecting Indian companies to spend $29.2 billion on technologies like advanced metering infrastructure, carbon capture, and solar energy technology, and enterprises in the Middle East have displayed plenty of interest in using emerging technologies to cut down on their carbon footprints.

“The iPad happened in 2010, and individuals have been shifting their technology dollars to tablets ever since.

IDC, which made the original forecast, has tracked PC sales for this year, and the news isn’t good: Worldwide PC shipments are expected to fall by 10.1 percent in 2013.”

Prediction 2: PC shipments will record double-digit growth from 2009 to 2013, buoyed by growing demand for laptops and netbooks.

What happened: The iPad happened in 2010, and individuals have been shifting their technology dollars to tablet technologies ever since. IDC, which made the original forecast, has tracked PC sales for this year, and the news isn’t good: Worldwide PC shipments are expected to fall by 10.1 percent in 2013, below the previous projection of a 9.7 percent drop.

It’s the most severe yearly contraction on record and reflects a truth in IT budgets: Any sales and growth in personal computers is fuelled by replacement sales.

The market isn›t growing. Worldwide, an estimated 314 million PCs were sold this year―far below the 444 million PCs predicted back in 2009. People are buying iPads and other tablets instead.

Prediction 3: Mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web-access device worldwide by 2013.

What happened: Although the originator of this prediction, Gartner, didn’t respond to inquiries, other firms have been tracking Web access and have shared their findings.

In March 2013, Adobe released its analysis of Web traffic to more than 1,000 websites and found that 84 percent of all Web traffic came from users on desktop or laptop computers, 8 percent from tablet users, and 7 percent from smartphone users. StatCounter, which tracks visits to websites via ad network data, found that desktop usage still dominates at 76.1 percent. www.cnmeonline.com

Prediction 4: Windows Mobile will claim 15 percent of the global smartphone market, second to the Symbian OS’s 47 percent market share.

What happened: Nokia got killed by iOS and Android, that›s what happened. Since IHS iSuppli made this prediction in 2009, the once-dominant force in the mobile phone market was overtaken by device makers who understood the basic truth that users care more about smartphone software than they do the hardware. When Nokia began its death spiral, it took Symbian with it, which explains why the OS has a 0.1 percent market share today. iSuppli now says Android is the leader in the smartphone OS market with a 76.5 percent share, with Apple’s iOS a distant second with 14.9 percent. As for Windows Phone, Windows Mobile’s successor? It’s an even more distant third with 3.9 percent of the market.

Prediction 5: By 2013, the enterprise mashup market will reach $700 million.

What happened: Enterprise mash-ups, which were once defined as the integration of digital data from multiple sources for business purposes, have since been rebranded. You may know them now as part of the API and Big Data phenomena.

Asking analyst firms about estimated market sizes for enterprise mash-ups in 2013 gets you a lot of, “We don’t measure that market,” responses. However, Gartner estimates that Big Data will be a $34 billion market in 2014. That’s 48 times greater than the original forecast for mash-ups. Maybe this one will be true. january 2014

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Insight Innovation

Innovation management: No longer an oxymoron To foster innovation, IT leaders must balance blue-sky thinking and practical goals, according to the firms with a proven track record for innovative solutions.

W

hen it comes to innovation, IT and business leaders expend a lot of effort prying their organizations out of the box.

At The Hershey Co., Deborah Arcoleo, an innovation director, encourages innovation teams to act like anthropologists before brainstorming workshops, observing the outside world and exploring all kinds of retailers.

At Capital One, CTO Monique Shivanandan hosts trips to rub shoulders with the people behind start-ups and famous innovation houses like Google.

But just as too many constraints will squelch creativity, too much bluesky thinking can take you out of orbit.

To foster innovation, IT leaders must balance creativity with control. A PriceAwaterhouseCoopers survey of 1,757 executives found that 78 percent of the most innovative companies structured their creative efforts, compared with just 66 percent of less-innovative ones.

Balancing structure and creativity, however, often means designing new

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processes. When creating its Digital Innovation Labs two years ago, Capital One replaced its waterfall development methodology with agile processes.

Because agile places designers side-by-side with developers, it meshes the creative with the doable, Shivanandan says.

“The designers aren’t thinking up ideas that are impossible to build,” Shivanandan says. “And it’s much more fun for developers because they’re not just Acoders; they’re building along with the designers.”

One of the structured creativity guidelines at the $21.4 billion bank is that innovation labs must include between 20 and 45 people. Too small, and the group could lack the necessary diversity; too big, and it could become unfocused, bureaucratic and “more like a day job,” Shivanandan says.

It’s crucial to find structures that work for what innovation consultant Chris Trimble calls “the ignored side of innovation”-namely, execution. Unlike with traditional project management, innovating companies are attempting to implement the new while still meeting day-to-day demands, says www.cnmeonline.com

Trimble, co-author of Beyond the Idea: How to Execute Innovation in Any Organization.

Rather than shoehorning innovation into employees’ slack time, he says, companies need to combine dedicated teams with other staff that divides its time between daily work and innovation. “That’s a structure designed to do both jobs at the same time.”

While employees at Hershey are encouraged to seek insights from unlikely sources during the exploration phase of innovation, they focus on a business goal, such as product development or process improvements, Arcoleo says. “They’re not floating around untethered.”

Ideas are captured and executive sponsors screen, sort and rank them. From Hershey’s Simple Pleasures to Rolo Minis, most products that the $6.6 billion company has launched in recent years have gone through a similar process.

“There are times to be convergent, or structured and analytic, and times to be divergent, or open-minded and creative,” she says. “It’s important that the project champion signals to the team which mind-set to be in, so people know how to behave.”

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PRODUCTS

Launches and releases

PRODUCT WATCH A breakdown of the top products and solutions to launch and release in the last month.

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

Product: Vibe X Vendor: Lenovo What it does: This is the latest addition to Lenovo’s quickly growing line of premium smartphones that has been released in the Middle East lately. And though it sits at a midrange price point, there’s hardly anything midrange about the specs that it packs. The five-inch display offers a Full HD resolution, and delivers an incredibly sharp 440 pixels per inch – much better than the iPhone 5S’s 326 ppi. Meanwhile, the device features a stellar 13-megapixel rear camera and a best-in-class 5-megapixel frontfacing camera.

What you need to know: Even the Vibe X’s processor looks better than what you’d expect for the retail price of Dh1,699. It’s a quad-core 1.5 GHz unit with 2GB of memory. The device comes as standard with 16GB of internal storage.

The device comes pre-loaded with Android 4.2, a number of apps, and perhaps the most comprehensive photography suite seen on any Android smartphone to date. If this device is everything it’s cracked up to be, Lenovo’s rivals should be very, very worried.

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www.cnmeonline.com

Product: VAIO Fit PC Vendor: Sony What it does: Sony recently launched the new VAIO Fit PC in the UAE. The device features a multi-flip hinge that transforms the PC to tablet or viewer modes while offering the functionality of a traditional clamshell laptop. The device series is available with 15-inch, 14-inch and 13-inch screen sizes. The PC’s chassis is constructed with an aluminium hairline finish, and the notebook comes with a full-pitch keyboard, touch pad and palm rest.

What you need to know: According to Sony, the VAIO Fit’s laptop mode delivers the same performance as a conventional notebook PC. It features an Exmor RS for PC imaging sensor, which enables high-resolution image capture of documents. The back-illuminated CMOS sensor also ensures there is reduced noise in low-light situations. It also sports a TRILUMINOS display for mobile and X-Reality for mobile, adapted from technology used in the Sony BRAVIA 2013 range of TVs.

Product: Mini Jambox Vendor: Jawbone

Product: R7 Ultrabook Vendor: Acer What it does: The R7 now includes the latest fourth-generation Intel processor and an Acer Active Pen, which the vendor claims will help to redefine the notebook touch experience. Whether that’s true or not, the R7 has 12GB of memory, up to 1TB hard drive (or up to 256GB SSD), and full-size backlit keyboard, meaning it’s a reasonably well-specced Ultrabook for the price. As standard, the device comes with Windows 8.1, the long-awaited update to the Windows 8 operating system.

What you need to know: Acer says that the R7 was designed to provide the best environment for both touch and typing, so the device features a re-positioned keyboard and high-definition touchscreen mounted on what it calls an “Ezel hinge”, which allows the screen to flip, reverse, lie flat or float.

With four modes of operation, the R7 can easily be used as a traditional notebook, a table-top pad, a display, or switched into “Ezel” mode, allowing the screen to float over the keyboard at various angles.

www.cnmeonline.com

What it does: Though it’s squarely aimed at the consumer segment of the market, there’s no denying that the Mini Jambox from Jawbone is an interesting little device. The mini set of wireless speakers was specifically designed to be able to fit into a user’s pocket, though it delivers a full, dynamic sound that’s normally associated with larger – and more expensive – speaker sets.

What you need to know: What’s more, despite its size, the Mini Jambox comes packed full of smart features. The device can be paired with the Jawbone app - available on both iOS and Android – which allows users to wirelessly save and stream music. It can also personalise the device with new features as and when they become available.

Information about the speakers – such as battery status – is also provided through the app. january 2014

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Column The word on the street

James Dartnell

A wristed development

S

o here we are in 2014. After a year that’s seen the rise of BYOD and mobile malware, could wearable technology really kick off over the next 12 months, or will it take several years for innovation and consumption to gain momentum in the field?

Juniper Research predicted that 15 million smart wearable devices would be sold in 2013, a number that will jump to 70 million in 2017. The wearable device market is expected to be worth more than $1.5 billion in 2014, and by 2018 will have hit $19 billion.

But in terms of mainstream smart wearable objects we’ve seen so far, a lot of work is needed. Several products have lacked battery life, processing power, and ultimately, innovation.

Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch offering was about as convincing as its perverse and sinister skiing advertising campaign, and at $250, it was expensive for a product that needed a lot of development.

Meanwhile, the Google Glass eyeware shows potential but is also overpriced―as well as being raw―and a long way from establishing itself in the consumer market.

The area lacks one key player, who is

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

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conspicuous by its absence. Apple’s iWatch is allegedly due for release in 2014, and given the company’s track record for innovation, it will surely set the standard for its industry competitors.

In the meantime, the start of the CES 2014 trade show could serve as a window for what developments are on the horizon.

We can expect more smartwatches, smart eyewear, and wrist-worn activity trackers, and ten smartwatch manufacturers―including Burg Limited, Cookoo, Sonostar, Kronoz, Metawatch, and Neptune Pine―will stake a claim to the wrists of Nevada’s public.

But what is needed for the wearable technologies market to really take off?

Surely an extra ingredient is needed to take wearable tech to the next level?

The main problem with wearable smart objects is that they are ultimately difficult to use and aesthetically unattractive. They have a tendency to be confusing, and require a lot of development before they will be ready for the mass market. What’s more, they largely do the same things are smartphones and tablets.

“The wearables market is experiencing a hype bubble right now, but so did the Internet in 1999, and that didn’t make the Internet any less important,” says J.P. Gownder, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research. “Still, wearables vendors need to make sure that they are solving unique problems for users."

There lies the nucleus of wearable tech’s flaw. Although futuristic, for the time being, a lot of what’s on offer is stylish, but lacking substance. Watch this space.

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