Computer News Middle East April 2015

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EDITORIAL

The age of IoT Talk to us:

At this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, one of the things that caught my attention was the number of connected vehicles on display at various booths. They say there will be around 250 million connected cars on the road in the next five years as the Internet of Things grows to include 25 billion devices. So much has been said and written about IoT in technology magazines, the hype in the midst of a crescendo. Gartner predicts the global IoT market will reach $340 billion by the year 2020 and another report from ABI Research says there will be 5.4 billion IoT connections across businesses worldwide in another five years.

Though we still don’t have any idea about what kind of applications will take off in which sector, the declining costs of sensors and connectivity have made IOT an attractive proposition to businesses. But what is the real promise of IoT? It is defined as a set of technologies that enable information flow from devices, underpinned by communication between machines, so that we can How many make better decisions in real time. The top benefit of of our CIOs IoT, it is said, is enhanced customer experience. are really But how many of our CIOs are really familiar familiar with with IoT or what it does for their businesses? The IoT or what it ABI Research study indicates that only around 10 does for their percent of enterprises have deployed IoT extensively.

Many are still waiting for the technology to take businesses? shape or waiting for insights from the early adopters.

Another major hindrance is justifying the cost of IoT investments in the absence of clear use cases.

Having said that, in the Middle East many pilot projects are currently underway in industries such as retail, healthcare, utilities, and oil and gas. Energy and utilities sector could be the biggest adopter of IoT technologies for one simple reason – sensors and RFID tags are already used extensively by this segment for supply chain visibility and asset tracking.

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EDITORIAL

Paving the way Talk to us:

It is the end of an era. I’m not going to say that I’ll miss Internet Explorer – because frankly I haven’t used it in years – but as browsers go, I think that it has had quite an impact on all of our screen-facing lives. For many of us Internet Explorer was our first window into the World Wide Web. For two decades the browser has graced our PCs (whether we wanted it there or not) and put up a valiant fight against competitors such as Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox. At one point Internet Explorer took upwards of 80 percent of the market share, however the iconic E has fallen drastically since 2010, now hovering at around 20 percent.

It is strange to see a software as relatively old as Internet Explorer reach its retirement. The lifespan of technology is so comparatively short when stacked next to other markers of progress. Internet Explorer is, in tech terms, a dinosaur at 20 years old. It has long been slowed down, left to watch its competitors sprint ahead. Though I stopped giving it a throught years ago, I never As we progress, really considered that one day it would be shelved. we will see most CNME has recently started a new monthly of the technolgoy snippet called 'Vintage Tech'. I've really enjoyed on which we writing the new addition, researching the were once so industry’s major flops and duds, as well as those reliant fall into products that paved the way for the technology obsolesance. that we use today. I have to admit, the staff in the office have had a few laughs over clunky calculator-watches and bizarre mobile phones.

However, looking into technology’s past, I realise that that each misstep was still a step in the right direction.

As we progress, we will see most of the technology on which we were once so reliant fall into obsolescence. Internet Explorer was once the first thing I opened each time I switched on my PC, but eventually fell to the wayside once other, sleeker browsers came to market. Perhaps Microsoft’s new browser, codenamed Project Spartan, will give the other browsers a run for their money. Though Internet Explorer is being put on the shelf, and it probably stuck around for a few too many swan songs, we can’t deny that – for PC users at least – the browser defined the way we used the Internet, at least for a time.

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Contents

Strategic ICT Partner

Strategic Technology Partner

Strategic Innovation Partner

ISSUE 279 | April 2015

20

Mobile World Congress

Network World Middle East Awards 2015

34

Aramex

16 SAP roundtable

60 Big Data

18 Etisalat

64 Software-defined networking

An engaging roundtable discussion took place between Gulf-based IT leaders on the prospects of Big Data.

In partnership with CNME, telco vendor Etisalat hosted a conference on the potential of IT in the energy sector.

26 CIO Spotlight

38

www.cnmeonline.com

CNME Editor Annie Bricker caught up with Juniper Networks Chief Financial and Operating Officer Robyn Denholm.

Regional experts give their take on how CIOs can get the most out of their Big Data solutions.

A futuristic hope, or a realistic option for Middle Eastern CIOs?

68 Out in the open

We grill Shrikant Kabboor, Director of IT, Emaar, on his journey to the top of the property company’s IT.

32 Interview Petroserv

42

E-commerce, along with other online services, can leave users’ data at risk in the Wild West of cyberspace.

76 CXO Corner

Illyas Kooliyankal, CISO of ADS Securities discusses his role at the forex and commodities trading firm.

april 2015

7

AUTHENTICATION

DEFINITIONS SOMETHING YOU KNOW These are passwords, PINs, patterns, passcodes, and any other verification based on information only the user should know. Passwords have been the primary means of verifying user identity since the need to protect data emerged.

PROS

Users are accustomed to them; there is no special hardware required; and almost all applications accept them.

Easily hacked via social engineering, phishing, poor password hygiene, and brute force attacks. Also require users to remember and properly guard multiple unique, complex passwords; and IT management to reset when forgotten.

CONS

SOMETHING YOU ARE Biometric systems. A user authenticates based on a fingerprint check, voice print, retinal scan, or other unique physical attribute.

PROS

Convenience - nothing to carry or remember

Can be spoofed and may give false positives/negatives. Not as widely standarised as other solutions. Required additional readers, scanners and support. High acquisition and maintenance costs. Impossible to revoke without revoking the user’s biometrics.

Source: Wave Systems

CONS

EVERY IT SECURITY PRO

SHOULD KNOW HOW DOES ENTERPRISE IT ENSURE USERS ARE WHO THEY SAY THEY ARE?

SOMETHING YOU HAVE Physical items carried by the user - smart cards, tokens, virtual smart cards that are unique to them and are presented during the authentication process.

PROS

Usually requires physical access to the smart card or token in order to be hacked. If authenticating based on PKI, there is no password or PIN transmitted over the network. Smart card technology has been in use for over a decade and is a proven and understood strategy.

Requires users to keep track of additional, unique pieces of hardware for various services. Requires IT to replace hardware when lost. Additional cost associated with acquisition and replacement.

CONS

TWO FACTOR AUTHENTICATION Is the practice of combining any two of these three types of authentication: something you know, something you have, and something you are. Two-factor authentication is a recommended best-practice for protecting sensitive data and resources, and is required by law when handling some types of information.

PROS

Hackers have two layers of protection to crack, greatly decreasing the chance for successful attacks.

Reduces dependence on passwords, improving user experience and ultimately lessening cost.

Cost and complexity - organisations have to deploy and manage more than one form of authentication. The exception is virtual smart cards, which incorporate a password and therefore only require one deployment: to achieve two-factor authentication.

CONS

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Column

James Dartnell Online Editor, CNME

Vendor veracity O

ne key takeaway I’ve gained from dozens of meetings with Chief Information Officers across the Gulf is the importance of their relationships with vendors.

These relationships may seem straightforward to some. You pay the provider a sum, they give you a branded black box and the rest takes care of itself. But when it comes to services it’s certainly a different ball game.

In this instance what the products and services actually can do is only relevant to a point, and what they should do is what really matters.

If a vendor’s offering is not exactly what you want, then you should look elsewhere.

Although it could be construed as patronising for a technology journalist to be advising an experienced and savvy CIO on relationship building, I will still stress that carrying out due diligence of vendors is absolutely vital. www.cnmeonline.com

That’s not to say they are unscrupulous – far from it, but ensuring they understand the requirements of your specific vertical and organisation is absolutely key.

That may seem like stating the obvious, but a number of big brands will rest on their laurels, knowing that they will gain customers purely through their existing reputation.

Granted, it is likely the vendor's glossy image will have been generated by providing robust products and services, but it remains important that CIOs stay sharp and keep their own best interests in mind.

I shan’t name names of any particular vendors for fear of portraying bias, but the difference is clear when a CIO works with a one who cares.

Companies whose services and technology have been described to me as “magic” and those who “go the extra mile” to ensure their customers are

satisfied are the ones who should be selected, and the ones who really stand to benefit in the Middle East, where relationships are everything.

In other words, it’s critical that they have the tools and personnel to be f lexible and thorough in their project delivery.

The reality is that having offthe-shelf solutions that cater to each industry is a practical time-saver, but a customised solution or service – which factors in your business’ specific needs – could be a sager move in the long run.

A vendor who is able to not only provide firm and clear service level agreements, but will keep their word and ensure diligent provision of them, is one to value.

What matters is building that relationship of trust, an important jigsaw piece. Once it’s there, it gives CIOs peace of mind and serves as a vital springboard for progress in other areas. april 2015

11

CIO Soundbites

What is the best way for CIOs to handle internal resistance?

George Yacoub, Chief Information Officer, SEHA "In a lot of cases we run into internal resistance due to a lack of understanding or concerns about an unknown topic to those who resist it. I always try to take the time to educate my audience on the topic prior to making a decision or supporting a new initiative so they can feel comfortable about what they are agreeing to or supporting."

Farid Farouq, Head of IT, Dubai World Trade Centre "I believe building great relationships with various members of the organisation will play a significant role in reducing resistance in the long run when it comes to various change initiatives."

Alaeddin Al-Badawna, IT Manager, ADMA-OPCO "Technology changes often mean new ways of doing things. We always encounter resistance to change by users or even from technology guys themselves.

People are resentful to the unknown; such a situation builds their urge to acquire the needed awareness and enjoy the new ride.

They need to be engaged early so their attention can be captured and then convinced."

Ahmed Ebrahim Al Ahmad, CIO, Nakheel “CIOs should understand firstly from which level of the organisation the resistance is coming and address the resolution accordingly.

Demonstrating the overcome value such as the return on investment, operation efficiency, security, fulfilling audit requirements, time to market reduction and involving the users in the decision making, which could create a new mindset are ways to let the users buy into the new services or ideas and reduce resistance. “

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april 2015

www.cnmeonline.com

ADVERTORIAL

Security gets smarter

Gulf Air bolsters network security with HP TippingPoint

“We made a strategic decision to stay with HP because they are consistently ranked as one of the top leaders in enterprise security.

Moreover, HP TippingPoint has successfully protected our network for six years with superior TCO compared to other vendors."

– Dr. Jassim Haji, director of Information Technology at Gulf Air

www.cnmeonline.com

As the national carrier of the Kingdom of Bahrain, Gulf Air takes information security very seriously.

When faced with growing threats from botnets and malicious network traffic, the airline implemented HP TippingPoint Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) to protect its network perimeter and server farms. As a result, TippingPoint improved the number of blocked threats dramatically, thwarting attempts to compromise Gulf Air’s network and avoiding thousands of dollars in potential losses due to downtime and lost productivity.

Operating one of the largest networks in the Middle East, Gulf Air serves 39 cities in 24 countries spanning three continents. Renowned for its traditional Arabian hospitality and consistently on-time service, Gulf Air is committed to the ongoing enhancement and delivery of products and services that reflect and cater to the evolving needs of its passengers.

One of the most important ways Gulf Air cares for its passengers is ensuring the safety and security of their private information. The airline has built the highest level of trust with passengers by taking extraordinary steps to implement network and information security measures. It implemented an ISO 27001-certified Information Security Management System (ISMS) and appointed a governance board to oversee ongoing information security initiatives.

In 2008, Gulf Air implemented HP TippingPoint Next-Generation IPS to protect the airline’s network perimeter with inline blocking behind its firewalls.

As the threat landscape continued to evolve with new attacks coming from botnets, Gulf Air faced growing challenges to secure the egress and ingress points on its network and took the necessary steps to safeguard not only traffic from the inside out, but also from the outside in. After evaluating security solutions from a number of IT security providers, the airline once again turned to HP for an upgraded network security solution.

Dr. Jassim Haji, director of Information Technology at Gulf Air, comments, “We made a strategic decision to stay with HP because they are consistently ranked as one of the top leaders in enterprise security.

Moreover, HP TippingPoint has successfully protected our network for six years with superior TCO compared

to other vendors. Therefore, we were confident HP would be there for us to protect our network against the latest threats.

Enables proactive network protection With its most recent upgrade, Gulf Air deployed two HP TippingPoint Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention Systems for high-availability and protection of both its server farms and perimeter network. The airline also implemented the HP TippingPoint Security Management System (SMS) for management and reporting of the TippingPoint Next-Generation IPS environment.

“As an airline, it is critical to ensure we implement the right security measures and controls to prevent any possible threats that may impact business continuity and/or compromise the information of our passengers,” says Dr. Haji. “With its intrusion prevention capabilities, TippingPoint enables us to be proactive rather than reactive, which is vital for supporting our network security objectives.”

In the past, Gulf Air relied solely on its security information and event management (SIEM) system to collect events and threats, then use firewall commands to manually block traffic. Now, with TippingPoint Next-Generation IPS, threats are automatically blocked, strengthening protection by eliminating the possibility of human errors.

TippingPoint improved the number of blocked threats dramatically, thwarting attempts to compromise Gulf Air’s network through HP TippingPoint Threat Digital Vaccine (ThreatDV) filters.

These filters are developed and pushed out to the TippingPoint Next-Generation IPS to cover an entire vulnerability, not just a specific exploit. What’s more, TippingPoint has produced only two false-positives in the six years it’s been protecting Gulf Air’s network, and zero in the last three years.

Gulf Air is committed to continually enhancing its IT network security to protect its business assets and customer information. In the near term, the airline will be activating additional features in the ThreatDV service to detect threats based on reputation. Longer term, Gulf Air plans to integrate the TippingPoint Next-Generation IPS with its SIEM to enable even more proactive measures to thwart attacks.

january 2015

13

short takes

Month in view

Samsung launches ‘Business’ division

Samsung has launched its Samsung Business division – that unifies its end-to-end business solution portfolio – at the CeBIT 2015 conference in Hannover, Germany.

Won-Pyo Hong, President and Chief Marketing Officer, Samsung Electronics, delivered a keynote addressing the Internet of Things (IoT) for enterprise and how Samsung is creating a collaborative IoT ecosystem.

“As more and more businesses adopt the Internet of Things, we have a great opportunity to enhance customer value with increased productivity and profit,” he said.

“Significant advancements can be made in the business process through the application of IoT in inventory management, energy efficiency and more. However, we first have to overcome the challenges of platform compatibility, data analysis and security in order to accelerate IoT adoption.”

Samsung Business expands and unifies all the company's business solutions, including KNOX for security and enterprise mobility management, SMART Signage solution, the company’s printing solution and other business offerings.

The company showcased its enterprise solutions and services across the industries of retail, education, hospitality, healthcare, finance and transportation at the trade show.

14

april 2015

HP to acquire Aruba Networks HP has agreed to acquire Aruba Networks in a $3.0 billion deal.

Both companies’ boards of directors have approved the $24.67 per share deal.

Aruba has approximately 1,800 employees, and had revenues of $729 million in fiscal 2014.

Aruba will be led by the company’s existing Chief Executive Officer Dominic Orr, and Chief Strategy and Technology Officer, Keerti Melkote, who will report to Antonio Neri, leader of HP Enterprise Group.

“Enterprises are facing a mobile-first world and are looking for solutions that help them transition legacy investments to the new style of IT,” said Meg Whitman, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, HP. “By combining Aruba’s worldclass wireless mobility solutions with HP’s leading switching portfolio, HP will offer the simplest, most secure networking solutions to help enterprises easily deploy next-generation mobile networks.”

The transaction is expected to close in the second half of HP’s fiscal year 2015, subject to Aruba stockholder approval, regulatory approvals in the US and other countries as well as other customary closing conditions.

“Together with HP, we have a tremendous opportunity to become an even greater force in enterprise mobility and networking,” said Orr. “This

transaction brings together Aruba’s best-of-breed mobility hardware and software solutions with HP’s leading switching portfolio. In addition, Aruba’s channel partners will have the opportunity to expand their businesses with HP offerings. Together, we will build on Aruba’s proven ‘customer first, customer last’ culture, creating an innovative, agile networking leader ideally positioned to solve our customers’ most pressing mobility, security and networking challenges.”

ISIS supporters operated at least

46,000

Twitter accounts at the end of 2014. www.cnmeonline.com

HTC founder Cher Wang is taking over as company CEO, as the Taiwanese Android smartphone maker fights to revive its struggling business.

Peter Chou, the previous CEO, will remain with the company, and lead its ‘Future Development Lab’ to identify new growth opportunities.

MEA PCs grow for third straight quarter The Middle East and Africa PC market posted its third successive quarter of year-on-year growth in Q4 2014, continuing its recovery from the seven consecutive quarterly declines it experienced leading up to Q2 2014.

The latest figures announced by IDC show that the overall market grew 2.8 percent year-on-year for the quarter, spurred primarily by shipments of portable PCs. The number grew 4.3 percent year-on-year in Q4 to reach 2.83 million units, while desktop shipments experienced much flatter growth of 0.4 percent over the same period to total 1.8 million units.

This growth was aided by a recovery from the instability that plagued parts of the region in the corresponding quarter of 2013, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the ‘rest of Middle East’ sub-region, where the bulk of PC shipments can be attributed to Iraq and Iran.

“The market’s growth was also spurred by several mid- to largescale education deliveries that took place across the region in Q4 2014, with the largest being in Pakistan,” said Fouad Rafiq Charakla, Research Manager, Personal Computing, Systems, and Infrastructure Solutions, IDC Middle East, Turkey, and Africa. “

Google confirms carrier plans

Microsoft to ditch Internet Explorer brand Microsoft has confirmed that the new default browser in Windows 10 will not be named ‘Internet Explorer’, marking the end of a 20-year reign by the nameplate.

“We’re right now researching what the new brand, or the new name, for our browser should be in Windows 10,” said Chris Capossela, Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer, during a discussion of branding at the firm’s Convergence conference. “We’ll continue to have Internet Explorer, but we’ll also have a new browser called Project Spartan, which is codenamed Project Spartan.”

Microsoft has talked about Spartan before: In January, when the company touted Windows 10’s consumer-oriented features, it officially announced the new browser, dubbing it with the code name.

Spartan, executives said then, would be the default Web browser for the new www.cnmeonline.com

OS, although Internet Explorer will also be bundled with Windows 10, primarily for enterprise legacy requirements.

According to people familiar with Microsoft’s plans, it will not reveal Spartan’s name until May, most likely at Ignite, the conference slated to run 4th-8th May in Chicago. Ignite will roll up TechEd with several older, often-smaller meetings, including those that specialised in Exchange and SharePoint.

It’s no surprise that Microsoft wants to push the Internet Explorer brand into the background. For all its improvements over the years, IE continues to drag along past baggage of negativity, and a reputation - gained from earlier versions, notably IE6 as difficult for developers and site designers to support and an also-ran in speed and Web standards-support.

Google has confirmed that it plans to offer connectivity directly to mobile users in the U.S., but a senior executive downplayed the competition it would be to major U.S. cellular carriers.

Several reports have said the company is preparing a service that would be offered across an existing cellular network under a Google brand – a so-called “mobile virtual network operator” or MVNO. But the reports hadn’t been confirmed until Sundar Pichai, the company’s Senior Vice President, spoke at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

“You’ll see us announce it in the coming months,” said Pichai.

Pichai said it won’t be a full-service mobile network in competition with existing carriers.

Instead, it will give Google a platform through which it can experiment with new services for Android smartphones.

He likened it to the work Google does today in hardware, where it works with existing partners on its Nexus line of devices. april 2015

15

EVENT

SAP ROundtable

Data dissection As a warm-up to CNME’s Network World Middle East Awards ceremony at Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Chief Information Officers from across the region joined representatives from SAP for a thought-provoking discussion on the possibilities of Big Data. lively and broad forum acted as a platform for end users to share their thoughts on a topic which raises a number of questions, but does stand to bring dynamic, actionable information to organisations. The diversity of sectors that participated in the discussion certainly served as a catalyst for an engaging exchange of

A

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april 2015

ideas.

Jawad Fakih, Managing Director, Senior SAP Solutions Architect, Tyconz, set the ball rolling by posing questions around what Big data can do for the Middle East. “There are lots of stories around Big Data, but how do we achieve value from it, and is it needed in this market?” he said. “The main issues are capturing,

storing, managing and analysing massive amounts of various types of data. It’s stored in multiple formats, from internal and external sources, with strict demands for the speed and complexity of analysis. Yet there is a huge amount of information waiting to be leveraged.”

Ahmed Ebrahim Al Ahmad, Chief Information Officer, Nakheel, discussed how his team were considering a range of value-adding Big Data initiatives. “We’re currently looking at providing free Internet to people in various communities with targeted advertising campaigns,” he said. “A mall could be divided into small sectors, and customers who accept the conditions of free Internet access would permit access to things like their LinkedIn and Facebook details, which would enable us to send targeted advertising to them.

Ads can be based on preferences and www.cnmeonline.com

history, and this “Big Data requires enthusiastic about the potential of Big information needs investments in Data, but conscious to be analysed in both storage and of the need to milliseconds.” technical aspects. align it with Wissam Ismail, It needs data business needs.

Head of IT, Al Noor “Businesspeople Hospitals, drew scientists with have developed a attention to two key strong maths thick skin against factors that were and science IT hype,” he said. driving the adoption backgrounds, “Big Data requires of Big Data in the which is a big investments in healthcare industry. investment.” both storage and “Our key objective is technical aspects. to detect problems It needs data in patients,” he said. scientists with strong maths and “It’s a question of balancing cost and science backgrounds, which is a big quality of care. We can focus on our investment; a range of new roles business warehouse for clinical and that nobody understood before. financial sources which can be used IT always gets enthusiastic about for prediction and analysis. This technology, but it only takes one allows us to improve our financials, set of data leading to incorrect and the overall outcome for the business decisions before the patient.” business loses trust.”

Ali Radhi, Head of IT, MBC, was www.cnmeonline.com

Kumar Prasoon, Chief Information Officer, Al Safeer Group saw the need to unify data sets. “There are three main types of data that I need to analyse: transactional, process and behavioural,” he said. “What’s important is aggregating the data and then leveraging informed decision making from it. The challenge is homogenising a heterogeneous environment, gaining value of data from disparate sources.”

Jurageswaran Shetty, IT Security Manager, Gulftainer, framed the issue in terms of security and the difficulties of unifying information from different physical locations.

“We have multiple data centres across the country, so if a Big Data solution was compromised then everything would be breached,” he said. “The challenge of Big Data in the cloud is that we don’t know where cloud data centres in the UAE are configured. We have no visibility of who is handling our data.”

Fadhel Mandani, Manager IT Technical Services, Gulf Air, discussed how the airline had used Big Data to adapt the company’s services around the upheaval of the Arab Spring. “Our PR team had to handle hundreds of printed twitter pages, and had to analyse where to focus in order to enhance the customer experience, so this unstructured data had to be utilised,” he said. april 2015

17

EVENT

Etisalat

Energising the world

In an event organised in association with CNME, Etisalat showcased its expertise in the energy and utilities sector.

he energy and utilities industry is complex and growing, but also needs to be modern and efficient. From analytics to networking and mobility, the ICT opportunities are abound for this sector to survive the upheavals in markets and collapsing business cycles. Etisalat recently organised a half-day workshop, highlighting how the service provider’s domain expertise and flexible ICT solutions

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april 2015

can protect businesses in this important sector from market volatility and unforeseen business circumstances.

The event, which was held under the theme ‘Together we Energise the World’, kicked off with a keynote address from H.E Dr Matar Al Neyadi, Undersecretary, Ministry of Energy, who spoke about the UAE’s vision for energy and technology. “Technology is a crucial component of the energy sector and a vehicle of change

across the entire spectrum. The UAE is leading the way in clean and renewable energy by transforming and modernising the energy sector and enabling sustainable development to be the global future of energy,” he said.

Ragy Magdy, VP – Enterprise Private, Etisalat, set the stage for the event with a presentation on the internal changes Etisalat has made to address the energy and utilities sector.

“We are taking a triple ‘S’ approach.

This includes structure, whereby we are reducing the layers and putting in place dedicated account teams, and improving existing systems and rolling out new ones to improve customer experience. And we are planning to advance on core telecom offerings and introduce vertical solutions."

Irfan Jeraj, Director – Energy & Utility, Etisalat, who took to the stage next, spoke about the company’s www.cnmeonline.com

and deliver services unique value “The volume in a better way. As proposition to the of incidents part of this, we are industry. “The energy has increased organised internally and utilities sector dramatically in the to provide personal is the heartbeat past year. Power and and differentiated of the country utilities respondents services to our and we recognise to The Global State customers. We will the importance of Information provide consistent of the industry.

Security Survey services across all We understand customer touchwhat the business reported that the points including our requirements are of average number of unified customer this sector though detected incidents service centre and it is a complicated skyrocketed to B2B portal. Also, we segment to serve in 7,391, a six-fold will have dedicated the UAE,” he said. increase over the service managers This was followed year before.” assigned to our top by a presentation 34 customers.” from Jose Sanchez, Energy in the cloud was one of Senior VP – Pre-Sales & Customer the topics discussed at the event.

Delivery, Etisalat, on the new “The effect of declining prices is being service model to enhance customer felt and energy companies across experience. “We have recognised the different streams have been forced need to become more transparent www.cnmeonline.com

to respond to market conditions. IT organisations at these companies are under pressure to do more with less," said Omran Mansour, Senior Manager of Product Management – Data Centre & Cloud Services, Etisalat. "The solution is bimodal IT and adaptive sourcing to transform your business.

We have a comprehensive IT service portfolio including cloud, managed co-location and mobility.”

The state of security in the sector was discussed by Kamran Ahsan, Senior Director and Girish Dani, Manager of Security Services, Etisalat. “The volume of incidents has increased dramatically in the past year. Power and utilities respondents to The Global State of Information Security Survey reported that the average number of detected incidents skyrocketed to 7,391, a six-fold increase over the year before. You have to be risk-oriented and continuously monitor your infrastructure assets,” said Ahsan.

Other topics covered by key Etisalat executives at the workshop included VSAT for energy and oil & gas by Oosman Kader, Manager – Network Proposition; M2M solutions for energy industry by Murat Eldem, Senior Director, M2M Services; Enterprise mobility by Francisco Hernansanz, Senior Manager – Product Management, Cloud and Mobility Services; and large scale integrated ICT delivery and management by Sahebzada Haider Khan, Director –eHealth. april 2015

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EVENT

Mobile World Congress

moving towards 5g The race for 5G, which envisages a super-connected world with speeds 100 times faster than 4G, has started at this year’s Mobile World Congress as the industry gears up for a wide range of mobile apps with differing needs.

G, net neutrality and the Internet of Things were some of the topics that dominated this year’s Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona. The event also witnessed the launch of new high-end smartphones, tablets and wearables.

Some people might question whether it’s too early to discuss 5G, especially when in many countries 4G

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deployment has just begun, but the mobile industry believe the time is ripe to start the discussion and reach a consensus on the characteristics it should possess.

5G will be an evolution from 4G, so the move will be less disruptive than the shift from 3G to LTE. But the new technology will have to be ready to connect a lot more things, including driverless cars and IOT devices. It

is expected to have a big impact on industries that weren’t necessarily on the agenda when 4G was being developed, including transportation, payments and healthcare.

“5G infrastructure must support multiple vertical industries and promote confidence in the future, which is the key for investments,” said EU Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, Gunther Oettinger while

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discussing what 5G should look like to prevent standard wars. 5G technology will lower entry barriers for third party developers, as networks become more software-oriented.”

5G is expected to go mainstream by 2025, and an additional one billion people will subscribe to mobile services over the next five years, according to a new GSMA report. The Mobile Economy: 2015 report, released at MWC forecasts the number of unique mobile subscribers will increase from 3.6 billion at the end of 2014 to 4.6 billion by 2020. By the end of the decade, almost 60 percent of the global population will subscribe to mobile services, up from half of the population at the end of last year.

This could very well be true if Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg’s plans to offer free mobile data through his company’s internet.org works. This Facebook-led initiative aims to connect everyone on the planet by offering a suite of basic services without charge. In an opening keynote, Zuckerberg said there was no cannibalisaiton of revenue among operator partners, with customers not deserting paid data for free services.

The growing demand for mobile data is forcing the industry to look at new approaches to bring Wi-Fi and cellular technologies together. A lot of what makes Wi-Fi and cellular a good match is the spectrum they use – cell carriers have exclusive licences for low www.cnmeonline.com

frequencies that can cover large areas, while W-Fi uses higher brands with a shorter range but more total spectrum.

Because Wi-FI is unlicensed, anyone can use it and for years carriers have been putting up their own Wi-Fi networks.

At MWC, many vendors and carriers demonstrated new technologies that bring Wi-Fi and cell together, the most notable being Alcatel-Lucent. Like other vendors, Alcatel is pursuing LTE-U, which lets an LTE network use the unlicensed spectrum that powers W-Fi. But the French telecom vendor also demonstrated a technique called W-Fi boost, where users can upload data to the Internet over cellular and download it using Wi-Fi. The company plans trials of Wi-Fi boost in the second quarter of this year and will start selling in the second half.

As part of its Wireless Unified Networks strategy, Alcatel-Lucent is introducing two separate capabilities that blend Wi-Fi and cellular access.

The Wi-Fi boost uses cellular to enhance the performance of Wi-Fi networks and the Cellular boost uses unlicensed spectrum to enhance the performance of cellular. Combined, they maximise performance for subscribers across both access technologies.

Mike Schabel, Vice President of Small Cells in Alcatel-Lucent said, “As an industry we have historically treated cellular and Wi-Fi as unique technologies. For example, the

industry debates the merits of Voice/ Data over Wi-Fi versus Voice/ Data over LTE. From a consumer perspective, it should simply be just Wireless. With Wireless Unified Networks, we are excited to be taking the important steps to transform and greatly enhance the user’s wireless experience in the home, at work, and in dense venue networks by combining existing Wi-Fi and cellular networks into one high performance network.”

Users could get a 70 percent boost on downloads and an order of magnitude increase in upload capacity, the company says. A later version would allow the two networks to combine their download signals, too, leading to an even bigger boost.

To make Wi-Fi boost happen, a mobile operator would update the software that controls its network with the new version that can split up traffic between Wi-Fi and cellular. The capability would also require an OS update for subscribers’ devices. WiFi boost complies with current standards, Schabel said.

At the show, Alcatel-Lucent has also signed an agreement with Etisalat that will see the two companies develop and apply the latest networking technologies and design, build and run customer care operations to enhance mobile broadband accessibility and improve digital customers’ experiences.

(With additional reporting by Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service) april 2015

21

EVENT

CSG Spire roundtable

Defender’s advantage With IT security teams often overwhelmed with the strain on their defences, a proactive approach to threat protection is needed. Representatives from automated threat response firm CSG Invotas partnered with CNME to host a roundtable discussion on how CISOs can streamline their threat monitoring. ason Bird, Head of EMEA Technical Solutions, CSG Invotas, kicked off proceedings with an overview of how received wisdom is not applicable in terms of cybersecurity. “In over 5,000 years of warfare, the defender has always had the assumed advantage in any fight,” he said. “In cyberspace this advantage should be more pronounced defenders can control what the hacker sees and what they have access to, so why are they losing? Are we giving up the natural advantages we have in defending applications and networks?

We enable attackers by assuming they’ll win; the attacker only needs one vulnerability but the defender has to defend everything. The problem is that security operations are too slow.”

In response to Bird’s initial assertion regarding the ‘defender’s advantage’, Sunil Kumar Sharma, Manager, Information Security and Compliance, Aldar Properties, raised concerns regarding an organisation’s capacity to defend itself. “The majority

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of attackers are from other countries, moving beyond the geography of the UAE,” he said. “As such, a number of counter-measures are liable to breach international law.” He went on to discuss how the end user’s perspective should be accounted for, and how solid investment was also necessary. “One focus has to be user awareness and applicationwide listing – the user should get the chance to say which apps they need to run,” he said. “It would be useful to run their own local profile on top of an organisational one. You’re only as strong as your weakest link, so it’s important to invest in strong operational technology.”

Najyb Al Maskari, Chief Information Security Officer, Emirates Advanced Investment Group, highlighted how formidable adversaries necessitated robust, fast security processes. “It’s important that a monitoring product has a user-friendly interface,” he said.

“Our organisation has grown from 2,000 to 10,500 staff, which means we have a number of disparate systems.

Organised criminal hacking gangs’ tactics are very much ‘slash and burn’ – they’re after whatever they can take and then they move on. If the attack is no longer cost-effective, they pick a new target and attack it. With statesponsored attacks it is a different story, they’ll keep going, and are harder to keep out. Over 40 percent of systems are still unpatched, and no one can defend all their assets, but you give yourself a better chance with greater visibility.”

Sadaqat Ulla Patel, Information Security Officer, UAE General Civil Aviation Authority, underlined user awareness as a cause of vulnerability, but stopped short of blaming the average employee. “Hackers are able to impersonate our HR department’s email ID’s and they send malicious attachments to staff,” he said. “But it can be difficult for the common user to distinguish malicious attachments from legitimate ones. No matter how many controls we put in place, many aspects of security ultimately boil down to user awareness.”

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GISEC 2015

EVENT

GISEC 2015: A safe bet he 2015 GISEC conference kicks off this month in Dubai from April 26 to 28 at the Dubai World Trade Centre. With the theme of Security Innovation for a Connected Future, this year’s event will address current security concerns as well as issues that businesses and individuals will face as the transition to the Internet of Things takes hold.

With an estimated annual cost of US$100 billion from cybercrime, the global cyber security industry is projected to be worth US$120.1 billion by 2017. GISEC is the region’s only large-scale information security platform, assembling industry, government and thought leaders to tackle threats, issues and countermeasures. GISEC 2015 is highly focused on addressing security concerns for IT, oil and gas, banking and finance, government, legal, healthcare and telecoms industries.

The Middle East is well positioned to stem the tide of cyber-crime, as governments and corporations implement various counter-measures.

As the only focused platform of its kind in the region to specifically address cyber-security, the latest solutions were showcased by leading companies and industry experts.

GISEC 2014 was characterised by a high turnout of about 2,956 attendees hailing from 18 countries.

Dan Lohrmann, an internationally recognised cybersecurity Leader and ex-Chief Security Officer for the State of Michigan, one of the conference’s keynote speakers, will be discussing cyber-defence strategies and how to use the most advanced technologies

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and integrated systems to protect more attention and awareness on governments and companies against critical threats. Shahnawaz Sheikh, cyberattacks.

Dell SonicWALL’s Regional Director “Governments, organisations and for the Middle East & Turkey said, companies must first of all be alert ”Many events incorporate cyber and aware of the cyber-threats they security under the broader field of face each and every day. This means technology, so we are delighted to see an active programme in educating GISEC giving information security the everyone from front-line staff to prominence it deserves.” senior executives in the importance Other global visionaries speaking of protecting sensitive information,” at the two-day conference include said Lohrmann.

Steve Williamson, Director of IT Risk Tareque Choudhury, Head of Management at GlaxoSmithhKline, Security, BT Middle East and Africa UK, who will focus on unmasking also explained that organisations the risks and threats lurking in in the MENA region are investing the region’s cyber streets. He will in cybersecurity at a rate not be joined by Les Anderson, Vice seen before, fuelled by regional President of Cyber at BT, who will tensions. Concerns over attacks share information on the threat from cyberspace also resulted in an landscape and future of hacking increasing level of and Hani Nofal, complexity which Executive Director “Governments, makes them harder INS at GBM, UAE, organisations and to identify and who will tackle the companies must react to in a timely evolving holistic first of all be alert manner. concept of privacy, and aware of the “It is crucial to cyberlaw and data attain executive cyber -threats they protection, among level buy-in for face each and every others. cybersecurity," he Key sponsors day. This means an said. "Without this, of GISEC include active programme most cybersecurity BT Global as the in educating programmes will Lead Sponsor; everyone from not serve the GBM as Diamond purpose of the Sponsor; CISCO and front-line staff to business. A company senior executives in Spire Solutions as requires a solid Platinum Sponsors; the importance of security ecosystem Etisalat, protecting sensitive and to monitor their Paladion Networks, information.” business and use it Palo Alto Networks to identify risks as as Gold Sponsors. they unfold."

Key exhibitors also include Airwatch, A recurring theme in exhibitors’ Airbus Defence & Space, Neustar, feedback is that focusing exclusively Bit 9, Cyberroam, Splunk, Lancope, on information security will bring Mindware and more. april 2015

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CIO

Spotlight

Property Managed

Shrikant Kabboor, Director of IT, Emaar, did not intend on becoming a CIO – at least not at first. However, his interest was sparked with a little help from his family.

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technology, Kabboor graduated hen he was young, from Lamington High School in Shrikant Kabboor, 1988. He opted to attend Karnatak Director of IT, Emaar, University. His coursework was in admits that he simply the college of science, though he was "not that into” technology. “I still did not take on any computer grew up in a place called Hubli in sciences courses.

Karnataka, India,” he says. “The “I was interested in banking at children my age were much more the time,” he said, “I thought it could interested in sport - table tennis, be a profitable career.” Many of his swimming, cricket - I truly enjoyed peers were beginning their careers in playing sport. I was also interested in finance as well. With that, he moved music, and still am. When I was to Pune to attend Vaikunth Mehta growing up a neighbour of ours had a National Institute of Cooperative banjo. For about 40 rupees I learned Management and begin a course in how to play the banjo there.” He kept finance. He graduated in 1997 with his love for music and sport alive and an MBA in well to this day and Finance. is currently “My sister was It was at learning to play the working in technology. this time, when piano.

However, it She taught me some the advent of the technology wasn’t simply basic coding. She revolution that people in his simply could neighbourhood still takes credit for no longer be weren’t involved starting my career. ignored, that with technology, When I won the CIO Kabboor began Kabboor to experiment. remembers that 100 Award this year “My sister was there was even and posted my trophy working in some active resistance at picture on Facebook, technology,” he says. “She the time. “It was she took a second taught me early on, people some basic still really didn’t to remind me that coding. She still understand what she had taught me takes credit technology would everything I know.” for starting my mean for the career. When future,” he recalls.

I won the CIO “I remember 100 Award this year and posted my adults even saying that these sort of trophy picture on Facebook, she took advancements would take jobs and a second to remind me that she had they worried about that,” he says. taught me everything I know.”

Thus, with a love of sport After a few lessons under his and music, and absolutely no sister’s tutelage, Kabboor says he interest in pursuing a career in

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simply became addicted. He wanted to learn everything he possibly could about computer science. “I knew that this is what I wanted to do, and with the technology boom at it’s peak, it seemed like an obvious choice.”

Self-taught, in 1998, he landed a position with Clover Technologies in Pune. There, he made the transition from pupil to teacher. “I trained over 100 professionals on Oracle ERP applications,” he says. In addition to training, he was providing Oracle Application support and consultancy to the company’s clients.

On the brink of Y2K, Kabboor moved into the booming world of telecommunications. In the summer of 1999, he took an executive position at Birla AT&T in Pune as the Y2k Project Manager for the Oracle ERP upgrade. “We were worried about Y2K, and we had a delayed start in upgrading the applications,” he recalls. Inspite of the fact that the upgrade did not get underway until October of 1999, under Kabboor’s watch, the project was completed ahead of schedule.

With the threat of Y2K in his rear view mirror, Kabboor moved on. Having worked on Oracle applications for many years at this point, it was only natural that he moved directly to Oracle itself. He moved to Bangalore and joined the company as a Service Delivery Manager for Telecom Companies. “I was so busy at this point,” he recalls, “I was moving all around working on pre-sales activities, administering projects all over the country and writing white papers.”

After four years of running around the country, he wanted to april 2015

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CIO

Spotlight TIMELINE return to Pune. With his experience in the telecoms industry his hire at Idea Cellular was an easy match. He was hired as the Senior Manager of Corporate IT for the company, and continued his specialisation in Oracle ERP applications.

Finally, in 2008, Kabboor made the move to the UAE. He took on a position at Emaar Group. He and his young family moved to Dubai, and settled in a flat just across from his office. “I didn’t even buy a car for the first year, I just walked to work each day." He made that decision, he says, in part because of the location of his office, but also because he wasn’t, at the time, sure that he was going to settle in the UAE. “Emaar was different,” he says, “I was attracted to the projects they were taking on, but working in properties was quite a jump from my history with telecoms.”

In the end he did decide to stay on, but it seems that as soon as he did, the region was hit hard by the global recession. Perhaps more so than others, the property industry was hit hard. “We had to make serious cuts,” Kabboor recalls. “We had to get rid of people that were working in the office. Those were difficult decisions to make.”

While the recession was a drain on the region’s resources, Kabboor came

through with a few lessons learned. “I learned that it is better to outsource projects when possible. When you end a contract with someone, it is far easier on them than when you need to terminate their job.”

As the region recovered, so did Emaar, a company whose projects now make up the backbone of Dubai. “Emaar is more of a lifestyle company than a properties group,” says Kabboor, “we have malls, technologies, residential towers and hotels - we really take on everything.”

Still, Kabboor and the rest of his staff do take a few moments to have fun every once in a while. “We have a cricket league not a team, but a league,” he says pointing out a picture of his team. “I also put in an area for table tennis in the office building, and there is a group that meets for badminton every weekend.”

Though his first few years in Dubai were admittedly hectic, he has managed to find an outlet for his love of sports, and has not left his music behind either. “We had a talent show recently and I played the banjo,” he says. “Actually, my eight year old daughter has recently started taking piano lessons, so I am as well - in fact, I had to cancel my piano lesson for this interview!”

“I was so busy at this point, I was moving all around working on presales activities, administering projects all over the country and writing white papers.”

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1988 Graduated from Lamington High School

1997 Obtains finance MBA

1998 Hired at Clover Technologies

1999 Took on Y2K project for Birla AT&T

2000 Hired at Oracle

2008 Joins Emaar

april 2015

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Vintage Tech Apple Lisa

In every family’s history, there's always one black sheep that never quite fits in with the rest. With Apple, that odd relative was Lisa. The first personal computer to offer a graphical user interface, the Apple Lisa aimed to target individual business users. The idea of the integrated desktop was only just coming into play, and the Lisa was the first computer that used point-and-click commands and icons. The machine was, in some respects, very much ahead of its time. It boasted a protected memory, pre-emptive multitasking capabilities, a hard disk based operating system, and 1MB of RAM with expandable slots. Most notably, the Lisa’s screen was top-of-the-line at 12 inches and 720 x 364. A 90 person team worked on the design of the Lisa, and Apple spent more than $50 million on the project. In 1983, the Lisa made it to market, with an almost $10,000 price tag (that’s about $24,000 in today’s money). Unfortunately for Apple, the Lisa was not to be the success that it had banked on. The unit was slow, weighed down by a large and complex operating system and a clunky price tag. All told, after two years and a few attempted upgrades, the Lisa only sold around 100,000 units, of which 70,000 were sold in the first three months. Eventually, the Lisa would be folded into the Macintosh XL project, and the little Lisa OS would never be heard from again.

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april 2015

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INTERVIEW Robyn Denholm, CFO, Juniper Networks

A fresh new look Since the CEO turnover last year, Juniper Networks has been singing a new tune. At this year's Innovation Showcase, CFOO Robyn Denholm disccuses the companies new moves.

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t its Innovation Showcase in London on March 12, Juniper Networks unveiled new products that deliver on the company’s vision and strategy for transforming networks. New products include the QFX10000 line of spine switches as well as an enhanced Converged Supercore Architecture.

Heading up the event were Juniper executives Pradeep Sindhu, Founder of Juniper Networks and Robyn Denholm, CFO. CNME sat down with Denholm to discuss the future of Juniper Networks in relation to the Middle East.

Juniper has been experiencing some significant growth. Is your presence growing in the Middle East as well?

Our presence in the region has grown significantly over the past five years.

We have been working with carriers throughout the Middle East. We have projects underway in many different areas, notably within the government arena. We have also been working within the oil and gas industry, as well as financial services industries.

We have a varied and solid portfolio of different activities in the region.

What is driving your growth in the region?

It’s not all universal growth, given the different geographies in the region.

However, a lot of companies have businesses that are very dependent on the network. Because reliability is so important, particularly in the Middle East, we need to make

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sure that we are able to service the growing needs in the region. We have an excellent set of partners in the region as well that is helping us achieve that goal.

Are there unique areas of development in the region?

Some of the government initiatives stand out uniquely in the way that they are using technology. This is particularly evident in areas such as healthcare. There is a lot of infrastructure being built, particularly in the GCC, and wherever there is new infrastructure there is opportunity.

Infrastructure build out is an area on which we focus. There are some excellent use cases that highlight creative ways of using technology.

What sort of support can Juniper provide small to medium sized businesses?

SMBs provide a perfect environment for cloud technologies. For example, using virtual security provisioning from a cloud can be very cost effective. This sort of cloud application usage really helps small and medium sized businesses get the most out of their technology.

With large scale breaches making the headlines regularly, CIOs are on high alert. What is Juniper doing to help businesses protect their networks?

Network security is a core focus of ours. Security is very fragmented market, due to the fragmented threat environment. Last year we pivoted our

strategy and realised that virtualisation in the security space is key – both in the data centre and the device. We also realised that the different technologies used to counter threats need a single platform within the network on which policy could be enforced. For example, a data centre of course house a lot of sensitive information, but the fact is that most data centres have been breached. The real issue is what kind of damage can be done while the bad actor is in the system. If you can detect the activity before the data is extracted, you can stop the bad actors from taking the data out of the data centre.

A year ago we bought a company called Mykonos. Through their intrusion deception methods, we can get a virtual fingerprint of a network intruder. We are hoping to collect this information from around the world and make a sort of data base of cyber-criminals.

What is the strategy behind making your technology open to all parties?

We recognise that no one company is going to have the ability to detect all threats. The pervasive nature of the threats has made us realise that we need open APIs so that everyone’s separate technology doesn’t slow everything down. Our open strategy also speaks to scalability and reliability. The reception from our customers has been quite high.

What is the goal of your recent Big Data partnership with IBM? Our most recent partnership with IBM is focused around Big Data. I mentioned earlier collecting virtual fingerprints. With that concept, we started with the Spotlight data base this information. Now that we are collecting this data, our partnership with IBM is finding a way to use this data positively, to prevent these types of breaches. april 2015

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ARAMEX

CASE STUDY

Value Delivered As couriers clad in red polo shirts become the norm in office buildings around the region, it is easy to see how much Aramex has expanded.

The company's secret to success technology enabled services.

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hen Aramex began shipping parcels, their end-users gave very little thought to services like online package tracking.

In fact, in 1982, when the company opened its doors as an express operator, technology - particularly information technology - was not at the top of anyone’s concerns.

However, as the logistics and delivery company rapidly expanded its services, and the demands of its customers grew in conjunction with the evolution of technology, Aramex needed to adapt as well. www.cnmeonline.com

april 2015

35

CASE STUDY

ARAMEX

The Jordanian-founded company has grown a great deal since its humble beginnings. Today, Aramex employs almost 14,000 people in over 350 locations across 60 countries.

They have created alliances with other logistics companies to better reach their thousands of customers.

Aramex delivers a range of services including international and domestic express delivery, freight forwarding, logistics and warehousing, records and information management solutions, e-business solutions and online shopping services.

These days, it is accepted that Aramex - and all logistics companies for that matter - would come to a grinding halt without information technology as its backbone. No one takes this more seriously than Chief Technology Officer, Samer Awajan.

Awajan began at Aramex in 1996 and has been a part of the company’s double digit growth ever since. “When I began there were only about 400 employees at Aramex,” he recalls. “Now we are closer to 14,000.” He began at the company as an IT member and then moved on to information systems design. For the last eight years he has been serving the company as CTO, and has clearly had his hand in making technology and innovation a priority at Aramex.

Founded by Fadi Ghandour and Nill Kingson, Aramex is the first Arab-based

company to be listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. One of the company’s many goals is to to be recognised as one of the top five global logistics and express transportation service providers.Indeed, it seems that almost every delivery in the region ends with a courier in a red Aramex uniform at the door.

Aramex has not only become a pioneer in the region, but has established itself as a global leader within the industry. Aramex is a founding member and chairs the Global Distribution Alliance, which brings together over 40 leading express and logistics providers from around the world. Each specialising in their own region and together covering the world with the same, unified quality standards and technology of Aramex. The network has more than 12,000 offices, 33,000 vehicles and 66,000 employees serving alliance customers and attending to their business around the clock in more than 240 countries.

“The needs of the shipping industry are changing with the growth of technology,” Awajan explains.

Whereas customers used to be content with simply tracking their package online, they now demand

“We need to grow wisely. We can see what is happening with logistics and ecommerce in the region,” he says, “but we need to careful with how we control our technology.”

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more in-depth services. Awajan is constantly striving for efficiency in the logistics company’s IT infrastructure and systems. His focus recently has been to increase work in several areas of technology to ensure Aramex integrates its new technologies innovations into their operations. If that task wasn’t enough, it pays to keep in mind that many of these solutions are developed inhouse.

“Since the beginning,” he explains, “Aramex has developed customised solutions for IT.” This means that everything from fleet tracking to inventory has been created by the Aramex team. As the company has expanded, however, they have felt the need to take on a few outside solutions. “The challenge in this case,” says Awajan, “is to ensure that any technology that we take in from outside can integrate into our inhouse ecosystem seamlessly.”

As to what innovations Aramex customers can hope to see in the future - “I cannot go into much detail at the moment,” Awajan cryptically refers to yet-to-be-unveiled information, “but what I can say is that we are working on a programme that will roll out multiple projects.”

He does reveal that these projects will effect the way packages are delivered, as well as support e-commerce in the region. The programme, he reveals, will involve ten or more pieces and will be rolled out in phases.

“We need to grow wisely,” says Awajan. “We can see what is happening with logistics and

“When I began there were only about 400 employees at Aramex. Now we are closer to 14,000.”

www.cnmeonline.com

The 60 countries in which Aramex has a presence

e-commerce in the region,” he says, “but we need to careful with how we control our technology.” In other words, though the technology may be ready, Aramex wants to ensure that its customer base is also prepared before making changes to their process.

“One thing I see happening in the future is the utilisation of information from Big Data analysis,” says Awajan.

By analysing existing customer data, he says, Aramex can determine the best time for services such as parcel delivery. The thought is that, through

data analysis projects, Aramex will be able to determine when the best time to make a delivery might be.

Further, Aramex hopes to eliminate the need to wait around for the delivery. “You will be able to request a time for delivery,” says Awajan, “and that preference will be saved for future deliveries.” Essentially, you can set any of your preferences - when to deliver, where to leave the package, perhaps if you prefer for it to be delivered to a neighbour - and save those preferences for all your Aramex

“We want our customers to be more aware of the delivery as it is happening.”

www.cnmeonline.com

deliveries.

Visibility is important as well, and to that end a mobile app is now available. It allows users to track shipments, log recent deliveries, find the closest Aramex office and schedule a delivery. “We want our customers to be more aware of the delivery as it is happening,” says Awajan.

A seamless user experience is a key component of innovation at the company. “This recent suite of solutions has been a two-year effort,” says Awajan, “but we are constantly looking for new ways to improve our customer experience.” It is clear to Aramex, and to Awajan, that technology will be key in meeting their goals and delivering on their promises. april 2015

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CASE STUDY

Petroserv

Arduous advance

Shortly after joining Qatari firm Petroserv as Head of IT in April 2013, Mubarik Hussain was tasked with a business-wide IT overhaul. Two years later, he has been thrust into a high-powered transformation role in which he has encountered fierce resistance, and anxiously awaits results of a project which could be game-changing for the company.

T

hings were looking up for Mubarik Hussain when he joined Petroserv. He had been headhunted by the firm that operates in construction, oil and gas and infrastructure, and opportunities were ripe. Still, nothing could have prepared him for the uphill battle into which he would be thrust, being forced to drag the company from the dark ages of technology and business processes, and face bitter resistance throughout the organisation. Joining in April 2013, he was given a mandate to instigate meaningful change.

“When I arrived there was literally no IT in the company,” Hussain recalls. “The data centre was non-existent, the infrastructure dilapidated. Years and years of information was not electronically documented.”

Bogged down by a siloed work culture, where seven of Petroserv’s organisations had their own IT department, and misguided shadow IT was prevalent, Hussain knew that technology was going

to waste. “We were using about 5 percent of the capability of our systems,” he says. “There was a lack of technical and professional skills, and the senior management had no confidence in IT’s nous or delivery of data. We were constantly being attacked; and this was incredibly time-consuming and financially costly.” Following an arduous auditing process, in which Hussain considered outsourcing certain functions, he eventually decided that the company would simply have to “start from scratch” in building its IT. “I proposed that we wipe everything out, and begin serious civil works,” he says. “We needed a new data centre - new cabling, SAN storage, blade servers, firewalls, core switches, edge switches. We would even be making changes as far as endpoints, desktops and laptops.” The company would make a huge leap to a scalable, virtualised environment, which Hussain says was “legolike”. “I had never had to tackle change on this scale before; we would be moving from the worst

“When an IT guy comes in and tells them to do their job differently, their initial response is ‘what does he know about construction?’

Many of them will seek to undermine and subvert you.”

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environment and technologies to the best in one jump,” he says.

Between April-December 2013, Hussain oversaw the rebuilding process of Petroserv’s data centre, with fresh hardware, software and virtualised VMware servers being introduced. “We engaged suppliers, services, hardware, cabling and data centre firms, and made sure we thoroughly laid out our vision and plan,” he says.

By December 2013 – Hussain’s deadline for completing the update of the company’s decrepit IT – the necessary changes had been completed. Nine months later, six of the group’s companies had been migrated into the fresh IT infrastructure. The move to a virtualised environment meant only 10 percent of the initial quantity of servers were needed, while enhanced firewalls and switches were providing better security and networking capabilities. Where the company had previously incurred frequent downtime, Hussain says things now ran smoothly “24/7.”

However, he was to face yet more hurdles in this transitional period.

“A new Corporate MD joined in the summer of 2014, and he wanted to transform the business,” he says. “He recognised the success we’d had in IT, and asked me to oversee another development in terms of business processes and best practices. Best www.cnmeonline.com

www.cnmeonline.com

april 2015

39

CASE STUDY

Petroserv

practices are designed to prevent problems, but considering they were not there in the first place, the way projects were managed needed to change.” October 2014 arrived, and yet again Hussain had a brief to usher in new advancements to the company.

A key element to the extensive changes was the rebranding and reinvention of Petroserv on a number of levels. “On a general level we had to shift to a maturity model,” Hussain says. “This wasn’t just about technology and cleaning up data, but also people, business processes and how we related to our clients.”

In keeping with Petroserv’s archaic IT systems, its staff were unreceptive to Hussain’s suggestions to change, which were met with hostility. “People don’t like systems to be changed,” he says. “When an IT guy comes in and tells them to do their job differently, their initial response is ‘What does he know about construction?’ Many of them will seek to undermine and subvert you.” In spite of the resistance, Hussain made headway in getting staff on board. “We’ve engaged them with training and workshops, which we’ve always emphasised are designed to help them, to make their jobs easier,” he says.

“In the same way that we use cars and calculators for easier results, we also need to use IT. Once you get people on board, momentum gathers.”

Hussain says his strong working relationship with the company

CEO has not only provided a strong platform for change within IT, but has been a vital endorsement in his fight to prove that the overhaul of processes was necessary. “Although I can provide elements that the CEO wants through the use of IT, he is the person who understands the business better than anyone,” Hussain says. “I don’t understand a great deal about mega projects, oil and gas and construction, so his support has been a cornerstone in helping me turn things around. It’s vital that we have mutual trust to get the job done.”

At the time of writing, Hussain is still completing the final stages of his business transformation initiative. The process, although promising immense benefits for Petroserv, has been testing for Hussain. “I’ve faced a lot of pressure to ensure I delivered certain aspects immediately,” Hussain says.

“There’s been a lot of ‘Do this in two months’ ‘Do this by next month’. I’ve had many sleepless nights, and have worked countless 100 hour weeks.”

In addition, he has had to develop thick skin to a number of venomous colleagues. “When people feel their authority – and what they know – is being threatened, they can be nasty,” he says. “Quite often, any attempt to instigate change in an organisation pitches you in a lonely battle.”

As the initiative draws to a close, Hussain is anxious for its completion, but takes tremendous satisfaction from his efforts.

“The company is

“When people feel their authority – and what they know – is being threatened, they can be nasty. Quite often, any attempt to instigate change in an organisation pitches you in a lonely battle.”

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april 2015

Just

"5%" of Petroserv's IT capabilities were used pre-changes

8

months – time to complete infrastructure revamp

90% savings on servers following the overhaul

already unrecognisable from when I joined, and in a few months it will be even more different,” he says. “At times I think it would have been easier to not have done any of this; it has been incredibly challenging. Having said all that, if things come off as planned I will be immensely proud, and things will certainly be looking up.” www.cnmeonline.com

The power pack

The sixth annual Network World Middle East Awards ceremony was held at Jumeirah Beach Hotel on 23rd of March, celebrating organisations that have made the best use of networking technologies to extract strategic value and maximum returns for their businesses.

Excellence is learned. So it stands to reason that it also must be studied. In that spirit, the 23 companies honoured as winners of Network World Middle East Awards stand as examples of excellence.

But what exactly does that mean? Nearly every enterprise today can point to technology projects that save big bucks. Or to those that let companies conduct business faster and more efficiently. What differentiates the winners of NWME Awards and their projects can be summed up in a word: innovation.

This year’s winners stand as examples of networking supremacy and serve as inspiration and proof that charting new paths in technology deployment can yield business rewards and industry recognition.

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The winners were picked from a pool of more than 300 nominations and each entry was reviewed and judged by the four-member judging panel. In judging entries, the judges looked for projects that use mainstream networking technologies creatively or that employ new technologies to solve pressing business problems. The winners of two categories – networking vendor and value-added distributor - were decided by more than 4000 reader votes.

The awards ceremony was kicked off by Dominic De Sousa, Founder and Chairman of CPI Media Group, followed by a keynote address by Francisco Salcedo Montejo, Senior VP of Digital Services at Etisalat. www.cnmeonline.com

PANEL OF JUDGES Arun Tewary Arun is the CIO and VP of IT at Emirates Flight Catering, which employs more than 6500 people. His domain expertise is in the successful implementation of large ERP systems in complex business environments with a strong emphasis on implementing best business practices and organisational changes management.

Esam Hadi With over 32 years of experience in the IT field, the Senior Manager Information Technology at Aluminium Bahrain BSC (Alba) manages the technology infrastructure and applications required by the organisation. With a Bachelor of Sciences in Informatics Degree from the University of Portsmouth, England under his belt, he is the first Bahraini to be certified as an SAP Production Planning Consultant in 2002, and manages many key IT related initiatives within the Company. www.cnmeonline.com

Madhav Rao Madhav is the Chief Information Officer of Lulu Group International, with a Masters in Business Administration and over 20 years of experience in managing the technology infrastructure and applications for the Group’s diverse business units such as retail, importdistribution and food processing. He has been instrumental in keeping the Group abreast of IT developments and emerging technologies by way of implementing appropriate, innovative and cost effective solutions.

Paul Black Paul Black is responsible for all telecoms and media consulting and research projects for the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey at IDC. With over 14 years’ experience in telecommunications spanning Europe, the MEA region, he has managed a vast array of high-profile projects including startup operations, business processes, strategic planning, product and service portfolio creation, BSS deployment, and go-to-market planning. april 2015

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Data Centre Project of the Year

Winner : Etisalat The shortlist: Abu Dhabi Police Ankabut Dubai Islamic Bank Dubai Smart Government Gulf Air Gulftainer

Higher Colleges of Technology Ministry of Energy Nakheel National Bank of Oman Petroserv Yousuf Bin Ahmed Kanoo Group

Virtualisation project of the year

Winner: Gulf Air The shortlist: ADMA OPCO Dubai Financial Market General Civil Aviation Authority

Enterprise mobility project of the year

Winner: African Eastern The shortlist: Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority Al Safeer Group AW Rostamani Emaar Properties Emirates Palace

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General Civil Aviation Authority Gulf Precast Concrete Gulftainer Landmark Hospitality Ministry of Interior National Bank of Oman

www.cnmeonline.com

Network optimisation project of the year

Winner: ADMA-OPCO The shortlist: Al Noor Hospitals General Civil Aviation Authority Landmark Group

Network security project of the year

Winner: General Pension and Social Security Authority The shortlist: ADMA OPCO Al Noor Hospitals Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority

Gulftainer Higher Colleges of Technology

Storage project of the year

Winner: General Civil Aviation Authority The shortlist: Dubai Islamic Bank Ministry of Energy Tecom Investments

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www.cnmeonline.com

Collaboration project of the year

Winner: Abu Dhabi Police The shortlist: Gulftainer Healthcare MENA VPS Healthcare

Network cabling project of the year

Winner: Gulftainer The shortlist: ADMA OPCO Department of Transport, Abu Dhabi Ministry of Health, KSA

Networking project of the year – Public sector

Winner: Dubai Municipality The shortlist: Ankabut Department of Transport, Abu Dhbai Ministry of Finance Port of Fujairah

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april 2015

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Networking project of the year – private sector

Winner: Dubai Financial Market The shortlist: DM Healthcare Gulftainer MBC Thumbay Group

Editor’s choice

Winner: MBC

Editor’s choice

Winner: Higher Colleges of Technology

www.cnmeonline.com

april 2015

49

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Data centre networking vendor of the year

Winner: Cisco Networks The shortlist: Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Commscope Dell

Huawei Schneider Electric VMware

Wireless vendor of the year

Winner: Huawei The shortlist: Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Aruba Networks D-Link TP-link

Network security vendor of the year

Winner: Fortinet The shortlist: AlienVault Cisco Cyberoam Palo Alto Networks Trend Micro

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april 2015

51

Network management and monitoring vendor of the year

Winner: Riverbed Technology The shortlist: FireEye Fluke Networks WhatsUpGold

Network optimisation vendor of the year

Winner: F5 Networks The shortlist: 2X Software Riverbed Technology

Structured cabling vendor of the year

Winner: Nexans Cabling Solutions The shortlist: CommScope Excel Networking

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www.cnmeonline.com

Enterprise collaboration vendor of the year

Winner: Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise The shortlist: Avaya Lifesize Polycom

Network training provider of the year

Winner: Spectrum Training The shortlist: Fast Lane

The best return on investment award of the year

Winner: Dell The shortlist: BT Global Services Cognizant Technology Solutions eHosting DataFort Hitachi Data Systems Huawei Secunia

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Networking vendor of the year

Winner: Avaya The shortlist: Alcatel Lucent Aruba Networks Cisco Dell D-Link

Huawei Linksys TP Link VMware

Networking VAD of the year

Winner: Redington Gulf Value Distribution The shortlist: Al Jammaz Aptec, an Ingram Micro Company Arrow ECS ComGuard Exclusive Networks FVC Global Distribution Mindware Multinet Communications Prologix Distribution Westcon Group

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Blog

On the brink of a wearable tech tipping point

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here’s no question that wearable devices will be the next widely adopted form of consumer technology. ‘Wearable tech’ was the talk of CES 2015, the global consumer electronics and consumer technology tradeshow in Las Vegas in January. Gartner has predicted that the market will be worth $10 billion by 2016. Samsung has already released two ‘smart watches’, while Google Glass went on general sale for a short time earlier this month.

Despite some fears that George Orwell’s predictions might finally be coming true - albeit 30 years later - there are a multitude of practical applications for wearable devices for consumers – from fitness trackers to automatic cameras clipped to your breast pocket. But can the same be said for wearables in the work environment? There has been plenty of discussion as to how the enterprise might benefit from this new technology, though it has all been pure speculation.

But with consumer demand rapidly increasing – IDC says the number of wearable devices sold globally will top 19 million this year – it appears we are approaching a tipping point. Once widespread consumer adoption takes place, the enterprise is never far behind – whether it’s ready or not. Remember how quickly workforces around the world tossed aside those cumbersome BlackBerry devices in 58

april 2015

Ian Fleming, Managing Director, IFS Middle East, Africa and South Asia

favour of more consumer-friendly smartphones? The BYOD trend that hit businesses in recent years was evidence enough that members of staff will take technology into their own hands if their employer isn’t providing what they want.

While not always immediately obvious, there’s also a whole host of business applications for wearable tech in the workplace.

I can imagine manufacturing and construction workers consulting information in the field on a smart watch, or even a mechanic seeing vehicle diagnostics through augmented reality (AR) glasses.

Wearable tech isn’t just for manual workers – smartphones are getting bigger and bigger, to the point where it’s not really appropriate to be taking it out to check emails and appointments in a meeting.

These scenarios are realistic and, perhaps most significantly, would not require a complete overhaul of companies’ IT infrastructure. The most successful devices will be those that are simply new interfaces harnessing the power of the smartphones and tablets that most of us already carry in our pockets.

Over the next few years, wearable technology will reinvent the working day across many different industries.

Smart watches, AR glasses and even smart contact lenses will increase productivity, results that will be reflected in the bottom line of enterprises that choose to embrace this new technology.

About the author: Ian is the Managing Director for IFS’s operations in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia regions with a remit to grow the IFS footprint in these emerging markets. With more than 20 years’ experience in the enterprise applications marketplace, Ian joined IFS UK in the year 2000 and moved to Dubai in 2002 to establish the IFS Middle East operation.

This article has been contributed

by IFS. IFS Labs, the innovation division of global enterprise applications company IFS, has created a proof-of-concept that shows how users of business applications can benefit from wearable technology.

The fully working proofof-concept demonstrates how notifications from IFS’s business applications can be delivered to wearable technology. Using Samsung’s APIs for notification alerts, IFS connected components of its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and Enterprise Service Management (ESM) systems to send alerts in line with updates to certain processes. For example, field service operatives could be alerted when important items are shipped, key projects are started or completed, or even be notified when invoices are paid. www.cnmeonline.com

© 2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

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solutions World Big Data

Staying above water Venturing into the use of Big Data and in particular, predictive analytics - solutions can be a messy business.

We look at what IT leaders can do to get the most out of their sea of data.

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he volume and flow of data has grown to unprecedented proportions - from a stream of information to a veritable tsunami. This enormous wave of data, from new and ever-expanding sources, has drowned out most traditional analytic tools. This leaves anyone tasked with leveraging this data struggling to keep their head above water.

“Our most recent Digital Universe study,” says Habib Mahakian, Regional General Manager, Gulf & Pakistan, EMC, “showed that the MENA region is continuing to lead the way when it comes to data growth with an aggressive growth rate of 3.8 percent.” This is due to the penetration of social platforms and mobility in addition to heavy penetration of video surveillance across key verticals like oil & gas, aviation, hospitality, retail and finance in addition to the many ambitious smart city initiatives in play all across the region.

T

www.cnmeonline.com

Luckily, solution providers are continually working on new instruments for channeling data into manageable and practical bits of information. It is vital for businesses to keep abreast of the new and evolving data solutions so they do not find themselves adrift in the sea of Big Data.

The volume of data businesses must address is truly daunting. Ken Habson, Analytics Platform Leader, IBM Gulf & Levant says, “If you just look at volume, every day we create around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that approximately 90 percent of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.”

Sudesh Prabhu, CTO and Executive Director, SquareOne Technologies, also provides some alarming information at the size and rate in which Big Data continues to grow. “According to recent research, it is estimated that 40 zettabytes of data will be created by 2020 - 300 times more data than in 2005.”

Much of this massive increase in volume is due to the increase in the use of social media and mobile devices. As consumers rely on the Internet for more transactions than ever before, the complexity and amount of data collected continues to evolve. Yassine Zaied, EVP Middle East and Emerging Markets, Nexthink, explains the effect of this growth on the market, “According to Frost & Sullivan, the GCC’s Big Data market is set to grow nearly five-fold from $135.7 million in 2013 to $635.5 million in 2020,” he says.

Every industry can potentially use and benefit from Big Data. If analysed properly, the information acquired from Big Data can enable businesses to make informed decisions quickly that truly have the potential to set themselves apart in their industry.

However, simply collecting and storing Big Data is not enough. “There has to be a culture of evidence-based decision making in an organisation if it is going to make the best use of Big Data. If that culture is not present, then you can store all the data you want but you are not going to get returns on it,” says Ashley Woodbridge, Customer Solutions Architect, Cisco UAE. www.cnmeonline.com

“If you just look at volume, every day we create around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that approximately 90 percent of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.”

Ken Habson, Analytics Platform Leader, IBM Gulf & Levant

Jamil Jeitani, Managing Director, Teradata, Saudi Arabia, also notes the importance of being prepared to tackle Big Data from the start. “The very first step in any analytical process related to Big Data is a clear formulation of business questions that you want to investigate and find the answers to.”

Jeitani admits that the definition of questions can sometimes take more time than the analysis itself “However,” she concludes, “the faster you fail, the sooner you will be able to find the correct answer to the problem.”

Big Data Analytics, as with any investment a business intends to make, requires a strategic and well-mapped plan of operation. Businesses need will be the GCC Big Data market size in 2020 to decide what questions to ask, what patterns and trends need to be derived, how much data they need to collect, how often it’s collected, and how it will be used.

Big Data Analysis is driving the industry to create new positions like CDO with increasing importance. Vimal Sethi, Managing Director, Synechron, Middle East explains, “It has become imperative to appoint a Chief Data Officer (CDO) who can oversee the organisation’s data security, data quality, integrity, regulatory compliance and analytics. The firms having complex

$635.5

million

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solutions World Big Data

global operations and fragmented business units find it challenging to systematically consolidate their data and manage it centrally to make informed decisions.”

Ibrahim Akbas, Head of Business Intelligence, Middle East, agrees with the importance that a CDO will play as businesses continues to grow their use and reliance on Big Data. “The CDO will be the bridge between CTO who is generating the data and the other C levels. His job will be to convert data and information into practical, useful knowledge,” he says.

Many companies in the United States and Europe have already moved forward in the creations of the Chief Data Officer position, and many estimate the job will be prominent globally as soon as 2020. As the position continues to develop, businesses strive to define what a CDO’s responsibilities and skill set should include.

Karthik Krishnamurthy, Vice President, Enterprise Management, Cognizant, expounds on the development of the role of the CDO. “A CDO will need to concentrate on enabling data and information powering the enterprise by working with all stakeholders to ensure that quality, accuracy, security, usage, governance, availability, architectures and technology adoption are managed beyond silos and for the ultimate benefit of the enterprise,” he says.

There are, as in every business venture, potential pitfalls that must be avoided if organisations are to use Big Data Analytics successfully. Richard Harris, Solution

“The very first step in any analytical process related to Big Data is a clear formulation of business questions that you want to investigate and find the answers to.”

Jamil Jeitani, Managing Director, Teradata, Saudi Arabia

“The CDO will be the bridge between CTO who is generating the data and the other C levels. His job will be to convert data and information into practical, useful knowledge.”

Ibrahim Akbas, Head of Business Intelligence, Middle East

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Director, International Transportation and Government, Xerox, says, “Not all companies fully understand what Big Data Analytics is about. Starting with the assumption that everybody is fully knowledgeable about Big Data Analytics would seriously jeopardise the success of one’s BDA initiative.”

The first issue that a company needs to consider is asking the right questions and knowing what information is needed before opening the floodgates and allowing the data to flow in. Grant Amos, General Manager MEA, Actifio, adds, “Without caring for the prerequisites of distinguishing Production Data from Copy Data and virtualising their Copy Data for efficient usage, Big Data Analytics will become a challenging task.”

Getting started in Big Data Analytics can be a daunting process, but one well worth the time, risk and effort needed. Mr. Malcolm Noronha, COO Spectrum Group/ComGuard, offers this advice to companies looking into their first Big Data experience. “Businesses should start small. Business should first start building an EDW or DWH for OLAP, then see the results of the analytics and then add up datasets for further analytics and make the analytics more complex. It is best to achieve the goals in phases.”

The workload is considerable, and it requires having the right people and technology in place. However, when utilised properly, Big Data Analytics offers organisations solutions that can dramatically improve their business.

www.cnmeonline.com

network World SDN

The road to SDN The road to a Software Defined Network can be rocky without a bit of planning.

A

s businesses try to slim down their IT budgets, SDN could prove to be a money saving solution if done correctly – particularly in the world of SMBs where the bottom line is king.

However, without a solid roadmap in place, the transition could be a waste of resources at best.

SDN offers businesses plenty of benefits. Simplification of network design and operation, directly programmable network control, and centralised network 64

april 2015

intelligence based on SDN controllers that maintain a global view of the network are just a few of the emerging architecture’s most attractive elements.

The dynamic growth of computing and storage needs has put the static nature of conventional networks to the test. The everrising popularity of smart mobile devices, cloud services, and Big Data collection and analysis have driven the need for a more agile, flexible and powerful network paradigm.

However, businesses looking to make the move to SDN should take the time to examine

www.cnmeonline.com

Strategic Innovation Partner

their needs before beginning the process.

Ashley Woodbridge, Customer Solutions Architect, Cisco UAE, offers that the first question a business should ask is why. He explains, “SDN delivers speed and agility when deploying new applications and business services, giving businesses a more nimble infrastructure, while reducing infrastructure costs and overhead. Which is all good of course, but if an organisation isn’t ready to embrace all of that, then they won’t see the benefit.”

Woodbridge goes on, “Typically, what we see is that the organisations that have embraced cloud or virtualisation in their data centre environment, or have started the journey down that path, are the ones that benefit most from SDN.” Switching to SDN can potentially save an organisation money and time, but the process will inevitably cause a disruption. The size and impact of that disruption must be taken into consideration. Cherif Sleiman, General Manager, Middle East, Infoblox reminds those exploring SDN solutions, “With the adoption of SDN, there is a blurring of lines between applications and services, and the networks that they ride on. This will require new organisational models in terms of accountability, responsibility and governance.

The organisation needs to determine if it is culturally agile enough to be able to realign internal teams to meet these requirements.”

There is certainly a global trend of businesses adopting SDN, however it seems that, regionally, adoption has been cautious.

To this end, Sleiman makes a prediction about the unique opportunity that businesses within the Middle East are faced with. “I think we have the opportunity in the Middle East to leapfrog other countries across the world as we don’t have a lot of legacy infrastructure and as a result the transition and migration isn’t as complicated,” he says.

Shashi Kanth, Senior Manager, Big Data Practice & Open Compute Infrastructure, StorIT Distribution, acknowledges that the region’s uptake has been lower than other markets.

“The adoption rate of SDN in the US and Europe is growing at a fast pace, and the adoption of www.cnmeonline.com

“SDN addresses the IT challenges by operationalising the network to create a more flexible, programmable data centre that can rapidly respond to requirements for new services and changing network conditions.

I definitely believe that SDN will be for the long haul.”

Sudhir Sanil, Field Systems Engineering Manager, F5 Networks

SDN in the Middle East is slow at the moment,” he adds. “However, there is increased uptake with government organisations and PSUs. This will include enterprise and SMEs in the years to come.” With governments and PSU’s leading the way, it is possible that companies in the Middle East can match and surpass the average rate of SDN adoption.

Kanth also explains the benefits that a company stands to gain by switching to SDN. “It allows data centre switches to be managed in the same manner as servers. Network administrators who adopt open networking leverage familiar switching and routing features provided by the Linux OS,” he says.

“Server administrators use their existing Linux tools as they deploy open networking to support VMware vSphere, OpenStack, Big Data, and other application environments.

DevOps teams benefit from the ability to innovate at a faster pace.”

The benefits of SDN are not limited to the IT department. Organisations that employ SDN solutions are sure to see the difference in their bottom lines as well. Nachiket Deshpande, Vice President and Global Delivery Head, Infrastructure Services, Cognizant explains.

“SDN makes significant financial sense for decision-makers,” he says, “One of the financial april 2015

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network World SDN

benefits of SDN is reduced provisioning time, which has a rolling effect on business agility that directly translates into cost savings.”

On the other side of the coin, the potential issues in the adoption SDN solutions need to be considered. Virtualisation is a fundamental component to SDN, and this poses certain challenges. Deshpande acknowledges, “One of the major challenges posed by virtualisation is latency. As networks become faster and businesses get digitised with Big Data and the Internet of Things-related data bursts, the role played by SDN will have to be carefully observed.”

It must also be acknowledged that change itself can pose a challenge to any organisation, and moving to SDN is no small change. As a company considers switching to SDN, one has to ask if SDN networks last for the foreseeable future.

Sudhir Sanil, Field Systems Engineering Manager, F5 Networks, weighs in on SDN networks, and what the future holds for business networking. “When you really think about SDN, I

“SDN delivers speed and agility when deploying new applications and business services, giving businesses a more nimble infrastructure, while reducing infrastructure costs and overhead. Which is all good of course, but if an organisation isn’t ready to embrace all of that, then they won’t see the benefit.”

Ashley Woodbridge, Customer Solutions Architect, Cisco UAE

“With the adoption of SDN, there is a blurring of lines between applications and services, and the networks that they ride on. This will require new organisational models in terms of accountability, responsibility and governance. The organisation needs to determine if it is culturally agile enough to be able to realign internal teams to meet these requirements.”

Cherif Sleiman, General Manager, Middle East, Infoblox

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think the future is going to include a combination of both hardware and software. SDN addresses the IT challenges by operationalising the network to create a more flexible, programmable data centre that can rapidly respond to requirements for new services and changing network conditions. I definitely believe that SDN will be for the long haul.”

However, this confidence in the longlasting life span of SDN is not universal.

Sleiman expounds a cautious optimism for the technology. “SDN is still in the early adoption phase and so in my opinion, it is still too early to tell,” he says, adding, “Yes, SDN holds tremendous promise and there is strong momentum in the industry, but at the same time SDN poses a fundamental disruption to a number of large organisations which could lead to resistance that may either delay its adoption or kill the entire initiative. My personal take is that SDN will definitely become mainstream but it will take some time.”

Though opinions may vary, the fact of SDN’s increasing growth rate are undeniable.

As business begin to adopt SDN adoption plans, we will surely see the trend grow both regionally and globally. april 2015

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Security AdvisEr Online security

Buyers Beware With more and more interactions being carried out in cyberspace, a variety of complex and intertwined security measures are becoming a pre-requisite to ensure the protection of data.

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hese days, more and more transactions are occurring online. E-commerce has long been a part of our lives, but with recent data leaks and breaches, online consumers are feeling a bit nervous. As our transactions begin to include sensitive data such as healthcare and banking information, the stakes are becoming higher.

Though it is in the hands of vendors and security providers to ensure that the latest in fraud prevention and data protection are implemented, it is up to the consumers to stay aware of online best-practices and red-flags.

Cyber-criminals looking to prey on weak protection solutions are adopting sophisticated and dangerous tactics using web-based malware for account takeovers. Defending against web-based attacks requires that credit card issuing institutions adopt a new approach www.cnmeonline.com

to authentication and threat recognition.

Simple passwords and PINs are no longer enough to protect against pervasive attacks.

Socially engineered attacks are also on the rise, putting the least savvy consumers at risk.

“There is no situation in which a bank will call you and ask for information such as your card number, security code or PIN,” says Barbara King, Group Head, Payment Systems Integrity Group, MasterCard.

As with authentication, security frameworks within financial institutions also need to be layered and multi-phasic. This is especially important when looking at trends in consumer use of digital services, specifically e-banking. Financial institutions have been able to offer consumers convenient and easy access to their financial information, while saving on operation costs.

However, this increase in online consumer banking also increases the opportunity for security issues involving highly sensitive information. This means that as the number and variety of online transactions increase, so does the need for diversity and strength of online security measures. Sebastien Pavie, Regional Sales Director, MEA, Gemalto agrees, adding, “By implementing a three step approach - encrypting all sensitive data at rest and in motion, securely managing and storing all of your keys, and controlling access and authentication of users - you can effectively prepare for a breach.” As the threat landscape

“By implementing a three step approach - encrypting all sensitive data at rest and in motion, securely managing and storing all of your keys, and controlling access and authentication of users - you can effectively prepare for a breach.”

Sebastien Pavie, Regional Sales Director, MEA, SafeNet

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continues to evolve, it has become clear that one layer of protection is no longer enough.

One of these layers of protection against the continuously changing array of threats to information security is authentication. With an increase in online banking transactions, specifically via the use of mobile devices, comes the need for reliable authentication services has never been higher. “Consumers need to be aware that they need to protect their data, and they need to be sure that their bank is protecting them as well,” says King.

The most basic option for identity authentication on mobile devices continues to be the use of SMS to send one-timepasswords or (OTP). There are, however, myriad potential pitfalls that accompany this technique. This was clearly demonstrated by the Zeus Botnet attack, which resulted in nearly $50 million of stolen assets from over 30,000 banking customers. Mobile malware has becoming increasingly sophisticated and poses a serious threat to the SMS OTP authentication process.

One alternative to the OTP process involves using the mobile device to internally generate the OTP. As Nat Pisupati, Regional Sales Director Identity & Access Management Middle East & Africa, HID Global explains, “The mobile phone can be turned into a “soft token” by installing software that generates OTPs itself. OATH-compliant HMAC-based algorithms (HTOP) or timebased OTP algorithms (TOTP) can be used. A unique combination of time and event-based algorithms are considered more secure.”

Service providers and institutions do not bear the burden of online security solely on their shoulders. Consumers can play a part in their own protection by taking certain steps to ensure the safety of their online information, especially during sensitive transactions. Hariprasad Chede, Senior Manager, Information Security, National Bank of Fujairah, offers these helpful tactics for consumers to keep themselves safe.

“Customers should type the name of the bank directly into the browser instead of clicking on any links in emails or any online sources which may only resemble their bank’s web april 2015

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Security Adviser Online security address,” he advises. “They should also make sure to never use a common password for all their accounts; using different passwords works well in minimising risks by providing greater protection in case of compromise.”

Nader Baghdadi, Regional Enterprise Director, South Gulf & Pakistan, Fortinet adds, “Usually consumers accessing their online account information from a bank or making a transaction with a merchant, need to look out for a ‘lock’ sign on their browser that usually appears when the site is secure.”

Firosh Ummer, MD EMEA, Paladion Networks , offers up some additional online protection tips to consumers. “Consumers should never carry out sensitive transactions from a commonly shared terminal like an Internet cafe. They should also avoid connecting to hotspots to carry out sensitive transactions, and rely on trusted connections only.” He also reminds consumers, “Ensure the antivirus signatures on the device are up to date.”

The future of online transactions and card authentication may be just at our fingertips.

“We are doing a lot in terms of using biometrics for authentication and payments,” explains King. “We have been using finger prints, voice recognition and facial recognition. Izdehar Safarini, Deputy CEO Middle East Payment Services, Board Member PCI Council, also points to the evolution of authentication. “The significant change

“Consumers should never carry out sensitive transactions from a commonly shared terminal like an Internet cafe. They should also avoid connecting to hotspots to carry out sensitive transactions, and rely on trusted connections only.”

Firosh Ummer, MD EMEA, Paladion Networks

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is the introduction of OTP’s to authorize financial transactions, the development and introduction of biotmetric payment technology for authentication, and use of 3D secure payment services,” he says.

Even with increases in online protection, a responsible consumer can still suffer from a breach to their online accounts. Salil Dighe, CEO, Meta Byte Technologies for Online Transactions Security, details some red flags consumers should look for that might indicate their information and accounts have been compromised. “If there are logins from locations you don’t recognise, changes have been made to your account, messages in your sent folder that you didn’t send and you aren’t receiving expected emails, it is possible that your information and accounts have been breached.”

While it is vital that the consumer stays vigilant in monitoring their online accounts, the institutions and businesses share this responsibility as well. According to Ghareeb Saad, Senior Security Researcher, Global Research & Analysis Team, Kaspersky Lab Middle East, there are multiple things service providers can do to recognise when a customer’s account has been compromised. “If the IP geolocation shows that a user usually accesses online banking to do his transactions from Africa, and within short time period the same user tries to make transfers from China this is considered suspicious. Another indicator is the user browsing behavior patterns. Usually normal users, after logging into their online banking, will browse their account status and transfer history before making any transaction, but malwares and fraudulent actors send transfer request directly after logging in.”

If a consumer does find that their information has become compromised, time is of the essence. The sooner the customer detects fraudulent activity and reports it, the better. It is important to take steps quickly to minimise the damage and your liability on the charges.“If you suspect any malicious activity, call your bank as soon as possible to block your card and begin the process of issuing you a new one,” says Neil Fernandes, Visa Senior Director, Risk Services, MENA. april 2015

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Telecoms World Small cells

Small cells, big opportunities Small cell technology is primed for explosive growth as vendors connect 3G and LTE cellular networks to Wi-Fi access points that are already widely deployed in many enterprise facilities.

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in association with

mall cell technology products today are used to fill in gaps where traditional cellular has problems working - such as between downtown buildings that aren’t reached by traditional cell towers, and in many indoor settings.

The biggest promise of small cells is boosting network performance by decreasing the distance between the base station and the user. They can be used in places where a lot of people congregate or where coverage is mediocre, including malls, sports arenas and in enterprise offices.

Small cells can be used in homes, public spaces and offices to offload traffic from mobile networks. Rolling them out in offices will open the door for dedicated voice capacity, mobile unified communications, local switching of voice traffic and other context-aware services, according to industry organisation Small Cell Forum.

Small cells are widely seen as an inevitable tool for carriers to deal with booming mobile data demand. Now, with a number of vendors coming out with products that connect 3G and LTE networks to Wi-Fi access points, the interest in small cells in the enterprise is high.

“Mobile operators typically have a limited amount of the electromagnetic spectrum assigned to them by their local regulator,” says Muetassem Raslan, Regional Sales Manager – MENA, Ruckus Wireless. Small cells provide operators with the ability to create smaller areas of coverage that allows tighter frequency re-use. This means that each base station covers a much smaller area, allowing it to provide services to fewer customers at closer range increasing capacity and quality of experience to each customer.”

From Vodafone Qatar adds that small cells also reduce the cost of deploying the latest generation 4G networks allow network operators to enable more coverage in more areas. “Small cells represent the single most

S

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important innovation in mobile network deployments in recent years; enabling new business models and capabilities with the view clearly on how to deploy 5G.” Despite its myriad benefits, the technology has advanced as quickly as expected when it was first introduced with high hopes three years ago. To date, the problem with small cell adoption is at least partly due to issues related to getting the devices deployed and connected to backhaul – the wired connection to the rest of the wider network.

Other challenges include site acquisition and interaction with the macro layer. “The best model for site acquisition - the rights to install in a certain location - is to do the so-called ‘crowd sourcing’, where the operator can strike a deal with public service providers such as road and billion transportation to acquire the right install small cells in the size of global small cell market by 2017 public locations,” says Saleem AlBlooshi, Executive VP – Network Development and Operations, du.

$2.7

Ready for prime time Industry analysts predict small cells are ready for mass rollouts this year. According to a recent small cell market forecast from Mobile Experts, more than five million metro cells will be shipped in 2017. Infonetics, a research company, forecasts the global small cell market to grow from a very small base now to $2.7 billion by 2017. The research highlights the importance of looking for small cells to start easing mobile bottlenecks first in dense urban areas, where demand is usually highest. The first of those will probably feed off wireless links to the nearest large cell, taking advantage of its fast fibre connection.

“In the Middle East - Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, we have have already started rollouts for LTE with many of the major april 2015

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Telecoms World Small cells

network operators in the region. Mobile operators in these countries are open to new technologies that can increase their network coverage while keeping up with the increase of demand from their customers. Operators in these countries are most likely to serve as a guiding benchmark for other regional operators to follow, paving the way to more small cell deployments,” says Vick Mamlouk, VP Wireless Sales, MEA, CommScope.

Though operators all over the world are launching small cells on a large scale, it is important to strike the right balance when they move the traffic between Wi-Fi, macro networks and small cells. “Small cells provide a fantastic method of offloading traffic from the outdoor macro cellular network in specific environments. Small cells are widely expected to incorporate multiple standards including LTE and Wi-Fi in the same unit. According to industry analyst Joe Madden of Mobile Experts, small cells incorporating Wi-Fi are expected to account for approximately 70% of all small cell shipments by 2017,” says Raslan.

“The offload potential will depend on several factors such as the type of small cells, location and topology of the network,” says Rakesh Lakhani, Head of Mobile Broadband, Ericsson MENA. “From trials and commercial

“In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, we have have already started rollouts for LTE with many of major network operators in the region. Mobile operators in these countries are open to new technologies that can increase their network coverage while keeping up with the increase of demand from their customers.”

Vick Mamlouk, VP Wireless Sales –MEA, CommScope

“Mobile operators typically have a limited amount of the electromagnetic spectrum assigned to them by their local regulator. Small Cells provide operators with the ability to create smaller areas of coverage that allows tighter frequency re-use.”

Muetassem Raslan, Regional Sales Manager – MENA, Ruckus Wireless

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deployments an offload between 10% -30% macro has been experienced. Selection of site location for small cells is an absolute must for getting maximum returns from small cells.

Ericsson has developed tools to determine the most optimum location, which could result in RoI.” Will small cells prove to be an essential element in future of telecommunications?

Operators are increasingly relying on small cells more and more, with distributed antenna system being the original and one of the most versatile small solutions deployed today.

“Small cell technology will continue to develop over the next few years and the industry will grow as we start to see more operators launching LTE and looking into coverage and capacity solutions that are both efficient and cost effective. As more solution providers come into the market, it is also important for operators to choose wisely and look at the solutions that are less expensive than traditional cell sites and that can be installed quickly and easily while boosting network capacity and performance,” sums up Mamlouk from CommScope. www.cnmeonline.com

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CXO Corner

Open door policy Illyas Kooliyankal, Head of Information Security/ Chief Information Security Office, ADS Securities has always kept an open mind. Though he is tasked with protecting some of the most sensitive financial data, he realises that information security should be a business enabler, not a hindrance.

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llyas Kooliyankal is not a CIO, but he rarely strays far from the IT department. With around 20 years of experience in the Information Technology and Cyber Security arena, the Head of Information Security/Chief Information Security Officer at ADS Securities has built his career on a open platform.

“It is important that I am not just implementing security measures,” he explains, “I need to keep in mind that security affects every part of the business, and that people still need to be able to perform their duties without running into security measures that prevent them from functioning.”

His current employer is an Abu Dhabi-based organisation that provides sophisticated forex, bullion and commodities trading solutions to institutional and private investors. The firm’s clients include banks, global and regional hedge funds, asset managers, investment banks and other financial institutions. These entities are not only based in the UAE, or even the Middle East, but are spread over Europe, and Asia. The firm also provides wealth management solutions for private traders, business clients and more. In short, the company is the largest brokerage by volume in the Middle East and one of the fastest growing forex and investment companies globally.

The reason behind the company’s commitment to security is clear when it comes to working with the finances of others, there simply cannot be any missteps; ADS trades more than five million dollars per day.

Add to that the fact that the company is expanding into certain markets without a tight handle on security, and all could be lost.

When Kooliyankal came to ADS, he hit the ground running. “In 2013 alone we had ten different security projects www.cnmeonline.com

underway.” This was partially because of the rapid growth of the company, and partially due to Kooliyankal’s innovative approach to security.

“When you look at our portfolio from a security perspective,” says Kooliyankal, “one of the main challenges is maintaining compliance between countries, industries and portfolios.” The inclination, he explains, is to enforce a tight blanket of security around the whole operation. However, as a business savvy CISO, Kooliyankal is aware of the fine line between protecting information, and making it unusable.

“Information security has to be more than checking items on a checklist,” says Kooliyankal. In fact, he goes on to explain, because the company is both young and growing quickly, it is essential that they perform above and beyond expectations in every aspect of business - particularly security.

“Each business vertical is unique,” he says. “This can be because it is in a different region, or because that department has a unique function, but we have to customise security solutions for each area.” There is simply, he says, no one-size-fits-all solution for the entire firm. Some areas require tighter security, whereas others need more leniency to excel.

To continuously meet the unique needs of his end-users, Kooliyankal has developed a philosophy - work with them, not against them. “I created a security committee within the company,” says Kooliyankal. “I want to create an environment where all employees are open to sharing their opinions,” he says. The committee meets quarterly to discuss security issues. Each department is represented, and can express their needs openly.

Kooliyankal also personally trains all new hires. “I want to make sure that everyone is on the same page when it

comes to securing their data,” he says, “and I want them to know why a policy is in place.” Regulations aren’t there, he says, only “because I said so.”

Though he runs a tight ship, Kooliyankal he wants to insure that the entire company is open to adapt to changing needs. “I tell my staff to never say no,” he says. “If someone requests a policy to be changed, I tell my staff to say that we will review the situation - and we will.” Sometimes, he says, he will make an exception if it is good for business.

The secret to his successful initiatives, he says, is to create an environment in which everyone “buys in.” “These projects need support from the top down,” he says. The management needs to back each project, and the employees need to believe in the policies, and not simply find ways around them. “Everyone needs to be on board. It is not just a technical issue. The technology needs to be there, the process and the education of all involved parties and users,” he says. Security cannot stand alone, he explains, it has to be supported by all IT governance.

His hard work and dedication to communication has paid off for Kooliyankal. In 2013 he won ISACA UAE's CISO of the Year Award.

He has also been the recipient of Crystal Award from Emirates Airlines-ISACA, KERA Outstanding Achiever and World Excellency Award in Information Security.

As for what he sees in the future “As BYOD becomes more popular, we are going to need to address people’s needs in a security context,” he says.

He also points out that information security really isn’t an issue of attack prevention anymore, but of attack management. “It is not whether or not you will be attacked,” he says, “but what you do when you are the victim of one.” april 2015

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Analyst view

Rajesh Kandaswamy, Research Director, Gartner

Money in the bank Utilising agile principles can drive radical but constructive cultural changes, but how you go about adopting the technique is critical to success.

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he banking and securities industry has recovered well from the financial crisis, but it still struggles to improve raise revenue and return on equity (RoE) for its investors in many mature markets. While the banking and securities industry’s focus on reducing costs and risks has helped, revenue growth remains an issues that firms have to overcome.

Firms in the industry have to deal with such investor expectations, while handling the increasing regulatory requirements that curb undue risktaking by banks. In the meanwhile, customers have become much more digitally savvy, and technology has www.cnmeonline.com

brought in new competition from non-banks.

The industry is more reliant than ever before on technology for most aspects of their business. Technology is used more to sell products, manage internal operations and control risks. Many of the advances in technology – mobile, analytics and cloud, have a direct role to play in these areas.

They enable services from incumbents and new entrants and improve financial inclusion for the ones not served well by traditional banking products.

In the past year, the world’s largest listed company, Apple, has entered payments, and the world’s largest retailer, Walmart, has announced that it will offer checking accounts. Non-banks are a growing phenomenon in many parts of the world. While the portion of revenue that non-banks get at the expense of banks is miniscule today, they are growing and creating new services in unserved areas.

Gartner projects that the banking and securities industry worldwide will spend $502 billion USD on IT products and services in 2015, an increase of 2.7 percent over 2014. IT services, the largest segment at $193 billion USD, will grow by 3.3 percent.

Software will be the fastest growing segment at 6.5 percent, and the projected spend is $70 billion USD. Among priorities for technologies, analytics retains the top position for the third year in a row, while infrastructure/ data center, mobile and cloud are the others that make up the top four technology priorities for the banking and securities industry.

The increased reliance of technology

The industry is more reliant than ever before on technology for most aspects of their business.

Technology is used more to seel products, manage internal operations and control risks.

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for business goals has increased the participation of business leaders in technology decisions.

More consumer banks rank mobile as a higher priority, compared to cloud, whereas it is reversed for securities firms. Pure technology initiatives take a back-seat to the ones that are tied to specific business initiatives or regulatory requirements. Banks continue to tweak their technology investment for projects that are cost-efficient, revenue enhancing and that have the ability to control risks. As customer adoption of technology increases, banks continue to invest in customer facing services and solutions.

Cybersecurity has increasingly come to the fore, spurred by rapid adoption of digital channels by customers, ubiquitous connectivity and the increased sophistication of cyberattacks.

The potential to use mobile to improve access of financial services to the unbanked has piqued the interest of governments, and many are actively creating favorable

legislation or rules to enable entry of non-banks. For instance, Brazil and India have issued guidance that allow the creation of new legal entities that can offer many banking services needed by the poor and remote populations who might not have access to the traditional banking services. These entities will not have all the privileges of a regular bank (e.g. ability to lend money), but will have less regulatory expectations.

IT spending in the Indian banking and securities industry will grow 10.7 percent and reach $8.5 billion USD in 2015. Banks are continuing to invest in their channels, whether branches, ATMs, online and mobile. Investments in back-end processing solutions continue as well. Reserve Bank of India’s proposal to issues ‘payments bank’ licenses, an initiative to increase the availability of banking services for the unbanked and the underbanked, has attracted interest from many large companies from other industries, such as telecom and retail. The payment banks will rely much more on technology for all aspects of their functioning and issuance of these licenses will spur a wave of technology investments in the banking sector.

Technology’s role is becoming even more vital for the banking and securities industry to perform better, amidst regulatory constraints. It also enables banking services to reach large populations, who have not been able to make use of them before.

While banks are positioned well to seize the opportunities opened by technology, the future will have many providing innovative and useful financial services, offered both by banks and non-banks. april 2015

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opinion

Where SDN falls down Software Defined Networking (SDN) promises faster network deployment times and increased agility. Unfortunately, early SDN architectures focused only on solving connectivity challenges at layers 2 and largely ignored application-centric challenges at layers 4-7, writes Nathan Pearce, Principal Technologist, Cloud & Software Defined Networking, F5 Networks.

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ayers 4-7 are where many of the services reside that ensure applications are fast, highly available and secure.

Since the network exists to support applications, it follows that any new network architecture must address both the network challenges and the application layer deployment and management challenges. Enterprisegrade solutions, after all, demand more of the network than just switching, routing, and VLANs, so a more 'inclusive - or comprehensive approach is needed.

Where current SDN architectures fall short is with applications that require a variety of characteristics.

Packet forwarding decisions at the network layer do not typically maintain state awareness. In contrast, application layer-aware technologies maintain state information about application layer transactions so the exchange of data and application behaviour between those end points can be managed.

SDN operates on 'flows', for example, a TCP connection. However, application layer decisions are often based on HTTP messages, and a single flow might contain many such messages. Therefore, SDN is not well suited to applications that require message-based decision making.

Layer 4-7 context Simply put, many challenges cannot be met by simply focusing on Layer 2

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and 3 data without any other context.

Functions such as authentication, authorisation, metering, message steering, cross-origin resource sharing, application attacks, performance, elasticity, fault isolation, SSL offload, and others require application logic, state, and message-based decision making, which occur at layers 4-7.

Adequate product implementations.

Due to design constraints, current SDN products are not being developed to handle applicationcentric - layers 4-7 - requirements.

This shortsightedness limits many capabilities, such as computing power, addressing (flow) tables, and update frequencies, to name a few.

When evaluating a new architectural paradigm such as agile data centre networking, it’s important to consider how that networking can be influenced by the applications and services for which it exists.

There are three areas of focus to ensure an organisation’s evolved SDN implementation is successful.

The key driver behind SDN is the desire for a faster time to value for new applications and services.

Organisations are frustrated with the excessive lead times required to deploy new applications and services that are designed to increase productivity and revenue. However, an SDN architecture designed only to deploy a small part of the network infrastructure will

alleviate only a small part of the human latency that is inhibiting the desired realisation. Therefore, organisations should consider an all or nothing approach to SDN planning.

Closely following the need for speedy deployments is the requirement for a faster time to react to both planned and unplanned circumstances. Much of the focus of SDN has been on rolling out new systems. However, managing existing systems is equally important. The reality is that requirements change over time. This could be due to organic growth in service demand - for example, for new features and functions - or unplanned circumstances like a cyber attack. Whatever the driver, the ability to react quickly ensures service uptime and helps protect an organisation’s brand.

A hardware-free data centre isn’t a real possibility, but organisations should avoid building architectures in which the capabilities are defined by - and hinge upon - the physical devices themselves.

Instead, they should strive to deliver an architecture that’s inclusive of all network services - one that positions the physical elements of the data centre as a reusable pool of resources that can meet computing, access, performance, availability, and security requirements as part of an agile, software-defined delivery mechanism.

To succeed, plan your SDN implementation with a ruthless “all or nothing” attitude. april 2015

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INTERVIEW Louay Dahmash

Grand designs

With design projects including the award-winning film Avatar and Freedom Tower in New York City under its belt, software firm Autodesk’s aim is to make creativity and planning simple. Louay Dahmash, Head of Middle East, Autodesk, talks to CNME about the company’s direction and its cloud offerings.

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hat has been Autodesk’s recent business transformation? How successful has it been so far?

I can easily say we have a two year technology cloud lead over other software vendors and providers in the space. For the next two years, we’ve decided to move away from perpetual licences and move to desktop and cloud subscription licences. The train is fully in motion in that sense. We’ll stop perpetual licenses for standalone licenses at the end of the fiscal year, January 31st 2016. The following year we’ll start moving other products but won’t stop selling them as perpetual.

Also, with the move into the cloud, we’re providing customers with an opportunity to share more information in order to collaborate.

We’ve been at the forefront of cloud technology; 12 years ago we created Buzzsaw, and now have Autodesk 360, a cloud-centric collaboration solution, which is all based on workflows and design for the engineered world.

What projects are you working on in the Middle East?

We’re currently providing BIM (Building Information Modelling) implementation consultancy and advice for the Qatar Rail project.

This is to build standards and specifications that go out to contractors, who are responsible for the design, construction and maintenance of the rail network, and they’ll use BIM throughout the lifecycle of project. With BIM we need to create processes and establish how workflows go within a team. BIM doesn’t just end at design.

In the manufacturing industry there’s been a lot of talk about BIM.

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There’s a perfumery called Ajmal that’s headquartered in Dubai and uses our Inventor software to design their own bottles.

What training services do you provide for your customers?

If we look at our Qatar Rail project, we have a consulting team based in Doha which is working on consultation for Qatar Rail’s staff, helping with not just writing standards but also training for staff and executives. Top executives can use mobile devices to navigate through a model and easily play around with BIM. We also have an education department, authorised training centres throughout the region and we do training for other companies. Internally, our consultants do training for strategic customers.

How does Autodesk plan to leverage the cloud? What impact will cloud technologies have in construction and infrastructure?

This is not simply a massive cloud in the sky. It’s a single point of access where all designers and engineers who need to get a job done from any device and connect are able to. We provide collaboration that enables staff to work on a project in Dubai while they are in Shanghai, New York or London.

Going back to what I said before, the cloud is not new for Autodesk.

For example, with visualisation and rendering, a customer on a maintenance subscription can send a model and rendering is done in 15 minutes by Autodesk.

How are you bringing 3D design to consumers and ushering in the consumerisation of design?

Over the past two years, we’ve www.cnmeonline.com

“We provide collaboration that enables staff to work on a project in Dubai while they are in Shanghai, New York or London.” launched a series of free or nearly free consumer apps, which has had a transformative effect on the company. In 2009 we introduced a product called Sketchbook Pro, a drawing app for artists and designers that can be incorporated into other software. This was our first mobile app and an experiment we put out there, hoping to see 100,000 downloads in one year. We passed a million in 50 days.

Our 123D Catch software allows users to take a picture of virtually anything and turn it into a 3D model and get it printed. We’ve simplified the design process for the consumer.

In line with the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix we also ran a competition for kids to use our software to design prototypes of their own cars.

Broadly speaking, can you give examples of how CIOs can benefit from your technology?

Mafraq Hospital in Abu Dhabi was designed with our technology.

They used BIM, and the contractor needed to design a model at the end of the lifecycle for the client, who

specifically wanted the model to be developed through construction in order to develop interdisciplinary coordination. This enables better visual design, as whoever is maintaining the project can use all data. A CIO or CEO can navigate and see the construction phases and what stage they are at in terms of construction.

How can structural problems be detected within BIM software?

Non-designers won’t detect a problem but can still navigate through models, and can visualise what their design will look like, but engineers can detect problems.

The software has clash detection to pick up certain faults, for instance if a beam is colliding with an AC duct. In the old days construction plans would have had hundreds of clashes but BIM eliminates 99 percent of them.

Do you have any new software that’s close to market?

We’re working on new products as we speak. As a company, we’re the biggest spender in research and development in the market – at nearly $500 million a year. We’ve put a lot of investment into 3D printing, and have come up with our own 3D printer, Ember, and Spark is our open and free software platform for 3D printing, which connects digital information to a 3D printer. Consumers can start designing their own products with a simple 3D printer, and don’t need mass production if they want to build a prototype. We’ve also announced a $100 million Spark worldwide investment fund, a 3D investment programme for entrepreneurs & startups. april 2015

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3rdJune 2015

Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Dubai, UAE

Reseller Middle East’s annual Partner Conference and Partner Excellence Awards pay tribute to the achievements of the industry players in the regional channel ecosystem.

Nominations for the highly anticipated 2015 Partner Excellence Awards are now open and run until 30th April 2015. There are 4 categories with 29 awards up for grabs.

For details about specific awards and criteria, please visit our website.

NOMINATE NOW www.resellerme.com/awards SPONSORSHIP ENQUIRIES Rajashree R Kumar Publishing Director raj.ram@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9131 +971 50 173 9987

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KING OF TABLETS www.touchmatepc.com

PRODUCTS Launches and releases

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

Product: Mate 7 Brand: Huawei What it does: The Mate 7 is the Chinese company’s latest flagship device and aims to be a large-screen option for those who love their Ascend P7. It is the next in line after last year’s successful Ascend Mate 2, and comes with a few new and notable bells and whistles.

It is a bit smaller than its predecessor with a six-inch, 1920 x 1080 screen. It has an aluminium unibody and rear-mounted fingerprint scanner. The smaller screen should not be mistaken for an attempt to cut corners. The phone is still large, but Huawei’s shrink-down is an attempt to make the headset a bit more easy to handle. The device is 157 x 81 x 7.9mm with an 83 percent screen-to-body ratio.

What you should know: One of the most useful additions to the Mate 7 is the back-facing fingerprint scanner. It can be used to awaken the phone instantly, as well as to launch certain apps. The data that is collected from the scanner is kept encrypted on the device and is never sent to third parties. The Mate 7 is powered by an octa-core Kirin 925 processor made up of a quadcore 1.8GHz Cortex A15 chip and a quad-core 1.3GHz Cortex A7 RAM comes in either the 2GB or 3GB flavours depending on whether you opt for the 16GB or 32GB model.

Product: One M9 Brand: HTC What it does: The latest in what HTC aims to be an iconic line of mobile phones has a fiveinch 1080p display, inside a body with 144.6 x 69.7 x 9.61mm dimensions, making it a little shorter than the One M8 but also just a little bit thicker. The thickness is likely to accommodate the upgraded battery, which has been boosted to 2800mAh. The back camera is a whopping 20 MP, while the secondary camera is at 4MP. What you should know: If you are carrying an HTC M8 now, and want a fresh new design, you are going to be disappointed with the M9. The new phone looks strikingly similar to the M8, so much so that when you lay them side-by-side you can hardly tell the difference. Still, the line from HTC seems to be that they are in the game for the long haul – creating a design that will last throughout the life of the product line.

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Product: Chromebook Pixel Brand: Google What it does: The Pixel runs on a 2.4GHz Intel Core i7 processor – as fast as any fully loaded laptop on the market.

The unit comes with two USB-C and two USB 3.0 ports as well as a 64GB SSD and SD card for storage. Perhaps to make up for a small physical storage size, the Pixel comes with one teraByte of Google Drive service for three years. Just as with the 2013 Pixel, its 2015 sister shines when it comes to the screen.

The Pixel boasts a 12.85-inch 2560 x 1700 IPS display with 239-pixel-per-inch density and is powered by Intel HD Graphics 5500. It uses Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260. This chipset supports up to 802.11ac Wi-Fi and 2x2 spatial streams.

What you should know: Chromebooks are supposed to be inexpensive, with the idea that a machine that is essentially just a portal for a Chrome web-browser shouldn’t break the bank.

Though Google is infamous for breaking rules, it is a little bit surprising that they’ve done that on this occasion. The Pixel’s top-end model retails for an unheard-of $1,299.

What is more surprising, is that people are writing the cheque – the Pixel’s top model has been sold out for weeks.meet the brief on portability.

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five ways to manage emails and control spam

Spam lives on, despite all our efforts to snuff it out--but Outlook has some features to help slow it down. Here are some things anyone can do, plus some tips for working within a corporate Outlook system.

Use Block Sender frequently Use Outlook’s Block Sender feature to add intrusive spam to your Block Sender List, and then move it to the Junk Email folder.

Select the spam email, right-click, choose Junk from the drop menu, and click Block Sender. Or, Select Home > Junk > Block Sender. Outlook marks it and relocates it immediately.

Set up a Blocked Sender list If you get a lot of spam from a single ISP or country, or from a phishing group impersonating a legitimate organization, you can add these bad actors to your Block Sender list by company, group, country, ISP, or other criteria. Select Home > Junk > Junk Email Options and click the Blocked Senders tab. Click the Add button and enter a country code, a group domain, or even a fake company (epaypal.com).

Create Rules for sorting, moving and more Outlook has a feature called “Create Rule” that offers custom email management based on conditions that you define in its virtual rulebook. Like macros, these rules automate repetitive tasks that you perform daily.

Select the email you want moved

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to another folder. Select Home > Rules > Create Rule. In the dialog box, Outlook asks: When I get email with the selected conditions, do the following: Display in New Item Alert Window, Play Selected Sound, or Move Item to Folder.

Rules Wizard For this example: UserKC receives a lot of spam with attachments that are not addressed to her. In this case, the email was sent to somebody named mikeal.victor98@gmail.com, but she received it instead. This is a common phishing scam that’s escalated over time, so she decided to create a rule to automate a process that kills these spam attacks.

Select Home > Rules > Create Rule.

In the Create Rule dialog box, click the Advanced Options button.

In the Rules Wizard dialog box, Outlook asks: Which condition(s) do you want to check? Step1: Select Condition(s). Scroll through the list and choose the conditions that apply to your unique situation. UserKC selected where my name is not in the To box and which has an attachment.

Outlook enters the conditions in the Step2 box. Click Next.

In the second Rules Wizard dialog, Outlook asks: What do you want to do with the message? Step1: Select Action(s). UserKC checked move it to

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the specified folder.

The Step 2 box: That means, “click this link to complete this action.” Click once, choose the “specified” folder (Junk Email), then click OK. In the third Rules Wizard dialog, Outlook asks: Are there any exceptions? Step 1: Select Exceptions.

UserKC decided to add a safety exception: If the sender name/ email address matches a record in my current address book, then do nothing. Check the exception box, click the underlined “specified” Address Book, select the applicable contact list, then click Add. Check spam folders often In addition to the filters and rules you create on your own computer, your email software, antivirus program, Internet provider, network administrator, individual supervisor, and possibly others all have various systems for protecting users from harmful communications.

Check your spam folders often at every level, especially if you’re expecting a communication that never shows up. It’s generally easy to access your spam folders at the ISP level, because most providers offer an email program with the service, which includes a spam folder.

Individual company policies may not be as flexible or convenient.

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