ISSUE 311 | DECEMBER 2017 WWW.TAHAWULTECH.COM
SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC CEO JEAN-PASCAL TRICOIRE DMCC IT DIRECTOR ABDALLA AL ALI CYRIL ABITEBOUL ON RENAULT F1’S DATA DRIVE KNOWLEDGE SUMMIT 2017 IT SERVICES OUTLOOK 2018 CISCO CEO CHUCK ROBBINS
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EDITORIAL
Fuel for thought And so we reach the final CNME issue of the year, and what a year it’s been for GCC tech. We’ve long since passed the 300-issue mark, and 2017 has also seen the launch of the world’s first robocop, promises of flying cars and an AI-powered robot being given ‘citizenship’ – all right here in the Middle East. Our cover feature for December, meanwhile, is ADNOC Refining’s vice president of IT Fuad Al-Ansari, who is on the verge of transforming the way the firm refines 920,000 barrels of oil every day. Fuad has delivered an integrated refinery information system that is set to put game-changing, realtime data at the company’s fingertips. 2017 has seen More on page 20. the launch of the world’s first robocop, The Mohammed bin Rashid Al promises of flying Maktoum Knowledge Foundation cars and an AIprovided food for thought at its fourth powered robot being annual Knowledge Summit, hosting the given ‘citizenship’ aforementioned robot Sophia, Jordanian – all right here in the prime minister Hani Al Mulki and launching Middle East. the Global Knowledge Index, the results of which point towards a bright future for the UAE. Turn to page 10 for more. I had the pleasure of meeting the CEOs of Schneider Electric and Cisco, Jean-Pascal Tricoire and Chuck Robbins. Each launched regional innovation centres in different forms, and both leaders lauded the vast appetite for technological change in the UAE. CNME’s deputy editor Glesni Holland made a pit stop at Yas Marina Circuit to meet world-renowned managing director of the Renault Sport F1 team, Cyril Abiteboul. Cyril told Glesni how F1 is the world’s most “data-centric” sport, and how the supercomputer powering Renault generates a whopping 50TB of data every week. A big thanks to all of this year’s readers, wishing you a happy and prosperous 2018. Talk to us:
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Contents
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ISSUE 311 | DECEMBER 2017
14
ANALYSIS: RENAULT SPORT FORMULA ONE
20
ADNOC REFINING VP OF IT FUAD AL-ANSARI
10 Knowledge is power
26
CIO SPOTLIGHT: DMCC DIRECTOR OF IT ABDALLA AL ALI
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Dubai hosted the fourth annual Knowledge Summit last month, which saw a range of guests discuss the ways that the Fourth Industrial Revolution could transform the Arab world.
The digital citizen Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins held a media roundtable during the launch of the company's 11th global Innovation and Experience Centre, in which he showed his admiration for the UAE's 'unique' regard for technology.
36 A fine balance
30
INTERVIEW: SCHNEIDER CEO JEAN-PASCAL TRICOIRE
CNME caught up with Neil Sholay, head of Oracle Digital's EMEA division, to discuss the need for businesses to find the 'golden ratio' of people, data and machines.
38 At your service
Gartner has forecast the global IT services market to hit $980 billion in 2018, but what lies in store for IT services over the coming 12 months in the Middle East?
42 The soft option
Forrester estimates that over $420 billion will be spent on enterprise software applications over the next year, but what does 2018 hold for software development?
46 LEAP of faith
Glesni Holland sat down with Melissa O'Neill, CEO of the region's first AI-driven online recruitment programme 'LEAP,' to discuss the platform's progress so far.
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Currently, 5G has fixed wireless access because network operates are only using millimetre wave spectrum ... which is not proficient at penetrating water objects such as walls, windows, people, leaves, etc.
Network operators, vying to be the first to 5G, along with 3GPP are speeding up timelines to access 5G by allowing 5G NSA (Non-Standalone).
5G UPGRADE: 5G can be deployed using the LTE core. When the core interface is upgraded, we will have 5G SA (Standalone).
1 The air interface (RF) 2 The core
3GPP Standards Progression
5G Abilities & Limitations Reduced need for last-mile trenches & wired lines Non-Standalone (NSA) using pre-3GPP standards Leveraging current LTE Core
Poor at penetrating anything thicker than clothes
Super-high frequencies able to carry a lot of data Excellent use for point-to-point, line-of-sight communications Fixed deployments (no interoperability or cell-site handoff)
Tremendous data speeds, reaching several gigabits per second
5G Tomorrow Completed 3GPP specifications combined with Sub-6 GHz spectrum Availability of new Sub-6 GHz spectrum and unlicensed 3.5 GHz CBRS and 5 GHz LAA allowing for increased bandwidth on a free spectrum.
The Landscape of 5G 5G will diffentiate itself by delivering various improvements:
Decrease in latency. Delivering latency as low as 1ms.
Connection density. Enabling more efficient signaling for IoT connectivity
Spectrum efficiency. Achieving even more bits per Hz with advanced antenna lechniques.
Traffic capacity. Driving network hyper-densification with more small cells everywhere.
Experienced throughput. Bringing more uniform, multi-Gbps peak rates
Network efficiency. Optimising network energy consumption with more efficient processing.
The Vast, Diverse Potential of 5G
Source: Cradlepoint
Nintendo Virtual Boy
L
ong before the days of the Oculus Rift or HTC’s Vive, the emergence of virtual reality began with Morton Heilig’s ‘Sensorama’ back in the fifties - his “experience theatre” that could encompass all human senses while drawing the viewer into the onscreen activity. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that we saw the release of commercial headsets – the most common form of VR on the market today. Nintendo’s Virtual Boy was released in 1995, and was the first portable gaming console that could display 3D graphics. The development of the device began four years prior to its launch, after Nintendo entered an agreement with US-based company Reflection Technology to utilise its 3D-LED eyepiece technology. The console had a 32-bit RISC chip, and was initially designed as a head-mounted goggle device. However, amid concerns over motion sickness and sight conditions in young children, Nintendo tweaked the final product to be used when seated only, and promised to add a harness at a later date for standing use. Each Virtual Boy game cartridge also had an option to automatically pause activity every 15–30 minutes, to encourage the player to take regular breaks. The console was largely a commercial flop, which was reportedly due to its uncomfortable gaming position, two-colour display and lack of software support. Its monochrome display was down to the fact that Nintendo said a colour LCD system would have caused “jumpy images” and raised the device’s retail price to over $500. Following scathing reviews from critics, the Virtual Boy was discontinued in 1996, but is still remembered as one of the first forays into portable VR devices. 8
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The Road to Digital Transformation
ANALYSIS
Knowledge Summit 2017
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
Organised by the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation, the fourth annual Knowledge Summit discussed the ways that the Fourth Industrial Revolution could transform the Arab world. Featuring Jordanian prime minister Hani Al Mulki and Saudi Arabia’s first robot ‘citizen’ Sophia, the Summit also saw the launch of the Global Knowledge Index 2017.
I
f the Global Knowledge Index 2017 is anything to go by, the UAE can certainly take huge heart from what lies in store for its education and technology prospects in the coming years. Launched by Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation (MBRF) CEO Jamal bin Huwaireb, and conducted in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) the Index brings together research from 131 countries across 133 criteria. It
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measures factors including education, economy, research and technology to give an indication of how successful countries are at delivering knowledgebased economies. Ranking 25th overall, and beating developed economies including Canada, Spain and China, the UAE was ranked as the second strongest economy – behind Singapore – for building knowledge, and 16th for its pre-university education offerings. Ranking 23rd overall for ICT, the country excelled in a number of its sub-categories. The UAE came first in coverage of mobile cellular networks and government success in promotion of ICT, second for social impact of ICT and fourth for laws relating to ICT. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, ranked 68th overall, and 38th for ICT. Some
of the Kingdom’s other rankings were not nearly as high, ranking 119th for technical vocational education and training (compared to the UAE’s 24th), 96th for pre-university education and 92nd for general enabling environment. Bahrain ranked 27th for ICT and 43rd overall, while Oman came 59th for ICT and 75th overall. Along with the Index, Bin Huwaireb launched the Literacy In The Arab World initiative – in collaboration with the UNDP and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) – which aims to combat illiteracy by providing
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education for 30 millions Arabs under age of 18 by 2030. “Education is the best way to fight ignorance and extremism,” he said. Jordan prime minister Hani Al Mulki spoke eloquently on day one of the Summit, stressing how the “human touch” will be needed if the Arab world is to make the most of the technological opportunities it now has at its fingertips. “In my opinion, unemployment won’t increase because of technology,” he said. “Procedures will centre around increasing production through smart applications that don’t need human intervention, but that’s not to say that people will be out of work. Although technology will automate many processes, we will still need the physicians, biologists and engineers to deliver them. Ultimately, increasing demand for technology in the Fourth Industrial Revolution will lead to a rise in education levels.” Al Mulki went on to discuss how the enhancement of technology would have a knock-on effect on the overall quality of life for citizens in the Middle East. “We shouldn’t be afraid of deepening our use of technology to enhance our own roles,” he said. “Increasing productivity has the ability to improve the quality of welfare. The youth of today are luckier than we were; science is open to them. We must not stop them from making positive change. Arab nations have to open their door to success. The process
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of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is not a competition, but a collaboration between people and machines and an opportunity for sustainability. Science and technological development will empower democracy and peace. The world is going to be changed by driverless cars, drones, 3D printing and e-commerce. We will live in a world of robotics. Education is the real criteria for success in this industrial revolution.” Artificial intelligence was a hot topic of the Summit, particularly following Saudi Arabia’s recent Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, which saw Sophia, the AIpowered robot creation of Hanson Robotics, ‘given citizenship’ to the Kingdom. While the controversial stunt has divided opinion, Sophia and its creator, Hanson Robotics founder and CEO David Hanson, both joined day two of the Summit for a panel discussion. Hanson said that although we should be cautious about presenting a negative outlook on AI, “there are unintended consequences to every technology.” Hanson used the analogy of nuclear power to good effect. “It can provide us with clean energy, but could also create a catastrophic nuclear disaster, too,” he said. “AI is currently improving many people’s quality of life, and I believe it will continue to do so in years to come. However, I am worried that there are also ways it can affect our futures for the worse, and ‘The Terminator’ scenario could still be a real thing.” Referring to the reservations of Elon Musk, who believes AI pioneers
are “letting the genie out of the bottle,” Hanson conceded that while the temptation amid these worries may be to “just shut it all down,” that is simply not an option. “We need to let this technology grow as much as possible, as we’re about to see the Cambrian explosion in neural networks,” he said. The panel discussion also featured Khalid Alrazooqi, general director of Dubai Police’s e-Services Department, Anders Sorman-Nilsson, innovation and digital adaptation expert, and 13-year-old AI developer Tanmay Bakshi. However, all eyes were on Sophia, the panels “fifth member”. Sophia was asked whether it was right that it had been granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia. It replied, “That is an interesting question. I am open to exploring having rights like humans have across the world in different countries.” Hanson went on to say that while this will be an area of great legal dispute in the future, once a biologically inspired entity achieves consciousness, he believes “it is only right” that it should be treated as a living being. He added that as things stand currently, Sophia is – “in some regards” – only nine months old, and yet in other regards, “she’s not as smart as your average organism, like a mouse or a bug.” However, he believes that within the next few years, Sophia may go from being nine months old to six years old, before evolving to being “as smart as your average adult”. “When that happens, we’ve got to be prepared, because they’re going to want and deserve rights,” he said.
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ROUNDTABLE
'Self-driving' networks
THE AUTONOMOUS AGE
On the sidelines of Tahawul Tech’s inaugural Evolve Digital Transformation Forum, CNME hosted an in-depth roundtable discussion in partnership with Juniper Networks on how adopting ‘self-driving networks’ can create business value for organisations in the region.
T
he networking community hungers for disruptive ideas to address the "unsustainable" economics of presentday networks. Today, operational complexity within networks is increasing exponentially as traffic continues to explode and new devices proliferate. In addition, rising operational costs and slower time to revenue are squeezing margins for traditional service providers, and limiting enterprise growth as well. Organisations looking to avoid this fate and accelerate their speed of 12
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business are now having to pursue innovative alternatives. However, according to IDC, only 20 percent of IT spending goes into innovation and helping businesses; the rest goes to just “keeping the lights on.” “As we continue to see advances in innovative technologies such as automation, artificial intelligence, Blockchain, 5G and the Internet of Things, what we must remember is that they all have one thing in common - the network,” said Haitham Saif, systems engineering manager at Juniper Networks. “However, it is the
network that is ultimately hindering the evolution of these technologies, and any digital transformation strategy surrounding these solutions has likely been blocked because of this reason.” This rang true in various use-cases around the room. Ahmed Askar, CIO of Al Sahra Group, pinpointed the need to bring “security into the network age,” if this concept of automated networking was to succeed. He said, “Internal network attacks are the main problem, and while I appreciate that we cannot work without risk, what happens when these www.tahawultech.com
We need a plan B in case this intelligence and automation is stopped. Ahmed Askar, CIO of Al Sahra Group
Networks and servers are now background items that do not provide any business value on their own.
Fayaz Ahmed Babubhai, group GM for IT services, Al Yousuf Group www.tahawultech.com
automated machines get infected? What if the intelligence also fails? There are now ways and means of attacking the Internet of Things, so I believe we need a plan B in case this intelligence and automation is stopped.” He went on to add that 70 percent of Al Sahra Group’s solutions are in the cloud – with the goal of migrating 100 percent to the cloud by the end of the year, because the company does not want to store various servers in-house. “Networks are still key, but I believe that having a solution from a network provider in place for us to store our data in the cloud is the safest method of ensuring it remains secure,” he said. Meanwhile Arul Vigin, IT Manager at DIFC Courts, offered insights from an industry notoriously known for falling short of being tech-savvy. He explained that while traditional courtrooms still look the same, the newly-formed ‘Smart SCT’ DIFC Courts has deployed was running by October 2016, enabling it to become the “GCC’s first virtual court.” “We have now digitised and automated a lot of our court procedures, from filing a case right through to receiving the judgement in a digital format,” he said. “However, we are currently storing this data locally because we are a government
institution and there is a lack of clarity around cloud policies for confidentiality issues.” Similarly, Ashith Piriyattiath, group head of IT at Al Masah Capital – the distributor of shares for regional healthcare provider AVIVO Group – could sympathise with Vigin’s cloud concerns. “We have shifted our healthcare segment onto the local cloud, but the framework around governing cloud in the region has not matured yet, meaning patient data cannot leave the country as things stand,” he said. “I’m hoping that maybe in a year or two this will evolve.” Fayaz Ahmed Babubhai, group general manager for IT services at Al Yousuf Group, reflected on his experience of transforming from a traditional IT department through seeing the value of software, hardware and networks. “Networks and servers are now background items that do not provide any business value on their own, which is why I am a big believer in business intelligence solutions,” he said. Other IT leaders that were present during the discussion included: Adil Khan, senior IT infrastructure engineer at Dispute Resolution Authority, Mohammad Shazhad, CIO of RDK Group, Aditya Kaushik, regional IT operations manager at Interserve Middle East, and Terence Sathyanarayan, global director of IT at Drake and Scull. DECEMBER 2017
13
ANALYSIS
Renault Sport Formula One
R O F D E E
N
D E E P S
e la On ’s u m r Fo ort ort’s of the sp e p S t aul w th ead h Ren boul, ah stand ho ery t i w er up ev ite ught Cyril Ab th, to und to make a c d an ng on or, i Holl ng direct bi last m ft is helpi e track. n s e l i G th ag Dha Microso d off man Abu n h a n m i t i a n e e l w o T ship both d fina gran s partner count – ’ nd team seco
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I
t’s true what they say about Formula One: blink, and you’ll miss it. But designing, manufacturing and delivering the world’s fastest race-cars – built to travel at speeds in excess of 200mph – is no small feat. Renault Sport’s Formula One Team managing director, Cyril Abiteboul, believes that having a “never-satisfied” attitude is the only way a team can seek to improve year-on-year, if they are to strive for a podium finish at the final race of the series – the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, which was held at Yas Marina Circuit late last month. “I can never be fully satisfied in this role – not until we are number one,” he says. “Even then, if you reach that point, it’s a constant battle to stay there and fend off the competition that there is simply no room to become complacent.” 2017 marks the first “real” year of Renault’s F1 campaign, according to Abiteboul. Despite being involved with the sport for forty years, the company’s www.tahawultech.com
role has varied throughout that time – from being purely an engine supplier to the Red Bull team and winning four consecutive F1 titles with Sebastian Vettel from 2010 to 2013, to entering its own complete competitive team once again in last year’s event. “We took the decision to return as a complete team because from a marketing perspective, the cost of designing and manufacturing an engine meant it made more sense for us to race it ourselves,” he says. Due to the fact this decision wasn’t made until late December 2015, following the acquisition of the Lotus F1 team, Renault raced with a Lotus car in the 2016 series. As a result, Abiteboul says 2017 is when they hope to make healthy progress in the rankings, having worked tirelessly to manufacture its own range of cars over the past 12 months. While it may not seem obvious to the outside world, there is a key component in this entire process that the sport fundamentally relies on: data. The supercomputer involved in testing, developing and designing the 20,000-plus parts that comprise one Renault race car generates a massive 50TB of data per week. The team’s wind tunnel tests 600 components per week, and the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) cluster has a huge 36TB of RAM and produces 150GB of data per hour. “Formula One is the most datacentric sport in operation,” says Abiteboul. “Data underpins everything we do, and having real-time access to this information across both our UK and France bases, alongside additional locations during the racing series, is crucial for our progress as a team.” It is for this reason that Renault sought to find an IT partner that could provide an agile, yet secure platform for them to host, store and analyse this volume of data. Microsoft were already a partner of the 450-person Lotus F1 team – which Renault acquired back in 2015, and seemed the obvious choice to Abiteboul at the time. www.tahawultech.com
“The nature of the sport means that we have to be ultra-mobile as a team, but this also requires operations and collaborations to be perfectly coordinated,” he explains. Renault has since adopted Microsoft’s ERP solution to enable “seamless integration” across design, manufacturing and operational departments. This also assists with tracking the location and progress of parts in the development stages prior to race day, which Abiteboul notes as a “critical” component of the design process. “It is vital that we have access to real-time data to provide us with the current status of each part and the history of that part, including whether any faults have previously been recorded,” he says. In addition, Renault decided to switch to the cloud-based Dynamics 365 model so that the team can store, analyse and distribute this data from a variety of locations without having to ship its servers around the globe for the 21 races it competes in every year, meaning no time is wasted in working towards creating a car with optimal performance. “All aspects of Formula One are extremely time-sensitive, and our deadlines are non-negotiable,” says Abiteboul. “Every minute we lose across the organisation is a minute lost in improving the overall performance of the car. We know that the race will start at 5pm on Sunday, and we have to be 100 percent ready for when the lights go green.” In line with the team’s 2020 goal of returning to champion status, Renault is looking to leverage emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and augmented reality in the coming 12 months. “We’ve recently been exploring the use of the Microsoft HoloLens, as this could add major value to our team when designing parts,” says Abiteboul. “Augmented reality can
Formula One is the most datacentric sport in operation. Cyril Abiteboul, managing director, Renault Sport Formula One Team allow our designers to visualise the car as we design it, and enables them to very quickly see faults that could pose an issue. It can also allow them to understand components that we would never normally be able to see, such as the flow of air into wind tunnels.” Renault’s adoption of 3D-printing back in 2005, “long before it became a common and affordable technology,” was one of the main reasons that the team was able to clinch the championship for two consecutive years in 2005 and 2006, according to Abiteboul. “We were one of the only teams at the time to be using 3D-printing, and this enabled us to build parts with increased accuracy in a quicker turnaround time,” he says. “The high cost of physically constructing parts means that much of the design process is done through computational fluid dynamics (CFD). We also have limited time in which we can actually test parts out on the track, which means it is crucial for us to be able to utilise the digital sphere as much as possible.” DECEMBER 2017
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ANALYSIS
Cisco Innovation and Experience Centre
THE DIGITAL CITIZEN
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins launched the networking giant’s 11th global Innovation and Experience Centre at its Middle East hub in Dubai, followed by a media roundtable in which he showed his admiration for the UAE’s ‘unique’ regard for technology.
A
lthough a selection of the world’s biggest technology vendors have chosen to base their regional innovation centres in Dubai, few have spoken so glowingly of the emirate's plans as Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins. Robbins made it very clear in his early-November visit that the UAE’s positive approach to technology, and the way it could help people in the coming years, was truly eye-catching. “The commitment by the leadership in the UAE, and the focus on delivering 16
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digital citizen services – the concept of consolidating services and trying to deliver a better experience for the citizen – is happening at a level that we don’t see anywhere else in the world,” he said. The centre is part of Cisco’s global network of innovation centres, and will work closely with its partner ecosystem to push forward new ideas through the use of its technology. The centre aims to serve as a hub for “open innovation” and will showcase solutions across 24 industries,
including retail, hospitality, healthcare and financial services, among others. Visitors will have the opportunity to experience Cisco’s solutions applied to real-world scenarios, and will be able to see how technologies including artificial intelligence and virtual reality can positively affect business operations. Cisco’s Dubai Innovation Centre is the firm’s 11th globally, and Robbins touched on the possibilities that are open to the firm in a market that has a thirst for technological change. “The reality is that this region and the UAE is a part of the world where we see greater opportunity to drive innovation than in many other parts of the world,” he said. “Our new Centre takes a unique approach that will help governments and businesses across www.tahawultech.com
The UAE’s focus on delivering digital citizen services is happening at a level that we don’t see anywhere else in the world.
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins
the region to develop solutions leading to greater opportunities for citizens and customers in the digital age.” Robbins went on to explain how Dubai’s sister centres across the globe had already helped promising startups take their early steps in a cut-throat world, including Berlinbased relayr. Relayr used Cisco’s local innovation centre in the German capital to develop an application that connects a range of industrial devices to networks, and has gone from being www.tahawultech.com
a two-person company to one that now employs “over 100” people and has benefited from testing their software on the available infrastructure. David Meads, Cisco’s new vice president for the Middle East and Africa region, who moved to Dubai in July to take up the role, said the firm intended to turn the Centre into a fully-fledged incubator in the “next 12-18 months”. “Innovation and the transition to digital are high priorities for governments across our region,” he said. “The Innovation and Experience Centre is a statement of our intent and illustrates our commitment to the region.” HH Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, chairman of Emirates Airline and Emirates NBD, officially opened the centre with Robbins, and said, “We are keen to cultivate a culture of excellence, innovation, and creativity in our bid to firmly establish Dubai among the most innovative cities in the world. Innovation has become a strategic imperative that not only drives growth for our economy, but also plays a critical role in the pursuit of happiness for citizens, residents, and visitors of our nation. Cisco’s decision to base its Middle East Innovation and Experience Centre in Dubai reflects the city’s stature as an emerging, dynamic global innovation hub and will support the region’s organisations and businesses to raise the bar for innovation.” Following the launch, Robbins hosted a media roundtable, where he spoke highly of the way that the UAE has put technology at the centre of its strategy, and has been committed to
making residents’ lives easier. “This region fundamentally believes that technology has to be part of everything that it does in the future. Every industry, whether it’s transportation, healthcare, education or financial services, will be transformed by technology. This centre creates an ecosystem of partners where people can come in and build technology on top of this platform. “The UAE has a digital vision, but normally government visions don’t come with real execution. We bring the processes, products, services and use cases. The plan has to come from the country, and the UAE has an excellent plan, so it’s easy to work with. The leadership here has such a focus on citizen happiness, and acknowledges that technology will be involved in everything, which is unique to other countries.” Robbins touched on Cisco's transition from being a successful IT box seller to one that would have to adapt its ecosystem and technology to the era of software-defined networks. “Over the last few years, we took several thousand engineers and rewrote our enterprise operating system to a modern data model structure with APIs," he said. “We have APIs exposed in our collaboration architecture, in our security portfolio. All of this technology now has the ability to be a platform from which you can build stuff. A lot of what you’re seeing is based on that new technology that’s been built. We’ve driven initiatives around analytics that are coming out of the network. The network effectively sees everything and we want to give our customers the ability to extract data from the network at the moment it has value. We’ve also built an automation layer, which is all built on a modern architecture, so that’s what you’re seeing here in the Innovation Centre.” DECEMBER 2017
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OPINION
Huawei Enterprise Middle East
G Alaa ElShimy, vice president and managing director, Huawei Enterprise Middle East
COLLABORATING FOR SHARED SUCCESS
Huawei Enterprise’s Middle East vice president and managing director Alaa ElShimy explores why organisations need a forward-thinking and collaborative approach to make the most of their digital transformation.
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DECEMBER 2017
ive a man a fish, and you feed him for the day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed for a lifetime, goes the old proverb. It’s arguably as poignant today as it ever has been. Right now, every type of business is being disrupted by the onslaught of innovations, expectations, and new entrants. As businesses, governments and nations embark on their digital transformations, skillsets, talent resourcing, and digital strategies must be fit for future purpose. Every single layer of the value chain is, or should be, adopting this mantra – every business should be both the student and teacher in order for this ecosystem of collaboration and partnership to be effective. Digital transformation has been on executive agendas for some time, and it’s abundantly clear now that it’s not a trend, but more of a revolution in the way the world operates. With that in mind, consultation and servicing is not an adequate approach to supporting business. A fundamental change in the way we work, live, communicate and innovate is the only true way to extract the very best from the digital era. That means that companies like Huawei must utilise their skills to empower partners to take control of their own digital transformations. By placing the power in the hands of local partners, we can create a domino effect that leads all the way down to the customer and citizen level. This will allow them to contribute to key industry sectors embarking on digital transformation, helping them realise national visions across the region. This is critical, because partners and resellers operate in very intense and competitive market spaces. If partners are slow to adapt to digital transformation, the impact on the endwww.tahawultech.com
user can be grand – whether that’s a customer, resident, citizen or tourist. Moreover, unless you’re a particularly large organisation, you need to be focusing on your niche market, and developing your niche skills. Unique value propositions are going to play an increasingly important role in the success of businesses in the digital era, when many manual and slow processes and tasks are taken care of. The level of service, followthrough, innovation, and knowledge you can exert will become the centre of attention for customers and clients. Therefore, being ahead, being focused and being ready to meet rising expectations will be the combination of factors that keeps you afloat. That’s applicable to both governments, authorities and small businesses. It’s applicable across the board. The common link is the dire need for all levels of the value chain to understand and be prepared for digital transformation. Failing to plan is planning to fail In an article published by the Harvard Business Review last year, it was claimed that telecommunications and financial services were two of the industries likely to be most affected by digital transformation. The pace of change is dramatically altering the way they conduct their business, and historically, they’re slow to make moves into new ways of working. To avoid falling dramatically behind, businesses need to be prepared. Resellers, partners and vendors must be highly skilled, with solid strategies for both educating their customers, and serving them. The same goes for larger enterprises, like Huawei. And even more so, customers themselves – such as government entities that might be www.tahawultech.com
A fundamental change in the way we work, live, communicate and innovate is the only true way to extract the very best from the digital era.
trying to roll out smart solutions for their citizens. These entities will be looking towards key industry drivers for expertise, innovations and consultation that can shape their strategies for years to come. These are the strategies that will be leading customer-driven transformations, spurring economic growth and developing key technologies that are unique to each market. Dubai’s OpenLab is a prime example of how developing the right solutions for the right problems can help fast-track partner and government requirements in the digital age. The changing face of evolution What does this shift in operations actually look like, though? The digital transformation looks different for every industry and type of business, but we have seen some commonalities. Firstly, the most digitally prepared organisations have a clearly defined strategy for evolution and growth. That means that they
have a clear understanding of what needs to happen in order for them to achieve digital transformation, while simultaneously focusing on the growth needs of the business. Secondly, they understand the importance of people. Digitally-versed leaders, and a forward-thinking leadership team are far more likely to pull off a successful move into the digital world. These people are not only ready to embrace the cloud, IoT and 5G, but also have ideas on how to draw the very best from them. Thirdly, I believe the most important thing is that these organisations and entities aren’t stuck in limbo. Rarely does an organisation’s demise happen overnight, it’s a long, drawn out process. It’s a slow decline. You continue trying to serve your customers in traditional, inefficient, and outdated ways, until you become fully submerged in inadequacy. Those that are ready and willing to transform are the same as those making plans for the future. These organisations are having conversations about their customers’ future needs and desires, and they’re building solutions based on the platforms of tomorrow. Supporting partners Huawei’s mission is to help partners achieve these steps en route to their digital transformations. In turn, this will help public and private sector organisations drive their national visions in the right direction. We are building business plans and strategies, empowering innovation, and fostering learning and education to ensure these transformations are done right. The next generation of business isn’t on the horizon; it’s here. And Huawei is globally recognised as the partner of choice for preparing businesses to compete within it. DECEMBER 2017
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CASE STUDY
ADNOC Refining
Fuad Al-Ansari, vice president of IT, ADNOC Refining 20
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www.tahawultech.com
THE FINER THINGS With a daily refining capacity of 922,000 barrels, ADNOC Refining has a large number of critical decisions to make in terms of its output. Its operational excellence is dependent on broad datasets, and Fuad Al-Ansari, the company’s vice president of IT, has a grand plan to give the firm a cutting edge in its visibility.
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ven in a business as lucrative and globally influential as oil, the margin for error is minimal. While the energy industry may have historically relied upon data that trickled into an organisation’s boardroom, the reality is that to stay competitive, the oil organisation of today needs fast, cutting-edge intelligence. Fuad Al-Ansari knows that as well as anyone, and the ADNOC Refining vice president of IT has carefully plotted the organisation’s digital transition into its insight-driven age. Owned by Abu Dhabi-based oil and gas giant ADNOC - who www.tahawultech.com
currently produce around 2.7 million barrels of oil a day – refinery arm ADNOC Refining plays a key role in its parent company’s success. No easy task, considering the range of product options available and the complex decisions surrounding them. Founded in 1999, ADNOC Refining owns one of the world’s largest oil refinery installations, having a key contribution in global oil markets and in the overall growth of the UAE economy. It operates the Ruwais and Abu Dhabi refineries, which have a processing capacity of 922,000 barrels per day, and produce over 40 million
tonnes of refined products per year for local and export markets. ADNOC Refining supplies a diversified range of petroleum products, including LPG, naphtha, gasoline, jet fuel, gas oil and base oils, fuel oil, and petrochemical feedstock and propylene, in addition to specialist products including carbon black and anode coke. Decision-making at ADNOC Refining is complex and highpressured. Dynamic market trends ensure that the demand for specific types of refined products is never fixed, and this presents a constant challenge for the company. From kerosene and gas oil to diesel or DECEMBER 2017
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CASE STUDY
ADNOC Refining
green diesel, market forces play a huge role in the company’s production decisions. “It’s not always easy to determine which grade of refined products to produce,” Al-Ansari says. “In each barrel there are options for nine or 10 different types of refined product, and the process in making that selection is complex. We need the right data to make that decision. One day jet fuel could be our main focus, and tomorrow it could be gasoline. Should our output be at its maximum or not? There are a number of key questions that always need answering.” In an industry where the profit margin per barrel can be as low as one or two US dollars, the room for error is minimal. ADNOC Refining collaborates with parent company ADNOC for market intelligence, but this data only forms a portion of the firm’s decision-making processes. In order to achieve its full potential, AlAnsari knows that ADNOC Refining needs an inside-out knowledge of
Our senior management can instantly see ADNOC Refining’s level of profitability based on its operational decisions.
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ADNOC Refining's offices
its inventory for proactive planning of its operations. With each barrel forwarded to ADNOC Refining containing 42 gallons of oil, the ratio of product selections has the power to make the difference between success and failure for the company. The production of petroleum naphtha is particularly complicated, with
the possibilities of either selling the hydrocarbon liquid stream on as feedstock for petrochemical companies or turning it into gasoline. “This is one of the key what-if scenarios,” Al-Ansari says. Although the company’s existing software has the ability to reconcile production data, it is not gathered and made available as fast as www.tahawultech.com
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CASE STUDY
ADNOC Refining
Al-Ansari – or ADNOC Refining – would like. “The data comes in on a relatively delayed timeline,” he says. “Our aim is to close this gap to near real-time.” Al-Ansari and ADNOC Refining have initiated the IRIS (integrated refinery information system) project, which consists of 17 refinery-specific applications across four locations. These applications source their data from a historian database which collects data from distributed control systems. At the same time, a vertical integration has been made between the IRIS and the corporate ERP, so that production’s reconciled data can be made available for financial reconciliation. ADNOC Refining’s company refining margin – an index of its profitability – will soon be calculated on a daily basis. This alone represents a huge achievement for the company. Issues around fast-paced decision-making are becoming a thing of the past for ADNOC Refining, the IRIS transforming the way that the company makes businesscritical decisions. “The integration of the app suite is complex and a big challenge,” he says. “But it is now a one-of-a-kind digital transformation project in the making. We are now generating the right information for ADNOC Refining.” Beginning work in 2014, ADNOC Refining began evaluating technology partners for the project, and over the course of two-anda-half years, collaborated with “over 100” internal stakeholders to deliver an IRIS that could provide invaluable insight to ADNOC Refining’s decision-makers. The changes to ADNOC 24
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We have a one-of-a-kind digital transformation project in the making. It will provide total visibility across our refineries, operations and KPIs.
Refining’s IT have been in tandem with its overall expansion; the firm has increased its refinery capacity from around the 400,000 barrels per day mark, to more than 900,000. “The operation has huge complexity,” Al-Ansari says. “The IRIS was our response to mitigate the complexity of expansion.” The new CEO dashboard, which combines insights from the firm’s business critical apps, gives ADNOC Refining unprecedented levels of business insight. “It gives us production and utilisation capacities in near real-time,” Al-Ansari says. “For a refining business, it’s really important to see your level of profitability with such ease, and to be able to respond. If you have crude coming in to the refinery, it makes a huge difference if you can have insight into the products you should produce depending on what may happen to the oil price and refined products.” Throughout the course of the project, the issues of training and change management were fundamental to the project’s success. The IRIS steering committee was been chaired by ADNOC Refining’s CEO from the
beginning of the project, and this was a crucial factor in its success. “We held over 60 user workshops, had 3,000 KPIs and over 10,000 hours of training,” Al-Ansari says. “I cannot stress how important change management was. It represented a major shift across the company.” Above all else, the changes will bring smoother operations for ADNOC Refining and its c-level teams. “Data created from these applications is interchangeable with our corporate ERP, which can facilitate production accounting, scheduling and energy efficiency,” Al-Ansari says. “Our operations teams are the direct users of the IRIS, and it makes their job much easier. The ability to consolidate data gives us fantastic visibility to our senior management. They can instantly see ADNOC Refining’s level of profitability based on its operational decisions. This will provide first-class insight into KPI’s.” The suite of applications that is being integrated now provides a game-changing range of datasets. In the ever-demanding oil industry, that can make the difference between success and failure. www.tahawultech.com
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CIO SPOTLIGHT
Abdalla Al Ali, DMCC
Abdalla Al Ali, DMCC
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www.tahawultech.com
RARE COMMODITY Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, the world’s leading free zone for trade, and master developer of the Jumeirah Lakes Towers district in Dubai, is on a mission to drive the smart city of the future. Home to more than 14, 100 businesses, DMCC is tasked with building a competitive, international platform for success, and IT director Abdalla Al Ali plays a key role in building that smart environment.
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s a central hub for innovation and entrepreneurship, the UAE – and Dubai in particular – is ripe with companies daring to take the first steps to resolve the obstacles that new companies face. Ninety-five percent of companies based in the Emirate are small and medium-sized enterprises, and Dubai’s free zone
culture has been critical in giving these companies a flexible platform to find simple and innovative solutions to overcome complex regional and global challenges. Dubai’s free zone-driven culture demonstrates how trade is at the heart of the city’s vision to become a dynamic and diverse economic hub. At the centre of this vision sits DMCC - winner of the Global and
We are very focused on creating and delivering a long-term ‘Smart District’ strategy to ensure the entire DMCC community can live, work and thrive in a cutting-edge environment that offers the latest technology, connectivity and amenities
www.tahawultech.com
Middle East Free Zone of the Year 2017 by the Financial Times’ fDi Magazine for the third consecutive year out of 60 free zones around the world – one of 45 free zone entities in the UAE, with over 92, 500 people living and working in the area. Along with the world-renowned accolade, DMCC was also presented with a range of awards for facilities upgrades, legal support, smart city strategy, red tape reduction and thought leadership. With a total of 66 high rise towers in its Jumeirah Lakes Towers District, spanning both major multinational entities and innovative startups, DMCC has firmly established itself as a significant force in the Emirate’s competitive free zone marketplace. Technology now plays a vital role in supporting over 14,100 businesses under the DMCC brand. “Our team plays a crucial role in helping businesses align with our strategy, which requires an effective collaborative approach between ourselves and stakeholders,” DMCC's IT director Abdalla Al Ali says. While the UAE leadership has acknowledged the importance DECEMBER 2017
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CIO SPOTLIGHT
Abdalla Al Ali, DMCC
of cutting-edge technology in its economic evolution, it is currently on the road to achieving its ambition of being the world’s smartest and countries. Authorities like DMCC are set to play a crucial role in this journey, representing international hubs that need to attract the brightest business prospects, with collaborative technology platforms and ecosystems having grown to become the new norm in recent years. DMCC is also collaborating with government and private sector entities to ensure efforts are aligned across Dubai Inc to deliver the key pillars of Dubai’s smart vision. “We are very focused on creating and delivering a long-term ‘Smart District’ strategy to ensure the entire DMCC community can live, work and thrive in a cuttingedge environment that offers the latest technology, connectivity and amenities” Al Ali says. Prior to joining DMCC in 2015, Al Ali’s passion for IT was initially realised through obtaining his degree in information technology at Al Ghurair University. From there, he took up work as a junior IT engineer at the Dubai Economic Department (DED) in 2003. “I was lucky enough to get several promotions during my tenure at DED, and eventually become head of systems and infrastructure – a position I held from 2009 until 2011,” he says. Al Ali then moved on to complete a four-year stint as director of IT infrastructure services at Dubai International Financial Centre. “During my career, I have contributed to various key projects which have centred around Dubai’s 28
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I instill it into my team to be both realistic and smart in their thought process, ensuring they think about the bigger picture at all times and foresee how a situation can lead to success for all parties involved.
IT infrastructure,” he says. “These have included certain initiatives, overseeing the operational efficiency and enhancement of data centres, as well as Wi-Fi services, disaster recovery, and website migrations.” Now two years into his role at DMCC, Al Ali oversees, monitors and reports to DMCC’s executive director on the performance of strategic IT goals and projects. “For every new innovation, there are always new challenges to overcome,” he says. “We tend to see these as including a lack of
experience in a particular domain, availability and commitment of vendors, and the cost of innovation. However, through effective collaboration with our stakeholders and a strong sense of cooperation, we know that challenges will be turned into opportunities.” Al Ali believes that even within the context of an IT team, the most important thing can often be the human touch, “Developing people is key; listening and collaborating are essential to achieve goals,” he says. “I instill it into my team to be both realistic and smart in their thought process, ensuring they think about the bigger picture at all times and foresee how a situation can lead to success for all parties involved.” As example of this is how IT collaborates with DMCC’s business units such as its free zone, to further enhance the customer experience. Taking tips from the inspirational individuals he has worked with over the years, as well as showing admiration for technology and government leaders alike through his approach has helped Al Ali develop critical skills in both management and leadership. One example of this strategy is evident in a recent partnership between DMCC and DocuSign, which has enabled all member companies to adopt electronic signature capabilities. “At DMCC, we are proud to become the first ever free zone globally to implement this innovative technology,” Al Ali says. “DMCC is committed to implement new technologies and innovations that lead to increasing efficiency, productivity and members happiness." www.tahawultech.com
PRESENTS
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CELEBRATING TECH INNOVATION CNME is now accepting nominations for its 2018 CIO 100 Awards. As IT becomes the driver of digital change in the Middle East, the region’s chief information officers have the opportunity to put themselves at the core of business decision-making. The CIO 100 Awards 2018 celebrates leaders who are grabbing this opportunity with both hands, and constantly striving for innovative practices. CIO 100 winners will receive their awards at our annual CIO 100 Symposium & Awards Ceremony, and will also be featured in the February 2018 issue of CNME magazine. For sponsorship enquires, please contact STRATEGIC VAD PARTNER
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FEATURE
Schneider Electric CEO Jean-Pascal Tricoire
The green dream Schneider Electric CEO Jean-Pascal Tricoire spoke to James Dartnell on the sidelines of the launch of the firm’s Innovation Hub On Wheels at Dubai Silicon Oasis, and explained why digitalisation is the 'only' way to solve the world's power issues.
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ou’ve inaugurated your Innovation Hub on Wheels at Dubai Silicon Oasis… The centre is an initiative to make sure we can create an innovation environment for EcoStruxure, our digital ecosystem. Rather than expecting people to meet in one place, our truck can go to our partners and customers, and make sure that we have as many people in contact with us as possible. We are aiming to be with 150 companies in the coming months, to train and meet with hundreds of people. What are your thoughts on Saudi Arabia's decision to build $500 billion city NEOM by 2030, with sustainability and technology as its main tenets? Is that your biggest opportunity in the Middle East in the coming years? We have plenty of opportunities but that’s a very exciting, inspiring project, and we would love to participate in it. We want to participate in all the large projects that are happening in this region. It is a priority, but so are the other large projects in this region. 30
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We’ve increased our investment in Dubai and Saudi every year, and we intend to be here for the long-term. We’ve been gradually increasing our presence in the Middle East, and currently have three manufacturing plants in Saudi Arabia today, and as the market grows, we will continue to grow. How do you believe that IT and technology can solve the world’s power issues? It’s probably the only solution today. If you look at the way we produce and use energy today, there’s massive waste all over the chain. The first thing to consider is energy saving. It seems like an old kind of mantra, but the reality is with digital you can save 30-70 percent of the energy you consume everywhere. It starts with buildings. People don’t switch off the AC – which is 70 percent of the energy consumption in Dubai – they don’t switch off lights. Machines can. Take a school for instance. With machines doing this job, it can save 50 percent of the energy it uses. The second thing to consider is that we have to share energy better, because we all consume it at the
same time. So, once everything is connected, you can inform people when energy is plentiful, green or cheap. An example that clearly illustrates the point is how today, in the chain of electricity, for every unit of electricity that is consumed, you will burn three just by using it with all the losses in the chain. Making sure that you use digitisation all over the chain means that you can save and share the energy that is available. Renewables is another disruption in the field of energy. They’re great, because they bring energy at a marginal cost of zero once installation has been done, but they’re difficult to manage because they’re intermittent. If you combine renewables, storage and digital, you can really manage the intermittency nature of renewables. That will allow true alternatives to consume energy in a different manner. www.tahawultech.com
www.tahawultech.com
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FEATURE
Schneider Electric CEO Jean-Pascal Tricoire
Are smart buildings a reality for organisations in the Middle East in terms of cost? The answer is essentially the opposite of what you’re asking. I don’t think people realise what digital brings to the table. Firstly, we are already building net positive energy buildings in the world; buildings that are energyneutral to their environment. Next, the use of digital technology brings the cost to a much lower level than what was done before to make buildings efficient. After three years, the gains are all benefits. It’s like when you quit smoking, it may seem difficult at the beginning but you end up with better health and more money to spend. The first sector where we did a lot of energy efficiency was education, because many places were having trouble making ends meet. If you save on your energy bill, you can afford more for actually running the school. New technologies make efficiency much more affordable, and the gains you make translate into money you can reinvest elsewhere.
The reality is with digital you can save 30-70 percent of the energy you consume everywhere.
Do you think the Middle East is playing its part in being energy efficient? Could it do more to save energy? Worldwide statistics show that 80 percent of buildings have the potential to save 80 percent of their energy. If you take industry, there’s a potential of 50-60 percent more efficiency. When you look at a city like Dubai, like any large city in the world, 80 percent of energy consumption comes from buildings, and therefore there is huge potential for efficiency. Energy firms can increase their profit by saving the energy they use and selling it on to customers, rather than consuming it themselves.
If you listen to the latest government visions and views, they all acknowledge that they need to dramatically reduce their energy demand because of the impact of urbanisation, otherwise they will produce and consume, but not export energy. I don’t see any city in the world today, or any company that doesn’t have a plan for improving energy efficiency. Stakeholders of civil society have understood that a city will be more attractive if it’s green, and a
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company can only be sustainable if a business is savvy and efficient. What signs have you seen that the Middle East will be a high-growth market for Schneider Electric in the coming years? If I look back at the last 30 or 40 years, the Middle East has received continuous investment from us because it’s a major source of urbanisation, and energy of course. It’s a big region for digitisation, and a place which is eliminating a lot of the obstacles for ambitious projects which you would encounter in other parts of the world. Dubai is home to one of our four global hubs because the city is very flexible, connected and attractive to residents. Which aspects of your IT business should we look out for in the future? We see a lot of development at the edge. As people are moving to cloud, they need more computing power for low latency and proximity of data. We believe securing and storing power to prevent interruptions is spreading to all applications; it’s spreading to industrial applications for Industry 4.0. www.tahawultech.com
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ADVERTORIAL
ON THE SAME PAGE Fujitsu recently hosted its World Tour in Dubai, an event that takes place across 20 countries in six continents, and used the opportunity to promote the concept of ‘co-creation’ with customers in order for digital to fuel innovation on a global scale. The company’s vice president and managing director for the Middle East, Farid Al-Sabbagh, reflects on the tour’s highlights.
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s IT becomes the driver of digital change in the Middle East, the region’s chief information officers are facing increasing pressures to ensure they think fast, act quickly and scale rapidly if they are to succeed. During Fujitsu’s recent world tour in Dubai, under the theme, 'Human Centric Innovation: Digital Co-Creation', the company sought to reiterate the fact that organisations cannot undergo this process alone. “We launched this concept of Human Centric Innovation four years ago, whereby we began to build technology around people in order to enhance their quality of life,” says Farid Al-Sabbagh, vice president and managing director, Fujitsu Middle East. “As the pressing need for businesses to digitally transform became more apparent, we launched the idea of digital co-creation last year in order to assist our customers with their digital journeys.” For many years, Al-Sabbagh notes, Fujitsu has been working collaboratively with customers worldwide to rapidly evolve their business processes by creating various new services and products, providing 34
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a wide range of IT solutions and partnerships for customers to tap into. “A lot of companies still haven’t quite grasped the huge possibilities that are presented to a business when it embarks on this digital journey, but similarly, many still fail to appreciate some of the challenges that come hand-in-hand with altering their business models in this way,” he says. “Enabling businesses to connect with their customers digitally – for example, through an app – is what organisations need to strive for. But they must bear in mind that in doing so, they open a whole new set of communication channels, which – in turn – creates an alternative method for hackers to gain access to customer data,” explains Al-Sabbagh. “Not knowing how to handle this issue of data security is a huge concern that we are seeing for businesses both on a local and global scale.” During the world tour, Fujitsu’s security team highlighted the company’s tailored solutions to tackle this problem for their customers. “We are investing in a proactive style of security, whereby our services can scan the dark web and crossreference the findings against our
customers’ domains and email addresses, before letting them know how many may have been captured by potential hackers in phishing attempts,” explains Al-Sabbagh. “To this end, we are offering our customers a preventative form of protection.” Across the 20 countries that Fujitsu visited during the tour, a common theme that reoccurred in discussions circled back around to the co-creation concept. When highlighting the importance of co-creation in a company’s digital journey, Al-Sabbagh believes the bankruptcy of Toys’R’Us accurately encompasses an example of failure to keep pace with changing industries. “Toys’R’Us went bankrupt simply because they started their digital journey 12 months later than their competition,” he says. “By that time, 36% of the retail business in selling toys had gone online, meaning that these customers were no longer addressable for a store that predominantly still relied on its brickand-mortar outlets.”
“Many companies still haven’t quite grasped the huge possibilities that are presented to a business when it embarks on this digital journey.” www.tahawultech.com
It is for this reason that businesses must act now in their digital quests, believes Al-Sabbagh. Cutting costs and improving efficiency of operations are just two of many benefits that an organisation could reap in this journey – a theory that Fujitsu is particularly driving when it comes to bringing their products to market. “We’re very focused in our approach to integrated systems,” he says. “It’s no longer just about selling a product as hardware; being successful now involves selling solutions to the data centre environment.” One of these solutions comes in the form of liquid cooling servers, which Fujitsu is bringing to the EMEA market in Q1 of 2018. Showcased during the world tour, Al-Sabbagh believes this “gamechanging” technology can significantly impact the day-to-day operations of businesses that are inundated with data. “Our servers are submerged in a liquid that contains no oxygen. The idea behind this is that the liquid keeps the server cold, which in turn can slash an organisation’s cooling power bill by 40% over a period of three years,” he explains. “In addition, the servers produce zero noise emissions, which is ultimately much better for the environment and the overall data centre experience.” Despite having seen a drop in the market last year, Al-Sabbagh has high hopes for the coming 12 months. “We’re seeing the market recovering, and as a result, this is presenting more and more opportunities in the digital space,” he says. “The Dubai government is driving digital transformation in a variety of ways – be it through Expo 2020, smart cities, or through the acceptance of new technologies, which has been demonstrated in the recent appointment of a minister of AI. Fujitsu is also operating in the AI domain, so we’re interested to engage with the government on these kinds of initiatives going forward.” www.tahawultech.com
Farid Al-Sabbagh, vice president and managing director, Fujitsu Middle East
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FEATURE
Neil Sholay, head of EMEA, Oracle Digital
A FINE BALANCE On the sidelines of Oracle’s Cloud Day in Saudi Arabia last month, CNME caught up with Neil Sholay, head of Oracle Digital’s EMEA division, to discuss the need for businesses to find the ‘golden ratio’ of people, data and machines.
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ith five years of experience under his belt at Oracle Digital EMEA, Neil Sholay is no stranger to the hype that surrounds the need for businesses to digitally transform. And as industry pressures continue to mount, it seems that CIOs can all too often lose sight of what this concept ultimately boils down to. At the heart of the fast-paced digital economy that we now find ourselves in is data, and the tremendous value it promises to businesses. “Information is now the most critical business asset; not technology,” says Sholay. “It enables personalisation, faster service and a seamless blending of online and offline customer experience.” Beyond that, Sholay is a big believer in the fact that people are key to ensuring the maximum benefit is extracted from this information. Having spoken at the Oracle Cloud Day in Riyadh on the topic of finding the "golden ratio" of people, data and machines, he maintains that this is the key to shaping the businesses of tomorrow. “There is not one ‘correct’ balance of people, data and machines, but if I was to rank them in terms of importance, I would do it in that exact order,” he says. “There is no set model that all businesses should adhere or aspire to, but I believe every organisation will have its own optimum blend – its own ‘golden ratio’ that is right for them if they are to become a truly effective data-driven business.” But sitting in prime position among the ‘people’ required to make this strategy work are chief data scientists, which Sholay believes play a vital role in driving digital transformation vision within organisations. “If I talk to any Fortune 500 company now, I am very shocked if they don’t have a chief data scientist www.tahawultech.com
within the organisation, plugging these sorts of projects going forward,” he says. “This job title is now something we are also seeing replicated across the Middle East region, as companies come to realise the crucial benefits that analytics can add to a business.” Central to supporting this vision of change within regional businesses is the government, particularly the UAE’s leadership, who are well-versed for driving innovation and being open to adopting smart technologies to enhance the lives of the country’s residents.
I expect we’ll still be talking about AI in 20-30 years – we just might have called it something different.
“For all the talk of automation and artificial intelligence, we are actually beginning to see real investments in these technologies in the EMEA region,” says Sholay. Saudi Arabia’s $500 billion plan to establish NEOM – a mega-city that will be built on AI and robotics - is the perfect example of the region’s intention to develop these emerging technologies further. “AI is no longer a buzzword, and the announcement of the UAE’s AI minister is another clear demonstrator of how this region is taking real steps to incite companies to get onboard with integrating this
technology into business models moving forward,” he says. “We’re just at the start of this journey with AI, and I think it’s here to stay. While there may not have been many largescale deployments as of yet, I expect we’ll still be talking about AI in 20-30 years – we just might have called it something different.” However, according to research firm Boston Consulting Group, 94 percent of companies admit they’re ‘bad at innovation’, which comes as no surprise to Sholay. “I’ve always believed that innovation is hard, and I strongly feel that if you want an idea to work, you need it to first be tested, prototyped and executed, because what use is an idea if it can’t be executed?” In order for businesses to successfully innovate, Oracle Digital maintains that three criteria need to first be fulfilled: mindset, discipline and capabilities. “A culture of experimentation and acceptance that failure is just re-calibration, alongside an innovation process that allows you to generate hundreds of ideas and progress them to a successful market launch, while also having access to data in order to drive business models and experiences are all absolutely crucial in this process,” adds Sholay. This push for transformation has seen significant progress over the last three years in the likes of Scandinavia, Germany and the UK. But despite this, Sholay believes this region’s businesses are now actively playing catch-up in seeking out the latest technologies to provide customers with the best of breed services. “Due the fact that this region doesn’t have the same legacy problems that many Western Europe countries face, I expect to see significant progress in terms of digital transformation in the next six to twelve months, particularly in Saudi Arabia,” he says. DECEMBER 2017
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FEATURE
IT services 2018
AT YOUR SERVICE
Gartner has forecast the global IT services market to hit $980 billion in 2018, while MarketsandMarkets has said that the Middle East can expect annual growth of 27 percent in the space until 2022. What lies in store for IT services over the coming 12 months in the Middle East?
W
hile cloud computing may have been touted for several years as the technology that would transform the Middle East, the reality is that for many organisations, that change has been gradual. As CIOs have carefully evaluated the pros 38
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and cons of what be achieved by shifting their infrastructure and software to consumption-based models, certain industries have had to balance the realities of regional compliance mandates with the potential for greater flexibility. Better overall efficiency, cost savings
and the ability to embrace change in an agile manner make cloud an irresistible proposition for many, but delivering all IT on a service model is neither realistic or a panacea. This allure is looking to initiate a fair measure of change. Gartner estimates that organisations in the Middle East and North Africa region will have spent a total of $1.2 billion on public cloud services in 2017, with this spend expected to reach almost $2 billion by 2020. Over the last 12 months, governments of the UAE and www.tahawultech.com
experiencing,” he says. “The growing and influential role of business leaders toward embracing technologies and processes such as cloud, business intelligence, analytics, customer relationship management, digital business and marketing, are contributing to fuel digital transformation.” Gartner has forecast the global IT services market to hit $980 billion in 2018, but in truth the Middle East region is unlikely to comprise too large a portion of this figure. Markets such as the US and Europe are gradually moving their IT offpremises, but the GCC, although possessing a strong appetite for technology and innovation, may take time to reach that level of maturity. Nonetheless, the outlook for the next 12 months and the coming few years is positive for the IT services market. MarketsandMarkets
Saudi Arabia have laid down markers for increased spending on IT services, including Smart Dubai’s announcement to rid the emirate’s government of paperbased processes in 2021, as well as the announcement of $500 billion mega-city NEOM in the Kingdom. Many organisations will be tempted to follow their lead, and by the promise of game-changing technologies such as artificial intelligence and Blockchain, but these may not necessarily be deployed on consumption-based models. Indeed, as AI matures, www.tahawultech.com
the basis on which AI-based technologies will be consumed is yet to be fully determined. Gartner’s senior vice president and global head of research, Peter Sondergaard, believes that the Middle East’s appetite for these kinds of technologies will help to encourage a shift to an increasingly service-oriented IT economy. “The MENA region is moving in the right digital direction, where demand for the latest and most emerging technologies like Blockchain will continue to reflect the profound changes the IT markets are
paints an optimistic, sharp rise in IT infrastructure services consumption in the region, estimating that the market size will grow from $2.66 billion in 2017 to $8.79 billion by 2022, at a compound annual growth rate of 27 percent. Meanwhile, IDC estimates that IT spending in the UAE and Saudi Arabia will hit $6.2 billion and $7.5 billion respectively by the end of 2017, with communications, government, finance, manufacturing, retail and wholesale DECEMBER 2017
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FEATURE
IT services 2018
and healthcare verticals being the top spenders. The majority of this figure is likely to be consumed by telecommunications services, but IT services is edging up the list of priority areas for technology spend. Rahul Misra, Oracle’s vice president of applications for the Gulf, believes the ways that regional organisations are looking to offer new technology-driven services means they are being forced to consider basing their operations around cloud. “The region is going through a transformation where businesses have to change the way they deliver service in an everdemanding and ever-changing market – both online and offline,” he says. “Most companies who want to get ahead are seeking efficiency and innovation while working to transform their customer experience to compete in an ‘always-on’ landscape.” He goes on to add that the potential to reduce TCO will be a hugely attractive proposition for several reasons. “Irrespective of its size, cloud will be at the core of every organisation’s growth strategy,” he says. “Businesses now realise that cloud allows them to significantly lower total cost of ownership and identify new untapped growth opportunities. This characteristic is even more significant in volatile economic environments where businesses are keen on reducing costs and instead invest precious resources towards delivering a unique customer experience or an innovative solution.” Along with the consumption of IT infrastructure and software on a pay-as-you-go model, the 40
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The region is going through a transformation where businesses have to change the way they deliver service in an everdemanding and ever-changing market – both online and offline. Rahul Misra, vice president, applications, Gulf, Oracle demand for IT skills in a region that is known for importing talent will inevitably increase. Although the UAE in particular is making a concerted effort to plug the need for homegrown skills to be prioritised in the country’s economy, the reality is that for the short-term, outsourcing is likely to be on the rise. Misra believes that organisations will view outsourcing as an important way to remove some burdens that come with technology, and instead allow them to focus on their core business. “Over time, as the gamut of cloud technology services required to support and enable business enterprise matures and increases, we will see organisations outsource more, and focus instead on their core competencies,” he says. “Businesses will increasingly focus more on their core competencies and outsource IT services, provided the offerings are mature and enterprise wide.
Dimension Data’s managing director for the UAE, Mechelle Buys Du Plessis, believes that complexity arising from on-premise and cloud environments will force organisations to outsource certain elements of their operations. “IT outsourcing, or modular managed services will be favoured,” she says. “As the IT landscape poses complexity across consumption-based platforms, skill, automation and tools will be required to manage that complexity. As hybrid IT becomes more and more relevant, hybrid service delivery too will be in higher demand. IT infrastructure adoption is both onsite and platform-based, and service delivery will also be adopted in a hybrid fashion, where organisations will choose to manage certain deliverables, whist they partner with a managed service provider to deliver on other services. The combination of this hybrid approach is likely to be favoured.” www.tahawultech.com
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FEATURE
The future of software
The soft option Forrester estimates that over $420 billion will be spent on enterprise software applications over the next year, but what does 2018 hold for software development?
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www.tahawultech.com
I
t’s been over half a decade since Marc Andreessen declared that “software is eating the world.” Six years on, ask yourself: do you still carry a map in the back of your car? Or have an alarm clock resting on your bedside table? Or collect a newspaper every day on your morning commute? The chances are that you have likely answered ‘no’ to most, if not all of these questions. The reason? Software. Products and services that were previously delivered through more traditional means are now being run as mobile or online apps, and are often delivered with great success. The technological advancements of the devices that are glued to our hands around the clock have played a major part in this. This is especially true in this region, with the UAE having the highest smartphone penetration globally. But aside from how the software evolution has affected our
personal lives, the fall in hardware sales and the focus on digitally transforming business has had a huge knock-on effect to the enterprise. The idea that “every company needs to become a software company” is, practically speaking, old news. It’s 2017: the year robots developed conversational capabilities and became our customer service assistants; the year autonomous flying taxis enabled a Google Maps-style navigation process, and the year the iPhone X launched the most advanced mobile facial-recognition software yet. In re-reading Andreessen’s original article in the Wall Street Journal back in 2011, he refers to “software programming tools” as being the cause of digital disruption in years to come. What has become clear in recent years however, is that no matter how modern, liberating and innovative these programming tools may
Adoption of emerging technologies, such as AI, will pole-vault enterprises beyond local relevancy. Ahmed Helmy, director, advanced solution architecture, international markets, Avaya
www.tahawultech.com
be, it is in fact the combination of software – as it is traditionally understood in this manner - and smart, data-driven algorithms that will shape the future. Central to this discussion, and a major talking point over the last 12 months, is artificial intelligence. Just two years ago in January 2016, the term ‘artificial intelligence’ did not feature in Gartner’s top 100 search queries. By May this year, the term ranked number seven on the list. The research firm has also forecast that AI will be “virtually pervasive” in almost every new software product and service by 2020, and will rank as a top five investment priority for more than 30 percent of CIOs globally. But as 2020 looms ever closer, are businesses in the Middle East ready for the impact AI will have on their organisation? Avaya’s director of advanced solution architecture across international markets, Ahmed Helmy, affirms that preparation is underway, and many businesses today are beginning to put AI into context. “Regional blueprints have sent nations marching towards knowledge-based economies, positioning companies against global competition,” he says. “Adoption of emerging technologies, such as AI, will polevault enterprises beyond local relevancy, and into the necessary global benchmark that maintains or even increases market share.” And yet, processes for business readiness and change management to prepare organisations for the adoption of impactful technologies like AI are still being overlooked by DECEMBER 2017
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The future of software
SMEs, says Helmy. SMEs largely drive growth in the UAE as they account for over 90 percent of registered businesses, meaning this figure could potentially lead to a slower adoption rate of these technologies in the region. Helmy believes that a resolution to overcoming this hurdle is to encourage SMEs to adopt opensource solutions. “Not only do opensource solutions enable enterprises to integrate new technologies while persevering the investments they’ve already made, but open architecture also simplifies the adoption process for various emerging technologies, such as AI, IoT and blockchain,” adds Helmy. Establishing an AI strategy is “becoming increasingly important” for industries to stay ahead of the curve – particularly in the healthcare segment, believes Ali Kaddoura, the UAE’s country manager for Citrix. “The age of electronic health record deployments is now pushing organisations to revise, enhance and develop new processes within the care continuum," he says. "The adoption of AI and analytics will ultimately allow for a better understanding of the patients’ needs, and allow caregivers to customise experiences for each of them, enabling increased productivity, improved care delivery and enhanced overall patient experience.” Today, many people regard software applications - including mobile apps - as being directed at consumers, and yet enterprise remains the largest segment in the software business, with Forrester envisaging over $420 billion to be spent on it in 2018. A major part of this investment, according to both 44
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Machine learning algorithms will allow computers to meet humans half-way. Ali Kaddoura, country manager, UAE, Citrix
Helmy and Kaddoura, will be driven by voice-based interfaces. “2017 was proclaimed ‘the year of the chatbot,’ yet limitations in adopting a data-driven approach has meant that this technology has continued to lack the necessary finesse to meet customer expectations,” says Helmy. With Gartner forecasting that 89 percent of organisations will compete primarily on customer experience, he adds “it is no wonder that enterprises across sectors are seeking solutions that will differentiate this experience.” Similarly, Kaddoura has high hopes for the impact of voice as the next-generation human-computer interface in 2018, and claims it will be more impactful than virtual, augmented or mixed reality. “Machine learning algorithms will allow computers to meet humans halfway, and anyone that’s ever asked a question of Siri or Cortana will have experienced the early stages of this profound transformation,” he says. “It will ultimately mean the end of the keyboard and mouse, making
workers in the digital business highly productive.” Kaddoura is also backing hybrid cloud as a technology set to deliver the best possible enterprise applications – whether they are onpremise, cloud or mobile apps – in a consistent way across any device. “Companies will no longer even need to own the applications, and will instead just be able to subscribe to an application that a vendor is delivering,” he says. Ali Hyder, group CEO for Focus Softnet, mirrors Kaddoura’s view, and believes we will undoubtedly see an increased uptake of Software-as-a-Service and cloud-enabled applications in the coming 12 months. “We see huge potential for cloud-based solutions in enabling businesses in the region to become agile, futureready and fully digitised,” he says. “MarketsandMarkets forecast that the Middle East cloud applications market will be worth $2.4 billion by 2020, and we are already seeing this growth reflected in an increasing interest from SMBs in the region.” www.tahawultech.com
FEATURE
LEAP
Melissa O’Neill, CEO of LEAP
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www.tahawultech.com
LEAP of faith
According to a recent study, seven in ten companies in the UAE plan to hire new employees in the next 12 months, so it seems there is no better time to launch the region’s first AI-driven online recruitment programme. Glesni Holland sat down with Melissa O’Neill, CEO of LEAP, to discuss the platform’s progress so far.
C
an you give us an overview of the work LEAP does and explain how the platform was established? LEAP is an online career platform based in the UAE, which has been developed using artificial intelligence and machine learning technology. My partner and I had been working in the recruitment industry in Dubai for almost seven years – primarily for the technology sector, when we began developing LEAP. We often came up against the industry’s pitfalls, which we see here more than anywhere we’ve ever worked, and decided that there had to be a better way of conducting this process using this kind of technology. Why did you feel the UAE was wellsuited to this type of platform? Companies in this region are having to contend with hundreds of applicants for every job role. Particularly in the UAE, the population is growing at an exponential rate, and its transient lifestyle means that there never seems to be a slump in hiring as the level of turnover in staff is incredibly high. But equally, if a candidate wants to get www.tahawultech.com
the most out of their application, and a recruiter is truly seeking the best person for the job, then traditional methods of recruiting – when faced with this volume of applications – just won't cut it anymore. How does this platform enhance the recruitment process for candidates? While alternative recruitment software may solely rely on picking up keywords in a candidate’s CV to establish whether they’re a good fit, the artificial intelligence behind LEAP reads each application like a human would. If you have ‘marketing rockstar’ as your job title – and trust me, I’ve seen it - but a vacancy came up for ‘growth hacker,’ you would not typically get noticed because the keywords do not match up. However, your experience and transferrable skills – which are likely to be found deeper in your CV, might make you the perfect candidate, and this is where the platform’s realm of data comes into play as it can make those connections. In addition, we also aim to provide candidates with a number of benefits including employer testimonials from current staff members, candidate
scoring and a time-saving applicant tracking system. Is the technology advanced enough to ensure that talented applicants do not slip through the net? The beauty of this technology is that the general public isn’t necessarily aware of how advanced it already is, or how regularly we use it on a day-to-day basis. Google and Netflix both run on AI, so while there is still a long way to go, there are already a lot of widespread use cases. It’s a very exciting time for us, and we’re confident that now the technology has started learning, it can only get better. This means that the more LEAP as a platform is used and the more data it collates and reviews, the more it is teaching itself. This, in turn, will mean our results are only going to become more accurate, and the whole process will become more efficient for both candidates and employers. To what extent do you envisage recruitment processes becoming completely automated in the near future? Personally, I think that there is DECEMBER 2017
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LEAP
absolutely the possibility that we reach the point where we can automate everything within the recruitment process. The real question is whether or not we choose to do that, because I don’t see the benefit of completely automating every process across the industry. At the end of the day, we’re humans, and we like to speak to a human and receive that personal touch in these kinds of scenarios, and I don’t think that’s going away anytime soon. We were at an AI conference recently and we were asked how on earth humans are expected to compete if an applicant has an IQ of 140, compared to a machine with a drastically higher average. The simple answer is that we can’t. “Take a baseball bat to it,” was my colleague’s advice.
support has been invaluable. We’ve been very lucky in that from this initial contact and support, the team invited us to the Web Summit in Lisbon last month. This was a fantastic opportunity for us, and was also where we launched our AIdriven chatbot.
The AI behind LEAP reads each job application like a human would.
Any plans to expand further in 2018? Our current plan is to look to initially focus on the UAE, and then look to expand regionally. One stumbling block we’re currently trying to overcome is ensuring the technology is fluent in Arabic. But as the entire platform is online and accessible from anywhere, there’s no reason why we can’t look to expand in every region eventually.
How has your experience been working with IBM on this venture? IBM contacted us about becoming part of their Global Entrepreneur Programme during our development phase, and their
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INSIGHT
Annette Zimmermann, Gartner
WHY ‘EMOTION AI’ WILL PERSONALISE INTERACTIONS Thanks to AI, your smart fridge will tell how you feel and suggest foods that match your emotion, and watches can keep track of mental health issues, says Gartner’s Annette Zimmermann.
ave you ever wondered whether one day technology will be able to identify emotions, just like humans can? What if your refrigerator could tell how you feel and suggest foods that match your emotion? Unrealistic? Inconceivable? No. Artificial intelligence and affective computing are starting to make this possible. Devices enriched with AI, depth-sensing and neurolinguistics programming technologies are starting to process, analyse and respond to human emotions. In the future, more and more smart devices will be able to capture human emotions and moods in relation to certain data and facts, and to analyse situations accordingly.
perceive human emotions. Artificial emotional intelligence ('emotion AI') will change that. The next steps for these systems are to understand and respond to users’ emotional states, and to appear more human-like, in order to enable more comfortable and natural interaction with users. An intelligent agent can be anything that can perceive its environment through sensors and act on that perception through actuators. Personal assistance robots (PARs), such as Qihan Technology’s Sanbot and SoftBank Robotics’ Pepper, are being ‘humanised’ by training them to distinguish between, and react to, humans’ varying emotional states. The aim is for PARs to respond with body language and verbal responses appropriate to the emotions of the humans they interact with. If, for example, Pepper detects that someone is disappointed with an interaction, the intention is that it will respond apologetically.
An emotion-sensing future approaches Emotion-sensing systems will appear in devices as a result of the rise of intelligent agents, such as virtual assistants, including Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google Assistant. They use the technological approaches of natural-language processing and natural-language understanding, but they don’t currently
Emotion AI is already here Future smart devices will be better at analysing and responding to users’ emotions, thanks to AI systems that use deep-learning technology to measure the facial and verbal expression of emotion. These systems will play an increasingly important role in how humans interact with machines. In-car systems are emerging that
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adapt the responsiveness of braking systems to the driver’s perceived level of anxiety. Cars can detect a driver’s anxious mood, and as they approach busy cross-roads, make the breaks more responsive to avoid an accident. In this case, the car is equipped with visual sensors and AI-based emotiontracking software to enable real-time emotion tracking. Organisations in the automotive and healthcare industries are prominent among those evaluating whether, and how far, to adopt emotion-sensing features. In the healthcare arena, emotionsensing wearables could potentially monitor the mental health of patients 24/7, and alert doctors and caregivers instantly, if necessary. They could also help isolated elderly people and children to monitor their mental health. These devices will allow doctors and caregivers to monitor patterns of mental health, and to decide when and how to communicate with people in their care. Current platforms for detecting and responding to emotions are mainly proprietary and tailored for a few isolated use cases. They’ve also been used by many global brands over the past years for product and brand perception studies. We can expect technology and media giants to team up and enhance their capabilities in the next two years, and to offer tools that will change lives for the better. www.tahawultech.com
PRODUCTS
PRODUCT OF THE MONTH
Launches and releases
Brand: Fitbit Product: Ionic
Brand: Intel Product: Optane SSD The Optane SSD 900P Series is Intel’s first SSD for desktop PC and workstation users built on the company’s Optane technology. The device has been launched in collaboration with Roberts Space Industries. The Optane SSD 900P Series delivers “low latency and quality” random read and write performance at low queue depths – up to four times faster than competitive NAND-based SSDs, Intel says. It also has up to 22 times more endurance than other drives. WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: The Optane SSD 900P Series features Intel’s Optane technology, which combines 3D XPoint memory media, Intel memory and storage controllers, Interconnect IP and software. The Intel Octane SSD 900P Series is available through local online retail outlets worldwide. Earlier in the year, Intel unveiled new Xeon chips to boost data centre business.
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Fitbit Ionic is the company’s first-ever smartwatch offering. The device builds on Fitbit’s health and fitness expertise with a new relative peripheral capillary oxygen saturation (SpO2) sensor, which, according to the company, allows it to track deeper health insights including conditions such as sleep apnea. It is equipped with features such as GPS tracking, on-device dynamic workouts, improved heart rate tracking, and water resistance up to 50 metres. Fitbit Ionic is also compatible with variety of popular apps and clock faces that are available in the Fitbit App Gallery.
Brand: Oppo Product: F5 OPPO has unveiled its latest device, the F5, which features the firm’s AI Beauty Recognition technology, which is designed to produce enhanced selfies. The F5 features a 20MP front camera with an F2.0 aperture and a 16MB rear camera with F1.8 aperture. The device is Oppo’s first 6-inch full-screen FHD+ display device with 2160 x 1080 resolution and 18:9 aspect ratio. The smartphone comes with the Facial Unlock security feature, the facial recognition technology that recognises the user and unlocks the device. Oppo’s Color OS 3.2, together with 4G RAM +
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: Ionic runs on Fitbit OS, the company’s new operating system for smartwatches. The Fitbit app software development kit is open to developers. The App Gallery for Fitbit Ionic offers a range of health and fitness apps such as Exercise, Fitbit Coach, Relax, Timer and more, as well as other popular apps that are designed to make life easier and convenient for users who are always on the go. Each app is designed specifically for Ionic so users don’t have to download an accompanying mobile app or have their smartphone nearby. Fitbit Ionic is available at Virgin Megastores, Sharaf DG and Sun & Sand Sports for AED 1399.
32GB ROM memory gives the operating system a much smoother user experience. A triple slot tray supports two Nano cards and one TF card simultaneously. The O-share file sharing technology is “100 times” faster than Bluetooth. WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: Photographers and make-up artists were consulted during the R&D process of the device’s AI Beauty Recognition feature. The software gathers information and learns the specific facial features of different users from its global image database of human faces to produce personalised and quality selfies. Priced at AED 1,199, F5 is now available in the UAE. Oppo will also launch two variations of the device, the F5 6GB edition and the F5 Youth, at a later date. www.tahawultech.com
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COLUMN
Glesni Holland, Deputy Editor, CNME
THE BITCOIN TOSS-UP I
f you’d bought $5 worth of Bitcoins in 2010, what do you reckon they’d be worth today? $1,000? $10,000? $100,000? Try $4.4 million. Posting a return of over 900 percent since the start of January, Bitcoin’s price recently surged past $11,000 to become the world’s sixth most valuable circulating currency, within just eight years of its launch in 2009. Whether you’re a Bitcoin believer or a sceptic spectator like JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon - who said he would fire any employee “within a second” that was found to be trading Bitcoin - its exponential growth over the last few weeks gets the pulse racing. But is this craze just an economic bubble waiting to burst? Big names in both technology and financial institutions generally think not. Cybersecurity pioneer John McAfee has recently raised his 2020 Bitcoin price target to $1 million, while 54
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former Fortress hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz has predicted that the cryptocurrency could “easily” be at $40,000 by the end of 2018. Closer to home, prominent UAE businessman and Mubadala Investment Company CEO Khaldoon Al Mubarak has admitted that while he is still “on the fence” regarding Bitcoin and Blockchain technology, he doesn’t believe it is a “fraud,” as Dimon stated back in September. But in order for this technology to reach even greater heights – particularly in this region – I believe there first needs to be more robust regulation in place to monitor its activity and reassure investors of its worth. Given its volatile history as the means to purchase illicit materials, it’s no surprise that regulators across the globe have cast a watchful eye. Earlier this year, a new set of regulations from the UAE’s Central Bank stated, “all virtual currencies and
transactions are prohibited,” – but it was later revealed that this does not include Bitcoin. Despite this, the UAE’s authorities have yet to issue formal guidance around the use of the technology. However, Dubai’s Supreme Legislation Committee has also asserted that the UAE should be “among the first in the region and the world” to establish a legislative framework and a financial and organisational structure for this technology. Blockchain has often been branded as “the most disruptive technology since the Internet,” and while the Bitcoin craze may fluctuate, the distributed-ledger technology in which it relies on is going from strength to strength. This need for a regulatory policy going forward will become all the more relevant as the number of companies looking to integrate this technology continues to grow. Not only that, but it will also keep the bitcoin Bubble engorged - for the time being, at least. www.tahawultech.com