ISSUE 296 | SEPTEMBER 2016 WWW.CNMEONLINE.COM STRATEGIC ICT PARTNER
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EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL Group Editor Jeevan Thankappan jeevan.thankappan@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9129
Breathing the hype
Editor James Dartnell james.dartnell@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9153
Last month, we organised our Data Centre Build roadshow across three cities in the region, and one common point of discussion at these events was how unwieldy and unnecessarily complex today’s data centres have become. IT managers that I have spoken to readily admit that their data centres are now too far too complex for hands-on management, and warrant automated processes for better control and management. This probably explains the sudden interest in hyper-converged systems, which are touted as the key to automating data centre operations. The concept behind hyper-convergence is rather simple: It’s a new way of simplifying Hyper-converged infrastructure by combing server, storage, and systems are networking, all managed via software. touted as the key The most popular flavour of hyper-converged to automating infrastructure in the market right now is predata centre integrated appliances offered by almost every operations top-line IT vendor, and have quickly found favour among small and medium-sized businesses, because they are usually hamstrung by tighter budgets and smaller IT teams. The early adopters of hyperconverged systems say, unlike traditional big systems, this new breed of infrastructure is easy to deploy and scale, and offers them an opportunity to modernise their internal systems without taking the public cloud route. Is hyper-convergence the panacea for all common ills plaguing the data centre? Most definitely not. Despite all the benefits it offers, hyper-convergence vendors have not been to address some of the challenges and drawbacks. Though it is ideally suited for all new applications, you can’t run missioncritical apps such as ERP on hyper-converged infrastructure. Nevertheless, the world of hyper-convergence is continuing to evolve and in the near future, you will see software taking up the reins of the entire data centre.
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EDITORIAL
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Rising to the occasion Many of you will know CPI Media Group for its long-running magazine titles, many for its glitzy awards ceremonies and engaging conferences, and some for a mixture of the two. For the last two years I have come to associate September as the time when our efforts on both fronts really step up a notch, and I honestly relish it. While things can undoubtedly become stressful in these months, they’re also a time when things are at their most vibrant in the GCC’s technology industry. One of the things I’ve always loved about working for CNME is the sheer number of events I not only get to attend, but also get to host, which is why I'm looking forward to the fantastic shows that we've lined up for you. I’m delighted to say that CNME’s ICT We draw Achievement Awards – now firmly established immense pride as the Middle East’s premier institution for in our ability to technology recognition – is in its seventh year. We draw immense pride in our ability to celebrate your celebrate your fantastic contribution to this contribution region’s economy, and I encourage you to start to this region’s submitting nominations, whether you are an end user or vendor. economy. Late-August also saw another milestone event for CPI – the inaugural Security Advisor Middle East Awards – the namesake ceremony of CNME’s eight-month-old supplement. SAME hosted a roundtable discussion in partnership with BAE Systems prior to the Awards, and National Bank of Fujairah’s CISO Hariprasad Chede hit the nail on the head when he articulated how the event’s existence proves IT security is finally being taken seriously in the region. Another exciting venture for us – and one that we’re sure will strike a chord with attendees – is our IoT Roadshow, which is due to take place in early-December. This won’t just be any event – it’ll be tailored to this region’s needs and wants in the field. In the meantime, I wish you all the best of luck in the hustle and bustle that is at hand in this exciting month. Talk to us:
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Contents
Our Strategic Partners Strategic ICT Partner
Strategic Technology Partner
Strategic Innovation Partner
ISSUE 296 | SEPTEMBER 2016
18
26
22 CIO SPOTLIGHT: SUHAYEB JAABO
EVENT: DATA CENTRE BUILD
20 Heading for the clouds
46 Reap the benefits
34 Fast and affordable
58 Celebrating 25 years of linux
38 Block by block
62 Keeping up to speed
42 Peace of mind
74
CASE STUDY: NAKILAT, QATAR
30
CASE STUDY: AL ZAHRA HOSPITAL
Jeevan Thankappan reports from the Sage Summit 2016, at Chicago's McCormick Place hotel.
Carrier Ethernet is projected to broaden its penetration in networks as the ubiquitous technology for broadband access.
Why is the modular data centre market expected to triple by 2020, and what part will the Middle East play in this change?
How the increasing use of digital technologies within hospitals bringing about significant changes to mental health.
Sabby Gill gives insight into how enterprises can see the benefits of ERP apps moving to the cloud.
Red Hat's Gunnar Hellekson waxes lyrical about the impact of the open source operating system over its quarter-century tenure.
Marco Landi, President, Polycom EMEA, discusses the shift in solution purchasing trends for enterprise IT customers.
Lean on IT Mike Runda of Avaya Client Services, gives his take on how businesses can maximise the value of their support services investment.
CIO SPEAKER SERIES
Banque Misr keeps threats at bay
ArcSight deployment provides sharper recognition of potential risks and fraud Banque Misr is a prime target for hackers. With millions of customers, 13,000 employees and 500 branches, effective threat monitoring is essential. Eager to gain a comprehensive view of the security risks it faced, Banque Misr opted to deploy Hewlett Packard Enterprise ArcSight. The change has enabled the bank to significantly reduce its compliance reporting efforts, as well detecting internal threats through an engine that recognises customised use cases. The bank has successfully minimised its risk of fraud, as well as slashing the number of hours spent on audit and analysis processes.
“We want to build our SOC based on an HPE framework.” – Mohamed Anwar Hafez, Chief Information Officer, Banque Misr
Read more at www.cnmeonline.com/hpe
IT TRENDS FOR 2016 THE YEAR OF PRODUCTIVITY
With the explosive growth of data and documents generated across business channels, IT professionals are under under increasing pressure to find solutions that improve user productivity while hitting targets for enhanced document security and sustainability.
3 KEY IT PRIORITIES FOR 2016:
1
2
3
Security
Content / data management
Cloud / hosted services
IT GOALS FOR 2016
58%
68% say increasing productivity is a key performance metric in 2016
HOWEVER
say that efficient content management is critical to business success in 2016
46%
say their company will not invest any more in tools to increase worker efficiency and agility in 2016
THE GREAT DISCONNECT: Revenue, IT spend and expectations
56%
BUT
of IT pros expect the company’s annual revenue to continue increasing in 2016
Only
$2,032
is the average increase in planned IT budget from 2015 to 2016
AND With the role of technology in business only increasing, IT pros face larger expectations and heavier workloads with fewer resources in 2016.
59%
of organisations are not growing IT staff
TOP PRIORITIES FOR CONTENT MANAGEMENT IN 2016 1
Remote accessibility
2
Reducing paper usage, improving sustainability
3
Facilitating team collaboration
4
Capacity/storage
BUSINESSES STILL RELY HEAVILY ON OUTDATED MEANS OF CONTENT MANAGEMENT
96%
91%
Printer + Scanning
Critical factors when selecting content management tools? Security 75%
Electronic signature adoptation still lagging
Ease of use 64% Cost of solutions 57% Customer support 57%
Only
26%
are currently using eSignature solutions to help manage content Only
17%
Ease of management 54% % of respondents who said these factors are critical
have plans to implement an eSignature solution in 2016
CONCLUSION How to keep pace in 2016
With content management being such a key focus in 2016, IT professionals should present leadership teams with a cost-effective content and document management solution that:
1
Eliminates paper dependency and facilitates eSignatures
2
Encourages secure cloud-based file sharing
3
Offers streamlined workflows for content editing, review and collaboration
SOURCE: www.gonitro.com
LEADING NEW ICT
BUILDING A BETTER CONNECTED WORLD
GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK 2016 I OCT 16 - 20 , DUBAI, UAE Visit us at Z-D20 in Za’abeel Hall, Dubai World Trade Center
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GITEX Mini-site
Email: enterpriseME@huawei.com
COLUMN
Adelle Geronimo Online Editor, CNME
ON THE SAME PAGE A
recent report by analyst firm Gartner, stated that by 2020, a corporate “no-cloud” policy will be as rare as a “no-Internet” policy is today. Cloud has improved business continuity, customer service and increased productivity around the globe, and promises to bring a range of benefits and further enable modern enterprises to cope with the ‘smart’ present and future. However, most organisations are yet to fully harness the many advantages that cloud brings, and are still grappling with a number of complexities. A pan-EMEA study released by Oracle highlighted that amongst the primary causes of these complexities is uncoordinated cloud purchasing strategy. A majority of enterprises still fail to align their business and IT strategies, which affects their funding models and hinders any innovation initiatives. Moreover, this disconnect between two key units of the company affects cloud purchasing decisions, which leads to data silos, duplicated purchases and even mistakes in some technology acquisitions. www.cnmeonline.com
The study, which included the UAE and Saudi Arabia, underlined that 60 percent of business decision-makers in the Gulf affirmed the difficulties. 29 percent also believe their company’s IT culture is unfit for the cloud computing age. In some ways this is surprising as both nations are frontrunners in terms of IT innovation in the region, but there’s undoubtedly a lot of room for improvement. Fortunately, none of the issues highlighted point towards problems with cloud technologies themselves, or to the lack of interest in adopting them. To avoid the escalation of this problem, it would be best for enterprises to initiate both cultural and organisational changes, and do their best to synchronise business and IT units. CEOs and CIOs must work together in establishing a unified model for cloud spending that will support both their needs. They should also instill a collaborative culture in each department to manage cloud procurement issues, cost and risk and ensure that each unit of the business is united towards a common cloud strategy. At the same time, the CIO must initiate change and urge other C-suite members to mandate a unified cloud approach. SEPTEMBER 2016
13
SHORT TAKES
Month in view
HPE TO BUY SGI IN $275 MILLION DEAL
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is buying SGI in a $275 million deal that it hopes will give it a major boost in Big Data analytics and high-performance computing. The acquisition fits with HPE’s goal to expand its data analytics business, and it will also make HPE a bigger player in high performance computing, a growing part of the server market. “Not only will the acquisition of SGI strengthen HPE’s position in the high-growth Big Data analytics segment, it will also extend our presence in HPC verticals including government, life sciences, higher education and research, manufacturing and supercomputing,” said Antonio Neri, Head of Enterprise, HPE. This deal isn’t the first time SGI and HPE have joined forces: SGI’s NUMAlink interconnect is part of HPE’s Integrity servers. What remains to be seen is whether acquiring a storied name like SGI can give HPE the boost it needs. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of HPE’s fiscal 2017, which ends in January.
$6
BN
14
SEPTEMBER 2016
CISCO TO SHED 5,500 JOBS Cisco Systems plans to lay off approximately seven percent of its global workforce, in a restructuring that will see it further focus on areas such as the Internet of things, security, collaboration, next-generation data centres and the cloud. The move will cost the company around $700 million in redundancy payments to the roughly 5,500 staff who will be out of jobs in the coming months. The layoffs will hit some of Cisco’s smaller and more mature business areas where longterm growth prospects are low, the company said. “We expect to reinvest substantially all of the cost savings
from these actions back into these businesses and will continue to aggressively invest to focus on our areas of future growth,” Cisco said in a statement. Cisco coupled the announcement with its fourth-quarter earnings report. It said revenue for the quarter fell two percent to $12.6 billion, while net income rose 21 percent to $2.8 billion. Excluding Cisco’s service provider video business, which was sold to Technicolor in July, revenue would have been up two percent. The company’s switching, collaboration, wireless, and security divisions all saw higher sales while revenue dropped in the NGN routing and data centre products divisions.
FORECASTED ANNUAL SPENDING ON AUGMENTED AND VIRTUAL REALITY TECHNOLOGIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA BY 2020 Source: International Telecommunication Union
www.cnmeonline.com
GLOBAL SALES OF SMARTPHONES TOTALLED 344 MILLION UNITS IN THE SECOND QUARTER OF 2016, A 4.3 PERCENT INCREASE OVER THE SAME PERIOD IN 2015, ACCORDING TO GARTNER.
CITRIX, MICROSOFT PARTNER TO TRANSFORM APP DELIVERY FROM CLOUD Citrix has announced its intent to take its "cloud-first, mobilefirst" approach to "new heights" through its partnership with Microsoft, by developing Johnny Karam, Citrix the next generation of the Azure RemoteApp service. The offering will combine the features of Microsoft Azure RemoteApp with many of the enterprise capabilities of Citrix XenApp to revolutionise app delivery from the cloud. The new Citrix application virtualisation service is part of the comprehensive Citrix Cloud strategy designed to simplify app
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA PC DECLINE SLOWS According to a report by IDC, the Middle East and Africa (MEA) PC market experienced a 13.3 percent year-on-year decline in shipments in the second quarter of 2016 to total 2.9 million units. While this is a continuation of a long-running trend, the overall decline seen in Q2 2016 was the slowest in the past five quarters. Segmenting the market, the report underlined that notebook shipments fell 11.4 percent to total 1.7 million units, while desktops suffered a sharper decline of 15.7 percent to total 1.2 million units. A key reason for the overall decline was a significant slowdown in consumer demand, caused primarily by the ongoing shift away from PCs towards tablets and smartphones, said the report. The market continued to see some consolidation in terms of vendor share, with the top five players combined gaining share both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. Indeed, the top three vendors – HP Inc, Lenovo, and Dell – accounted for over 60 percent of overall PC market share in Q2 2016, and over 70 percent of demand stemming from the commercial segment. Notebook vendor Toshiba has exited the region's PC market, with the vendor recording only a few shipments in just one country during the quarter. IDC underlined that despite losing market share from Q1 2016, HP Inc. was once again the region's leading PC vendor by a significant margin, courtesy of its strong distribution and channel network. www.cnmeonline.com
and desktop delivery for every use case. According to the company, the Cloud XenApp and XenDesktop service provides enterprise customers with superior performance and flexibility by moving the backend infrastructure to the cloud. “Working alongside Microsoft, we are developing a migration service to minimise disruption to existing RemoteApp customers,” said Johnny Karam, Regional Vice President, Middle East, Turkey and Africa, Citrix. “This will also simplify app provisioning, enhance monitoring, strengthen security and optimise the app delivery experience, which are key features that our customers have come to depend on. At Citrix, we are committed to our partnership with Microsoft and will continue to unveil additional solutions that take our cloud-first, mobile-first approach to new levels.”
ZAIN IRAQ, ERICSSON EXTEND MANAGED SERVICES DEAL Zain Iraq and Ericsson have signed a three-year extension of their network and IT operation and optimisation managed services agreement. Under the extended agreement, Ericsson will continue to optimise, transform and manage network and IT operations for Zain’s nationwide 3G mobile network in Iraq, which currently includes over 4,200 sites across the country. Scott Gegenheimer, Chief Executive Officer, Zain, said, “Through this agreement, Zain Iraq will be better positioned to support the evolution and growth of the telecommunication industry in the country and ensure that all Iraqis receive urgently-needed quality mobile telecommunication services. Social volatility has led to network instability in this huge and significant market for Zain, and as we strive to continue providing connectivity for our valued customers, our close relationship with Ericsson enables us to maintain vital mobile services and further contribute to the economic and social development of Iraq’s economy.” Furthermore, Zain will be able to increase its focus on its core customer-facing business activities such as managing customer relationships and offering a shorter time-to-market for the delivery of new services and technologies.
SEPTEMBER 2016
15
Apple 1
A
pple 1, formally known as Apple Computer 1, was designed and hand-built by Steve Wozniak – a close friend of Steve Jobs and co-founder of Apple. It was the company's very first product, and went on sale in July 1976 at a retail price of $666.66 – because Wozniak “liked repeating digits.” The Apple 1’s built-in computer terminal circuitry, branded “a truly complete microsystem computer on a single PC board,” was distinctive, and set it apart from its competitors at the time. All that was required in order to take advantage of the products features was a keyboard and an inexpensive television set. Based on the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, the Apple 1 had a built-in video terminal and sockets for 8K bytes of on-board RAM memory. It used the 16-pin 4K dynamic memory chips, which were much faster and took up a quarter of the space in comparison to even the low power 2102 chips, which the majority of computers at the time were using. Competing machines were generally programmed with front-mounted toggle switches and used red LED indicator lights for output. By supporting a built-in video terminal, this device could display the contents of 192 memory locations at once on the screen. As this meant that numbers and letters could be viewed as opposed to just LEDs, it opened the door for users to operate all kinds of alphanumeric software, including developing programmes and playing games. Text was displayed at 60 characters per second, which was even quicker than the teleprinters used on contemporary machines of the era. The computer may have only had a few notable features, but nevertheless, it was considered a technological masterpiece, and earned Wozniak a reputation as a talented designer. Apple 1 made the headlines recently, after what is suspected to have been one of the original prototypes was sold to a Hollywood couple for $815,000. The couple intend on taking the computer into schools and universities to try to educate and inspire young people.
16
SEPTEMBER 2016
www.cnmeonline.com
AAUJ automates processes with Laserfiche Version 10 Palestinian University vies to purge paper With 24,000 students having passed through the institution since its inception in 2000, Arab American University of Jenin’s enterprise content management needs were becoming too great for its administration teams to handle. Eager to automate a range of processes, AAUJ chose to implement Laserfiche Version 10. The change has set AAUJ on a path to becoming a paperless organisation, and has hugely reduced its administrative challenges. AAUJ is now able to easily archive Arabic and English documents, and has experienced the benefits of smooth, standardised procedures thanks to Laserfiche.
“
“Laserfiche has provided one of the smartest systems we’ve ever used.” – Abdelmunem Abuhasan, Department of Planning and Systems Ananlysis Manager, AAUJ
Read more at www.cnmeonline.com/case-studies
EVENT
Data Centre Build
READY TO RUN
The annual Data Centre Build roadshow visited Riyadh, Dubai and Doha for the fourth year running last month. Reporting from Dubai, the event saw a host of IT-decision makers turn out to reflect on what the future holds for data centres.
T
rends like cloud and mobility are significantly impacting and driving agility in today's enterprises, making it more important for IT teams to know everything there is to know about modern data centre best practices. The redundancy of ‘traditional’ data centres in favour of modern, automated systems posed as a popular topic of discussion across all three roadshow events. Kicking things off in Dubai was Taha Tungekar, Category Manager, MEMA region, HPE, who 18
SEPTEMBER 2016
said that the latest step in the evolution towards a 'softwaredefined' data centre is composable infrastructure. “HPE’s Synergy Platform consists of a composable frame, which combines fabric, storage and compute resources into one single resource pool using an intelligent HPE composer,” said Tungekar. “The best part about this is that for the first time in history, API is contained on the hardware. Composable systems allow IT teams to bridge the gap between legacy systems and cloud
apps,” he explained. Looking to the future, Tungekar discussed the development of ‘The Machine’ – a powerful, open, trusted and simple mechanism that claims to have the ability to “run an entire business.” It aims to be a data centre so structurally simple, manageable and automatic, that “it just works,” according to Tugekar. Mohammed Al Khalidi, Systems Engineer, Juniper, was next on stage. “Agility is a key aspect we should keep in mind when designing today's data centres, as doing so will help businesses www.cnmeonline.com
be more adaptive to the cloud era,” he said. “Everything is on the rise, except traditional data centres which are in decline,” he added. Al Khalidi also pointed out the four main categories that Juniper believe are driving a lot of the new designs being implemented in today’s data centres, which are: increased agility, reduced costs, enhanced experience and reduced risk. He went on to discuss the company’s ‘Meta Fabric’, which is an open eco system that connects physical and virtual networks, in the hope of removing some of the difficulties in the changing data centre architectures. The last speaker of the day, Mohit Pal, Enterprise Channel and Product Manager, Fujitsu, discussed the benefits of business centric integrated systems. He mentioned ‘Primeflex’ – a Fujitsu product intended to “make IT simple for customers” by reducing time, complexity, risk and costs. This product comes in two models: ‘ready to run’ and www.cnmeonline.com
Agility is a key aspect we should keep in mind when designing today's data centres, as doing so will help businesses be more adaptive to the cloud era.
‘reference architecture.’ Eyecatching statistics included claims that ‘Primeflex’ could reduce deployment costs by 70 percent, and double productivity and revenue rates. At the Riyadh event, speakers included: Saleh Al Nemer, Senior Solutions Architect, HPE; Nicolai Solling, CTO, helpAG; Mark Hosking, DC and Virtualisation Lead, Juniper; Osama Abed, Technical Manager,
Nexans Network Solutions; and Javed Abbasi, Principal Consultant, GISBA. Speakers in Doha included: Mubarik Hussain, Head of IT, Petroserv; Hamad Suwaid, IT Manager, Nakilat; Mohit Pal, Enterprise Channel and Product Manager, Fujitsu; Chris Leahy, Director of Technical Facilities, MEEZA; and P.M. Hashin Kabeer, Senior Systems Engineer, EMC. SEPTEMBER 2016
19
REPORT
Sage Summit 2016
HEADING FOR THE CLOUDS At its annual summit, Sage unveiled its ambitious strategy to embrace and lead the cloud accounting market. Jeevan Thankappan reports from Chicago's McCormick Place hotel.
S
age, which operates in 23 countries with over three million customers, offers integrated accounting, payroll/HCM and payments solutions specifically designed to power the ambitions of entrepreneurs all over the world. At the summit, Sage spelled out its vision and strategy to transform the company to drive future sustainable growth. “Technology disruption has dictated that Sage reinvents its business to embrace the cloud," CEO Stephen Kelly said. "We have a clear vision – to create the world’s leading cloud ecosystem 20
SEPTEMBER 2016
for accounting, payroll, HCM and payment solutions, supporting businesses from start-up, through scale-up to enterprise." Sage’s strategy is underpinned by five pillars. “We want to win in the market by building market-leading cloud solutions for businesses to run on," Kelly added. "They are Sage One, Sage Live and Sage X3 Cloud. And we promised last year, we are going to stand behind our commitment to our customers that there won’t be any forced migrations. We will continue to support their product, whether it is desktop or cloud, for as long as the
customer wants to use it." said Kelly. However, in many cases, Sage is modernising its desktop solutions such as Sage 50, Sage 100, and Sage 200 with refreshed user interfaces and connecting the entire portfolio to the cloud. Unlike some of the competitors that offer cloud-only products, Sage has taken a hybrid approach to its cloud strategy. “We have chosen to take a current proposition and transition into the cloud with the least disruption to users, unlike our competition, which is rewriting their products on cloud technology. We are embracing industry standards and creating the most pervasive cloud ecosystem, and this is where we leapfrog competition,” said Klaus Michael Vogelberg, Sage CTO. For customers demanding pure cloud solutions, Sage plans to offer the Sage Live and Sage One product line. “When we're talking 'realtime' , it requires a different way of accounting, based on real time processes. This is why we came up with Sage Live, built on the Salesforce platform,” added Vogelberg. Sage Live, optimised for mobile and social, aims to help www.cnmeonline.com
small businesses to connect their customer, accounting, payroll and finance data into one system, accessible from any device and any location. A mobile control centre lets users view data in real time, and the system’s social focus helps connect colleagues, customers, partners, suppliers and other stakeholders. With integration becoming a keystone of cloud solutions, Sage also announced its Integration Cloud, which enables its customers and partners to integrate their apps with Sage products with ease to deliver seamless experience to the end user. “These days, we can get any new app on our phones with just one click, and we don’t even think about it. No need to write code, or do manual updates or install software. But when it comes to business software, the experience is still broken. Our Integration Cloud is a platform to quickly build and manage app-to-app integrations with the entire range of Sage products,” said. Another highlight was the official launch of Sage’s new admin bot, Pegg, a smart assistant that allows users to track expenses via their chosen messaging app. Pegg www.cnmeonline.com
Klaus Michael Vogelberg, Sage CTO
When it comes to business software, the application experience is still broken.
removes complexities and enables entrepreneurs to manage finances through conversation. By digitising information at the point of capture, it takes away the pain from receipts and expenses, eradicating the need for paper and data entry. This coincided with the news that Sage has partnered with Slack, which will act as one of the core messaging channels connected to Pegg. “With the rise of freelancing and the sharing economy, the number of small businesses is growing exponentially. Most of these business owners use messaging apps, and with Pegg, we aim to bridge the gap between these apps and work, rendering accounting invisible to the end user and making running a business as simple as sending a text. We’re incredibly excited to partner with Slack, the fastest growing enterprise messaging app. Together we share the vision that the future of the workplace is conversational, easy and fun,” said Kriti Sharma, Sage’s global director for Mobile Product Management. Announced with a demonstration live on stage, Pegg is available now in Beta. SEPTEMBER 2016
21
CIO
Spotlight
MEASURABLE SUCCESS From the Dead Sea to the Dalai Lama, Suhayeb Jaabo has taken in a lot in his career. The Magnolia RM Investment group head of IT has developed a fresh outlook on business and life, through an impressive CV that has spanned several of the Middle East's prime locations.
22
SEPTEMBER 2016
www.cnmeonline.com
uhayeb Jaabo continues to value knowledge and precision in IT. “Only when you’ve finished a course of study do you realise how little you actually know,” he says. “Of the hundreds of IT professionals I’ve met and worked with, only 10 or 15 really stand out as being accomplished.” The Magnolia RM Investment group head of IT believes his field to be intricate and highly scientific. “It may seem a farfetched analogy to some, but I really do think IT is akin to the human body. The brain is like a processor, the body has storage systems and a complex network that delivers various messages for different purposes and processes.” Spending the majority of his childhood in Saudi Arabia, Jaabo obtained his Bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Applied Science Private University in Amman, Jordan in 2003. He kicked off his career in the hospitality sector, joining Amlak Hotels in Jordan as IT supervisor, where his work covered five properties. He was tasked with overseeing the infrastructure and overall IT management, an experience that pushed him out of his comfort zone. “I loved programming – and still do. I love the concept of creating applications to automate processes or tasks whether its personal or professional, but my role encompassed other elements which served as great experience,” he says. After two years at Amlak, Jaabo upped sticks to work across hotels in two of the Middle East’s most famous tourist sites – Petra and the Dead Sea – as Mövenpick’s IT supervisor in 2006. Jaabo quickly ascended the ranks at Mövenpick, becoming assistant IT manager in the
S
www.cnmeonline.com
early stages of his tenure, and then IT manager after just one year at the tender age of 26. His time at the properties afforded him some unique opportunities, with Mövenpick Petra hosting the Petra Conference of Nobel Laureates, and the Dead Sea venue playing host to the World Economic Forum. “I was lucky enough to meet the Dalai Lama – he was a big fan of our chefs,” Jaabo says. The events also served as a fantastic professional learning curve. Catering for the technology demands of world leaders was challenging and fascinating,” he says. “They demanded secure communication
“
Only when you’ve finished a course of study do you realise how little you actually know.” outlets, and we provided them with ISDN and leased lines. On top of that, they brought a lot of their own equipment which we had no access to, including Including SCIF - sensitive compartmented information facilities - for secure communications. There was a forbidden tent that we couldn’t access. The experience taught me that there was a lot out there that we have no idea about.” Nonetheless, the rigour of working for a “large enterprise” like Mövenpick taught Jaabo plenty about business. “The nature of IT in hospitality meant I was working until 3.30am every night, and waking up five hours later,” he says. “I had a
room within the property, and quite often staff would have to wake me because I wouldn't be available to serve the hotel's guests.” Eventually tiring of the slow pace of his personal life in Petra, Jaabo opted to return to Amlak, this time for a role in Dubai as IT manager. His time at the company remains a great source of pride. “We implemented a state-of-the-art infrastructure there,” he says. “We spent around 3 million dirhams on first class IP telephony, core switches and touch screens.” After spending two years in the role, Jaabo felt compelled to move away from hospitality, and joined Belhasa International as IT manager for security and operations. “I was keen to move to a diversified company,” he says. Emirates Driving Institute fell under the Belhasa umbrella, and Jaabo was tasked with equipping 900 learner cars with “intelligent systems”. “We completed an award-winning vehicle tracking project which helped deliver quality control,” he says. “It was important to track the speed and location of vehicles, as well as providing an effective communications channel to ensure that lessons were conducted properly.” Following a variety of other successful projects at Belhasa, Jaabo joined food and beverage company Magnolia Restaurant Management Investment in 2014 as group head of IT. The firm operates as a franchise for a range of renowned brands, including Chuck E. Cheese, Flippin’ Pizza and Just Falafel. His work at the firm has taught him the value of integrating IT assets effectively. “When operating across businesses, it’s important to assimilate with each company culture, and that applies to IT systems,” Jaabo says. “Businesses SEPTEMBER 2016
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require creative data for decisionmaking purposes, clever stats or data that assist in getting the job done.” Still a firm believer in continuing professional development, Jaabo is currently undertaking a Master’s degree in IT management at the University of Wollongong in Dubai, a course he is due to complete this year. “I believe it’s important to have practical skills as well as certifications,” he says. “Whenever you face a challenge, you need to be ready to take the appropriate course of action. He goes on to add that the term ‘IT’ is not all encompassing in a decision-maker’s position. “I believe
projects within, in order to be able to manage risks involved, and. more importantly, business short-term and long term impact." Having lived across the Middle East, Jaabo continues to be impressed with the pace of business in the UAE. “Everything is very fast here,” he says. “People can often be wasteful with investments because they change their mind too quickly, but it’s great to be kept on your toes. In Saudi and Jordan, things are much slower, and projects take ages to finish.” Jaabo says Frank Underwood, protagonist of American TV series House of Cards, has qualities that he
TIMELINE
2003
Joins Amlak Hotels
Graduates from Applied Science University in Amman
2004
“
Sometimes completing one step creates five more, but if they aren’t completed then neither is the task .”
our role is more of a ‘business technology’ manager, so BT,” Jaabo says. “I’m an ambassador of IT to the business. Many IT managers focus on technology. They might say ‘I want Oracle because it’s the best,’ but does that really suit your environment? By 2020 or 2025 I believe most infrastructure will be in the cloud, and that is a prospect that can enable businesses.” Jaabo started his professional development by gaining certifications in subjects that continue to benefit his current business assignments, including OCA, MCSA, ITIL, CCNA, CHTP, CISA, CISSP, PMP, CITM, CDCP and recently ACIArb, which specialise in arbitration. “I believe that a successful head of IT should have sufficient knowledge in the fields that he is required to oversee 24
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admires. “He does certain things that I can’t condone, but I do like the way he chases what he wants,” Jaabo says. “He is determined and gets results.” He goes on to add that he expects his team to apply common sense in their approach to tasks and in their organisational skills. “I love interacting with my IT team and like to make it clear that I have three rules. Firstly, to be smart. By that I mean you have to make sure your success is measurable; there are no loose ends and things are done in a timely manner. Second, if things are not documented then they may as well not have happened. Everything needs to be in black and white. “Lastly, don’t ‘but’ things. Sometimes completing one step creates five more, but if they aren’t completed then neither is the task.”
2006
Joins Belhasa International in Dubai
2014
Moves to Movenpick for Petra and Dead Sea properties
2012
Moves to Magnolia RM Investment
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Build Trust and Resilience at the Speed of Business
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Save $300 on standard registration price when you register early. gartner.com/me/security#registration
CASE STUDY
NAKILAT
Hamad Suwaid, IT manager, Nakilt.
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FOOT ON THE GAS Despite boasting the world’s largest fleet of liquefied natural gas (LNG) vessels, Qatari firm Nakilat’s IT systems were wasteful and inefficient. Joining the company in 2014, IT manager Hamad Suwaid was tasked with modernising the hardware, software and applications that resided in its data centre. hen laid side by side, Nakilat’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) vessels have a combined carrying capacity of over 8.5 million cubic metres – an astonishing 15 percent of the world’s LNG capacity. Nakilat’s (Qatar Gas Transport Company) core business is shipping Qatari gas to countries around the world. Its $11 billion fleet of 67 wholly and jointly-owned LNG and four liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) vessels comprises one of the world’s newest and largest gas fleets. Through various strategic joint-ventures and subsidiaries, the company also offers a range of maritime services such as ship repair, ship building and offshore fabrication as well as towage, agency and warehousing solutions for vessels in Qatari waters.
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The company forms a key part of the supply chains of some of the Qatar’s most important energy projects, including those undertaken by Qatar Petroleum, Qatargas and RasGas. LNG has a high energy density, and is largely used for heat and power generation. Despite the vast scope of Nakilat’s work, its use of IT was wasteful. Nakilat’s IT systems were siloed across the company’s divisions – ship-building, transportation and repairs – while servers were dispersed across the business, making their management and maintenance costly and time-consuming. Joining the company in January 2014, IT manager Hamad Suwaid was tasked with building a roadmap with technologies that could maximise Nakilat’s opportunities, and lift them out of the “mess” that the IT was in. “In the seven years prior to my joining the company, there had been a huge investment in terms of both CAPEX and OPEX on the company’s IT, but the output was not up to scratch,” Suwaid says. “The reason behind this was simple – every division had its own IT infrastructure. We had three different data centres in Qatar, and each ship had its own separate data centre, as well as different providers and applications. This meant our IT was a long way from being classed as ‘innovative.' I had to look at digitalising Nakilat, finding a way for the business to be run from tablets and smartphones.” Other concerns within Nakilat’s IT infrastructure also had to be addressed. A range of disparate hardware appliances with multiple vendors had been deployed, which inevitably meant a series of complicated SLAs. From a security perspective, the appliances that were SEPTEMBER 2016
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NAKILAT
already in place were struggling to meet requirements of the ictQATAR Critical Information Infrastructure Protection laws. It faced a range of other difficulties, including a relatively limited communications network and a varying back office systems that needed upgrading. Perhaps of greater concern was the lack of any virtualisation, firewall or automated data backup process. Suwaid set about transforming Nakilat’s IT operations and data centre. Topping his list of priorities was delivering a series of cost-effective and game-changing upgrades for the company, and delivering an IT environment that could bring real-time data to the business. Having issued an RFP, and evaluated a number of vendors who could assist with the migration, Suwaid decided that Fujitsu’s Integrated System PRIMEFLEX was the best platform available for managing the change to roll out SAP HANA. He decided that consolidating the Qatari data centres into a virtualised “all-in-one” site was necessary, which would feature auto backup and archiving. In terms of applications, Suwaid introduced a ship management app that could increase productivity and reliability, and provide self-service for Nakilat’s fleet management team. On the communications front, meanwhile, Suwaid introduced a consolidated contract for 18 ships, as well as providing free VOIP calling between offices and ships. Collectively, the changes have been transformative for Nakilat, and Suwaid has seen the company’s annual IT investment halved due to both CAPEX and OPEX savings. “The upgrades in hardware have increased the replacement period from three to five years,” he says. “The all-in-one data centre will reduce manpower 28
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costs in terms of maintaining multiple sites, as well as high physical maintenance costs.” The upgrade in applications, meanwhile, has increased staff productivity by providing reliability and speed in terms of data delivery. This in turn is enhancing Nakilat’s senior management’s decisionmaking abilities. “Critical business reports which previously took hours to generate are now available in seconds, making the company more responsive and productive,” Suwaid says. Nakilat and its joint ventures now have highly available access to the information that the organisations
most important decision-makers within Nakilat. “The leadership of the company are buying into the idea of using technology to benefit the business,” he says. “They are beginning to realise that anything – to a certain extent – can be accomplished with technology.” The changes have set a precedent for more development in terms of fresh IT initiatives. “From 2014 to now, there are still a range of ongoing projects which will have a positive impact on the company,” Suwaid says. “I am still extremely driven to turn IT from a cost centre into a profit centre. The market in the Middle
“Every division had its own IT infrastructure. We had three different data centres in Qatar, and each ship had its own separate data centre.” need via a secure private cloud. “One of our biggest benefits has been our ability to revisit business processes,” Suwaid says. “Many of them were based outside of IT. Once you can give employees access to enterprise applications on their mobile devices, it means they do not have to be in the office in order to work. Social media feeds and analytics are providing dashboards that empower our senior management to make more informed decisions. Now that our back end is consolidating data into the cloud, everything is becoming possible. For example, if the Suez Canal is congested with ships, real-time data can allow our vessels to change their route.” Suwaid also believes the transformation has proven to be worthwhile as it has influenced the
East and North Africa region is still behind due to legacy data centres and applications. When data centres can be more available, and make use of the cloud, you can bring the data centre into the next generation.” Beyond the realm of Nakilat, Suwaid believes that initiatives such as the ones he has undertaken are important if Qatar is to make the most of its economic opportunities. “IT is relieving our country’s infrastructure costs,” he says. “Labour costs are not cheap. The infrastructure built around various sectors is getting harder to justify. The reduction in the oil price presents a good chance for IT to transform. Technology that can reduce infrastructure and man power costs is a very positive contribution to a country.” www.cnmeonline.com
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CASE STUDY
AL ZAHRA HOSPITAL
Samer Abu Hayah, Director of IT at Al Zahra Hospital
ACCESS & EMERGENCY
Striving to be the best in the business, Samer Abu Hayah, Director of IT at Al Zahra Hospital, opted for an upgraded wireless network to cater to the needs of both the hospital’s staff and patients.
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IT is one of the most important underpinning services in a hospital” says Samer Abu Hayah, Director of IT, Al Zahra Hospital. Even for an acute care facility like this one, which opened just three years ago, Hayah’s IT department has a heavy involvement with various daily tasks undertaken by both the healthcare and administration staff within the hospital. “We are trying to create the very best in terms of a care delivery model with both excellent clinical outcomes and the
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need. Our department’s objectives come from the care team, not the IT team,” says Hayah. “We had a basic Wi-Fi system before, but the coverage, connectivity and speed were a challenge for us. We needed to expand our wireless network everywhere if we were to implement the IT strategies that we wanted.” A variety of wireless solutions were installed over a period of 12 working days. “We had no challenges at all in terms of deployment. It was a seamless integration with our current system,” says Hayah. The solution has resulted in practical benefits for the hospital
“Our mission in IT is to strive to support our care delivery team who serve our patients. Our department’s objectives come from the care team, not the IT team.” best patient experience,” says Hayah. Aiming to take a major tech leap in delivering this mandate, Hayah sought to update Al Zahra's LAN using Aruba’s access points. “Our mission in IT is to strive to support our care delivery team who serve our patients, so we need to support them with any systems or services that they www.cnmeonline.com
from both a business and technology perspective. “Aruba wireless has enabled us to implement a lot of initiatives, such as BYOD,” says Hayah. “We all know the benefits of deploying an initiative like this, but one of the major benefits for us has been that it allows caregivers to access patient information at the bedside. It helps create a SEPTEMBER 2016
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CASE STUDY
AL ZAHRA HOSPITAL
good patient experience when the physician is discussing a patient’s results with them right there, rather than saying “I’ll get back to you with that later,” and then returning after three or four hours, or forgetting completely.” Not only has this helped improve the patient experience, but it has saved “45-50 percent” of the staff’s time in accessing the required information, according to Hayah. By connecting to one of the 200+ wireless access points across the hospital, both healthcare and admin staff alike can securely access clinical or business related information as soon as it becomes available. But the network can also be accessed with ease by a variety of visitors within the hospital's vicinity, depending on their role. “We are extending the Wi-Fi access to our guests and communitybased doctors, as well as patients and their families. The Internet is now part of Dubai’s Smart City initiative; it’s everywhere from airports to cafes to restaurants, so now it’s also part of our information processes as a smart hospital,” says Hayah. “When we designed the solution, it was driven by demand, so we’ve mainly targeted the patient areas using the advanced point 205, because it will be accessed by a lot of users – especially when people have three or four mobile phones,” he says. “But there’s nowhere left in the hospital now that doesn’t have Wi-Fi; we wanted our staff to be connected to their systems around the clock because patient care is at stake, so we’ve implemented it everywhere. Whenever connections break, patient care declines.” 32
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Patient experience The solution has also enabled Hayah and his team to look towards future projects within the hospital to further his vision of being the best in patient experience. “The next phase of our programme will involve patients having tablets at their bedsides which they can access at any time,” he says. “They will have control over their entertainment, meal ordering, communicating with their care team, viewing their recent results, seeing the goals that have been set for them and understanding what they need to do to achieve them;
“Whenever connections break, patient care declines.” engaging with the patients in this care delivery model is something that we are planning for, and this wouldn’t be possible without Aruba running in the back rooms.” Known as the ‘One for You’ system, the project is set to be in the hospital’s budget for next year’s patient experience solutions. Mobility Increasing mobility was one of the main focuses for Al Zahra in this new era of wireless technology. “One of the most important things that we monitor is the hospital information system (HIS) – which empowers the care team/care givers to have an updated information log of the most recent medical records for their
patients to support and enhance the decision making processes that they undergo,” says Hayah. Physicians now also have access to ‘Up to Date’ – a clinical database application which can be accessed on their smart devices to assist them in diagnosing and treating conditions that may not already be stored on the HIS. “Physicians can key in the patient’s details, their results or vital signs that they are showing, and the app will then support them with what decision they should make,” explains Hayah. “We used to source our information from Google and Wikipedia, but when you do that you have to summarise the details yourself and form a conclusion.” The upgraded wireless network has enabled both hospital staff and patients alike to experience the positive benefits brought on by its implementation. “It has played a big role in the growth of the hospital, for both operational and clinical outcomes, whilst also supporting our patient experience,” says Hayah. Well aware of the need to continue innovating, Hayah is already thinking ahead in terms of what else needs doing to ensure his department’s operations keep running smoothly. “I think we’re moving more towards smart computing and smart devices, where you will have a wireless environment – a virtual office – in which you can work from anywhere in the world and not be tied to one machine,” he says. “We have planned with Aruba to make all our networks wireless. If you consider the future of technology in healthcare, it will need supporting by high-speed wireless networks which will require a very stable and scalable backbone to cope with the volume of traffic.” www.cnmeonline.com
TELECOMS WORLD
Carrier Ethernet
FAST AND AFFORDABLE Carrier Ethernet is projected to broaden its penetration in telecom networks as the ubiquitous technology for broadband access, cloud interconnect and wide area medium.
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thernet was commercially introduced in 1980 as a networking standard to connect multiple computers. Since then, successive generations of Ethernet increased the total amount of traffic that can be carried on a cable from 1Mbps, to 100Mbps, then 1Gbps, and most recently, 40Gbps and 100Gbps. Initially Ethernet was used for creating LANs, (local area networks) in which all computers on the network are physically located close to one another. Today, thanks to Gigabit Ethernet standards, Ethernet is viable not only for LANs, but for metro area networks (MANs) and even higher traffic back-haul communications. In this capacity, Ethernet offers an alternative to other high-volume networking technologies such as synchronous optical networking (SONET). In 2005, the Metro Ethernet Forum introduced Carrier Ethernet as a set of extensions that describe how data communications carriers should use Ethernet in a consistent manner. The latest generation of Carrier Ethernet standards- CE 2.0 provides guidance for setting up multiple class-of-service (multi-CoS) definitions, which allow carriers to establish more nuanced service level agreements (SLAs). CE 2.0 provides a richer set of management metrics, and it also sets the stage for multiple service providers to exchange Ethernet traffic in a uniform fashion. From a carrier's perspective, industry analysts say the biggest driver of Carrier Ethernet markets was the carriers' moving to an IP network. But recently what has pushed it more dramatically has been video and mobile broadband. According to the 11th annual Cisco Visual Networking Index, global IP traffic will nearly triple at a CAGR of 22 percent over the next five years. The Middle East and Africa region alone will see a six-fold growth in IP traffic by 2020. “More than one billion new Internet uses are expected to join the global Internet community, growing from
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Fuelling this growth is a new generation of media applications and user demand for more interactivity, personalisation, mobility and control. Operators need Carrier Ethernet in the access network to deliver this type of services anywhere, anytime, to any device." Fady Younes, Acting MD, Cisco UAE three billion in 2015 to 4.1 billion by 2020," says Fady Younes, Acting MD, Cisco UAE. "Fuelling this growth is a new generation of media applications and user demand for more interactivity, personalisation, mobility and control. Operators need Carrier Ethernet in the access network to deliver this type of services anywhere, anytime, to any device." Bassel Megalla, IP Business Manager, Nokia Middle East, agrees, “With all the challenges of delivering the many services and their constraints on the network, service providers are caught between the paradox of cost versus delivering. The only solution to this problem is a technology that is simple, reliable and costeffective. I don’t see any other technology but Carrier Ethernet performing the job.” Among the biggest adopters of CE are the mobile network operators - an industry hit by intense price competition combined with a huge increase in data traffic driven by the rise in smartphones. Until recently, backhaul from the cell tower to the core network used leased lines - an expensive solution and one where increased traffic could only be handled by installing another leased line. Once Carrier Ethernet backhaul is installed, however, not only do you have the simplicity of an all-IP network but also throughput can be rapidly altered as needed in small increments. Another advantage of Carrier Ethernet is that SEPTEMBER 2016
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Carrier Ethernet
it can be accessed over a range of media copper, fibre or wirelessly - so that the biggest success has been Carrier Ethernet microwave backhaul, expecting an exponential growth rate for the next five years. Now, with cloud spurring the adoption of software-defined networking and network functions virtualisation among telecom operators, the key question being asked by everyone is what will be the impact of these technologies on CE? “I believe the physical layer will see no impact from SDN/NFV,” says Nimrod Kravicas, EMEA Director for Carrier Business, Ixia. “The transport layer might be impacted by SDN in the sense that CE services can be provisioned and configured on demand via SDN protocols. More specifically, one can use SDN concepts to deliver self-service portals to end customers. The customer could log in in the portal provided by the service provider and purchase a certain service (or configure their previously purchased service), and this is automatically provisioned in the network by means of various SDN protocols.” He adds that most of the impact from NFV will be seen at the edge of the Carrier Ethernet domain. “As CE is more of a transport service (without a lot of upper layer intelligence), while NFV is best suited to virtualise the more complex network functions - the ones which do a lot of upper layer processing - my guess is there will not be a lot of intersection between these two. The Carrier Ethernet service will interconnect the edge cloud - where there will be many VNFs deployed - with the core network and central data centres, where there will be many NFV elements.” Though CE offers just the sort of cost savings, business flexibility and new growth opportunities that are most needed in these difficult times, there are a few factors that operators need to keep in mind before jumping on the bandwagon. “At Cisco, we advise partners not to wait to start preparing their networks for future technologies. While it is true that upgrading from 10 Gbps Ethernet to 36
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“With all the challenges of delivering the many services and their constraints on the network, service providers are caught between the paradox of cost versus delivering. The only solution to this problem is a technology that is simple, reliable and cost-effective.” Bassel Megalla, IP Business Manager, Nokia Middle East
40G should be a relatively smooth process, today’s network managers must think a step beyond. That means considering not only how best to transform today’s legacy systems to a 40G environment, but what implications that transformation will have on the eventual migration to 100G Ethernet and beyond. By thoroughly considering these issues now and developing an implementation plan, IT can help ensure smooth evolution of their networks,” says Younes from Cisco. Kravicas from Ixia says the ability to deliver a high quality service depending on the end user and application is equally important while designing a CE network. “In a software-based environment, ensuring linear performance is not an easy task, but a critical one to maintain the network SLA. Another import aspect is network visibility, as some parts will change from hardware to software, and traffic might flow between virtual components,” he adds. With the telecom network infrastructure increasingly moving towards as-a-service models, Carrier Ethernet adoption is slated to surge as an alternative to legacy technologies such as TDM, as the preferred high-bandwidth network technology that is scalable and flexible. If you are a telecom operator looking for the most-effective network solution to meet current and future needs, Carrier Ethernet might be the right choice. www.cnmeonline.com
NETWORK WORLD
Modular data centre
BLOCK BY BLOCK With the modular data centre market set to triple by 2021, what is driving this change, and what part can the Middle East play in this growth?
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he modular data centre market is booming. According to a 2016 study by Frost and Sullivan, the worldwide market is expected to grow from $8.37 Billion in 2015 to $35.11 Billion by 2020. Research firm Markets and Markets estimates it will triple by that time, and a range of vendors are licking their lips at the prospect. As IT departments across a range of verticals opt for more scalable, environmentallyresistant IT, modular data centre producers will unquestionably be winners. It’s not hard to see what is driving this anticipated growth. Modular data centres are one of 2016’s all-important buzzwords – scalability – personified. The ability to add modules as and when a business dictates is a huge draw for IT decision-makers, and one that will ensure the longevity of modular data centres. For CIOs who are conscious of budgets, modular data centres require lower capital expenditure, which means they are more likely to guarantee buy-in from other business decision-makers. “The demand for the best-in class data processing and storage, convenience and security are driving demand for modular data centres,” says Jonathan Duncan, leader, Regional Application Centre, Building & IT Business, MEA, Schneider Electric. “Users of traditional data centres are looking for the scalability, functionality and low power usage effectiveness offered by a modular data centre model, and are transitioning to these systems. The modular data centre – being relatively mobile – offers benefits for users who would like to scale-up and transport based on their immediate operational and long-term business needs.” For those looking to make their company greener, modular data centres, featuring www.cnmeonline.com
tight integration of internal subsystems and optimum placing of equipment, as well as more power density per square foot, mean that environmental concerns can be fulfilled. While in truth, this may be a luxury benefit for many regional CIOs, for those operating in certain industries this is certainly something to consider. IDC research indicates that modular data centre solutions make up between 1020 per cent of the total data centre market in the Middle East, and that the region will almost certainly follow suit with the rest of the world and continue to see huge growth in the space. With temperatures often exceeding 50 degrees Celsius, it’s not hard to see why in-row cooling is necessary. “The most popular modular data centers in the region come with a power density of 5KW/ rack and feature in-row or overhead cooling systems,” Duncan says. “The government sector is the region’s biggest user of modular data centres, with the solutions often deployed in remote locations or at border control stations.” A range of verticals that the GCC heavily relies on are primed for the adoption of modular data centres. The relative constraints on obtaining the right balance of IT skills can be challenging enough at the best of times, let alone without the geographical challenges of working in remote and harsh terrain coming into play. Chief among these industries is oil and gas, where offshore and inland fuel sources are not practical locations for centralised enterprise data centres. Against the extreme heat of the desert, modular data centres stand out as being very practical options. The ability to construct a data centre from afar can allow IT resources on-site to deal with other business-critical issues, and this can be a massive time saver. SEPTEMBER 2016
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Modular data centre
“A high-quality prefabricated data centre is fairly immune to the environment,” Duncan says. “However, that being said, there are environments that are better suited to the deployment of prefabricated modules due to the reduction in onsite complexity that this ‘Lego’ type block approach can allow. Environmental factors will still affect the choice of equipment to be deployed within the modules, for example, typically the most heavily impacted is the cooling systems which are particularly sensitive to environment, things, like altitude, ambient temperature and humidity, which have a large effect.” Back in the city lights, there are a whole host of other industries that are sure to be spying opportunities in the market. The oft-cited stat that 90 percent of the world’s data has been generated in the last four years is the most eye-opening, and will spur a number of industries with that hold huge amounts of customer data to consider modular data centres. Banking stands out as a prime suspect, an industry that is already heavily digitalised and could be fully so in the coming years. The Middle East’s retail sector, meanwhile, is still heavily reliant on in-store sales, with only 2 percent of this region’s retail purchases made online. This number is sure to increase, and the building block approach of modular data centres serves this need. Of course, with any technology solution that is set to experience growth, modular data centres may not be the perfect fit for every organisation. Indeed, CIOs may
$35.11 BN Predicted value of modular data centre market in 2020 – Frost and Sullivan 40
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“The government sector is the region’s biggest user of modular data centres, with the solutions often deployed in remote locations or at border control stations.” Jonathan Duncan, leader, Regional Application Centre, Building & IT Business, MEA, Schneider Electric be wary of downtime risks. In volatile climates, where critical infrastructure may not be up to scratch, the fear of power outages may well act as a sufficient deterrent to those who are considering the option. Many may also feel that many ‘onesize fits-all’ solutions that are available in the market may either be out of their reach from a pricing point of view, or may not suit their business. “In the true essence of modularity, probably the biggest challenge is to understand the optimal building block ‘module size’ for a specific business, to meet today’s needs and be prepared for any future expansions that may be required,” Duncan says. “Modular data centres, while in some cases conveniently portable, are often bespoke to a particular working environment, thus limiting global versatility. Although engineering can negate this, it could detract from operational efficiency. “Another challenge in operating within a modular data centre network is of managing modules separately as well as part of the whole solution. Thus, a good DCIM (datacenter infrastructure management) solution could be a great benefit. Before opting for a modular data centre, CIOs and IT consultants should further consider how well a module will integrate with existing resources.” www.cnmeonline.com
SOLUTIONS WORLD
Healthcare
PEACE OF MIND
The increasing use of digital technologies within hospitals is bringing about significant changes to healthcare. How can the industry ensure that these new technologies work to both physicians' and patients' best advantage, and what risks should be considered before implementing such initiatives?
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he digital revolution of healthcare has already begun. IT within the healthcare industry is now not only being used to enhance patient experience and treatment, but to also provide staff with the services they need to reduce redundant tasks. Having access to patient records at the bedside via a tablet or mobile device can significantly reduce the time that physicians spend circulating the hospital to collect diagnosis information or test results before being able to have a discussion with a patient. Initiatives such as BYOD have already been implemented throughout a number of establishments, but with this increased mobility and access to information comes a whole host of risks that must be considered before installation, namely hygiene and security. 42
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“Disinfection will always be a fundamental issue in healthcare, and adopting robust cleaning processes for mobile devices such as tablets to reduce cross contamination is vital to the control of infection in this environment,” says Wayne Miller, Director, EMEA Healthcare Practice, Zebra Technologies. “When it comes to BYOD in hospitals, infection and contamination is another potential consideration, alongside the obvious security threat for devices beyond the control of the hospital’s IT department. This means that BYOD should be limited.” Miller adds that security management also means restricting access to systems for certain devices that do not meet the hospital’s security criteria. “Ensuring that patient data is secure and is treated in compliance with local laws are core concerns of each endeavour,” says Laurent Marini, Managing Director, Saudi www.cnmeonline.com
Arabia, Oman and Bahrain, Orange Business Services. “Accessing patient data from anywhere within the hospital needs to be backed up with high levels of data security, robust authentication protocols and extremely secure networks.” Digital hospitals In order to take full advantage of the extensive benefits that technology can provide for a healthcare establishment, hospital CIOs should be looking to implement a range of different systems to meet their specific needs. According to Miller, estate-wide tracking technologies will be the future. “RFID and RTLS both offer solutions to meet this challenge, but hospitals must always take into consideration the wireless system needs and the availability of suitable bandwidth before adding such services,” he says. Marini agrees, and believes that leveraging Wi-Fi networks with RFID tags for asset tracking and management of medical equipment, or alert systems with geolocation for surveillance have become “standard services for newly minted digital hospitals.” Adopting a cloud-based system is also of imperative importance, according to Mohammad Samer Siouty, CEO, NVSSoft. “As patients become more aware of their health and well-being, engaging patients in their own regimen is becoming crucial, as opposed to keeping information behind closed doors, or only discussing during scheduled appointments,” he says. “Giving patients real-time access to their health records and enabling them to submit data about their activities and vital stats is not possible without an EHR system that is cloud-based.” Wearable technology Healthcare is a prime target for wearable technology, with a huge boom in business for wellbeing devices such as the Fitbit, which measures physical activity and sets motivational targets for users. “The ‘quantified self’ has gained increasing mass market appeal through the availability of personal, connected devices that can track human physical activity, resulting in new behaviours and attitudes around exercise and well-being,” says Marini. www.cnmeonline.com
“When it comes to BYOD in hospitals, infection and contamination is another potential consideration, alongside the obvious security threat for devices beyond the control of the hospital’s IT department." Wayne Miller, Director, EMEA Healthcare Practice, Zebra
“This represents a promising future for a truly preventive approach to healthcare, considered a key solution to rising public health issues such as obesity and diabetes.” Wearables can also be used to reduce the need for face-to-face appointments for patients who have undergone serious operations, such as a heart bypass. Followup appointments for this type of surgery are usually required, but with the introduction of wearable technology, physicians can now monitor the condition of patients who are recovering in the comfort of their own home. “Connected devices continually collect patient data and enable physicians to monitor their patients’ conditions on a daily basis,” says Marini. “Intelligent algorithms screen data and are able to detect anomalies representing the onset of potentially life threatening situations, alerting physicians who can organise adequate care response.” Technological treatments The use of technology in terms of treating illnesses – particularly mental illnesses – is still under scrutiny, and continues to be a developing factor in this healthcare revolution. A recent study by the Medical Research Council at the University of Oxford has tested the effectiveness of using virtual reality (VR) technology to combat schizophrenia. Patients were encouraged to drop their defences and try to fully learn that they were safe, by approaching the computer characters shown in the VR, and holding long stares or standing toeto-toe with the avatars. The patients who fully lowered their defences showed very substantial reductions in their paranoid delusions, with SEPTEMBER 2016
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SOLUTIONS WORLD
Healthcare
over 50 percent of the group no longer having severe paranoia at the end of the testing day. This positive response has planted the seed for VR technology to be used to treat a variety of anxiety issues, including post-traumatic stress. But a question that is often asked is whether healthcare professionals are sufficiently trained in IT to realise the full potential that VR, cloud, mobility and analytics can have on enhancing experiences for both patients and physicians alike. “The simple answer to this question is ‘no’,” says Miller. “There are healthcare professionals who have taken the initiative to develop their IT skills, but these people often have a background or a keen interest in technology. Once clinicians see the realworld applications and benefits that improve efficiency, safety and patient outcomes, this will drive the adoption of IT and with it, more training.” Baher Ezzat, Regional Director, Middle East, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, believes more responsibility lies with the vendor. “In order for them [healthcare professionals] to have the appropriate IT skills, local vendors will need to play a more
“Intelligent algorithms screen data and are able to detect anomalies representing the onset of potentially life threatening situations, alerting physicians who can organise adequate care response.” Laurent Marini, Managing Director, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain, Orange Business Services
active role in educating the health workforce and keeping them up to date on the latest innovations in these emerging technologies.” This ever-increasing involvement of such technologies in healthcare also begs the question of whether data scientists will eventually become a necessity in hospitals. “It is less a case of whether data scientists will be a necessity and more a case of being essential to the overall healthcare delivery value chain of the future,” says Marini. “Hospitals have choices to make in terms of which kinds of skills they keep in-house, and those that they outsource.”
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INTERVIEW
Sabby Gill
REAP THE BENEFITS Whilst launching Epicor’s new cloud strategy in the region, company EVP Sabby Gill gave deputy editor Glesni Holland an insight into how enterprises can hope to see the benefits of ERP applications moving from on-premise to the cloud.
H
ow does Epicor approach cloud development? Cloud is now pretty much inevitable. It is going to happen whether or not you want to adopt it. One of the most important things we did was about 18 months ago when we did the rewrite from Version 9 to 10, and in hindsight, it was one of our best decisions. We made a fundamental change to rewrite a lot of the application, so it wasn’t just a move from progress to sequel, but we looked at the code and re-architected it with cloud in mind. We now have just one line of code; one version of the software. It doesn’t matter whether you want to deploy that on-premise or on cloud, or even at a later stage if you decide you don’t want to use cloud anymore and you want to move to on premise, you have the choice and you can modify it to suit you. What that really gives us as a vendor is it makes our total cost 46
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of ownership a lot lower, because we’re not using multiple lines of code. Secondly, when you go and apply a fix, you don’t have to apply it to multiple places. It’s just so much easier. Also, back in 2013 the average ROI was 1.7, and now it’s 2.2. The reason why this number seems to keep getting better is as technology changes and more cloud deployments happen, every dollar that someone puts in is now giving a high level of return, and that’s why we’re seeing
an increase now in people thinking of cloud as a real viable option. Why has it taken so long for ERP to move to the cloud? One reason is technology itself. You know the iPhone has only been out six years? Just think about the amount of change that technology has seen since then. The other factor is security – the biggest incumbent in this region that has stopped people from deploying cloud. As technology
As technology changes and more cloud deployments happen, every dollar that someone puts in is now giving a high level of return.
www.cnmeonline.com
has changed, it has allowed us as ERP vendors to take advantage of it. Security standards now are a lot higher than they have probably ever been; the standards around data centres, the 4G network – that technology, the latency, the way they talk about the IoT and everything being measurable, that technology just simply didn’t exist before. We would never have been able to deploy cloud applications if that technology wasn’t available to us. What are the benefits enterprises can hope to realise once they move to the cloud? The biggest one is cost: cost of infrastructure, resources, technology – all of those components that enterprises would normally have invested in – in theory, they no longer have those costs. But the important benefit is, imagine a company with a dedicated IT infrastructure team and they had resources focused on that, well now they can take those resources – not necessarily eliminate them, but refocus them on other activities that will bring in greater business benefit than looking after a box in the corner. I think that’s going to be the biggest benefit to organisations; refocusing people on new activities to drive more value. Do you think cloud ERP provides a better user experience? Yes, because if you think about the way people used to enter information into ERP applications, it used to be these green screens, which meant that the individual needed to learn and understand how to use the application. If you think about cloud applications, www.cnmeonline.com
Security standards now are a lot higher than they have probably ever been; the standards around data centres, the 4G network – that technology, the latency, the way they talk about the IoT and everything being measurable, that technology just simply didn’t exist before.
teaching that now isn’t necessary. I can’t think of anyone who has downloaded an app and then gone and watched a three-hour tutorial on how to use it. By the year 2025, they expect 60 percent of the workforce to be millennials. The way in which millennials interact is through tablets, apps, social media; I’ve got a 10-year-old son and an 8-year-old daughter, and whether or not they will ever see a PC, they still know how to work my phone better than I do. I took my laptop home and the first thing my son did was start playing with the screen, not realising that there was actually a keyboard attached to it, but he expected that user experience. That is the future generation. If we had to go and tell them, “here’s an ERP application”, they would sit and look at you and ask “what on earth is that?” But I think that whole mentality around ‘what is an ERP? Is it supply chain management, distribution etc.’ It’s not going to be about that in the future. No one’s going to be concerned about what the back-end applications are, and I think cloud gives you more of the ‘what is it you want to do?’ and ‘is there an app out there that can help you?’ experience. Are you planning to provide mobile interfaces? With our most recent release, we introduced the enterprise mobile framework, so that allows us to not only natively deploy applications through the cloud, but specifically across any kind of phablet device. We’ve also created a social framework which allows you to interact with other parts of the supply chain. SEPTEMBER 2016
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THE STATE OF THE CLOUD AND SOFTWARE-DEFINED DATA CENTRE ISSUES & TRENDS: CLOUD & SOFTWARE-DEFINING COMPUTING
70% 60% 50% #
1
Faster development
55% 50% 50% Storage virtualisation
Positive trend indicators:
increased adoption
Usage will increase for...
Greater tangible benefits and ROI
Network virtualisation
40%
Hyper-converged infrastructure
Public Cloud
40%
Workloads traversing Hybrid Clouds
Concern of business and IT professionals: Security.
67% 55% 70%
say security will slow down migration believe there will be more data breaches and other security problems
%
90
say effective automation - reducing the need for manual processes, while ensuring security-is key to deployments of SDDC strategies.
%
95
say consistent policies can be enforced that align to meet your compliance, security and business needs.
expect more or the same amount of internal compliance and auditing issues
BENEFITS OF CLOUD AND SDDC
95%
say current SDDC platforms and strategies ensure top-tier security that meets their needs
95%
believe better security helps them quickly derive obvious benefits agility, performance, cost savings
90
say optimal SDDC strategies and deployments noticeably benefit bottom line, and quantifiably drive up virtualisation ratios and server optimisation
%
HyTrust Inc.
INSIGHT
Latif Sheik, account manager, Finesse
IT SHIFTS TO MOBILE-FIRST PERSPECTIVE Latif Sheik, account manager, Finesse, explains why mobile development approaches need to be tailored to each industry.
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s we move into the final third of 2016, mobility continues to gain traction in the enterprise, as both IT and business users contend with how they will serve their employees, partners and end-user customers. According to recent Forrester research, more than half of all adults worldwide already own a smartphone - and this number is projected to grow up to 80 percent by 2020. In the Middle East this figure will be much higher. With this increased smartphone usage, it is obvious that there will be coextended hike in customer expectations. Today’s mobile apps are designed specifically to utilise existing built-in features of mobile devices including cameras, GPS and push notifications amongst others. The next generation of enterprise mobile apps will connect across multiple data sources like never before — seamlessly accessing users’ contextual data, business data, and even data from external app ecosystems — to predict and deliver 50
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the most relevant information to the mobile user, instantly. Most customers now expect to immediately get every piece of information they need within a few clicks. Organisations in every industry are facing challenges to meet these expectations. Creating rich, engaging apps that consistently deliver a great user experience, solve business challenges, improve agility and meet the need of IT security concerns, means it is necessary to have solid strategy, design in place and execution throughout the lifecycle. With new expectations comes a fundamental change in the way leadership views, structures, and runs IT organisations. As IT leaders, you need to consider both the pros and cons of mobile development approaches against your specific use cases. Additionally, you need to address the needs of stakeholders and customer segments. The most valuable mobile apps are the ones that enable business user’s context - that is, the ones that include functionality that reads and updates relevant data, uses data from different
sources, and leverages services from other cloud and on-premise apps. Developers need to easily tap into an enterprise-grade set of mobile back-end services to ensure that their apps have this complete business user’s context and meet the requirements they have. Recently, IDC surveyed a dozen Salesforce App Cloud customers in various industries including consumer goods, manufacturing, financial services, IT service, healthcare, entertainment, and others. IDC evaluated the business impact of building apps on the App Cloud platform, and concluded that Salesforce App Cloud customers are achieving 478 percent 5-year ROI, a 7-month break-even point, releasing new apps in 59 percent less time, and 50 percent faster application development life-cycle. The study found that Salesforce has helped deliver high-performing apps and new features to business users and their customers in much less time, in turn helping them to win more business and making their employees more productive. www.cnmeonline.com
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ANALYST CORNER
Drue Reeves, Gartner
GEARING UP FOR THE INTERNET OF THINGS Drue Reeves, managing vice president and distinguished analyst, Gartner, shares his insights on how enterprises can prepare for the Internet of Things.
T
he Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to be the most game-changing IT initiative since cloud computing in terms of new business opportunities, and its impact on IT. However, IoT is still an emerging area of business technology today. With so many aspects that differ from traditional IT, it presents several new challenges for which technical professionals must be prepared. IT organisations must start taking proactive steps now to address the coming changes brought by IoT. Otherwise, they’ll risk getting left behind and 52
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putting their business at a competitive disadvantage. Here are four key challenges enterprises should focus on:
INTEGRATION IoT is not one thing; it’s the integration of several things. It requires advanced integration skills and end-to-end thinking. As IT organisations begin to build their IoT solutions, the most prevalent problems they will encounter are the integration of edge devices to the IoT platform. They will also come across several bottlenecks in the integration of the IoT platform www.cnmeonline.com
to enterprise applications and services — especially security, identity and operational applications. To overcome these challenges, IT organisations must form IoT solutions teams, led by an IoT architect and composed of a variety of subject matter experts who can diagnose and solve challenges across the IoT solution landscape.
NEW SECURITY VULNERABILITIES Several aspects of IoT solutions raise new security risks that have yet to be encountered in traditional IT systems. First, the potentially vast array of geographically dispersed edge devices can pose broad, and difficult-toprotect physical attack surfaces. Next is the potential for malware or compromised firmware when devices and their aggregation points have management interfaces www.cnmeonline.com
The key challenge will be to build trust into IoT systems from end-to-end. that allow remote access over public networks. Finally, the automated, end-to-end nature of IoT solutions compounds the risk. An attack at the edge could trigger events throughout the enterprise systems, which could inappropriately act on those events and cause serious operational issues or false reports of problems that don’t exist. The key challenge will be to build trust into IoT systems from end-to-end — from the edge device, through the aggregation point, and into, and out of, the IoT platform.
IOT TECHNOLOGY MARKET VOLATILITY Because IoT is still at its nascent but rapidly evolving stages, the markets for various products and technologies associated with IoT are emerging, and a significant degree of change and upheaval is likely to occur. Many
small, innovative startups will likely be acquired or disappear, while established vendors from other, adjacent markets can be expected to jump into the fray.
NEW ORGANISATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS IoT solutions will require IT organisations to work in new ways with many of their colleagues in business units, and with parts of the business that handle operations-related functions and related operational technologies. Creating an effective threeway working relationship among information technology, operational technology and the business units will be key challenges for enterprises undertaking new IoT initiatives. Without this, the enterprise is likely to end up with too many, or poorly operating, IoT solutions, or IoT solutions that don’t solve any real business problems. SEPTEMBER 2016
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INSIGHT
Gregg Petersen, Regional Director, MEA and SAARC, Veeam Software
PUBLIC POTENTIAL Gregg Petersen, Regional Director, MEA and SAARC, Veeam Software discusses how enterprises should be adopting the public cloud for a range of situations in their production environments.
A
t almost every conference, event or analyst meeting you attend, you’ll hear someone discuss how your business can benefit from the Operating Expense (OPEX) model, greater agility, and faster deployment speeds offered by the public cloud. But let’s be honest: if you go to your internal IT staff and propose the public cloud, you’ll get a lot of pushback. They’ll talk to you about a number of issues, most notably security, legal compliance and a loss of control over the company’s valuable data. The problem is that debates within the business about using the public cloud are often dominated by discussion of production environments instead of exploring opportunities where the cloud could help save time, effort and money. Let’s have a look at some common use cases where those benefits can be gained. Separate environments Every business needs an environment for testing solutions, development and acceptance. In an ideal world, these should be three separate environments and they should be the same as (or at least very similar to) your production environment. Unfortunately, the number of enterprises that have the resources 54
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available to use best practices is very limited. Why not use the public cloud for these scenarios? Organisations can create copies of the production environment (at least the important parts of it) in a public cloud and grant access to developers, test engineers, workload owners and more to that environment. After a project is finished, that environment can simply be shut down. Patching, updates and upgrades Many enterprises have a change advisory board (CAB) that needs to approve all changes (bug fixes, security patches and functionality enhancements) that will happen in a production environment. The best practice is to implement these as quickly as possible, but only after they have been tested thoroughly to prevent any major issues making it to the live environment. The best way to do this is to mimic your production environment as well as possible when testing changes. Again, this is impossible for most companies due to a lack of resources. Enter the public cloud again. By using copies of the production environment and restoring them into the public cloud, organisations can conduct effective testing and documenting of all those changes and feed that information into the
change request plan. IT professionals will lose less time in setting up those environments, have better documentation of changes and perform better testing that matches the production environment. Disaster recovery testing How frequently does your business test its backups or its disaster recovery plans? Weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? Yearly maybe? Or perhaps even never? The reasons why this doesn’t happen are similar to the previous two scenarios: there aren’t enough technical resources, people available to do it or time to do it in. Can we use the public cloud again for this scenario? The answer is obviously yes, and the way to do this is again very similar to the previous scenarios. Conclusion The public cloud is certainly something that needs to be considered by every business. Which scenarios fit your business will depend on your specific environment, and your use cases can only be decided after careful evaluation. But many day-to-day supporting operations, such as the scenarios above, can and should be considered by nearly all businesses because they can help save time, money and resources. www.cnmeonline.com
With so many alerts, it’s not your security that’s working hard. You are. KNOW THE TRUTH. www.FireEye.com
© 2016 FireEye, Inc. All rights reserved.
INSIGHT
Clinton O’ Leary, Cloud Lead, Cisco Middle East
HYBRID CLOUD: THE NATURAL STEP Cloud platforms are entering a new phase with higher expectations of returns pivoting around adoption of hybrid cloud, writes Clinton O’ Leary, Cloud Lead, Cisco Middle East.
P
hase one of cloud adoption is now leading into phase two. How do IT managers build a universal policy to deploy and manage applications across multiple cloud platforms, using various technologies, that gives the end users choice, benefit and security in a seamless and transparent manner? Across ‘phase one’ of cloud deployment, there are very few IT managers who have gone all-in with private cloud or all-in with public cloud. IT and business managers have come to realise that no single type of cloud platform can deliver all the requirements of business and IT users. Workloads must be able to move across different types of cloud platforms and different providers for reasons decided by end users over time. However, this is usually not so straightforward. A right step in this direction is to have generic profiles associated with application workloads that can be ported and automated across cloud platforms. This step marks the entry of the hybrid cloud in a more productive form, that is more coordinated with the demands of the digital enterprise and digital transformation. A benchmark of success in hybrid cloud is having the technology and operational processes to move any type of application workload into any type of cloud environment. This 56
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transforms the organisation from one which uses a manual platform and workload selection process into an automated one. This helps to generate the best price to performance benefits, while meeting end user and IT user requirements. IT managers typically require control and adherence to company and regulatory guidelines and policies. While business users and IT developers want self-service and fast access to cloud infrastructure. The ‘second phase’ of cloud adoption moves away from service level agreements and cost cutting that so dominated phase one of cloud adoption. End users are now expecting strategic gains such as converting returns into revenue growth from using various forms of cloud. The cloud platforms in-play include public cloud, private cloud at customer site, private cloud at provider’s site, and on-site deployment. Based on how the IT department manages workloads across these platforms they can be classified into five levels of increasing usage maturity. These include ad-hoc, opportunistic, repeatable, managed, and optimised. While over 60 percent of organisations are considering cloud platforms for deployments, the percentage of users who are currently managing cloud workloads strategically, is much lower. Surveys
indicate that out of those organisations using and deploying cloud platforms, only 25 percent can be considered with repeatable, managed, optimised, workload maturity levels. Very broadly, these maturity levels distinguish organisations that have increasing capability levels in being able to distribute workloads on platforms that generate the best returns, with sufficient security, based on previously set up and automated policy decision making. Adopting a hybrid cloud platform is more complex than adopting a singular cloud platform. Most organisations using cloud platforms tend to have their own definitions of hybrid cloud. But amongst the common parameters used to describe hybrid cloud are workload portability and the ability to combine public and private cloud platforms. In simpler terms, mature cloud users can automatically burst amongst internal and external cloud providers using workload portability, location, policies and governance. They can also leverage load balancing between public and private cloud platforms. By proactively working along these guidelines, end users can progress and align the benefits of using hybrid cloud platforms with their enterprise digital strategies and generate significant returns. www.cnmeonline.com
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INSIGHT
Gunnar Hellekson, director, product management, Linux and Virtualisation, Red Hat
CELEBRATING 25 YEARS OF LINUX Gunnar Hellekson, director, product management, Linux and Virtualisation, Red Hat, waxes lyrical about the impact of the open source operating system over its quarter century tenure.
T
wenty-five years ago, a short post on a Usenet group by Linus Torvalds heralded the arrival of a new, homebrewed operating system: Linux. Fast forward to today, and Linux is the bedrock of enterprise computing, the fundament for a significant majority of data centre innovation. Linux operating system distributions are now so pervasive that it’s almost easy to take their impact for granted. “Almost” is the key word here. Over the past quarter century, Linux adoption has grown significantly, and we expect it to continue growing, just as we expect to see more innovations emerge from this community. The sheer scale of Linux’s influence is difficult to articulate - the New York Stock Exchange, one of the most sophisticated IT organisations in the world, has said “it flows like water.” It’s easiest to understand the role of Linux in two ways: • As an extremely low barrier of entry to a high-quality, innovative operating system kernel • As an icebreaker for the broader movement of open source software 58
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Linux is open source, but open source is not just Linux Open source certainly existed before Linux. It would not, however, exist as it does today without Linux. Linux provided a powerful catalyst to the free and open source software movement. The successes of a fundamental building block like the operating system drove more adoption, more innovation and more legitimacy for other projects and communities. Twenty-five years later, we have an IT domain that is now effectively “open by default.” Take, for example, GitHub, which is now the home for a bulk of the world’s open source code, communities and projects. Github is built on git, which was created by Torvalds, the grandmaster and namesake of Linux, to help bring sanity to Linux kernel development. It was never intended to be the engine for this massive repository that it is now, but Git simply evolved to that state. This is a common theme in open source, where projects and tools that were originally started in support of Linux but have grown well
beyond those boundaries to serve the community at large, not just Linux. The standard for innovation Linux has also had a profound impact outside of the open source world. Not just through the obvious innovation of the kernel, but also through standardised innovation. As Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst often alludes to, interchangeable parts in manufacturing during the early part of the 20th century eliminated much of the ‘bespoke’ processes that went into manufacturing, allowing for true innovation to thrive on common platforms. This is exactly what Linux has done for 25 years - it provides a common, standardised platform, predictable across use cases, that allows for innovations on top of innovation. Cloud computing, for example, is a result of this standardised innovation. Without the cost and technical efficiencies provided by Linux, cloud computing would look incredibly different, if it existed at all – more akin to the siloed, custom UNIX stacks of the early www.cnmeonline.com
90s than the flexible, commoditised services we expect today. Linux containers are another example of innovation on top of Linux. Containers use the standardised components of Linux itself to provide a new way of packaging and consuming enterprise applications. From Linux containers, we’ve seen even more innovation emerge, from the Docker project to Kubernetes, creating an emerging market for applications and tools that can manage dozens or hundreds of simple, isolated processes. Finally, hardware is not immune from the effects of Linux’s innovation. By providing a standardised platform, Linux effectively drove a wedge between the application and hardware, allowing for the rise of commodity x86 servers and even the evolution of emerging hardware approaches, like ARM and system on chip (SoC). This common base for computing has allowed enterprise IT to grow, emphasising innovation instead of simply keeping the lights on with expensive maintenance and exorbitant licensing fees. Beyond the data centre Linux, as a driver for the methodology of open source, has also had a profound effect on our culture. As open source and Linux have grown together in prominence, we’ve seen more and more open-oriented shifts in our world, from Wikipedia to open governance initiatives to communitydriven business efforts, like crowdsourcing and even Kickstarter. The notion of collaboration done in a transparent, open manner joins well www.cnmeonline.com
with an increasingly interconnected world, especially with the rise of social media, making open source a trend that goes well beyond the technology sector. 25 to life Linux has accomplished an inordinate amount in its short life: the driver for open source in the enterprise, an innovation standard-bearer, a cross-cultural, cross-industry driver
Open source certainly existed before Linux. It would not, however, exist as it does today without Linux.
for openness and more. But that’s not enough - what’s next? In the coming years, what does Linux need to accomplish? What challenges will it face? Here are just a few that I see: Security - As a growing baseline for enterprise IT deployments, Linux is not just an enabling layer of software. It’s now a part of many organisations’ critical security infrastructure. This means more and more sophisticated mechanisms are needed for protecting data and applications, and that flaws or vulnerabilities must be
diagnosed and addressed before they can be exploited. Hardware advances - The commoditisation of hardware (thanks to Linux) now means more hardware options that update more frequently. Trends like cloud computing, nonvolatile memory, GPU computing and the emergence of highly interconnected computing fabrics will change what we expect from an operating system. Linux needs to retain the position as the great standardiser, but this means adapting to an ever-growing ecosystem of emerging chipsets and hardware approaches. Linux containers - For an innovation that bears its name, Linux containers have the potential to most shake up Linux (and open source) in the next quarter-century. From redefining the enterprise application lifecycle to operating systems that may need to exists for only a few milliseconds, Linux needs to continue driving towards the automation, scalability, and manageability that containers require. Thanks to Linux, open source is now a key player in enterprise IT and the global business world. Without it, many of the everyday tools that we take for granted, from on-demand services to VoIP, might not exist or would, at the least, look much, much different. While questions about the future must be addressed, there’s one point that will forever stand out: We owe a significant portion of our world today to a single Usenet post from 1991. Here’s to 25 years, Linux, and many more to come. SEPTEMBER 2016
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INSIGHT
Patrick Groot Nuelend, Head of Product Management ENC, EMEA at Zebra Technologies
IS YOUR WI-FI READY FOR IOT? Patrick Groot Nuelend, Head of Product Management ENC, EMEA at Zebra Technologies, examines the impact of the Internet of Things on each vertical and networks will face extra strain.
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he Internet of things has been given the term ‘Industrie 4.0’ in Germany for its potential to spark a new industrial revolution. Critically, with your Wi-Fi network at the heartbeat of any IoT strategy, how can you ensure it’s ready to help you make the most of IoT’s potential to find new ways to work more efficiently, productively and cost-effectively? New ways of working Periodically, technology arrives that changes everything, and IoT fits that bill. It will allow us to rethink the way we do things with particularly farreaching benefits in: Manufacturing: To date, 40.2 percent of active IoT sensors are found in this vertical. By collecting real-time data from across supply chains, manufacturing lines and machines, manufacturers are shaving seconds off processes, driving down defects, working more safely, cutting costs and improving productivity. Using data from machines and robots on the plant floor, as well as predictive analytics, makes it possible to schedule pre-emptive maintenance to avoid line closures. Healthcare: Take the example of a critical patient. In many cases they 60
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need to be triaged, tested and treated within set time-frames. By placing Bluetooth-enabled wristbands, they can then be tracked through a hospital using Bluetooth beacons. If their progress slows, alarms can be automatically raised with senior clinicians who can intervene. Transport and Logistics: One of the most interesting uses in T&L is the use of smart cameras in depots to assess the dimensions of items. This added intelligence can be used by Big Data systems to provide loading guidance that optimises vehicle space to reduce unnecessary mileage, costs and CO2 emissions. Retail: Bluetooth beacons are allowing retailers to track customers around aisles. The data can be used to identify successful store layouts (using heat mapping) and to connect with customers’ smartphones to interact in new ways such as welcoming them in-store and sending promos and discounts. The likelihood is your IT team are not wireless experts – so it’s important to think about the best way to deploy, integrate and manage your network. With all this in mind, and with the help of Gartner’s IoT stack, I outline three things to think about to get your Wi-Fi IoT ready.
Versatile connectivity: While most new devices will be based on the latest standards (802.11AC Wave 2) – that offer more bandwidth and scalability that’s so essential in the world of IoT, if you have legacy devices connecting to your Wi-Fi you need to make sure the network can support them. Use the power of the cloud: If you’ve a large number of users, many sites, demand for guest access and the requirement to scale – to pretty much any size – cloud-based Wi-Fi could be for you. With cloud systems, the power of switches and controllers and the intelligence of the network are put into the APs that will selfregister over the internet with the host cloud. If you need more capacity, or more sites, you just add more APs (there’s no need for controllers. This simplifies the way networks are built and changes the economics of Wi-Fi – from a hardware play – to a more flexible and versatile ‘Op-Ex’ model. Apps and services: Look for networks that make it easier to on-board guests (while managing authentication) and include technology to monitor network activity. That monitoring should include both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth clients to find suspicious behaviour. www.cnmeonline.com
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INSIGHT
Marco Landi, President, Polycom EMEA
KEEPING UP WITH THE PACE
Marco Landi, President, Polycom EMEA, discusses the shift in solution purchasing trends for enterprise IT customers.
O
ne of the biggest challenges for established IT vendors in the Middle East is retaining a clear vision and strategy in an increasingly complex marketplace. New competitors, with new solutions are attempting to gain traction across the region, and the way that customers purchase IT has shifted. For many vendors the big question is, how can they extend their marketplace whilst facing this challenge? Reformulating your sales pitch to get back to basics is a good start. Think about perception changes to identify upselling opportunities in line with changing purchasing trends. Working with the right partners is extremely important. One thing that vendors can do is look to expand their partner base beyond the traditional installation and integration specialists. We are all working towards a common goal, and the customer is not looking just for voice, video or services – they could also be looking for the underlying networks and servers. The voice industry has witnessed further growth through partner diversification measures, such as adding ITSPs to the network. This, in turn, has opened up much of the largely untouched SMB market to vendors, who have historically only targeted enterprises. Similar tactics could be identified for the video market by analysing the
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commonalities between the vendor and the ITSP operating spaces. Selling services, not just solutions, is also key to maximising current opportunities. As-a-service models aren’t just for SMBs, they are also an attractive proposition for larger organisations that experience capacity peaks and troughs. Look at the retail sector, for example, where current purchasing trends indicate clear seasonal peaks. Retail is where a hybrid or cloud-based model that allows expanding capacity on demand, using technologies such as cloud bursting, would offer a tangible benefit while keeping business-critical communications live. It will not require the customer to invest in hardware or infrastructure, which could go unused during off-peak seasons. Identify new IT selling opportunities by keeping on top of changes in purchasing trends that are driven by vertical markets and business function leaders with department owned IT budgets. Look at each technology and each segment of the market to develop a strategy that caters to their business objectives. Different products and solutions might map to different verticals in different ways, and will similarly differ for each business
function as well. Most business function leaders tend to be quite familiar with video collaboration for group meetings. Speak their language and identify business issues that these decisionmakers could face, keeping in mind that they are not IT specialists. For instance, HR decision-makers could be mapped to function-specific solutions for conducting live training sessions and enabling flexible working for employees. In a secondary context, video collaboration can also improve cost efficiencies, when needed, for contracting external subject experts, diversify the curriculum offering and improve ‘field trip’ opportunities, all on a budget. Adjusting your approach to accommodate vertical market requirements will help demystify the untapped pool of opportunities. In some vertical markets, you need specialised endpoints for certain environments, for example in healthcare, you have to meet strict medical standards. You might need qualified status to supply to certain sectors; government organisations often require suppliers to be registered to serve a tender framework. In both of these situations you can still tap the market by teaming up with the right partners.
www.cnmeonline.com
OUTSIDE THREAT PROTECTION
PERIMETER SECURITY
Message Security (anti-virus, anti-malware)
Secure DMZs
NETWORK SECURITY
Perimeter IDS/IPS
NAC
Enterprise Message Security Enterprise ENDPOINT SECURITY Wireless Security Endpoint Security Content Security Enterprise FDCC (anti-virus, anti-malware) Enforcement Remote Access Compliance
Enclave/ DataCenter Firewall
PO LIC
Cyber Threat Intelligence
YM
Security Awareness Training
Host IDS/IPS
Desktop Firewall AN AG EM EN T
Threat Modeling Penetration Testing
LICATION SECURITY APP WAF Database Dynamic App Testing Monitoring/Scanning
Static App Testing/Code Review
SECU DATAIdentity & RITY
PKI
Vulnerability Assessment
DAR/DIM/DIU Protection Data Wiping Cleaning
Access Management Enterprise Right Management
Data Classification Data Integrity Monitoring Data/Drive Encryption
Mission Critical Assets
Patch Management DLP
SIEM
NS IO AT R E OP Continuous
SOC/NOC Monitoring(24x7)
Incident Reporting Detection, Response Monitoring and (CIRT) Focused Ops Assessment Situational Security Dashboard Escalation Awareness Management Security SLA/SLO Reporting Digital Forensics
Database Secure Gateway (Shield) DLP
DLP
DHS Einstein
PONSE & RES
PREVE NTIO N
Enterprise IDS/IPS
Security Architecture & Design Risk Management
Continuous C&A
DLP
NG ORI NIT MO
Security Policies & Compliance
Inline Patching
Web Proxy Content Filtering
VoIP Protection
Perimeter Firewall IT Security Governance
Honeypot
INSIGHT
Sachin Bhardwaj, Director, Marketing and Business Development, eHosting DataFort
CENTRES OF DISRUPTION
With data at the centre of any digital transformation, modern data centres have a key role to play in providing stable and scalable platforms to make this happen, writes Sachin Bhardwaj, Director, Marketing and Business Development, eHosting DataFort.
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lobal and regional businesses are now well entrenched in the third wave of digital disruption. While the phenomenon of digital disruption is not new, this time around, the consequences are not just being felt by players inside industries, but across industries. Industries are disrupting their counterparts on the basis of being first movers in certain key areas. The winning characteristics this time around revolve around the customer and include elevating their experiences through deep insights and new technology platforms. This is putting pressure on businesses to rethink their overall processes and operations. Those organisations that do not rebuild their business processes and operations around customer data at their core, are the most likely to be disrupted, irrespective of their size, and current market position. Another key characteristic is the levelling of brand comparisons amongst tomorrow’s customers, where brand loyalty is compared across players in heterogeneous industries and not just within similar industries. Customers are judging every brand they engage with on the basis of their best interactions with other brands, irrespective of which 64
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industry they are from. The unwritten business mantra that is becoming obvious is to disrupt through improved customer experiences and superior technology management, or be disrupted by others. Industry consultants point out that in the years ahead, successful CEOs will increasingly refer to their businesses as technology companies who are in the business of managing customer data. Data will be the new core and singular competency characteristic. To manage these fast-changing disruptive trends, a key requirement for technologies is to be hyper-scaled, where big and bigger is more beautiful. Another requirement is to have rapid development and improved iteration of best-in-class applications to lead and break away from the pack. Customers are increasingly expecting rapid changes with consistent responses from the businesses they deal with and will abandon those that do not deliver. Big data, analytics, convergence of network, security, computing technologies are other key technology platforms enabling today’s disruption. Only 43 percent of Fortune 500 companies that existed in 1995 are still alive today, and the average life of S&P companies has fallen from 60 years to 20 years.
The challenges of legacy IT systems, increasing risk and compliance guidelines, overwhelmed manpower and budgets, will drive the entry of managed services through the modern, agile data centre. At the centre of all this, how organisations manage their data in a timely, accurate, and relevant manner will be a competitive differentiator in the digital market place over the next ten years. Organisations will need to answer questions like where should my data reside and what are my data requirements going forward in order to successfully engage with modern and agile data centres. They will need to come up with a data protection strategy for today and tomorrow. Moving forward, organisations will need to share their data into stacks built across common ecosystems enabled by modern data centres, leveraging scale to reduce costs of enormous data overflows. The lower levels of such stacks will be increasingly commoditised and shared universally, while the higher levels of the stack will enable market differentiation. As organisations enter this phase, the era of value systems would have been irrevocably left behind to be replaced by ecosystems, stacks, and platforms, enabled by modern data centres. www.cnmeonline.com
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INSIGHT
Stephen Fernandes, Executive Vice President, TransSys Solutions
THE GENERATION OF MODERN ERP BEGINS
TransSys Solutions’ Executive Vice President Stephen Fernandes believes that shifts in modern technology necessitate new approaches in ERP systems.
T
he rapid onslaught of digital technologies and communities has prompted CIOs to look beyond traditional ERP frameworks. Business applications have relied on databases to store information and process it for results and inferences. But the architecture of databases used over the last decade has been used with certain limitations. Most databases have been built to use with specific applications and for specific purposes. In other words, applications and databases are configured to match each other to generate specific results for end users. Change the requirement, and the database needs to be configured to match the purpose. In the present era of digital transformation and business agility, the biggest hurdles remain managing the complex databases and the enormous growth in duplication of data. Until recently, businesses had no option but to wade through large, sprawling, complex and limited database structures, locked into legacy applications that generated predetermined reports and dashboards. Changing the requirements of the management dashboard meant recreating the database, a long and demanding process. While the basic core ERP engine still remains, the driver of enterprise 66
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transaction processing cannot be ignored. The associated ecosystem of tools and interfaces to engage and access this engine are in the process of being transformed. Creating and replicating databases to meet new requirements, the significant lead times associated with the process, the limited benefits and gains at the end of it, has led to the emergence of next generation ERP. While duplication and complexity of database structures are offshoots of traditional inward-facing IT investments, the challenges of data deluge are coming from another source. Sensorgenerated data, data from social media applications, consumer data generated from mobile and other connected devices, are generating exponential volumes of data that are in an unstructured format. For any business, the external unstructured data needs to be linked to internal structured databases to be brought into context and generate business friendly conclusions. Many of the open source data warehouses are limited in their ability to integrate with internal, structured application databases. CIOs are now faced with answering two fundamental questions. How can they leverage previous investments in ERP systems while meeting the requirements of business managers faced with the onslaught of digital
transformation? How can they rapidly integrate existing ERP systems with newer, more open, agile digital applications? The primary objective of such initiatives is to transform and rebuild the business into one that is adapted for change and can perform as a high velocity enterprise. The most significant aspect of Modern ERP solutions is simplification at every level. This includes a range of issues including system architecture, programme structure, data models, user interfaces, intuitiveness, data results, data dashboards and data interpretations amongst others. Another question that arises for end users is how to migrate into nextgeneration ERP solutions. A ray of light here – vendors are offering all possible migration paths. End users can opt for on-premise or hybrid migration options. If they are on-premise they can opt for greenfield, all-new environment migrations. Or they can opt for upgrading selected hardware, and a phased-wise approach for improvement. For a hybrid IT migration, the optimal mix of private and public cloud deployments are selected. It has been decades since the first databases were used by enterprises, but the IT industry may now be on a fresh and revamped path of win-win relationships with their ecosystem of end customers. www.cnmeonline.com
INSIGHT
Ciaran Roche, Coevolve
SERVICE CHAINING, NOT BOX CHAINING, IN THE WAN Co-founder and CTO of network solutions company Coevolve, Ciaran Roche, discusses how SD-WAN is enabling a new mindset for adding services to enterprise networks.
S
ervices are a relatively new concept in WANs. Devices and configurations were traditionally what made up a WAN, with routers, switches, load balancers, firewalls, proxy servers and other components positioned at appropriate points in the network. Enterprises have long grown accustomed to the use of appliances - or 'middle boxes' to perform a single function, and the maintenance and management of these devices can be a real headache for IT teams. Service chaining first emerged as a concept for carriers and other network operators. The basic premise was that services - firewalling, intrusion detection, carrier-grade NAT, deep packet inspection - could be deployed using generic compute and storage resources at strategic points within the network, and traffic would be programmatically directed 68
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to (and through) these services as required. This may not be the most efficient path for the traffic to take from a network topology perspective, but this can often be outweighed by the efficiencies gained from deploying these services at scale. We are now starting to see service chaining emerge as a concept in enterprise networks. As with many newer terms, various vendors have adopted it to have a meaning that relates to their own product set and capabilities. This can lead to some confusion for the enterprise. However, there are some key principles - and benefits - that apply to service chaining in the enterprise WAN. Resources inside the WAN can be used more dynamically Many enterprises already backhaul Internet egress to headquarters or data centre sites due to the
placement of large firewalls, IDS/ IPS infrastructure and proxy servers. In traditional WANs, it is challenging to make this a flexible policy. Typically, the redirection is performed using complex PAC files or a default route in the network. But suppose the requirement is “send web traffic to the best egress point based on path performance, except Office 365, Salesforce and a local banking site, which should go directly to the Internet.” This is very complicated in a traditional WAN, but it can be extremely straightforward in many SD-WAN solutions. Resources such as regionalised Internet access points can be defined as services, then policies can be created to “chain” these services into the traffic flow for specific matching application types. Real-time path performance can be used as a factor to determine which www.cnmeonline.com
INSIGHT
Ciaran Roche, Coevolve
service should be used, and the enterprise can manually adjust the ordering if required. This can enable the use of policies that are more in line with what many enterprises now demand as a result of their application mix and traffic flows. Services outside the WAN can replace boxes inside the WAN Using internal appliances as services is only half the story. For many enterprises, the real value comes from leveraging services outside the network to replace physical devices in data centres. A perfect example of this is the growth, in recent years, of public cloud-based services such as Zscaler and Cisco Cloud Web Security, which provide Internet content filtering and access control services that were previously possible only via on-premises solutions. Why is this attractive to the enterprise? The reasons vary depending on the use case, but generally they include reduced cost, better performance and improved scalability. Using cloud-based web security services like these is possible with traditional WANs, but it can be highly complex. Tunnels need to be configured and managed from each location, and various failover mechanisms need to be implemented and tested. Many enterprises give up on this due to complexity and revert to backhauling traffic to the data centre before redirecting to the cloudbased service. In a modern SD-WAN solution, the public cloud service can be defined just as easily as a private service, and policies established to determine which traffic should be directed to the 70
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The maintenance and management of 'middle boxes' can be a real headache for IT teams. service. Performance-based selection of the best service is usually possible, and failover is handled automatically. This is one of the real benefits of service chaining - matching traffic is automatically sent via the selected services before reaching their final destination. As a result of this, we are seeing a big increase in interest for public cloud services like this as the adoption of SD-WAN services increases. The automation and intelligence in the SD-WAN layer is acting as an enabler for more advanced solutions through service chaining. Virtualising locally provided services - less box chaining Finally, there are services that are very difficult to take out of an individual site without significantly compromising performance. Complex application-level firewalls are a good example, as are WAN optimisation services. These services have traditionally existed as appliances stacked next to routers and other network devices at remote sites. Most of the first SD-WAN solutions were, counterintuitively, very dependent on hardware - most
vendors used proprietary hardware to act as router replacements in the absence of generic infrastructure. However, we are seeing an increase in enterprise deployments of SD-WAN in truly virtualised environments, and there are many benefits that can be achieved from virtualising the entire stack of branch office network appliances. This is another variant of service chaining, where network function virtualisation (NFV) allows virtual network edge topologies to be built that can chain services together that were previously all delivered as separate hardware. Enterprises operating in highly remote geographies are especially interested in this trend due to the challenges and cost associated with getting proprietary hardware certified and cleared through customs. We expect to see this trend continue as enterprises become more comfortable with softwarebased network edge appliances, and to see the number of physical boxes 'chained' together in the WAN continue to decrease. The next 1218 months should see even more interesting developments in the enterprise WAN topology. www.cnmeonline.com
Gil Hecht, CEO, Continuity Software
BLOG
OUT OF SERVICE
A
s euphemisms go, it’s hard to beat the term ‘service outage’ as used by IT departments. While it sounds benign - something has stopped working but tech teams will soon restore order - anyone familiar with the reality knows the term really means a ‘huge hit to bottom line.’ A quick perusal of the tech news will confirm this. Delta Airlines' global fleet was just grounded by a data centre problem. A recent one-day service outage at Salesforce.com cost the company $20 million. Hundreds of thousands of customers were inconvenienced in May when they couldn’t reach Barclays.com due to a “glitch.” And a service outage at HSBC earlier this year prompted one of the Bank of England’s top regulators to lament that, “every few months we have yet another IT failure at a major bank... We can’t carry on like this.” Nearly half a century into the computer era, however, we do still carry on like this. According to research by IDC, infrastructure failure can cost large enterprises $100,000 per hour, while failure of critical applications could cost as much as a million dollars an hour. Regardless of the solutions that are thrown at the problem, service outages are as common – and as lethal – as ever. So where do outages come from? An interesting study by a University of Chicago team lists the 13 leading causes of service outages at online www.cnmeonline.com
services companies, but the lessons are just as valuable for IT departments. The researchers parsed over 1,000 web articles and papers that discussed the causes of 516 unplanned outages, hoping to determine what happened, why it happened, and how it was fixed. Upgrades, for example, were responsible for 15 percent of service outages. One could presume that every upgrade ‘had been tested thoroughly in an offline environment.’ Apparently not, otherwise, it would stand to reason, upgrades wouldn’t be such a major factor in service outages. Even if an upgrade was tested on a server, ‘upgrades pushed to the full ecosystem can be fragile,’ which means that the new upgrade had not been tested thoroughly enough. Misconfiguration is another important factor – responsible for 10 percent of service outages. While IT workers are often responsible for misconfiguration, the study says, it’s not always their fault. Often new software or upgrades to existing applications make changes to configuration files, with the application satisfying its own ‘needs’ – while throwing things out of whack elsewhere. Other causes of service outages include undue stress on an ecosystem due to traffic issues, power outages, security issues - and of course, human error. But perhaps the biggest issue – the most common reason for service outages, according to the University of Chicago study, is ‘unknown.’ Of the
516 outages studied, the team could not determine the root cause of 294 (48 percent) of outages. Once an IT department gets into the unknown territory, they’re in big trouble. If you can’t figure out what the problem is, how can you fix it? One way is to use automatic big data analytics to identify potential outages. These systems evaluate network elements on an ongoing basis, analysing the relationships between hardware, software, configuration files, network connections, and everything else that makes up an IT system. IT department workers can’t do this work – because there is just too much information to keep track of. These systems can do what humans can’t – identify risky deviations from industry best practices and vendor recommendations while providing early warning capabilities to help administrators understand the impact of any change. So, when the time comes to install new software, for example, analytics systems can send out alerts about the implications of the installation, what services and functions will be affected, and what steps should be taken to prevent the risk of an outage. All it would take is a missed step to significantly hamper operations, and even cause yet another dreaded outage. With proper operations analytics in place, users can complete the job much quicker and more reliably, leveraging the power of automated configuration validation. SEPTEMBER 2016
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OPINION
Mike Runda, Senior VP and President, Avaya Client Services
LEAN ON IT Mike Runda, Senior VP and President, Avaya Client Services, gives his take on how businesses can maximise the value of their support services investment.
I
n the world of support services, everyone is always striving to reach that nirvana state where everything is perfect. That requires keeping networks running at peak performance while contending with the onslaught of new technologies. For every support services organisation, the aim is to reach this stable state for our customers. Here are five actions that IT departments can take to gain the most value from their communications support services coverage: Take full advantage of automation. Automating remote diagnostics, alarm monitoring, and issue isolation and resolution can reduce preventable outages dramatically. In my experiences, such tools can auto-resolve 90 percent of alarms requiring service requests without human intervention, while lowering outage risk by nearly threequarters. If the systems are unable to resolve a problem, they automatically forward relevant information to a technician. By taking advantage of these advanced diagnostic capabilities, your organisation can equip itself for proactive prevention, rapid resolution and continual optimisation of communications systems. Establish healthy connectivity. Realising automation’s substantial benefits requires reliable access to remotely provided tools and services. Solid connectivity is vital to ongoing 74
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monitoring, accurate measurement and fast issue resolution. Adopting a standard remote connectivity methodology can help enhance security and enable more effective use of enduser and administrative controls, make for smoother and more reliable alarm validation and clearing functionality, and allow for more detailed logging and audit trails. Prevent and predict network issues onsite. User-controllable diagnostic tools can speed diagnostics while reducing costs and equipment requirements. Intelligent software agents continually collect relevant data and detect potential problems before they impact service. The tools equip system operators and their vendors to better diagnose, analyse and address incidents remotely without compromising system stability. Diagnostic tools can help resolve issues up to 50 percent faster. Tackle the outage top five. The major causes of communications outages are no surprise. The surprise comes in not knowing which one will pop up, and when. According to research, depending on the specific cause, one-third to three-quarters of reported outages could have been avoided by using the outage prevention practices: • Power outages - regularly scheduled audits can help determine if facilities and uninterruptible power supply systems are capable of meeting
power demands and ward off problems, with particular attention given to hardware that is approaching the end of manufacturer support (EoMS). • Lack of routine maintenance— proactive health checks, disciplined system monitoring, and observed maintenance schedules can help IT departments catch the telltale signals equipment emits when a problem is approaching. • Software bugs—a sound patching strategy and proactive approach to patching to eliminate known issues can help maintain software performance and avoid software-related outages. • Hardware failures—proactive upgrades of equipment approaching EoMS, audits to verify system redundancy, system health checks, and failover strategies for critical systems can help reduce hardware-based outages. • Confirm that your records are accurate. Support services providers can address issues faster if they know what systems they are dealing with and whether those solutions are up to date. If you have a disciplined process for accurately registering equipment, you can facilitate ongoing remote maintenance support, improve the accuracy of contract renewal price quotes, and help your support vendor update hardware inventory records and test device connectivity and alarming. Achieving nirvana in the chaotic world of IT with its many moving parts, increasing productivity goals, and the ever-growing world of cloud applications requires a continuous commitment to these top five practices. But once achieved, it can lead to happier customers, more productive employees who are able to focus on initiatives that will move the business forward, and for IT managers, peace and stability. www.cnmeonline.com
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INSIGHT
Siddhartha Bhattcharya, VP Marketing, Kodak Alaris Information Management
HARNESS THE POWER OF DATA CHAOS Siddhartha Bhattcharya, VP Marketing, Kodak Alaris Information Management discusses his strategy for navigating the seemingly endless information at your company’s fingertips.
T
he era of data chaos has arrived. Businesses need a better way to face the mountains of data created every day. Depending on the industry, your company possesses between 1 million and 12 million gigabytes of information. Most of that data is unstructured. Of course, this makes document management chaotic. Unstructured data is the information that does not fit into neat rows and columns. It overtook structured data several years ago, and by 2020 it’s estimated that unstructured data will total over 9 times the volume of structured data. This presents two problems: • You are managing more data, from more sources • Most of that data is unstructured Existing data management methods, which were made for structured data, are insufficient to tackle either challenge efficiently. According to Forbes, only 0.5% of business data is ever analysed and used. The struggle is universal, spanning industries and functions alike, leading to a shared pain among business leaders. 76
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The Answer: Digital Transformation Data management and Big Data initiatives have been buzzworthy subjects for years. But for most organisations, Big Data remains just that - a big pile of data. Unless companies extract meaning from the chaos, they miss opportunities to grow. Digital Transformation involves the improvement of business processes by pulling insights from integrated data. It makes sense: the volume and complexity of data, and its scale for an average business, requires the flexibility and elasticity provided by digital. After all, once business processes have been digitized, they are more able to... • Share data with teammates and co-workers. • Mine data for meaningful insights. • Comprehend the comparative value of various business processes. • Determine areas of improvement within particular functions and workflows. The world’s business leaders believe digital transformation leads
to growth, and it makes sense: more efficient internal processes produce noticeably better results. But evidence is always encouraging. According to McKinsey, companies that infuse their operations with analytics “deliver productivity and profit gains that are 5 to 6 percent higher than those of the competition.” critical documents. It’s no secret that Digital Transformation is valuable. The secret is how. There is a distinct need for businesses to analyze more of their data in order to derive insight. Harness the power of data chaos for your business The ever-increasing flood of data and how you manage it is one of the biggest challenges facing businesses in the 21st century, but it is also one of the greatest opportunities. Data doesn’t need to be chaotic. With digital transformation, you’re not just wrangling ones and zeros into meta-tagged cells, you’re injecting insight into your business decisions. With new science, technology and partner ecosystems, you can streamline internal processes and meet company-wide revenue objectives. www.cnmeonline.com
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workflow of IOPS-demanding applications.
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INSIGHT
Sarah K. White, CIO.com
TIME TO COMBINE
Network and security teams may have different goals and objectives, but as networks grow more complex, it’s time to get these two teams on the same page.
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t’s not surprising that network and security teams aren’t always on the same page. After all, networks need to be fast and efficient, while security is about slowing things down and implementing extra steps to help meet security measures. But when a data breach or security threat strikes, businesses need both teams working together to help get it fixed as soon as possible, especially as networks become more intricate. Conflicting goals One of the biggest reasons these two teams aren’t known for strong communication and teamwork, according to David Vigna, Practice Director, Softchoice, is their “conflicting goals.” Network teams are focused on network availability and usability, while security teams are focused on potential risks and vulnerabilities. And security measures can often slow things down – adding things like two step authentication, firewalls or other precautions that might hinder how fast networks can get up and running. So, for a team focused on speed and availability, security can often be seen as a roadblock in reaching those goals – and vice versa. It’s not that security isn’t important to networking professionals, it’s just that it isn’t necessarily their focus. And the same goes for security pros. They don’t want things to run slower 78
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or to create more steps for people, but it is their job to keep things as secure as possible. And as it becomes increasingly important for businesses to avoid any security breaches – both teams will need to shift their priorities. Build communication The best solution to this problem? Start communicating, says Vigna. The time to communicate isn’t after something bad has happened – it should be before. “Both network and security teams should also proactively reach out to one another and discuss trends and issues on a day-to-day basis in order to be prepared for the worst,” says Eddie Schwartz, Board Director and Chair, ISACA. That means, when embarking on new projects, get both teams in on the conversation. At the very least, Vigna says network teams should be proactive in giving security workers a heads-up about new projects. He suggests inviting security professionals into the early concept stages, to give input where they might find security issues before any time, money or energy is invested by the network team. Similarly, he says security teams should be “consistently responsive in sending risk assessments to network teams.” Hire the right people Hiring the right tech workers might
seem obvious, but if you want your network and security teams to get along, include it in your hiring process. While network and security professionals have different skillsets, you can still emphasise during the interview process that you encourage collaboration between the two teams, so they come in knowing what to expect. If you know you’ll need someone who can be flexible and open with other IT teams, find people with well-rounded backgrounds who express an openness to the changing landscape of IT. You might even find network professionals emerge with security skills, says Vigna, especially as networks become more complex, which increases potential risks. Schwartz also points to the CIO as a guidepost for the rest of the department. As the CIO, he says, you need to encourage both teams to understand one another’s priorities and goals. You can’t expect your teams to understand how they can help one another if they don’t even know how the other operates on a day-to-day basis. “It’s important for IT leaders to see these departments as part of one larger team, rather than separate factions. Though some organisations are quick to see their security teams as supplements to the IT department, IT leaders need to fully integrate security teams,” says Vigna . www.cnmeonline.com
INSIGHT
Mark Nowell, Chair, IEEE P802.3cd Task Force
STAY CONNECTED Mark Nowell, Chair, IEEE P802.3cd Task Force, gives a lowdown of the three new Ethernet projects the IEEE Standards Association has launched.
T
he success of Ethernet has driven a diverse and everchanging set of applications involving various Ethernet data rates over different media. Historically, the pursuit of higher speeds was paramount, but IT engineers have now been working to enable existing Ethernet rates over new distances for specific applications. By creating standards for different Ethernet data rates that optimise limited resources like the number of pins, or lanes, on a chip, engineers are creating a deeper toolkit that is cost-effective for the network and computing domains. The work of building out “families” of Ethernet standards continues, and the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) recently initiated two new IEEE 802.3 projects, as well as the modification of an existing standard. These projects will deliver standards that support additional Ethernet rates over various media in a cost-effective manner for a range of applications in networking and computing. The three new projects include: • IEEE P802.3cc, 25Gbps Ethernet over single-mode fiber • IEEE P802.3cd, 50Gbps, 100Gbps and 200Gbps Ethernet • IEEE P802.3bs, 200Gbps and 400Gbps Ethernet 80
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The IEEE P802.3cc project will complete the 25 GbE family of physical layer specifications (PHYs). The data centremarket for 25 GbE short-reach over copper and multi-mode fibre is currently in full swing. The IEEE P802.3cc 25 Gb/s over Single-Mode Fibre Task Force will develop new 10 km and 40 km PHYs over single-mode fiber for 25 GbE. A standard supporting single-lane signaling at 25Gbps will help lower costs for this application. The timeline for completion of this standard is, roughly, sometime in the second half of 2017. The IEEE P802.3cd Task Force will develop the new 50Gbps Ethernet rate as well as a set of PHYs for 50 GbE, 100 GbE and 200 GbE that can cost-effectively leverage common 50Gbps optical and electrical signaling technologies. The timeline for completion of IEEE P802.3cd 50Gbps Ethernet is, roughly, in the first half of 2018. The IEEE P802.3bs 400Gbps project is expanding its scope. Originally, 400 GbE was defined by creating 50Gbps single-lane technology, and multiplexing 8 lanes together. The creation of 50Gbps single-lane signaling was the catalyst for the creation of the IEEE P802.3cd project.
During the creation of that project, however, it was realised that the synergies for 200 GbE SMF PHYs with the P802.3bs project meant it made more sense to include it there to accelerate completion. The IEEE P802.3bs 400GbE project modification, therefore, expands the project to include the definition of the new rate of 200 GbE and 200Gbps single-mode fiber PHYs within its scope. The timeline for completion of the IEEE P802.3bs project is late 2017. Copper, multimode fiber and single-mode fiber PHYs will be developed for all three Ethernet rates. It’s worth noting that the success of IEEE 802 standards has always been based on their open, transparent, inclusive development process conducted by IEEE-SA, with full participation by industry. These latest IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Working Group projects will address the increasing needs for speeds and reach targeted at specific applications, and help ensure best practices are implemented through the principles of standardisation. If you’re an IT executive eyeing your technology roadmap, rest assured that industry participants are working to address your needs and we now have timetables for the delivery of standards that will enable the solutions you need in your toolkit. www.cnmeonline.com
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INSIGHT
Loudon Blair, Senior Director, Corporate Strategy Office, Ciena
EVOLVING ENVIRONMENTS Loudon Blair, Senior Director, Corporate Strategy Office, Ciena, outlines the differences between virtual, augmented and mixed realities, and explains how organisations can adopt these new technologies to work in their favour.
V
irtual reality is hot, and enterprise and consumerfacing organisations are eager to figure out how they can take advantage of the new medium, whether it be for entertainment, productivity, sales, or a myriad other potential uses. However, sometimes lost in all this excitement is the difference between virtual reality platforms and whether the required technical underpinnings are in place to deliver a satisfying user experience. It’s important to understand what virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality are in relation to each other, as well as the technical considerations that those hoping to create experiences for these platforms need to keep in mind. Virtual Virtual reality, or VR, is often used as a blanket term for all digital-reality variations. But in practice, it’s a specific kind of experience. While AR and MR incorporate some aspect of the real environment around the user, VR refers to a 100 percent virtual, simulated experience. VR headsets cover the user’s field of vision and respond to eye and head movements and shift what the screen displays accordingly, thus creating the illusion that the viewer is actually inside the other location or world. 82
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Augmented The crucial difference between VR and AR lies in the way digital content is mixed with reality. Augmented reality (AR) doesn’t block out the world around the user in favour of a new, fabricated one, rather, it places a digital layer between the viewer and reality. AR units are at least semi-transparent, allowing the user to see the world around them even as web pages, graphs, maps, and more are displayed in front of them (think Google Glass). This kind of technology also allows engineers and designers to see and manipulate models of what they’re working on alongside or overlaid onto their current work. Similarly, a surgeon could use an AR visor to highlight specific anatomy, pull up a model of an organ for reference, or help train other surgeons. Mixed Mixed reality – MR - is a combination of both virtual and augmented reality. Whereas in AR, digital content is simply overlaid onto the real environment being viewed - typically informational content such as a timetable when looking at a train with MR platforms, the digital world is integrated into the real world in an interactive way. MR use diverse cases and reach the everyday consumer.
We’re very early in the development of MR technologies, so it’s too soon to say with accuracy what the required network resources will be for these devices, but we know they’ll be significant, and will require an even more robust and flexible network than both VR and AR. Luckily, we have time to figure this out. The MR start-up Magic Leap has, despite only showing its technology to a few individuals (and never publicly), raised $1.4 billion in funding, and Microsoft has been developing its own MR platform, HoloLens, for some time now, and has even begun shipping development kits. Building towards adoption The key to unlocking the potential of these platforms lies in making sure massive amounts of data can be transferred without being slowed down or limiting the experience. In short, this means we need to look to 5G and the infrastructure to support it, as well as improved wireline access. There are so many exciting, aspirational VR stories about all the things we can do with the many permutations of this technology, in the enterprise, healthcare, education, and more. The use cases are worth working towards, but we haven’t yet focused enough on the network infrastructure to make them a reality. We need to get to the point in which these capabilities become seamless, and we’re not there just yet. www.cnmeonline.com
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David Lavenda, co-founder and VP of Marketing and Strategy, Harmon
THE BATTLE OF INTELLIGENCE
T
he philosophical war between artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligence augmentation (IA) has been waged for more than half a century, with the focus shifting between the two as each has made important strides. The last two decades have witnessed AI’s rising fortunes, with the success of IBM’s Deep Bluecomputer, which beat chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov in 1997, Big Blue's Watson defeat of American TV show Jeopardy's champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in 2011, and most recently, Google’s AlphaGo defeat of Go champion Lee Sedol this year. These successes demonstrated the superiority of computers over humans in accomplishing a certain kind of undertaking. And following each victory, various predictions emerged of the ascension of machines and the demise of the human. AI, bots and the cloud According to AI theorists, it’s not just game-playing computer programmes that are poised to wrest control of your life. In the last few months Microsoft, Google and Facebook have all announced bot frameworks – software designed to automate tasks, like setting up an appointment or performing an Internet search. Modern bots employ AI technology to process conversations (or text sessions), effectively replacing the human operators who typically stand behind these processes. Experts predict bots will soon replace apps as the primary way we complete 84
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tasks. The simplicity of the bot promises to replace the rigid structure of the app; it’s easier and more intuitive to use. Instead of navigating through an app, you will simply speak to (or text) a bot and tell it what you want. Is that it for IA? After 50 years, has IA finally been vanquished? Are we ready to relinquish control to autonomous cars, software bots, and AI-based recommendation engines? The answer is yes and no. While AI will clearly play a larger role in our daily lives, it is not a panacea. AI-based solutions work best in structured environments where all relevant information can be considered and where the goals of the system are specifically defined – ordering a pizza, setting a meeting, playing chess and so on. In all these cases, while the number of possible outcomes that has to be considered may be enormous, the outcome can be predicted with a high degree of confidence (and can be tweaked based on user response to improve results in the future). This is exactly the situation where a powerful computer has an advantage over the human mind. On the other hand, artificial intelligence is not well-suited to situations where goals and inputs are not welldefined; it’s here where intelligence augmentation will continue to play a major role. Let’s look at an example. A salesperson focused on closing business relies upon many different systems to do their job. Email is the main source of information today, but others include
SharePoint, Box, or Dropbox for documents; Skype and CRM among others. On any given day, integrating that disparate information is an exhausting task. AI-based machine learning systems can extract topics from messages on each of these systems and even match them across systems. But then what does the salesperson do with that information? Here is where AI reaches its limits and IA excels – assisting the human operator in evaluating what action should to be taken next. A virtual détente Today’s information worker is inundated by inputs from an increasing number of data sources, and as a result they are turning to a growing number of cloud services to get business done: for storing and sharing documents; for completing transactions via CRM, HR, and business-specific apps; and for communicating with peers via social tools like Skype and Slack. Since individuals and departments can sign up for whatever services they need (often without IT’s approval), the corpus of tools being used by an organisation is becoming progressively diverse. Trying to make sense of this discord of signals is creating an information overload for workers, who now run the risk of dropping the ball instead of focusing on, and completing, important work endeavors. Simply put, it’s becoming more difficult to see the information forest for the data trees. The AI vs. IA war isn’t a war after all. They both have an important role to play in our future. www.cnmeonline.com
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Allwyn Sequeira, Senior Vice President and Co-General Manager, vCloud Air, VMware
CACHING ON CLOUD
Allwyn Sequeira, Senior Vice President and CoGeneral Manager, vCloud Air, VMware, discusses how utilising the cloud for backup and recovery can pave way for a more comprehensive data protection strategy.
C
loud-based backup and recovery can be appealing for various reasons. Large enterprises may see it as an extension of their hybrid cloud strategy, while smaller businesses may simply be looking for a ‘shrink-wrapped’ solution. But it is important to understand that traditional on-premise backup procedures do not always apply in the cloud. Here are the key things to consider when looking at cloud-based backup and recovery: Think apps, not files. Traditional backup systems tend to be organised around files and folders, but this model isn’t a great fit when you’re backing up to a cloud. A better strategy is to think of cloud backup in terms of recovering entire on-premises applications. That means backing up the entire application context – including files, data objects, and even executable binaries – so that whichever portion of the application that may have become corrupted can be reconstructed. Depending on your application’s design, the most efficient method may be to backup whole virtual machines. Organisations with more budgets may want to couple this with a full disaster recovery strategy, potentially even implementing a full active/active continuous availability strategy. But a comprehensive backup plan can help 86
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reconstruct local applications in a pinch at much lower cost than operating redundant active data centres. The WAN is not the LAN. It should be obvious that network bandwidth will be a top concern when backing up to the cloud. One of the advantages of cloud-based backups is they can occur throughout the day and not only during off-peak hours, but customers should consider the bandwidth they’ll need and plan appropriately to avoid disrupting other operations. For most customers, the most effective solution will be to establish a class of network service just for backup, either on a switch or via software-defined networking, that sets a cap on the amount of bandwidth it can consume. The trick is to attack the problem in terms of network engineering, rather than simply throwing bandwidth at it. This strategy, combined with leveraging WAN optimisation, data dedup and hypervisor based protocols, seamlessly orchestrated via enterprise-to-cloud management frameworks, can provide cost-effective solutions. Who can get at your data? The issue of data sovereignty is an increasingly important one, particularly for organisations with a global reach. The tug-of-war between privacy requirements on one side and national
security concerns on the other makes it imperative that companies understand who can access the data they’ve stored in the cloud, when, and under what circumstances. Trusting your cloud provider. Lastly, it’s important to choose a cloud provider you trust – because with the transition to cloud-based storage, backup becomes not just a product or service to integrate, but a partnership. So, for example, you need to have as much confidence in the cloud vendor’s internal data protection processes as your own. Backup and recovery use cases will vary, so matching a cloud vendor’s offering to your organisation’s specific needs should be an early priority. What, exactly, will be backed up? What is the data retention period? How quickly can I restore from backup? Does the level of security match my compliance requirements? Asking the right questions up front can save a lot of sleepless nights down the road. This goes double if your organisation is still early on its cloud journey. Cloudbased backup and recovery may not be for everyone. When implemented with care and the aid of the right partner, however, it can be not only part of a comprehensive data protection plan, but also a first step into a larger, hybrid cloud world. www.cnmeonline.com
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WHAT IT DOES: The latest in the Note series made its debut in the Middle East region last month. The curved, 5.7-inch QHD Super AMOLED screen is equipped with the advanced camera that was introduced in the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. With the improved S Pen, users can “bring ideas to life, the moment inspiration strikes” without even unlocking the screen, by using the ‘screen off memo.’ The tip of the S-Pen has been reduced by nearly 50 percent and now totals 0.7mm in diameter. With its water resistant certification, the S-Pen also allows users to jot down ideas even when the screen is wet. The new Air Command functions, including Magnify and Translate, enable users to zoom in on the screen or convert
languages with a simple hover of the S-Pen using Google Translate. In addition to 64GB of internal memory, the Note7 offers expandable storage and microSD support of up to 256GB. It is equipped with a 3,500mAh battery, and uses the new USB-C port for wireless charging. WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: Coupled with Samsung Knox, the Note7 provides ‘heightened security and privacy’ for its users, through its fingerprint scanner and iris scanning technology. The secure folder, according to Samsung, instils a new level of user confidence through its added layer of authentication to keep private and personal information safe.
Brand: Bose Product: SoundSport and SoundSport Pulse WHAT IT DOES: According to Bose, the headphones were designed with a sportversion of StayHear+tips, which keeps users comfortable during exercise. Made from soft, flexible silicone, the device’s umbrella shape and extended wing fits securely to the user’s ears. SoundSport headphones are sweat and water resistant, and are Bluetooth and NFC-enabled so users can pair and connect them to their smart devices. The headphones also have volume-optimised EQ, which brings users balanced audio
quality at any volume. They have an inline mic and remote, letting users stay focused while skipping songs, adjusting volume, or taking and making calls. Meanwhile, the SoundSport Pulse headphones include a built-in heart rate monitor with the precision of a chest strap. They are also compatible with Runkeeper, Endomondo and other fitness apps. WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: SoundSport Pulse has up to five hours of battery life and SoundSport has up to six hours. The SoundSport headphones are already available in the market for AED 599, while SoundSport Pulse will only be available this month. www.cnmeonline.com
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FOUR THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE MOVING YOUR DATA CENTRE TO 25G Forward-thinking enterprises are now trying to understand how they can achieve web-scale IT efficiencies on an enterprise scale IT budget. Rather than bolting from 10Gbps server connectivity straight to 100Gbps, many are considering 25Gbps as an affordable and less disruptive step that will still provide significant performance improvements. So, the question is, are you ready for 25G? If not, how do you get ready? 1. Which workloads benefit from 25G? All of them. Businesses frequently say they don’t run high performance applications and therefore don’t need high speed networks. But this belief fails to take into account the key insight the web-scale folks have learned – high speed networks are not just about performance, they are about efficiency. As more and more applications become converged, virtualised and distributed, the network is being utilised constantly. This is being further driven by the trend towards hyperconverged infrastructure, which combines compute, storage and virtualisation into an integrated platform. Hyperconverged solutions from Nutanix, Microsoft and VMware all utilise distributed, software-defined storage that relies on the network to move data. Furthermore, snapshots, backups and virtual machine migration is a regular occurrence to achieve load-balancing and high availability. 90
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The alternative is to increase network speeds to minimise the impact of these background tasks, enabling servers and storage resources to serve applications and users, rather than be consumed simply by moving data. The relationship between higher speed networks and infrastructure efficiency is a key insight that the hyperscale public cloud providers have embraced and has positioned them on the forefront of 25, 50 and 100Gbps network speed adoption. 2. What is the server, switch and storage infrastructure availability? Today, there are 25G Ethernet solutions from all of the major switch and server vendors available. Multiple suppliers have released silicon and system products that support the standard. Major server vendors including Dell, HPE and Lenovo are now offering 25G, 50G and 100Gbps Ethernet Adapters across a broad range of servers with both traditional stand-up PCI and mezzanine cards available. In addition, a broad range of switch vendors are supporting 25G, 50G and 100Gbps Ethernet speeds. 3. Is there a significant cost to upgrade to 25G? Fortunately, even though they provide 2.5X more bandwidth, 25Gbps NICs and switches are not significantly more expensive than 10Gbps Ethernet solutions. Furthermore, they are fully
backwards-compatible and will autonegotiate down to a slower rate when connected to 10Gbps equipment. This means that you don’t need to do a wholesale forklift upgrade to your data centre. Instead, you can upgrade your data centre network as part of a regular refresh cycle and still future proof your network with 25G capabilities. 4. Is my cable plant ready for 25G, 50G & 100G Ethernet? One of the biggest costs and risks for any data centre is installing cabling fibre plant. Not only does this involve intensive labour, it is also extremely disruptive to data centre operations and carries with it the potential for confusion and errors. For most data centre operators the preference is to install fiber cabling just once and then leave it. Most 10Gbps data centres use Small Form Factor (SFF) optical transceivers and multimode or single mode fibre. For those considering a 25G upgrade, the good news is that the fibre that has already been installed in the data centre will work in the vast majority of cases. So, there is a high probability that you can reuse all of your existing fibre plant. You will only need to upgrade the optical transceivers and copper cables to support the faster 25Gbps speeds. Fortunately, the upgrade from 10G to 25G (or from 40G to 100G) avoids tearing out and laying new fibre, which is typically the most expensive, time consuming and the error-prone part of an upgrade. www.cnmeonline.com
HPE Helion hybrid cloud helps Fortune 500 companies scale up and down and up. First, the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Helion platform lets you shift traditional apps into a private cloud that can heighten security and lower costs. Then it lets you add a public cloud that can scale up and down as rapidly as demand does. So you can always find your right mix. See how companies like yours are moving to hybrid with the leader in private cloud solutions.* hpe.com/hybrid
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