Computer News Middle East January 2019

ISSUE 323 | JANUARY 2019 WWW.TAHAWULTECH.COM

NATIONAL BANK OF OMAN CEO: "CHANGE OR DIE" IBM CFO ROUNDTABLE UIPATH CEO SAMSUNG GALAXY WATCH GCC EXPERTS ON 2019

ONE-STOP SHOP WHY DELL EMC BELIEVES IT IS THE COMPLETE TECHNOLOGY COMPANY

PUBLICATION LICENSED BY DUBAI PRODUCTION CITY, DCCA

Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2019 Intelligent #1

Digital #2

#3

Autonomous Things

#4

Digital Twins

#5

AI-Driven Development

Blockchain

#6

Empowered Edge

Augmented Analytics

#7

Mesh

#8

Smart Spaces

#9

Immersive Technologies

Ethics & Privacy

#10 Join us at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2019 to learn about Gartner’s technology trends, if they will work for you and how to implement them.

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2019 Dubai, UAE / 4 - 6 March gartner.com/me/symposium / #GartnerSYM

© 2018 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner and ITxpo are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates.

For more information, email info@gartner.com or visit gartner.com.

Quantum Computing

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EDITORIAL

TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'

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FUTURE NETWORK AWARDS 2019

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January really is the mensis horribilis of the year.

All the best for the next few weeks.

I

f it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Not so, say National Bank of Oman.

Those mavericks from Muscat are at it again, and hosted their fifth annual Ibtikar Innovation Day in December. I was lucky to be part of the judging panel, and was once again hugely impressed with the originality, completeness and variety of the technology innovations on offer from the 12 NBO staff teams. Marvellous stuff.

Post-judging, I sat with NBO’s acting CEO Sayyid Wasfi Jamshid Al Said, who heaped praise on his wonderful employees and explained why NBO will take inspiration from beyond banking in order to be different. More on page 24.

Our cover interview this month is with tech veteran Mohammed Amin, now Dell EMC’s senior vice president for the META region.

The $89 billion storage and cloud behemoth has the edge over its not-insignificant rivals, Mohammed says. He’s also mindful that future employment demands will leave today’s Luddites bamboozled, confounded and befuddled. More on page 20.

I ran, cycled and swam with the Samsung Galaxy Watch and you can relive that omnishambles - that's me, not the Watch blow-by-blow on page 36.

Final thought: echoing Queen Elizabeth II’s 40th anniversary coronation speech, January really is the mensis horribilis - Latin for absolutely dreadful month - of the year, so best of luck with the next few weeks my fellow technophiles.

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CONTENTS

Cloud and Managed Services Partner

Transformation and Technology Specialist Partner

ISSUE 323 | JANUARY 2019

24 National Bank of Oman CEO

20 16

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IBM CFO ROUNDTABLE

NBO Ibtikar 2018 CNME editor James Dartnell judged National Bank of Oman's annual innovation day and was hugely impressed with the breadth and quality of solutions on offer from NBO employees.

30 2019: What to expect

Equinix's chief product officer Brian Lillie predicts that 5G, artificial intelligence, Blockchain, data privacy and cloud will undergo major architectural changes in 2019.

32 Making the future work

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NETAPP INSIGHT 2018

FOUNDER, CPI MEDIA GROUP Dominic De Sousa (1959-2015)

Daniel Dines, co-founder and CEO of New York-based robotic process automation specialist UiPath, tells CNME why RPA has the power to reinvent the future of work.

36 Samsung Galaxy Watch

James Dartnell took the latest version of Samsung’s Galaxy Watch series for a spin, and was quickly impressed with its substance-overstyle user experience and exercise features and slick design in one package.

38 Predict, protect

Johnny Karam, regional vice president for emerging markets for Veritas Technologies, gives his take on the the trends that will most affect data management in 2019, including blockchain.

40 What you make of it

Economic challenges can be spun into opportunities by tech-savvy UAE manufacturers, according to Hesham El Komy, regional vice president for the Middle East, Africa and India at Epicor Software.

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NEWS

DUBAI KICKS OFF TRIAL PHASE FOR DRIVERLESS TAXIS

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The Roads of Transport Authority (RTA) and the Dubai Police have kicked off trials for driverless taxis in the emirate.

Residents of Dubai Silicon Oasis will be among the first to witness the technology in action.

However, the authorities have

clarified that the autonomous taxis are not yet available to the public.

The trial phase will take place for three months and will be running at designated routes in DSO. The driverless taxi can run at a speed of up to 35km per hour and can accommodate four people,

including a professional driver who can take over the vehicle in case of an emergency.

According to the RTA automated fare collections systems department’s Khaled Al Awadhi, after the threemonth trial phase, the organisation will evaluate how the driverless taxis can be rolled out in other areas of the city.

Following the debut of the autonomous taxi’s design and concept in October, during the 38th edition of GITEX Technology Week, Mattar Al Tayer, director-general and chairman of the RTA, said the autonomous taxi will serve as the “last mile solution” for public transport.

While the public is not yet allowed to hail the cab, there will be passengers who will be invited to try the driverless ride during its trial phase, Al Awadhi said.

FRANCE TO PUSH AHEAD WITH DIGITAL TAX

France has confirmed that it will introduce its own taxation scheme for big technology players starting from 1st January 2019.

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According to reports, the levy on direct sales, ad revenues and the sale of private data will cover tech giants including Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, which have been criticised for not paying a big enough tax bill in the EU. The French government has dubbed the plan the GAFA tax, named after the tech quartet.

French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said he expected it to bring in €500 million ($569 million) in 2019.

France, along with Germany, had been pushing for the European Commission to agree measures by the end of this year.

Under the proposed scheme, EU states would charge a 3% levy on the digital turnover of large firms such as Google and Facebook that

are accused of routing their profits to the bloc’s low-tax states.

However, the EU nations have failed to agree on a region-wide scheme as it was opposed by countries including Ireland, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Finland. Some member states are divided on how to tackle the new taxes, with some including arguing any new levies could be met with reprisals from the US. Over the past few years, countries such as the UK and France have alleged tech firms of routing some profits through low-tax EU member states such as Ireland and Luxembourg. Nonetheless, big US tech companies have argued they are complying with national and international tax laws. www.tahawultech.com

UBER FILES FOR LONGANTICIPATED IPO Uber Technologies has filed paperwork for an initial public offering, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. This move signals Uber taking a step closer to a key milestone for one of the most closely watched and controversial companies in Silicon Valley.

The ride-hailing company filed the confidential paperwork in December, one of the sources said, in lock-step with its smaller U.S. rival, Lyft Inc, which also announced it had filed for an IPO. The simultaneous filings extend the protracted battle between Uber and Lyft, which as fierce rivals have often rolled out identical services and matched each other’s prices. Uber is eager to beat Lyft to Wall Street, according to sources familiar with

the matter, a sign of the company’s entrenched competitiveness.

Its filing sets the stage for one of the biggest technology listings ever.

Uber’s valuation in its most recent private financing was $76 billion, and it could be worth $120 billion in an IPO. Its listing next year would be the largest in what is expected to be a string of public debuts by highly

valued Silicon Valley companies, including Airbnb and workplace messaging firm Slack.

The IPO will be a test of public market investor tolerance for Uber’s legal and workplace controversies, which embroiled the company for most of last year, and on chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi’s progress in turning around the company.

DUBAI LAUNCHES FIRST VR TRAINING CENTRE

Dubai Municipality has launched a smart training centre, which offers hands-on training using a virtual reality environment.

The Smart Training Hub, supervised by the municipality’s Geographic Information Systems Centre, is www.tahawultech.com

considered the first-of-a-kind in the Middle East for the city planning and engineering industry.

According to Dubai Municipality director-general Dawoud Al Hajiri, with the Smart Training Hub, the Municipality aims to enable

trainees to learn the techniques and mechanisms used in urban planning and the methods of building supervision and control. The techniques of the centre will also enable the trainees to implement urban planning rules and the setting up of building regulations as well as performing land surveying tasks while they are inside the training room.

The centre is equipped with devices and tools that are used in VR technology, while the software was fully developed by the GIS Centre team.

The training curriculum covers limited fields for the time being such as urban planning, land surveying and building supervision, while in the future it is expected to include other training topics to cover Dubai Municipality’s specialty areas.

JANUARY 2019

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NEWS

LARRY ELLISON JOINS TESLA BOARD

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison

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Tesla has announced Oracle’s cofounder Larry Ellison, a shareholder and close friend of chief executive Elon Musk, to its board to provide the independent oversight demanded by US regulators after Musk tweeted about taking the electric carmaker private.

The move is meant to usher Tesla past months of turbulence following Musk’s August tweet that he was considering taking the company private and had secured funding, said the report.

The fallout, which included the US Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently filing fraud charges against Musk for what it said were his “false and misleading” tweets, led some investors to call for stronger board oversight of Musk.

ADNOC TURNS TO BLOCKCHAIN TO STREAMLINE SUPPLY CHAIN

The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has announced its successful collaboration with IBM, piloting a Blockchain-based automated system to integrate oil and gas production across the full value chain.

The groundbreaking system provides a secure platform for the tracking, validating and execution of transactions at every stage, from production well to the end customer.

According to ADNOC, using JANUARY 2019

Blockchain technology will reduce the time it takes to execute transactions between ADNOC’s operating companies and significantly increase operational efficiencies across its full value chain.

It will also improve the reliability of production data by enabling greater transparency in transactions.

The project was announced by Abdul Nasser Al Mughairbi, ADNOC Digital Unit Manager, at the recent World Energy Capital Assembly in London.

The inclusion of Ellison puts one of the world’s richest people with experience building a startup into a successful company on Tesla’s board. He served as a director at Apple at a critical time for that company – in the five years after Steve Jobs returned to the helm of the then struggling computer maker in 1997, helping oversee one the greatest turnarounds in corporate history.

Under a court-approved agreement with the SEC, Musk agreed to pay a $20 million fine and step aside as Tesla’s chairman for three years to settle charges that could have forced his exit. Tesla also agreed to name the independent directors and a board committee to control Musk’s communications.

“We believe this could be the first application of Blockchain in oil and gas production accounting anywhere in the world. It demonstrates how ADNOC is leveraging innovative partnerships to unleash the power of technology and creative thinking to enhance efficiencies and deliver greater performance,” said Al Mughairbi.

ADNOC’s Blockchain pilot has provided a single platform that tracks the quantities and financial values of each bilateral transaction between ADNOC’s operating companies, automating the accounting process.

For example, as crude oil makes its way from the production well to the refinery, or the export terminal, all quantities are accounted for on a daily basis along with the associated monetary values. Other products included in the Blockchain application are gas, condensates, natural gas liquids (NGLs) and sulphur.

These products are exchanged between ADNOC’s operating companies and exported to customers overseas. www.tahawultech.com

UAE LAUNCHES FIRST EVER WOMEN’S TELCO COUNCIL Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company has announced the launch of the UAE telco sector’s first Women’s Council.

Hanan Ahmed, EITC Women’s Council Chairwoman, said, “The Women’s Council is representative of the growing need for diversity within our day-to-day operations and reinstates EITC as a future-facing organisation committed to bringing the UAE’s women empowerment and leadership agenda to life. Together we will form a consortium of like-minded advocates who are passionate about women’s empowerment and aligning the company’s visions to

effectively promote inclusivity within the workplace, within the industry, and within the communities of our beloved country.”

Through the formation of the EITC Women’s Council, the company is in a healthier position to empower its female employees, which make up 29 percent of the company’s workforce. In addition to this, recent figures reveal that 40 percent of new recruits are female.

By embracing these key values, the Council will seek to support women in the workplace; generate happy and balanced employees with initiatives promoting diversity and inclusion; build a culture of collaboration; foster the next generation of female leadership across EITC; create high performing and engaged female employees; and building a women’s support network.

The EITC Women’s Council consists of the following members: Hanan Ahmed, chairwoman; Dr Alia Al Serkal,

Hanan Ahmed, EITC Women’s Council Chairwoman

vice chairwoman, Noora AlMansoori, official council spokeswoman; Dr Mansoor Habib, council advisor; Aisha Rawert, council member; Dr Raffaella Bianchi, council member; Mona Gulaid, council member; Maryam Thani, council member; and Jennifer Gonzalez, council member.

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www.tahawultech.com

JANUARY 2019

ROUNDTABLE IBM

ON THE MONEY IBM HOSTED A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION IN PARTNERSHIP WITH CNME AND TAHAWULTECH.COM, WHICH EXPLORED WHY CFOS SHOULD SPEARHEAD DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION EFFORTS.

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rtificial intelligence giant hosted a roundtable discussion in partnership with CNME that focused on the ways that chief financial officers can put themselves in the driving seat for their organisations’ digital transformations.

IBM’s general manager for global technology services in the Middle East, Isabel Gomez, got the day underway by framing some of the biggest challenges that CFOs face in their bid to drive technological change in the enterprise. “The challenge is being agile with budgets,” she said. “How can you reduce your costs through digital transformation? KPI’s will definitely change in the future, competition will intensify and you will have to partner more with your competitors.

JANUARY 2019

www.tahawultech.com

Ian Fletcher, director of IBM’s Institute for Business Value

IDC’s associate vice president for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa, Ranjit Rajan

IBM’s general manager for global technology services in the Middle East, Isabel Gomez

“If someone told me 25 years ago that the concept of services would shift from labour to automation I wouldn’t have believed it. We now need less labour and more automation.”

Ian Fletcher, director of IBM’s Institute for Business Value, then homed in on results from the IBM’s latest CFO Study, which advocates organisations choosing to consciously self-disrupt against a backdrop of technological change.

“The Fourth Industrial Revolution has the power to change everything,” Fletcher said. “The CFO has a massive role to play in that.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is not about digital transformation, but the fusion of the physical, digital and biological. CFOs are no longer just responsible for money. They need to make decisions about where the company is going. The CIO and www.tahawultech.com

COO have to deal with that. The CFO is integral in deciding which projects to pursue.”

Fletcher went on to highlight how the UAE was not only part of this change, but at the forefront of it. “Dubai is, without question, ahead of the game,” he said. “It’s not behind the US. If we don’t embrace change, we will be in big trouble.”

Fletcher then discussed IBM research which revealed that just 27% of CFOs could be classed as ‘reinventors’ - those who are ready for or in the final stages of their digital transformation, where people, systems and processes are ready for change. Practitioners formed the next category with 37%

of respondents, while 36% of CFOs were ’aspirationals’.

“Aspirationals are already five years behind the rest,” Fletcher said.

“Reinventors are storming ahead because they are agile enough to make it happen. Most reinventors segment off a third of their business to innovation. We have to think about disrupting our own businesses and governments.

We’ve seen a huge increase in market share for those that have digitally transformed. I know some CIO’s who are still keeping the lights on. Digital transformation isn’t just a case of digitising your ERP, but is about having digital DNA throughout the organisation.”

If we don’t embrace change, we will be in big trouble.”

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ROUNDTABLE IBM

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IDC’s associate vice president for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa, Ranjit Rajan, then took the floor and used the firm’s research to support Fletcher’s claims around the growing importance of the CFO in driving digital transformation. He also echoed Gomez’s comments about how KPI’s will change in this new landscape. “Most organisations are at a digital transformation deadlock,” he said.

“Progressive CFOs are looking at the development of new KPIs for digital transformation. “The CFO plays a key role in three areas: championing organisation-wide digital transformation, supporting and enabling IT transformation and leading transformation of the finance function. Digital transformation demands new KPIs. They could be around innovation, customer advocacy, data capitalisation, business operations or the workforce. Old KPIs do not work in the digital era.”

Rajan then discussed how other important roles were helping to drive technological change within the enterprise. “Figures such as a head of retail, marketing or a line of business are now driving digital transformation because they want to be competitive,” he said. “Budgets for transformation aren’t just going to IT. Most are either jointly for IT or the business. The CFO brings this together. The CFO manages the budgeting process and has a full view of where spending is going, and is in a unique position to bring this together. IT budgets JANUARY 2019

aren’t growing in double digits, so organisations need to find the money to transform.

“Businesses need to make cost savings in the ways they keep the lights on in terms of IT. Those funds can be channelled into digital transformation projects.

Digital transformation probably takes about 10 years for most organisations. CIOs in this part of world are usually tech-centric, and are more like CTOs, and aren’t as business-oriented. In many organisations, the CIO reports to the CFO. CFO’s are driving the conversation towards opex-based IT sourcing models.”

Rajan also stressed the need for organisations to carefully select their technology investments, and not

simply follow the herd in opting for the latest novelty on the market.

“Once one bank launches a chatbot, others feel compelled to,” he said.

“Every bank in UAE has now launched one.

There are a lot of vanity projects - tech for the sake of tech. Truly gauging the right experiences across channels isn’t necessarily happening.

“T spending on digital transformation will reach the tune of $1.7 trillion per year, which is roughly the size of the Canadian economy.

CFO’s need to help deliver agility, improve operational efficiencies, create new customer experiences and generate new revenue streams.

They need to look at combinations of technologies, like IoT and cloud, AI and cloud or IoT and AI.”

Digital transformation probably takes about 10 years for most organisations.”

www.tahawultech.com

Smart Choices for Digital Infrastructure Digital transformation requires agile, carefully planned IT infrastructure, efficient data access and exchange.

Each of these factors is vital to success.

The challenge is making smart, correct choices in line with performance requirements, without over- or under specifying.

Nexans supports you in making smart choices that will help you build and operate the most efficient and costeffective digital infrastructure to support your business goals.

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ANALYSIS NetApp

NETAPP: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION TOP PRIORITY FOR 70% OF CEOS DANIEL BARDSLEY REPORTS FROM NETAPP’S INSIGHT 2018 CONFERENCE IN BARCELONA, WHERE THE FIRM FLAUNTED ITS NEW PRODUCTS AND SERVICES WHICH ARE BUILT FOR THE MULTI-CLOUD AGE. 14

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loud computing is “transforming every industry around the world”, the CEO of the data services company NetApp has said, and is forcing companies to get on board or be put at risk of seeing their business model disappear.

NetApp is enjoying double-digit annual revenue increases in the Middle East, and has announced a range of upgraded services as it looks to drive continued growth.

During the keynote address at Insight 2018, the company’s main gathering for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, CEO George Kurian said that digital transformation could create a wholesale shift in the competitiveness of enterprises.

Kurian, an Indian-American, became CEO of NetApp in 2015 and took

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over the additional role of president the following year.

He is one half of a celebrated pair of high-flying Silicon Valley identical twins, with his brother Thomas being until recently president of product development at Oracle, a role that made him one of the best-paid tech executives in the United States.

“You have to respond fast to take part in the opportunities as well as to protect yourself from being disrupted,” he said. “Digital transformation is the response to disruptive forces; it’s the use of digital technology to radically transform the performance

of the business, to reach new customers, to open opportunities.”

According to Kurian, digital transformation is at the top of the agenda for 70 percent of chief executives. “In every industry, those that are adopting digital transformation are increasing their opportunities and those that are not are losing,” he said. “Data is the fuel of the digital business and software is the engine that transforms that fuel, so digital success requires a data-driven approach.”

Kurian cited the automotive industry as an example of a sector

If you are not a born digital company, you have something the digital disrupter does not have: data.”

www.tahawultech.com

NetApp CEO George Kurian

that was in the midst of digital transformation, while he said the retail sector was using digitalisation to optimise its omnichannel offering to consumers. Digitisation can be just as important to what might seem older-style companies, with Kurian giving the success of children’s toy manufacturer Lego in creating an “immersive online experience” as an example. “If you are not a born digital company, you have an additional challenge to transform your company on the lines of digital,” he said. “But you have an advantage. You have something the digital disrupter does not have: data. Your knowledge of your customers… is something the digital disrupter does not have. How you leverage that is how you make progress in the digital world.”

At Insight 2018, NetApp was keen to promote its technology around www.tahawultech.com

hybrid cloud and multi-cloud and focused on solutions that can allow organisations to move between onpremise data centres and multiple public clouds. NetApp’s Data Fabric technology is central to its offerings in this space.

An expanded offering for Microsoft Azure is among the innovations that Californiaheadquartered NetApp unveiled at Insight. To be sold and supported

by Microsoft, Azure NetApp Files is an Azure file service that offers what NetApp describes as “enterprise-grade storage and data management capabilities” and is based around NetApp’s Ontap technology.

Like other upgraded services announced by NetApp on the first day of Insight, Azure NetApp files is aimed at helping organisations to move seamlessly between on-

premise data centres and multiple public clouds, part of NetApp’s focus on the hybrid cloud and multi-cloud, for which the company’s Data Fabric technology plays a central role.

“NetApp maintains services across all the biggest public clouds,” Jennifer Meyer, NetApp’s senior director for cloud product marketing said. “NetApp is laying the groundwork to support our customers’ multi-cloud approach.

It’s less about moving from one cloud to the other; more about subscribing to [different] clouds for particular services. We want to be able to direct to where the expertise is. We give a seamless experience across these multi-clouds.”

On the first day of Insight, NetApp also announced upgraded NetApp Cloud Volumes services for Google Cloud Platform and NetApp SaaS Backup for Salesforce, the latter said to offer improved data protection.

Although promoting its cloudbased solutions at Insight, NetApp said cloud-based solutions were not appropriate for all enterprises, at least for now. “Some have not sorted out their data classification, [in which case] we would say keep your fingers away from every cloud,” said Alexander Wallner, NetApp’s senior vice president and general manager for EMEA. Wallner said that NetApp has a 10-15% market share in the Middle East, a lower level of penetration than in some markets, but he added that the company was making “huge progress” in the region, with growth in the double digits on the back of a renewed focus locally over the past several years.

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EVENT Ibtikar Innovation Day

OUTSIDE THE BOX

JAMES DARTNELL WAS A JUDGE AT NATIONAL BANK OF OMAN’S 2018 IBTIKAR INNOVATION DAY, AND WAS ONCE AGAIN IMPRESSED BY THE COMPANY’S UNIQUE APPROACH TO IDEAS AND THE FUTURE. 16

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very time I leave National Bank of Oman’s annual Innovation Day I can never fail to be impressed.

I’ve said the same thing after each of the the three editions of Ibtikar that I’ve had the pleasure of judging - it’s genuinely refreshing to see a prominent Middle East company pushing its employees to experiment with technology and contribute in a way that can make a difference to the business.

The whole event speaks volumes about NBO’s open culture, and is sure to be one that will make the company stand out in the future.

No two ideas pitched at Ibtikar are even vaguely similar, and all -

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www.tahawultech.com

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in my opinion - have the potential to be integrated effectively into the bank’s operations.

From the user experience to security and customer onboarding, NBO’s employees are clearly in tune with the kinds of technologies and solutions that aren’t just pursued for the sake of it, and that’s an example that enterprises across the region can and should follow.

It’s clear that innovation isn’t just another box that needs ticking for NBO, and that’s truly refreshing to see. The reality is that a lot of organisations don’t practice what they preach in terms of innovation. They often misunderstand the meaning of the word or do not give new ideas the weight they deserve. www.tahawultech.com

It’s clear that 'innovation' isn’t just another box that needs ticking for NBO.” What’s perhaps most eyecatching about the whole concept of Ibtikar is that 32 of the 60

ideas pitched over the last five years have been put into practice by the bank. This shows that NBO isn’t just operating on a top-down model. “It helps you to constantly challenge assumptions,” acting CEO Sayyid Wasfi Jamshid Al Said said of Ibtikar, and he’s right.

Employees typically begin preparations for Ibtikar three months in advance of the event, and work in small teams to devise technology concepts and services that can be put to use by NBO. The ideas are then pitched to an audience including the firm’s senior management, members of its board and regional technology experts, including representatives from Oman’s Central Bank.

Hats off to NBO. Keep up the good work.

JANUARY 2019

NEWS SamTech

SAMTECH MIDDLE EAST FUELS WORLD’S LONGEST DESERT MARATHON Samir I. Abdul Hadi, CEO of SamTech Middle East

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nder the umbrella of Dubai Sports Council, Dubai hosted the world’s longest desert ultra-marathon from December 11th-15th, in Al Marmoom Desert Conservation Reserve. The Al Marmoom Ultramarathon was the ultimate measure of athletic endurance, testing physical strength and mental stamina as runners tackle 270km of desert landscape.

UAE-based systems integrator SamTech Middle East supplied the athletes with personal devices that provided real-time tracking of their performance data. The devices also have an ‘SOS’ button that can be pressed by runners in case of any emergency to trigger alerts along with the GPS location to the emergency services team.

This technology also provides continuous tracking information for the race organisers, media and spectators and was available to view on a variety of platforms, across social and mainstream media.

Samir I. Abdul Hadi, CEO of SamTech Middle East, said, “It was a great honour to be the exclusive

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THE FIRM’S DEVICES DELIVER REAL-TIME PERFORMANCE DATA AND HAVE AN EMERGENCY SOS BUTTON

technology partner in the world’s longest desert ultra-marathon. The solution is based on location-based and real-time tracking technology.

It ensures that runners are always connected and can be effectively located in case of any emergency based on the exact coordinates that are shown on a map. People can track runners in realtime by logging into the provided portal address on any device including the mobiles and tablet.”

The event’s organisers were looking for the right technology partner to ensure that the runners were always tracked and that their safety was ensured. They also wanted to use the right dashboard that was user friendly and could be accessed on different mediums.

Event director Ruth Dickinson said, “We have been working with the SamTech technology and software development team for the past year. The team has been very responsive, efficient and extremely

professional. They have worked on a very user-friendly web app that can be accessed on all types of devices including tablets and smartphones, regardless of the operating system, to ensure that they are always connected with the runners.”

Hadi added, “Our team worked to ensure that the viewers, race organisers, media and spectators had a seamless and very user friendly experience on both the mobile and web.

The experience on the mediums is divided into three sections; the main dashboard where you can customise your views, choose the track you are interested in and the information you want to view. The second one is the map, and with this you are able to have real-time tracking and a view of the runners during the race, and on this we partnered with Google Maps. The third section is the profile of the participants. I hope participants and attendees enjoyed the technology experience.”

The SamTech team has been very responsive, efficient and extremely professional.”

www.tahawultech.com

SAVE THE DATE 16-18 April 2019

2019 BICSI Middle East & Africa District Conference & Exhibition Dubai World Trade Centre Sheikh Maktoum Hall | Dubai, UAE

bicsi.org/mea2019

From AI to Zettabytes:

A Connected Future!

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Dell EMC’s senior vice president for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa region Mohammed Amin

JANUARY 2019

www.tahawultech.com www.tahawultech.com

COVER FEATURE Dell EMC

WHY DELL TECHNOLOGIES HAS THE “UPPER HAND” IN ENTERPRISE TECH DELL EMC’S SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR THE MIDDLE EAST, TURKEY AND AFRICA REGION MOHAMMED AMIN TELLS CNME WHY HE BELIEVES THE FIRM HAS THE EDGE OVER ITS BEHEMOTH COMPETITORS AND WHY IT WILL BE THE “LAST MAN STANDING” IN THE IT INFRASTRUCTURE SPACE.

68% of organisations are struggling to keep up with the relentless pace of industry disruption.” www.tahawultech.com

F

or Mohammed Amin, the autonomous car encompasses the biggest ethical and technical challenges brought on by digital transformation. “If it detects an obstacle such as a wall, it will have to send that information back to the cloud and wait for a decision on what to do next,” Dell EMC’s senior vice president for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa says.

“Obviously the decision needs to be instantaneous or we know what will happen. We need compute power at the edge. Dell Technologies is reading the future in the right way and is taking the right steps to make that a reality. We’re clear on our vision and mission - to help and support human progress.”

Dell’s $67 billion acquisition of enterprise storage and cloud provider EMC in 2016 was the biggest deal in history between two technology companies, and the move is already bearing fruit for the new company, Dell Technologies, which recorded revenues of $89.6 billion as of Q3 Fiscal Year 2019 (trailing twelve months). Over the past three years, the firm has spent $12.8 billion on R&D, and “90%” of that investment has been devoted to software and software-defined projects. “That’s a key part of our AI value proposition,” Amin says. “Our customers are exposed more and more every day to the breadth and depth of the Dell Technologies portfolio, not just Dell EMC’s. This is our value proposition to organisations to help them build JANUARY 2019

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COVER FEATURE Dell EMC

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their digital future. We’ve come a long way to work as a unique family of businesses that offer organisations the trust, service, choice and global scale of a large enterprise.”

Along with Dell’s Client Solutions group, virtualisation market leader VMware, RSA, Pivotal, SecureWorks and Boomi, Dell EMC now boasts a formidable value proposition under the Dell Technologies brand, according to Amin. “As the market leader in enterprise storage and servers as per IDC, we certainly have the strongest hand in the enterprise technology space offering organisations robust technology to address their essential infrastructure needs,” Amin says.

“The companies we’re competing with are undoubtedly great, and I believe some of them compete with us in more than one line of business, however no organisation competes with us across our end to end portfolio from the edge to the core to the cloud.”

Dell EMC’s market share for enterprise storage currently sits at an impressive 68.4% in Egypt, 46% in the UAE and 57.8% in Saudi Arabia.

“We’ve seen double-digit growth in the META region year-on-year and are number one in storage and servers,” Amin says. “I believe the UAE is the most mature economy in the Gulf and will continue to diversify.

We’ll continue to attract the best talent in our regional headquarters in the UAE and across the region.”

However, Dell EMC will not rely solely on its formidable position in the IT infrastructure space, Amin says, and is determined to make the most of the seven brands of Dell JANUARY 2019

As the market leader in enterprise storage and servers, we certainly have the strongest hand in the enterprise technology space.”

Technologies. “We’ll be the last man standing in storage, infrastructure and PCs, but we’re mindful that the future will be software-defined,” he says. “The cloud still needs infrastructure, and we will always be there to deliver that. It’s normal that hardware becomes commoditised over time. Since people began

saying we’d entered the post-PC era, over five billion have been sold, so you could say we’re now in the post-post-PC era.”

Dell EMC also experienced “double digit” growth in the UAE last year, with 20% of that business coming from new customers. This is perhaps one of the 2016 acquisition’s biggest benefits - bringing two client bases under one brand. “Our companies didn’t have a conflict of product or go-to-market approach. Dell brought a lot of accounts to the table, and so did EMC,” Amin says. “The acquisition has been so successful because we weren’t selling to the same customers before. In the Middle East, Turkey and Africa region, we will finish well for the year.”

Amin has been particularly impressed with the pace of change in the Middle East’s largest market, Saudi Arabia, and is encouraged by the government’s approach to technological change. In late-2017, the Saudi government announced plans to build $500 billion hightech city NEOM by 2030, and has also announced a range of deals www.tahawultech.com

We’ll be the last man standing in storage, infrastructure and PCs, but we’re mindful that the future will be software-defined.” with blue-chip technology firms.

“Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the country’s leadership are doing an amazing job,” he says. “Saudi has seen changes in the last 24 months that most people didn’t think were possible. Saudi Arabia has the right vision and I wish the best for the present leadership. Saudi is a large country and is well positioned to achieve its transformation goals. I believe that IT spend is a necessity and it will continue to grow in the region and in Saudi Arabia.”

However, Amin is willing to acknowledge that things haven’t gone quite as well as planned in some of the markets his remit covers.

He concedes that market realities have hampered overall economic progress in parts of the Middle East, Turkey and Africa region, and have posed challenges for the technology industry. “The biggest challenge of the year has been the currency www.tahawultech.com

situation in places like South Africa, Nigeria, Turkey and Egypt,” he says.

“It’s created a headwind for business because it is conducted in local currencies, and is undoubtedly a big issue. I do believe the economy has been a bit tougher, and I’m expecting that to continue throughout 2019.

Markets are in their correctional years, this is not unique to the region as the emerging market economy globally is challenged.”

Although currencies have been a thorn in the industry’s side, Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell has nonetheless been impressed with the firm’s regional progress. “He’s very pleased with what we’re doing in the META region and the way we’re growing,” Amin says. “We’ve hired close to 700 people in the region over the last 24 months and he is committed to continued investments in the region.”

In spite of the region’s largely forward-thinking attitude towards technology, Amin believes that as organisations prepare to enter the next era of human-machine partnerships, businesses are torn between optimism and anxiety and largely worried about obsolescence of their businesses unless they accelerate their digital transformation. He is mindful that, without the right technology advisory services and strategic roadmaps, enterprises may fail to fulfil their potential in the digital age.

“68% of organisations are struggling to keep up with the relentless pace of industry disruption," he says. “More than half of them feel threatened by more agile startups.”

Amin believes that one of the biggest barriers that organisations face is getting to grips with this impending change. “The biggest obstacle for digital transformation is the human factor itself,” he says. “I don’t believe there are enough skills

that understand the new agenda of IT. The IT industry has to be mindful that IT used to be a business enabler, but is now moving to become the business itself. It’s why CIOs are reporting to the CEO and are asked the million dollar questions for how the business can launch new services that are key to the bottom line.”

The GCC region, meanwhile, is beginning to recognise the potential for technology-induced transformation, both in terms of the way services are delivered and the effect on the job market. A whole host of statistics speak volumes about the way technology will change the world. EY has forecast that artificial intelligence will add $96 billion to the UAE’s economy per year by 2030, while the World Economic Forum believes that 75 million current jobs around the world may be displaced by the shift in the division of labour between humans, machines and algorithms by as early as 2022. Amin is mindful of these effects on a regional level.

“Over the next 10 years, humanity will be exposed to digital experiences on a new scale, and this will have a huge impact on the global workforce,” he says. “By 2030, 85% of the job market will consist of jobs that haven’t been invented yet.

That change will create a new profile for the employee of the future. We believe robots and machines will take the load of repetitive tasks that humans do today.

“From a technology industry point of view, the changes that we’ll see in the near future are more drastic, dramatic and severe than everything that’s happened in the last 2,000 years.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning, robotics, augmented and virtual reality and digital experiences are becoming part of our life, and will change the IT industry and the way business is done.”

JANUARY 2019

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National Bank of Oman's acting CEO Sayyid Wasfi Jamshid Al Said

JANUARY 2019

www.tahawultech.com

FEATURE National Bank of Oman

WHY NBO WILL NEVER STOP INNOVATING NATIONAL BANK OF OMAN PRACTICES WHAT IT PREACHES IN TERMS OF INNOVATION. THE FIRM HAS IMPLEMENTED OVER HALF OF THE IDEAS PITCHED AT ITS ANNUAL, EMPLOYEE-DRIVEN IBTIKAR INNOVATION DAY OVER THE LAST FIVE YEARS. ACTING CEO SAYYID WASFI JAMSHID AL SAID TOLD CNME WHY NBO IS PUSHING ITS EMPLOYEES TO THINK AND WORK DIFFERENTLY.

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Banks have been good at making money, so why should they change?

I think the answer to that is upon us - the choice they have is to change or die.” www.tahawultech.com

HAT DO YOU THINK OF THE IDEAS THAT WERE PITCHED AT THIS YEAR’S EDITION OF IBTIKAR INNOVATION DAY? I think it’s the best Ibtikar I’ve seen so far. The ideas were crisp, innovative and simple - very to the point. That’s what we want to see.

It’s about simplicity and making things easy for the customer, and how you can think beyond what the customer might think about themselves. We have to get ahead of the curve. At the end of the day, we’re all banking customers. There’s nothing strange about them. We can take inspiration and ideas from what we ourselves expect when we deal with a bank.

These ideas can trigger a broader thinking pattern which would never come from a top-down working

25 culture. It helps you to constantly challenge assumptions. We mustn’t hold onto assumptions for too long because will get found out. Like Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

HOW HAS IBTIKAR ALREADY CONTRIBUTED TO THE BANK’S TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY? Over the last four years we’ve seen over 60 ideas that have been pitched, and 32 of those have been implemented within the bank, which is a very good hit rate. Most of these serve as enhancements to our existing products.

Our staff who want to better themselves, who want to contribute and are excited by progress are stars in the making. We’ve seen people come out of their shells because of this initiative. It helps them to play a part in shaping what NBO can be.

JANUARY 2019

FEATURE National Bank of Oman

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WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT TO HOLD EVENTS LIKE IBTIKAR, AND WHAT DO YOU THINK MAKES IT SUCH A UNIQUE PLATFORM? I’m so pleased with what I’ve seen from this year’s edition. It’s the fifth year we’ve run Ibtikar, and it keeps getting better and better. The levels of passion, togetherness and positive energy are clear - and that’s what NBO is all about. That positive energy is not something you’ll see in many institutions like ours. Banks are normally thought of as stale and not really having a soul, but what we’ve seen with Ibtikar proves that’s absolutely not the case with NBO. That’s what makes us different.

We’ve also shown our approach to innovation with events like our external Hackathon and Innovation in SME awards, which are about identifying and harnessing positive energy and ideas. When we do that, good things tend to happen.

HOW DOES IBTIKAR HELP TO MOTIVATE PARTICIPATING EMPLOYEES? When you start work from day one at a new company, you want to be engaged and participate in something that is special and energising. Platforms like Ibtikar do that and keep everyone engaged, and remind us of who we are as a bank. Those reminders are really important because you often get caught up in the day-to-day grind of getting stuff done or dealing with daily issues that inevitably come up. Our culture is evolving, but our staff already believe in NBO’s values, which makes it a lot easier.

The large number of young employees at NBO must bode well for its future.

JANUARY 2019

It bodes very well. One of the teams participating in Ibtikar highlighted how young a population we have in Oman. The 16-35 age group is a maximum-energy age group, and we’re very focused on trying to connect with the youth. We have to listen carefully to the signals that they give us and what they tell us.

HOW WILL YOU ENSURE THAT NBO DOESN’T JUST DEPLOY TECHNOLOGY FOR THE SAKE OF IT, AND THAT YOU WILL PURSUE THE BEST POSSIBLE TECHNOLOGY PROJECTS? We do everything in reaction to what we believe our customers want. We find that out in various ways. We try not to waste energy or money in pursuing the wrong things. That’s not to say we won’t be experimental - we will and we do that to encourage a culture of learning from mistakes. We do everything in-house and don’t use ready-made systems that could box us in, which can be a problem in this part of the world.

We’re about remaining agile and responsive. Our agility has got us here and I think that’s what will keep us ahead for the next 2-3 years.

It comes down to having the right

Over the last four years we’ve seen over 60 ideas that have been pitched, and 32 of those have been implemented within the bank.” people who think in different ways and we will encourage the ability to make mistakes. I’m not just paying lip service to people being our greatest assets, but it’s something I believe deeply in.

The world’s changing quickly, and we need to react to that change where we can and ensure that we are agile. We make sure that every project and product that we launch are relevant to what customers want.

DO YOU BELIEVE THAT ORGANISATIONS HAVE TO DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY, AND IF THEY DON’T THAT THEY WILL BE MERELY COPYING THEIR COMPETITORS? Innovation is important, and it’s great if you can have www.tahawultech.com

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FEATURE National Bank of Oman

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some innovations along your transformation journey. A lot of what you do will be stuff that others are already doing. In our case, this may not just apply to banking. We take a lot of our inspiration from outside of the industry. Some things are already out there and aren’t new, but we try to apply them to our own context. Doing something new and different that’s borne of ourselves is good for positive energy and momentum, and good things happen as a result of that.

COULD EMERGING FINTECH COMPANIES AND EXISTING TECHNOLOGY GIANTS POSE THE BIGGEST THREAT TO INCUMBENT BANKS? I recently read the story of Kakao Talk, a social media site in South Korea that decided to launch a banking platform. Within two hours of the launch it had 300,000 customers. Within a few weeks it had received millions of dollars of deposits, and now it has almost 10 million customers in a country of 50 million people. When you read that as a banking executive, it’s pretty scary stuff. We have to be aware JANUARY 2019

of that, but my own view is that we won’t be disrupted completely as an industry. There might be some players within the industry that lag or are in denial, and then you end up like a BlackBerry, a Kodak or a Nokia. There will be some companies that become dinosaurs along the way but we won’t be one of them. I’m pretty sure the industry as a whole won’t become a dinosaur, but we have to adapt.

Fintech has its own issues around getting into banking. Banking is very much about underlying trust, technicalities and processes so the barriers to entry are very high.

That being said, Fintech is definitely bringing something interesting to the table and rather than seeing it as a threat, I think we should embrace it and see how we can partner with the right ones.

DO YOU BELIEVE THAT BANKS OFTEN EXAGGERATE THEIR LEVELS OF INNOVATION AND THEY ARE ACTUALLY VERY CONSERVATIVE IN THEIR APPROACH TO CHANGE? I don’t know whether banks are even known for innovation. If you look at the banking industry, we’re probably

We take a lot of our inspiration from outside of the banking industry.” behind many other industries that have taken on the digital evolution much quicker. I guess that’s to do with old-school cultures that exist within banking which have always worked. Banks have been good at making money, so why should they change? I think the answer to that is upon us - the choice they have is to change or die. I imagine the next five to 10 years will see some of the largest changes we’ve seen in the last century across all industries.

When we look at transforming ourselves digitally, we’re not competing against other banks, because I don’t think they have set a very high benchmark. We benchmark ourselves against players from other industries who have done this really well and have delivered a really good www.tahawultech.com

customer experience, which is what we aspire to.

SO YOU BELIEVE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS MAINLY ABOUT CHANGING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE? Absolutely. Digital is a means to an end. The customer experience is at the heart of what we do. Everything that we’ve been doing over the last five years has been focused towards the customer. Digital, if used properly, is a great enabler.

WHAT AREAS OF TECHNOLOGY WILL YOU BE SPENDING ON IN THE COMING YEARS? We don’t want to be too specific at this stage. We can see that there are many forks in the road and we

don’t want to commit to one of them right now. We want to remain agile and make sure that where we think customers are going and how the youth are thinking and their tastes and preferences will be the same in a few years’ time. If they’re not, and you commit to a certain direction, then you have a good chance of becoming a dinosaur before long.

HOW DO YOU PLAN TO BALANCE INNOVATION WITH IT SECURITY NEEDS? The security aspect is front and centre of our minds. We’ve seen how attacks can bring down major corporations. No matter how secure you think you are, there are always nefarious types who will come after

you. That being said, I think thieves will go after the house with the open window, and that’s not us. If they think you’re a juicy target and have something nice inside then they could work extra hard to get in.

AS A BANK, DON’T YOU FALL INTO THAT CATEGORY? There are still other banks around the world that do have open windows and haven’t taken threats that seriously. We have, and so has the Central Bank of Oman, who has rolled out a number of directives to the country’s banks.

It’s often a knee-jerk reaction can be to go for a solution, but I think it’s important to make staff come up with solutions rather than throwing money at a problem.

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www.tahawultech.com

JANUARY 2019

OPINION Equinix

THE 5 DIGITAL ENTERPRISE TRENDS THAT WILL DOMINATE 2019 30 Equinix’s chief product officer Brian Lillie

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he technology market is at an inflection point, where the right digital strategies will become the differentiator and source of competitive advantage for organisations. For the first time in history, the technology needed to fully enable digital business is available to everyone.

Evolving technology and data trends such as 5G, artificial intelligence, blockchain, data privacy and cloud are paving the path for significant IT and network architecture changes in 2019. With an unmatched geographic footprint across 52 global markets and nearly

JANUARY 2019

EQUINIX’S CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER BRIAN LILLIE PREDICTS THAT 5G, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, BLOCKCHAIN, DATA PRIVACY AND CLOUD WILL UNDERGO MAJOR ARCHITECTURAL CHANGES IN 2019.

10,000 customers, Equinix has developed unique insights into the key drivers pushing enterprises to succeed in the digital economy.

PAVING A PATH TO 5G Equinix anticipates that 5G will open up endless possibilities of digital transformation, especially in an IoT and AI-connected world. To attain the high radio density required for 5G, operators are looking to optimise costs through the use of open-source commodity networking hardware and virtualisation of the wireless networking stack. These efforts will pave the way for an edge-based architecture to solve

for cloud radio networks that will power several radios through pools of virtualised network software. Equinix anticipates increased investments in 2019 in the revamping of existing cellular building infrastructure and the building of new edge infrastructure, as well as innovation in hardware and virtual wireless networking stacks for both performance and cost optimisation.

DISTRIBUTED AI ARCHITECTURES Equinix predicts that the growing use of AI in business and society will increase data usage exponentially. While first-generation www.tahawultech.com

AI architectures have historically been centralised, Equinix predicts that in 2019, enterprises will enter the realm of distributed AI architectures, where AI model building and model inferencing will take place at the local edge, physically closer to the origin source of the data. To access more external data sources for accurate predictions, enterprises will turn to secure data transaction marketplaces. They will also strive to leverage AI innovation in multiple public clouds without getting locked into a single cloud, further decentralising AI architecture.

space, driven by the need to accommodate more than simple transaction data or as an element in applications where real-time performance and linkage with other data sources matter.

Examples of performancesensitive blockchain applications include track and trace for the supply chain, machine-tomachine (IoT) communications, and cross-border currency settlements, just to name a few.

Integration will become a huge challenge as enterprises combine their legacy applications with multiple blockchain networks, necessitating the deployment of exchange points for blockchain participants to directly connect and collaborate.

Equinix anticipates that 2019 will see the next level of challenges associated with hybrid cloud and multi-cloud approaches.”

‘UN-BLOCKING’ THE CHAIN Blockchain investments are growing at a CAGR of 73%, with a projected total spending of $11.7 billion by 2022, according to IDC. Equinix predicts that enterprises will start to participate in multiple blockchain networks such as food safety, financial services and global container shipments, thus creating a network of networks - something that allows them to simultaneously interact with multiple blockchain ecosystems.

Blockchain performance will become a more important requirement within the enterprise www.tahawultech.com

MANEUVERING THE DATA PRIVACY MAZE Many enterprises and SaaS providers are deploying miniclouds in multiple regions in order to adhere to local data residence and compliance requirements.

They are also looking at distributed data management architectures that require global networks and data fabrics in order to coherently manage these distributed miniclouds. Equinix predicts that in

order to prevent data breaches and retain control over their data, enterprises will consider new data management techniques that operate seamlessly on encrypted data (for example, limited forms of data querying on homomorphically encrypted data. Enterprises will also consider new hardware-based virtualisation technology that will prevent service providers from surveilling their customer’s data.

TAPPING INTERCONNECTION TO TAME CLOUD COMPLEXITY Enterprises are now accessing SaaS, IaaS and PaaS solutions from multiple providers, and Equinix anticipates that 2019 will see the next level of challenges associated with hybrid cloud and multi-cloud approaches. Equinix believes enterprises will struggle with expanding their security perimeters, as well as integration and management issues as they pursue hybrid multi-cloud architectures.

These predicted trends indicate that enabling capabilities such as security, analytics and data exchange in close proximity to the cloud is a must for seamless cross-border data flow. The right interconnection partner can help organisations navigate through the complexity of cloud. According to the Global Interconnection Index, a market study published by Equinix, interconnection bandwidth between enterprises and cloud and IT providers is projected to grow 98% per annum through 2021, supporting businesses in building out new digital services and migrating existing workloads to third-party cloud platforms.

JANUARY 2019

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PUTTING AUTOMATION TO WORK DANIEL DINES, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO OF NEW YORK-BASED ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION SPECIALIST UIPATH, TELLS CNME WHY RPA HAS THE POWER TO REINVENT THE FUTURE OF WORK, AS WELL AS PROVIDING WHOLESALE IMPROVEMENTS TO ENTERPRISE OPERATIONS. Daniel Dines, Co-Founder and CEO of New York-based robotic process automation specialist UiPath

JANUARY 2019

www.tahawultech.com www.tahawultech.com

INTERVIEW UiPath

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RPA replaces tasks, not jobs.”

HAT ARE THE BIGGEST MISCONCEPTIONS AROUND RPA? There’s this blanket statement that RPA replaces jobs, and while some sectors are more susceptible to job losses (such as business process outsourcing or shared services), what we’re seeing in our deployments with partners and customers is that RPA replaces tasks, not jobs. Our customers are reporting that their employees are happier because of automation with more time to get immersed in creative, customer-facing activities.

industry-standard enterprise RPA platform. We see ourselves as reinventing the future of work through our automation-first mindset, promoting the adoption of one robot for every employee that will exempt them from tedious timeconsuming mundane tasks, freeing them for higher value work.

UiPath’s RPA is easily implemented across any enterprise or government entity and within any department.

Our Enterprise RPA Platform has an open architecture, is well-suited for integration with innovative technologies and has an intuitive design that people find easy to use.

WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES THAT ORGANISATIONS FACE IN MAKING ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION WORK FOR THEM? Sometimes it is a challenge to bring the IT department on-board with the RPA implementation. Journeys need a plan that take us from A to B, that have ideally been preceded by a competent analysis – what business processes are suited for automation, which departments hold the most people doing dreary time-consuming work comprising tasks that employees hate. Ideally, this should be done by a member of an inhouse RPA centre of excellence that include all functions the organisation needs to seamlessly deploy RPA. We believe RPA is at the core of the digital transformation in companies, and this should be seen as a journey for all non-born digital organisations.

IS RPA TOO OFTEN CONFUSED WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE? IF SO, DOES THIS MISCONCEPTION HINDER THE UPTAKE OF RPA? We think there is more and more education among business audiences as to what RPA really stands for, and how it has become an enabler for companies to start leveraging AI. We see that the vast majority of enterprises have embarked on their digital journeys, and that has been a major factor in our success.

WHAT IS UIPATH’S VALUE PROPOSITION? UiPath is at the forefront of the digital revolution, providing organisations of all sizes an www.tahawultech.com

DO YOU BELIEVE THAT RPA NEEDS TO BE IMPLEMENTED ACROSS ALL ASPECTS OF A LARGE ORGANISATION? IF THIS IS NOT THE CASE, ISN’T THIS LIKELY TO RESULT IN A SERIES OF PROBLEMS? RPA simplifies business processes by replicating human actions and automating repetitive tasks through the deployment of software robots, without modifying existing infrastructure and systems. We intervene in functions that are faced with monotonous tasks that can be easily automated, such as finance, JANUARY 2019

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INTERVIEW UiPath

HR, procurement, and customer service. That being said, not all functions can be automated.

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IS THERE A RISK THAT RPA CAN MAKE ORGANISATIONS TOO RELIANT ON AUTOMATION? COULD THIS RELIANCE LEAVE THEM HAMSTRUNG IN A FEW YEARS’ TIME? Automation is here to stay. A scenario where an organisation has started its digital journey and then dropped it altogether is not a realistic one. Not when RPA yields cost reductions, time saving, improved productivity and compliance, increased customer and employee satisfaction.

Moreover, RPA will only get better as it matures even more, becoming a true path to AI for enterprises.

HOW CAN ORGANISATIONS ENSURE THEY CONTINUALLY UPDATE AND ‘TEACH’ THEIR RPA PLATFORMS TO ENSURE THAT THEY GET THE BEST POSSIBLE RESULTS FROM THEM? It’s really important to work with the platform, involve the right people in implementations, making it a company-wide initiative.

WHAT KIND OF AREAS IS UIPATH CURRENTLY INVESTING IN AND PRIORITISING FOR THE FUTURE? Our investments go primarily towards increasing our global footprint – creating and developing teams to best cater for our local and regional customers, and to support our accelerated product development objectives – adding more and more AI and machine learning algorithms to our platform. UiPath is also deepening JANUARY 2019

its ecosystem of partnerships to deliver complementary AIenabled solutions, and we want to stay faithful to our mission to democratise RPA. We provide free access to our Community Edition platform to tens of thousands of developers and businesspeople in the world, as well as free training programs through the UiPath Academy, and access to a strong automation curriculum to students and universities worldwide.

HOW HAVE UIPATH’S PRODUCTS AND SERVICES ALREADY BENEFITED CUSTOMERS? GIVE EXAMPLES OF HOW YOUR TECHNOLOGY HAS TANGIBLY IMPROVED OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS. Curo Fund Services — a South African investment administration services provider — needed to boost the overall efficiency of their operational processes to reduce costs and optimise their customers’ experiences. They knew that there were parts of their process that were repetitive, data-intensive and error-prone. They also knew that errors in the process could result in financial loss because of agreements made with their clients. Exploring a solution to these issues, Curo turned to South African LarcAI, a solution provider specialising in RPA and intelligent automation. LarcAI determined with Curo that automation could help boost the performance of their processes. LarcAI selected UiPath for its RPA implementation because of characteristics that make its platform unique and user-friendly. A critical requirement for the project was for the solution to allow for

Our customers report that their employees are happier because of automation, with more time to get immersed in creative, customer-facing activities.” future enrichment with intelligent processing and machine learning capabilities.

UiPath’s open platform proved itself an integral part of this plan as it can be easily integrated with expert AI services. Microsoft Cognitive Services, IBM Watson or ABBYY’s intelligent OCR, were fused with the UiPath RPA platform to help Curo automate more processes at a later stage of the deployment. Implementing the LarcAI-UiPath solution, Curo automated 65% of targeted instructions: extracting pricing information, consolidating and updating emails, and sourcing data on a daily basis. As a result, they attained a greater degree of control over the entire process and more efficient, optimal workflows. www.tahawultech.com

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REVIEW Samsung Galaxy Watch

REVIEW: SAMSUNG GALAXY WATCH JAMES DARTNELL TAKES THE LATEST VERSION OF SAMSUNG’S GALAXY WATCH FOR A SPIN, AND IS IMPRESSED WITH ITS SUBSTANCEOVER-STYLE USER EXPERIENCE.

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he age of the smartwatch is here, with so many handsome, high-tech models on the market. Samsung’s latest smartwatch effort, the Galaxy Watch, is sure to be a heavy-hitter in the space.

The Watch’s design is pretty much what you’d expect from a sports timepiece - circular face, dial, black strap. I tested the version with the silver stainless steel finish, but I’m a much bigger fan of the all-black model, which looks much smarter.

It pains me to say it because almost everything about the Galaxy Watch is good, but for me, the silver version looks like the kind of watch you’d buy a 13-year-old boy - not particularly stylish. Irrespective of design, at 42mm or 46mm, either model looks oversized.

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www.tahawultech.com

37 In terms of usability, the Galaxy Watch’s dial doubles as its scrolling mechanism, and this makes for an intuitive, seamless experience.

There’s also no denying its fantastic OLED display, and it certainly stands shoulder to shoulder with any rival smartwatch on that front.

In terms of fitness tracking, the Galaxy Watch excels, tracking 39 different types of exercise as well as sleep and stress levels, offering breathing and stretching exercises to help keep users calm. These moves raised a laugh in CPI’s offices - I looked ridiculous doing full body stretches at my desk every few hours, but no bother. The new sleep tracker also monitors all levels of sleep, including REM cycles, to help users adjust their sleeping habits. www.tahawultech.com

I looked ridiculous doing full body stretches at my desk every few hours, but no bother.”

The Galaxy Watch’s battery life is disappointing, however. Samsung’s claim that it can last four days on a single charge was wide of the mark in my experience, a single

charge typically lasting me a dayand-a-half.

All in all, the Samsung Galaxy Watch is an undoubtedly satisfying smartwatch and exercise buddy.

Personally, I don’t think it comes close to the Apple Watch series in terms of style, and for some consumers it’s bound to be a non-starter on that basis alone.

However, its usability is fantastic and as a sports accessory it more than holds its own.

On that basis, it gets a solid recommendation from this largely satisfied user. It’s as good as any Android smartwatch available, so if you fall on that side of the aisle and you’re in the market for a smartwatch the decision should be pretty much made. Priced around $330, it’s not a bad bang for your buck either JANUARY 2019

OPINION Veritas

BLOCKCHAIN, PREDICTIVE TECHNOLOGIES TO TAKE CENTRE STAGE IN 2019

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Johnny Karam, regional vice president for emerging markets

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oing into 2019, we’re going to see the technology market continue to transform and adapt to new customer demands. In particular, IT and data companies will be collecting, analysing and providing insights about vast volumes of data – more so than ever before.

Businesses will need to start thinking about the future of how

JANUARY 2019

JOHNNY KARAM, REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENT FOR EMERGING MARKETS FOR VERITAS TECHNOLOGIES, GIVES HIS TAKE ON THE THE TRENDS THAT WILL MOST AFFECT DATA MANAGEMENT IN 2019.

they perform these tasks, and how to take advantage of new solutions that can make the jobs and lives of the people responsible for these tasks easier. New solutions can also guarantee more security and reliability, enabling better relationships with customers.

In particular, data and IT staff will tend to incorporate more blockchain technology into their workflows for data security and

protection. And with the consistent stream of business, leveraging technologies that enable predictive insights will give IT staff the tools to know how or when to upgrade technology to ensure there are no business disruptions.

BLOCKCHAIN’S EFFECT ON DATA BACKUP AND RECOVERY The benefits that blockchain will bring to an organisation’s security www.tahawultech.com

protocols are unparalleled.

However, there are other areas that will be affected as blockchain becomes more prominent in 2019. Traditional backup will give way to hyperconverged solutions.

Convergence will occur between compliance, protection and security as businesses continue to address risks and exploit opportunities with the data they have access to. In the coming year, organisations that can effectively leverage blockchain will be the clear winners as technologies continue to converge.

This makes blockchain ripe for the backup and recovery market because it can touch all pieces of data, stored in any location. As long as data exists, the need to tap into that data will also exist – but who has access to this data will be the real determinant of blockchain’s power. As we look to 2019, we’ll need to keep three groups in mind: the user, the organisation and any third parties. Individuals will need the opportunity to delete their data and access it when they like.

Organisations will want to use insights from the data to explore new opportunities.

And both parties should be concerned with any threats from third parties.

Blockchain can provide a solution that enables all of the above. But before it can be widely adopted,

In 2019, we will see more innovators experimenting with blockchain use cases that demonstrate many of the its data protection benefits.” factors such as people, legality, business, culture and more will need to be in agreement. In 2019, we will see more innovators experimenting with blockchain use cases that demonstrate many of blockchain’s data protection benefits.

AI ENABLES PREDICTIVE INSIGHTS AND DATA PROTECTION As we move into 2019, organisations will deploy more technology that enables predictive insights into IT infrastructure.

Right now, most IT managers are taking a rearview mirror approach when reacting to unplanned downtime caused by interruptions related to software or hardware error, component failure or something even more catastrophic in the data centre.

Incorporating

As we move into 2019, organisations will deploy more technology that enables predictive insights into IT infrastructure.

www.tahawultech.com

predictive technologies will enable proactive monitoring for downtime and faults so IT managers can take preventative action before a disruption ever occurs. Being more prescriptive can lead to fewer disruptions and less downtime in operations.

More frequently, AI is enabling predictability and will play a key role in data protection in 2019 and in the future. As businesses are continuing to adopt more complex IT environments, such as hyperconverged infrastructures and other modern workloads, data protection will also need to adapt. AI consistently learns from the system as these dynamic IT environments adapt and change.

Data protection stands to benefit the most from AI-enabled predictive insights by reducing risk to data in a power disruption. And with regulations such as GDPR guaranteeing data protection for users at a business’s expense, it is becoming increasingly important to keep data under lock and key.

Proactive strategies to avoid the repercussions of even a moment of downtime will be critical for businesses in 2019 that need to provide round the clock data support.

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39

OPINION Epicor

WHY UAE MANUFACTURERS CAN TURN CHALLENGES INTO OPPORTUNITIES 40

Hesham El Komy, regional vice president for the Middle East, Africa and India at Epicor Software

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ast year was one of allround transformation. We saw the world’s economy shift. We have seen uncertainty in markets brought about by various tariff wars.

Nevertheless, as our Growth Index has shown, we have seen businesses continue to find ways to grow.

Given this changing landscape, the task of looking into the future and pinpointing what lies ahead seems trickier than ever before. It certainly feels like 2019 will provide regional businesses — and manufacturers in particular — with new challenges.

However, I also believe that if businesses put the right technology to work, these challenges can quickly become opportunities.

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GLOBAL ECONOMIC CHALLENGES CAN BE SPUN INTO OPPORTUNITIES BY TECH-SAVVY UAE MANUFACTURERS, ACCORDING TO HESHAM EL KOMY, REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENT FOR THE MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA AND INDIA AT EPICOR SOFTWARE.

To that end, here are five potential economic challenges which have the potential to become opportunities for the enterprise.

MACROECONOMIC CHANGES The last 12 months have been shaped by a series of dramatic macroeconomic events that have strummed up uncertainty and shaped economies around the world.

Uncertainty is challenging.

However, local businesses that are agile, pioneering and able to adapt quickly to change can reap rewards.

In fact, challenging environments often present unparalleled opportunity for those ready to step up. UAE manufacturers using modern technologies and software can keep

themselves agile enough to respond quickly and adapt to market changes.

Enterprise resource planning solutions enable manufacturers to adapt their entire supply chains to peaks and troughs in demand to allow for changes in the market.

BRIDGE THE SKILLS GAP WITH ROBOTICS A people and skills shortage continued to plague the manufacturing industry in 2018, and this is only set to continue into 2019. According to a recent study

by Korn Ferry, by 2020, the skills shortage in the UAE will translate to $14.46 billion of unrealised output and this figure will soar to $50.55 billion by 2030. www.tahawultech.com

Implementing new technology and ways of working can help businesses maintain and improve production levels despite their resourcing pressures. Because robots can automate repetitive tasks, they are an effective way of relieving a strained workforce from manual or difficult labour.

However, the pressure is still on businesses to encourage new recruits into industry. Here too, the businesses that can use automation effectively will be at an advantage, with Epicor research showing that 41% of young people want the opportunity to work with the latest technology. Robotics and artificial intelligence are a big draw for young talent, and with software solutions like ERP enabling their investments, businesses can truly take advantage of these innovations.

THE BIG DATA BANDWAGON Many businesses mistakenly believe that technology can fix all of their problems. Over the last few years, we have seen technology investment go through the roof, and according to research in the Epicor Global Growth Index, technology remains a high priority for 74% of high-growth companies.

With new technology comes new data. Many business leaders have therefore become submerged in a quagmire of big data, with 77% of businesses in the manufacturing sector agreeing that they are having to deal with more and more information every day.

In 2019, all of this investment will come to a head. Business leaders stuck on the big data bandwagon will spend this year asking, ‘How can I realise the value www.tahawultech.com

of my tech investments?’ and ‘How can I get the most out of all of this information?’

For UAE manufacturers that can put their data to good use, 2019 will be a good year. We can expect to see smart manufacturers use data from their ERP systems to generate real insights. Many will be seen using predictive analytics to preempt shortages or high demand in the supply chain, for example, and those who do this well will quickly become preferred and reliable suppliers to their customers.

EMBRACE CLOUD According to IDG, 73% of enterprises have at least one application, or a portion of their computing infrastructure already in the cloud. However, despite its prevalence elsewhere, manufacturing has been slower to adopt cloud than other industries.

According to some reports, digital services such as cloud computing now provide at least 25% of the total inputs that go into finished manufactured products. However, this barely touches the surface of what is really possible.

For UAE manufacturers, cloud technology makes industry-specific software much more accessible for small players by lowering the total cost of ownership for users - something that will redraw the competitive landscape in 2019.

EMBRACE THE AMAZON EFFECT When we shop on Amazon, the customer journey is smooth.

A seamless user experience is something that customers now expect - not just in the consumer sector, but in the business world too. = According to recent research, more than eight-in-10 business buyers want the same experience as when they’re buying consumer products in their spare time.

Manufacturers who will succeed this year will be those that can create highly customised products that are delivered faster than any competitor.

This is the challenge presented by the Amazon Effect, and it’s a tough one. Epicor research shows the majority of manufacturers (65%) expect to tackle stresses and challenges next year, but 2019 will see some manufacturers respond to this challenge with online user journeys, personalised product offerings, and customer engagement pre-purchase through to delivery and beyond.

The skills shortage in the UAE will translate to $14.46 billion of unrealised output.”

EMBRACING OPPORTUNITIES IN 2019 There’s no doubting the challenges that local UAE businesses have been, and will continue to be up against as we head in to 2019. But put technology in the right places and it’s possible to turn these challenges into opportunities.

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41

OPINION Gartner

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION BUILD HIGHPERFORMANCE TEAMS

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GARTNER’S VICE PRESIDENT ANALYST BRUCE ROBERTSON BELIEVES THAT CIOS WHO DECIDE TO BUILD DIVERSE TEAMS WILL INCREASE THE BREADTH AND DEPTH OF SKILLS AT THEIR DISPOSAL.

Gartner’s vice president analyst Bruce Robertson

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IOs must harness diversity and an inclusive mindset to build cohesive and successful teams.

In order to be among the 33% of global CIOs who have evolved their digital endeavours to scale, they must exploit the output of highperformance teams.

High-performance teams are needed for project and product

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design and engineering activities, and as organisations advance their digital business initiatives, teams are becoming a high-priority target for change.

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION DRIVE FINANCIAL TARGETS High-performance teams that advocate diversity and inclusive behaviours will help scale digital initiatives. By 2022, 75% www.tahawultech.com

of organisations with frontline decision-making teams that reflect a diverse and inclusive culture will exceed their financial targets. The impact of diversity and inclusion is highly positive.

Gender-diverse and inclusive teams outperformed genderhomogeneous, less inclusive teams by 50%, on average.

DIFFERENCES OF AGE, ETHNICITY, GENDER AND OTHER DIMENSIONS FOSTER TEAM PERFORMANCE There are certain attributes that build high-performance teams and make them stand out, and two in particular, diversity and inclusion, can improve success.

Bringing diversity into the workforce is effective at a business level. The difference in employee performance between non-diverse and diverse organisations is 12%, with similar improvements in intent to stay factors.

Having diversity of age, gender, race and ethnicity, or

High-performance teams that advocate diversity and inclusive behaviours will help scale digital initiatives. www.tahawultech.com

geographic and national culture in teams reflects the very broad user base that companies have. This in turn allows the organisation to better serve its consumers. We know that innovation and diversity are correlated; more diversity of thought is fuel for innovation.

In additional to a mixture of age, gender, and cultural backgrounds, CIOs need to also look for ’cognitive’ diversity, which is mixing people together with different thinking styles, habits and perspectives. Having everyone on a team with the same style will hinder performance.

Different people think in different ways, and that diversity can be what allows them to achieve better outcomes.

Furthermore, as organisations increasingly focus their teams on business product delivery, so they are becoming much more multidisciplinary. As multidisciplinary teams include business roles, not just IT, diversity of expertise and experience enables faster decision. Everyone who needs to make decisions is already on the same team.

There is no handing off a project to IT for delivery. Instead, the same team carries the work from design to delivery, and the high level of performance achieved is measured in faster delivery with greater quality.

CREATE A SENSE OF INCLUSION To build and sustain increasingly diverse teams, an organisation needs to adopt more inclusive behaviours. A meaningful, inspiring

Gender-diverse and inclusive teams outperformed genderhomogeneous, less inclusive teams by 50%, on average.” purpose matters for any team, because it fosters engagement and a sense of shared investment.

Inspired by a common purpose, everyone feels that it is ‘their’ mission, not someone else’s.

Build an inclusive team — ‘wedentity’ — by building purpose into a team manifesto. A team manifesto creates more engagement with the mission.

Trust plays a critical role in creating a cohesive and inclusive team. Fostering the psychological safety — a shared belief that any team’s member will feel comfortable about taking interpersonal risks — can improve discretionary effort among employees by up to 24%. In this environment, you are human, you discuss things together, and employees feel confident that no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a questions or offering a new idea.

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43

OPINION Chris Pope

WHY THE INTERNET OF THINGS MUST CREATE BUSINESS VALUE 44 ServiceNow’s vice president of innovation Chris Pope

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he Internet of Things has become a substrate layer of web-driven intelligence that connects our world.

Fuelled by data from sensors, cameras and all manner of gyroscopes and accelerometers, IoT gives us a new power to monitor, track, analyse and act upon the data being created in the world around us.

As we head in to 2019, the issue at hand for us now is what happens next in the Internet of Things. We need to focus on how we build the infrastructure that serves the IoT and how we create the higher-level technology fabric that feeds off it.

A crucial factor for organisations

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SERVICENOW’S VICE PRESIDENT OF INNOVATION CHRIS POPE BELIEVES THE INTERNET OF THINGS WILL ONLY DRIVE VALUE IF IT IS USED TO CREATE NEW BUSINESS MODELS.

looking to channel IoT is the need to create new business models.

New operational frameworks must be customised to the needs and requirements of the machines and people populating the IoT ecosystem.

We have reached a few watershed moments with IoT already. We know that the initial years saw too many products developed with inadequate or non-existent security provisioning. The security debate will always be there, but services have now come to the fore in terms of how we lock down data in the IoT. People - users and sometimes also wearers of technology - will now be central to the debate going

forward. The fact that people will be carrying wearables so much more means we will know a lot more about the status of every individual in every situation.

A MORE CONSUMABLE FUTURE Let’s think of possible future scenarios. For example, there may never be a standard health insurance policy needed anymore, because insurers will know more about people from the get-go.

Users will really just pay for what they consume, leading us to a more ‘consumable’ future.

But none of these advancements are possible unless we have access to a system of action that allows us www.tahawultech.com

to leverage the information coming out of the IoT in the first place. To put it another way, all the IoT ‘things’ are useless unless you can drive action from the information and alerts that they generate.

As we look to use this new system of action, we can point it towards the specific components of IoT that we are actually interested in. If you think about all the devices and data out there as the IoT universe, then there’s a tighter orbit around your own organisation’s personal IoT universe. These are the ‘things’ and the data that matter to you. Once you focus in on these elements, you can map your desired business outcomes against the IoT through an intelligently architected approach.

DEFINING DESIRED OUTCOMES The term ‘desired outcomes’ might sound a little strange, but it’s easy to put them into context.

From a health-tracking wearables standpoint, a user would typically have a variety of desired outcomes including, for example, a target heart rate, blood pressure, weight and so on. Any diversion from desired outcomes might cause the user to change their exercise regime, alter their diet and perhaps even visit the doctor.

Cars are another good example desired outcomes for car use would include fuel consumption per gallon, performance and the need for week-to-week maintenance.

We can go further with automobiles because they have become smart enough to track whether we are a safe driver based upon our behaviour on the road.

In the EU for example, if a driver shares their streamed dashcam www.tahawultech.com

data with an insurance company which recognises that driver’s safety, then the driver may be rewarded with a lower insurance premium.

FROM OUTCOMES TO SYSTEMS OF ACTION In this last example, the scope of our desired outcomes has widened, but we will fail to benefit from them unless a system of action is put into place, in this case to provide the service of a lower premium.

Without the system of action, the driver drives safely, the dashcam records it and sends the data onward, the insurance company gets to identify safe drivers and perhaps also accident blackspots, but the safe driver gets no reward.

I think this ‘ability to act now’ element of how we interact with IoT data was brilliantly expressed by Chris Mazzei, in his role as EY Global Innovation Technologies Leader & Global Chief Analytics Officer.

He said, “There is an acceptance that AI will change everything in 10 years’ time, but little appreciation of how it could, and should, impact businesses right now.”

become connected, we are seeing the same challenges that have been experienced across enterprise IT now appearing in the world of IoT, especially Industrial IoT. This reality is especially prevalent if we look at how we want to manage the functionality of IoT devices. We need to be able to understand how devices are performing relative to each other while also providing the requisite level of security for each device.

This isn’t about just managing the break-fix elements of the IoT - it is about analysing the data to optimise business processes and drive new business models.

There are huge data lakes created

by IoT and we know that. As businesses become truly digital, they will discover that they know more clearly what they want to get from the universe of data that is being created, enabling them to more intelligently ask the right questions in the first place.

They will know what the desired outcomes are and thus what questions to ask to drive their system of action into decision-making, paving the way for a truly ‘consumable’ IoT from end to end.

In the EU, if a driver shares their streamed dashcam data with an insurance company, then they may be rewarded with a lower premium.”

BUSINESS MODEL SHAKE-UP So, as we move forward in to 2019, and more and more devices

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45

OPINION FarEye

ON THE MOVE GAUTAM KUMAR, CO-FOUNDER AND COO, FAREYE, EXPLAINS WHY DIGITALLY-DRIVEN LOGISTICS CAN TRANSFORM CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES.

46

Gautam Kumar, co-founder and COO, FarEye

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he supply chain and logistics industry has evolved significantly over the past few years, driven largely by increasing customer expectations. Brick and mortar processes of delivering goods and services are no longer good enough. This has increased the need to deploy technologies that empower business that can keep up with customers.

In 2018, we witnessed significant advancements in the supply chain and logistics field. But are

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they enough? No. There is still a plethora of challenges that need to be addressed.

In Middle East and Asia, smallscale restaurant owners are finding it difficult to compete with food aggregators that have no intention to generate profits. In countries like the UAE, inaccurate addresses remain a big challenge. In addition, improving last-mile delivery to boost the customer experience will continue to be a prominent trend.

So, as we step into 2019, let’s glance through the four

major supply chain and logistics trends that are going to impact businesses in the Middle East and Asia region.

ADVANCED PLATFORM ADOPTION In the Middle East region, revenue from the food delivery market is expected to grow at an annual growth rate of 13.6%, resulting in a market volume of $2.8 billion by 2023. It’s not surprising that investors will continue to fund food aggregators.

Not worried about generating www.tahawultech.com

profits, these food aggregators are seldom known for playing by the rules and conflicts of interest between aggregators and restaurants owners are common.

The question is: how does a restaurant compete with aggregators who are delivering food at cut-throat prices? There is no easy answer to this, but adopting an advanced supply chain and logistics platforms can resolve a lot of issues.

Let’s take one case-in-point. A pizza restaurant in Dubai wanted to partner with a food aggregator to scale their deliveries.

Unfortunately, it never worked out as the latter was insisting on credit card payment options on their platform and demanded 37% of the total transaction value.

The only alternative for the company was to use a supply chain and logistics management platform, which could make delivery efficient and costeffective. Leveraging such an advanced platform, the pizza joint built its own proprietary digital e-commerce platform to execute deliveries.

An advanced supply chain and logistics software helps business increase fleet visibility, boost customer experience and engagement, optimise delivery routes, customise delivery locations, predict communications and so much more. Moving ahead, with the way e-commerce is flourishing, I feel it will be a necessity for organisations to digitalise and automate their logistics operations completely. www.tahawultech.com

WHERE ARE YOU? Incorrect and inadequate postal addresses are a major problem that supply chain and logistics businesses face in the region.

A large logistics company in Dubai highlighted that in the Middle East, it is common to see packages and letters addressed to a person in a city with no proper delivery address. All they usually have is a name and a mobile number. That it is the delivery company’s responsibility to investigate, research and find out the intended delivery address.

Imagine this. You are a reputed logistics company. It costs you around $5-7 to deliver a parcel to a customer’s location. In some cases, a few delivery addresses provided by customers were inadequate or did not have a proper postal code.

You do the right thing and spend more time, money and manpower to unearth the actual location of the customer and deliver the parcel. In some cases, the cost incurred in doing this might not hurt a company’s bottom line, but this could happen regularly with thousands of parcels. Delivery costs will balloon.

That’s exactly what’s happening in the Middle East and Asia.

To resolve this issue of inaccurate addresses, supply chain and logistics companies need to embrace AI and MLbased platforms that can leverage advanced technologies to geolocate a customer’s delivery address intelligently.

IMPROVING LAST-MILE DELIVERY Next-day deliveries, customising delivery locations and timing on the fly, paperless billings and more customer expectations will continue to drive businesses to embrace advanced supply chain and logistics platforms.

Online customers in the Middle East and Asia region want retailers to deliver buying experiences based on instant gratification.

According to Google, only 53% of retailers offer click-andcollect as a service, and only three retailers offer next-day delivery in the UAE. The only way to give the best possible customer experience is to drastically improve last-mile delivery with advanced SaaSbased logistics and e-commerce platforms.

The only way to give the best customer experience is to improve last-mile delivery with SaaSbased logistics and e-commerce platforms.”

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47

OPINION ManageEngine

HOW THE IOT WILL AFFECT IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT 48 ManageEngine vice president Rajesh Ganesan

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he internet of things promises a world where virtually every object is interconnected via embedded sensors, software, and electronics to collect and exchange data. Gartner predicts that by 2020, the IoT will grow to 20.8 billion connected things with 7.2 billion of them used by businesses.

Regardless of the pace at which businesses adopt the IoT, IT service management (ITSM) will have to evolve to deal with IoT-driven changes such as more connected nodes, data points, and automation, all of which add complexity. Here

JANUARY 2019

MANAGEENGINE VICE PRESIDENT RAJESH GANESAN BELIEVES THE INTERNET OF THINGS HAS THE POTENTIAL TO PROVIDE A NEW ERA OF INSIGHT AND VALUE WITHIN THE IT DEPARTMENT.

are seven ways in which the IoT will impact ITSM. PROACTIVE INCIDENT IDENTIFICATION AND PREVENTION IT service desks typically deal with incidents reactively. This means that incidents are often reported to the IT service desk only after they have occurred. Smart organisations can use IoT sensors to monitor device performance levels, thereby automatically reporting impending issues before they occur.

Furthermore, you can proactively prevent incidents from occurring, mitigating the risk of downtime.

IMPACT ON AGENTLESS NETWORK SCANNING Current hardware asset management processes require a scan of connected devices. For companies that use agentless scanning, devices can only be scanned when scheduled and the network is loaded with inventoryscanning pings that degrade overall network performance. The largescale interconnection of devices in an IoT network means that devices are constantly exchanging pings, which avoids the traffic jams created by scheduled scans.

Furthermore, you can identify and report a dead device in real time www.tahawultech.com

instead of waiting until the next scheduled scan to find it.

SHIFTING FOCUS ON CI RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH THE CMDB As components (nodes) in the IT infrastructure start communicating with each other, their relationships come into focus. This visibility helps map the flow of information in the network, which is essential to understand how a problem with one node affects the entire network.

With the IoT, ITSM practices will become more focused on the relationships between configuration items (CIs) to achieve this high level of visibility, meaning that the configuration management database (CMDB) will become an integral part of ITSM. IMPACT ON ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS The current level of data analysis in the problem management process is limited by relatively low device counts and data volumes on today’s networks. However, for IoT networks, the volume of data will increase with the growing number of connected devices and technological advancements.

This data can be used for a wider analysis of issues across IT, ultimately leading to continuous improvement and a decrease in associated major incidents.

IMPACT ON CHANGE MANAGEMENT Implementing a change can be a challenge for IT organisations due to the increasingly interconnected nature of IT. With IoT, implementing www.tahawultech.com

a change is a bigger challenge as there are more CIs connected to the network, and they are all more interdependent. Let’s say a department in an office has 10 nodes sharing and routing data with and through each other via near field communication (NFC).

With IoT, if one of these nodes is changed, the routing table (which is common to all nodes) has to be modified, affecting the entire network. In contrast, when each node is connected to a conventional network, changing a node affects only that particular node and not the entire network. When implementing a change in an IoT network, it’s best to go for incremental steps to minimise the number of CIs that need to be changed and managed.

convergence of software asset management (SAM) and hardware asset management (HAM) to support the transition of static, non-IT assets to IoT-enabled smart assets.

ITSM WILL GO BEYOND INCIDENT MANAGEMENT AND INTO BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE The IoT-enabled organisations of tomorrow will be able to use the huge amount of data generated by network-connected CIs to help cut costs and increase profits.

For example, if the IT service desk is planning to initiate a change, the data collected

by IoT sensors can help analyse past data to figure out the most costefficient and non-intrusive downtime window to implement the change. The analysis and insight gained from IoT-enabled IT go a long way to ensure business availability.

While IoT is currently consumeroriented technology, it can definitely impact businesses, especially when it comes to the ITSM domain, much like Wi-Fi and BYOD did in the past.

There’s no doubt that IoT will revolutionise the world of automation and big data. This is a fantastic time for ITSM professionals to adopt IoT and help their businesses reap the benefits.

With IoT, if one node is changed, the routing table has to be modified, affecting the entire network.”

CENTRALISE PURCHASES AND CONVERGE SAM AND HAM Assets are typically purchased through the procurement department, where they can easily be classified as IT and non-IT. However, this clear differentiation will blur in an IoT network, and all assets will have to be added to the CMDB for clarity. Therefore, the IT department will have to work with the procurement department to sort out assets. Another major consequence of the IoT is the

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49

COLUMN Glesni Holland

THE CHOICE IS YOURS 50

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etflix viewers were gifted a late Christmas present last month, after the streaming site dropped a new episode of Black Mirror in the form of an interactive film on 28th December.

Bandersnatch, the latest show in Charlie Brooker’s technologicaldystopia series, is branded a “choose your own adventure” experience for viewers. Every few minutes, the show gives the viewer two options, and depending on which one they click with the remote, this determines the path of the story.

There are pressing decisions that the viewer must make throughout the show - some trivial, some consequential (spoilers incoming).

Should Stefan Butler have Sugar Puffs or Kellogg’s Frosties for his breakfast?

Should he bury a body of a man he’s just killed or chop the body up into pieces? Only you can decide.

So, is this the start of an interactive TV revolution?

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Gone are the days of focusing on GAUTAM KUMAR, CO-FOUNDER AND COO, FAREYE, solely collecting data to establish EXPLAINS WHY DIGITALLY-DRIVEN CAN the ways in which LOGISTICS viewers engage TRANSFORM with CUSTOMER content. Now, EXPERIENCES. utilising

This opportunity to choose alternative endings has been used for decades in books. But the process is far from seamless, as it involves flicking back and forth between pages, when reading sequentially is what we’re used to and therefore tend to enjoy. Netflix, however – which is said to have created at least five different endings to the episode, seems to have perfected the way in which its story paths diverge based on user choice.

To that end, platforms like Netflix lend themselves perfectly to such an experience, as the service is fundamentally built on tailoring its viewing to user preferences. The difference between Netflix and other streaming sites is that those behind Black Mirror thought to exploit this user involvement in the smartest way possible.

And if this advance into interactive television continues, it may just be what sets Netflix apart from its competitors in today’s saturated streaming market.

interconnected decision-making, as Bandersnatch has done, Netflix can collect more robust insights into the personality of its consumers.

By delving into conclusions made in “real-world scenarios,” it can – in this instance - extract data that can ultimately determine its 137 million subscribers’ musical taste and cereal preferences, to name a few.

It’s not too far-fetched to suggest that data collected in this manner could be used to create or influence the projects that get the go ahead from Netflix in years to come.

Either way, if other streaming services are to follow suit and attempt a similar show – which is looking likely, considering the buzz that Bandersnatch has created the consensus is that it’ll have to be something extra special to top Black Mirror’s efforts. Watch this space.

www.tahawultech.com

See it all at hpe.com

We see something. Amid the streams of ones and zeros, we see a world where oceans of data yield sparks of insight and unending questions are being answered. A world where every space is intelligent and each connection is seamless.

Where cutting-edge computing has the power to carry mankind to new planets, and faster data analysis accelerates the race for a cure. Where solutions come before problems arise and physicists have the power to map the universe’s origins.

We see a world where Everything Computes, and what’s next is extraordinary. ©Copyright 2018 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP.