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Finding a cure

Medmark improves health services with technology Saad Mohamed, IT unit manager, Medmark

INSIDE: JRG International | Healthcare Focus | Data centre management | Cloud chargeback

ISSUE

228

|

Finding a cure

January

Medmark improves health services with technology 6 SaaS revenue to total $9.2b >> Analyst firm Gartner states that service providers run the risk of confusing and antagonising customers when they re-brand traditional hosted solutions as SaaS or cloud offerings.

8 Device dilemma >> End users are walking smartphones, tablets and somje iT management headaches into the enterprise. Here’s five key issues, to help you plan wisely and head off trouble.

12 Security looking glass >> Fortinet rolls out the crystal ball and predicts what the biggest secureity trends are going to be in 2011.

14 Round-up >> A quick round-up of IT industry news in the MENA region.

CASE STUDY 22 Breaking new ground >> Brokerage house JRG International understand the value of technology in providing and improving service levels, and finds the right partner in EHDF. FEATURE 26 Getting more >> Regional enterprises are building more data centres, and as they continue to invest in infrastructure the need to run these at optimal levels becomes critical. CNME looks at the issues that enterprises face with data centre management and analyses how they can achieve more.

32 Healthy choices >> Medical institutions across the region are implementing technology to increasingly digitise information, improve patient care and make themselves more attractive to

2010

20

medical tourists. CNME examines this trend in the first of a two-part series on healthcare in the region.

38 Social media meets ERP >> The time has come to stop fighting the tide towards social media and instead harness its power within the enterprise.

ERP is the natural place for social media tools to enter. Building social media-type enterprise 2.0 functionality into ERP will eliminate potential security risks and productivity drains.

INTERVIEW 44 Switching over >> Tarek Ghoul, director and GM of Cisco Gulf reflects on the various product groups of the firm and talks about next steps in the region.

INSIGHT 48 Charting the weather >> Looking ahead, CNME discusses ten developments that we are likely to see in cloud computing for service providers and enterprise users.

HOW TO 52 Craft a chargeback strategy >> Cloud provides business with a great opportunity to get their strategic approach to IT funding in order, says Mark Settle, CIO at BMC Software. Here’s his advice on building the right chargeback strategy for your business.

GAGA OVER GADGETS 54 >> CNME gets down in the dust with the latest in productivity solutions, and gives you the verdict.

58 WHAT WE’RE READING >> We select the best international technology blogs and books and bring them to you.

Publisher Dominic De Sousa COO Nadeem Hood

Wake up call

Sathya Mithra Ashok Senior Editor

Commercial Director Richard Judd richard@cpidubai.com +971 4 4490126

Sometimes governments can be the victims of their own success.

Despite a decade of driving e-government initiatives, the recent renewed drive to register residents for the Emirates National ID card before the closing deadline saw the on-line registration process collapse at times amidst rising concerns that the Web site itself is confusing.

Some might see that as evidence of vision not being supported by technical deployment; others, that the commitment to joined up e-government has created a population of all classes comfortable with working with technology, if not always fully cognisant of on-line navigation procedures. Glass half full, perhaps.

The reality is that e-government is here to stay and, worldwide, has been perhaps one of the best success stories for the ICT industry. Governments in this region have been promoting and focusing on using technology to provide and improve citizen service availability for the best part of a decade, despite technology players not always rolling out implementations without kinks.

According to Alfonso Di Ianni, senior VP for Eastern Europe, CIS and MEA at Oracle, there are a couple of reasons that e-gov projects fail more often than not. Firstly, when e-government is used as a political tool rather than being integrated into the fabric of a government’s functional approach; secondly, when a government lacks a spearheading department that focuses on just e-government initiatives. When efforts are fragmented, so are the results, he says.

When we survey the region, though, both of the above issues seem to be well addressed. With minimal political f luctuation, e-gov projects become part of the longterm strategy of governments and most countries already have departments handling these initiatives (for eg., Dubai e-Government or ICT Qatar).

So why do some e-government projects appear to fail in the region?

The answer could lie in a lack of adequate planning. Ideas exist and they are brilliant, but an implementation can fail due to mistakes made in the capacity and resource planning that has to happen at the back-end. This could mean anything from hardware and software that cannot cope with a load that was unexpected, or snags in the applications that were built for the projects or even lack of manpower to ensure that maintenance and monitoring happens regularly.

Whatever the issues, it is time that regional governments addres them seriously. The Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin recently ordered government agencies in the country to move to open source software by 2015.

The Russian government also plans to build a national repository for open source software. Middle East governments have already moved in the right direction with e-government initiatives and technology usage. Now is the time to think big and make bold steps for the future.

Let 2011 be the year of e-governance!

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analysis | month in view revenue > SaaS to total $9.2 billion

Global analyst firm Gartner states that service providers run the risk of confusing and antagonising customers when they re-brand traditional hosted solutions as either SaaS or cloud offerings.

Worldwide software as a service

(SaaS) revenue within the enterprise application software market is forecast to reach $9.2 billion in 2010, up 15.7% from 2009 revenue of $7.9 billion, according to Gartner. The market is projected for stronger growth in 2011 with worldwide SaaS revenue totaling $10.7 billion, a 16.2% increase from 2010 revenue.

Gartner defines SaaS as software that is owned, delivered and managed remotely by one or more providers. The provider delivers an application based on a single set of common code and data definitions, which is consumed in a one-to-many model by all contracted customers anytime on a pay-for-use basis, or as a subscription based on use metrics.

"Initial concerns about security, response time and service availability have diminished for many organisations as SaaS business and computing models have matured and adoption has become more widespread," said Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner. "Usage and vendors' on-demand ecosystems continue to evolve to provide additional business and technology services, more-verticalspecific functionality, and stronger communities of partners and buyers."

The composition of the worldwide SaaS landscape is evolving as vendors continue to extend regionally, increase penetration within existing accounts and "greenfield" opportunities, and expand their solution offerings, either organically or through acquisition.

During the past 12 months to 18

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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST

months, Gartner has observed shifts in how SaaS is sold, consumed and perceived by vendors and buyers.

"There is increasing involvement from executives in purchasing decisions, as well as greater participation from IT in the purchase process due to larger deals, the expanding footprint of SaaS in the enterprise, and a higher requirement for downstream integration as SaaS becomes incorporated in the enterprise business process," Mertz said.

Additional shifts in SaaS include an increasing number of enterprises using a variety of SaaS applications from multiple vendors that were procured and deployed without participation from IT, creating management issues and challenges. SaaS deployments are becoming larger, with deals more frequently appearing in the range of thousands to tens of thousands of users within large enterprises. Social media and social software are becoming increasingly integrated with SaaS solutions,

january 2011

as social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are leveraging customer service, sales and marketing initiatives. In contrast, recent research indicates that social software has the lowest adoption rate by buyers of SaaS solutions.

Content, communications and collaboration (CCC) continues to lead the enterprise SaaS market with worldwide CCC revenue on pace to reach $2.9 billion in 2010, followed by customer relationship management (CRM) revenue of $2.6 billion.

For CCC technologies, SaaS use varies across the market segments. For certain markets, such as ECM and search, SaaS is barely used at all, while for Web conferencing, it is the predominant form of software access.

Adoption of SaaS in the CRM market also varies within each subsegment. The majority of SaaS total software revenue within the sales subsegment is represented by sales force automation, where benefits of rapid time to deployment and ease of configuration for sales administrators make it an attractive alternative to on-premises solutions. Interest has been growing for e-commerce SaaS solutions in business-to-consumer environments, although some buyers express concerns about a potential lack of differentiation, impact on the total IT portfolio, integration challenges with on-premises applications, and uncertainty over data ownership (client data versus aggregated data).

During 2009 and 2010, the significant industry buzz surrounding SaaS and other off-premises models has shifted to cloud computing — a broad concept, of which SaaS is only one variation, representing the application layer of the overall cloud architectural stack. Gartner estimates that 75% of the current SaaS delivery revenue could be considered as a cloud service, and that could exceed 90% by 2014 as the SaaS model matures and converges with cloud services models.

Gartner analysts said it is important to also differentiate SaaS from hosting or application management or application outsourcing.

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All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. APC Middle East, PO Box - 53852, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. 998-2029_A4_GB

analysis | month in view > Device dilemma End users are walking smartphones, tablets and some IT management headaches into the enterprise. Here's a guide to five key Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) issues, to help you plan wisely and head off trouble.

Two megatrends collided in big

IT shops during 2010, and will continue their irresistible force/immovable object dynamic moving into 2011 and beyond, analysts say.

One is the well-ordered, wellestablished practice of consolidating servers and PCs as much as possible and standardising on specific manufacturers, form factors and component lists to minimise support, training and replacement costs.

The other is the consumerisation of IT, which is having as great an impact on the business world as the PC, LAN or networking revolutions, by putting the interface to almost any IT resource in a business literally in the hands of end users, according to Ian Song, research analyst for IDC. The demand by end users for access to corporate IT resources using iPads, iPhones and other devices they personally own is one IT has a long tradition of opposing. Opposition wasn't difficult when the devices were a BlackBerry here or a Macintosh there, Song says.

The buzzword for all this — other than consumerisation — is Bring Your Own. The name began as Bring Your

Own PC, was morphed into BYO Computer when it began to be applied to Mac users bringing in their laptops, and eventually to BYO Device (BYOD).

Who owns the hardware?

It depends on what kind of situation it is. The idea of BYOD was first applied to contractors who would work for a company for a set period of time, often working with critical software or sensitive data, and then go on to another assignment, potentially at a competing company, according to Chris Wolf, research vice president for Gartner's IT Professionals service.

Because contractors often use their own equipment, rather than PCs supplied by the company, many companies were looking for ways to be sure that, when they left, no sensitive data was left on their computers intentionally or otherwise.

More recently, at Citrix for example, some companies have been offering stipends to let employees buy what they

The proliferation of highly connected, powerful devices such as tablets and smartphones changed the dynamic in most companies from one in which users make requests and IT denies them.

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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST

january 2011

want within certain guidelines. Others, like Intel, give employees guidelines on what will work, and let them buy their own.

Carafax was offering employees interest-free loans for PCs, then switched to a straight stipend.

Most often employee-owned devices are smartphones such as the iPhone or very new devices such as the iPad, which IT may not have had time to react to before employees begin using them.

Employee-owned gear typically involves gadgety things they want to use in their personal lives, but that are powerful enough for business use as well, Song says.

Why is it a big deal?

Productivity, cost and power.

The proliferation of highly connected, powerful devices such as tablets and smartphones changed the dynamic in most companies from one in which users make requests and IT denies them, according to Dave Buckholz, principal IT engineer responsible for evaluating new technology at Intel.

BYOD amounts to a recognition that not all end users work in the same way and that making each more productive is worth the effort — and sometimes the cost — of supporting a range of hardware platforms, Buckholz says.

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analysis | month in view According to a survey of 1,100 mobile workers worldwide by enterprise mobility vendor iPass, workers who use mobile devices for both work and personal issues put in 240 more hours per year than those who do not.

That kind of productivity, and the increasing refusal of users to take 'no' for an answer, are two reasons Gartner predicts that by 2014, 90% of organisations will support corporate applications on devices owned by workers.

Consumerisation, virtualisation, cloud computing and an increasingly fuzzy boundary between "w ork" and "personal" time is making it practical for employees to be connected with full access to all their work resources wherever they are, whatever the time of day, according to Mark Bowker, senior analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group.

That fuels the desire of employees to be out of the office and connect with a device that they find pleasant, rather than be chained to a desk or a heavy laptop or other piece of hardware blessed by corporate IT. "It really changed the way users see IT into more of a partnership," Buckholz says.

Why are BYOD and virtualisation linked?

Desktop virtualisation is the technology that makes consumerisation and BYOD practical in a corporate environment, Bowker says.

There are two main methods: the first is to let a smartphone or tablet act as a dumb terminal, using a browser to show applications that are running on a server in the data centre, sending images of the data to a handheld screen via secure VPN. The other is to install a hypervisor on the device itself that creates a virtual "work" PC inside another computer owned by the employee. Both the virtual and work PCs believe their operating system is the only one on the machine, and neither can communicate with the other, so sensitive data are protected.

What about security?

Security is actually one of the factors holding back adoption of virtual

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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST

Consumerisation, virtualisation, cloud computing and an increasingly fuzzy boundary between "work" and "personal" time is making it practical for employees to be connected with full access to all their work resources wherever they are, whatever the time of day. desktops as a whole and highly mobile BYOD plans in particular according to a November study from UK-based hosteddesktop provider Molten Technologies.

Server virtualisation sales are driven by the desire to save money; desktop virtualisation projects are approved on the basis of agility, flexibility and, increasingly, choice, according to the survey.

Security is still the only issue that shows up as one of the top three answers in every vertical industry and every size company in the survey. "People are still worried about it because they haven't had the time to evaluate the real risks and solutions especially in things like iPads and iPhones," Song says.

Properly configured, a mobile BYOD device may never house any secure data, but each one is a portal through the company's security that could be expensive in the direct cost of stolen data and liability cost of having lost a customer's, Song says.

Truly securing corporate data that will be shared across clouds or in personal devices requires more than just virtualisation, though, Wolf says. It requires limits on the kind of information end users can download to insecure devices, what they can do with that data, and where it can go.

Do I really have to deal with this?

Almost certainly. If not this year, then next. You may already be in the middle of the trend without realising it.

A July study by IDC, sponsored by Unisys, found that 95% of employees

january 2011

use at least one personally purchased device for work, more than 40 percent use IM or text messaging for work and that twice as many employees report using laptops and other mobile devices than managers thought.

According to IDC, 2011 will be one of "transformation" of IT as organisations try to cut technology costs and consumers demand "a unique and compelling experience with any new purchases."

Many of those devices will access corporate resources — with or without IT's permission — using some of the 300,000 mobile apps that have been produced during the past three years for smartphones and tablets.

IDC predicts there will be hundreds of thousands of others, connecting to everything from phones to TVs to corporate virtual-server farms via mobile apps that will show up as the market for them grows from $10.9 billion in 2010 to $76.9 billion in 2014.

They'll also be connected via broadband wireless and cloud-computing platforms of many types, drastically changing the “IT infrastructure” as it's been defined until now, according to Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala. iPhone-heavy corporate applications are already common in healthcare, where HIPAA privacy rules require tight security, and the need by clinicians for efficiency demands automation.

Kraft Foods gives employees a "substantial" stipend to buy equipment they'll use for work as part of a BYOD programme for mobile workers who don't deal with confidential information.

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analysis | month in view > Security looking glass Fortinet’s Derek Manky, who coordinates research team efforts and manages responsible disclosure efforts between the company and other vendors, rolls out the crystal ball and predicts what the biggest security trends are going to be in 2011.

Increased global collaborative takedowns This year, we’ve seen examples of countries working together, such as such as Operation Bot Roast (FBI initiative), Conficker Working Group and the recent Mariposa/Pushdo/Zeus/Bredolab busts, to bring syndicates down but these takedown operations are only focused on the most visible violators and sometimes only cause a temporary impact. While there were other notable takedowns, these operations only focused on the most visible violators and sometimes only caused a temporary impact. For example, while authorities took down the massive Koobface botnet in November, the servers were reconfigured, and back up and running at full capacity a week later.

In 2011, we predict authorities will consolidate global collaborative efforts and partner with security task forces to shut down cyber criminal operations that are growing in number. The Zeus takedown that occurred in 2010, leading to charges by authorities in both the US and UK, is a great example, and we believe foreshadows things to come.

Infected machine inflation Today, we’re seeing a territorial concern for criminals building their malware empire(s), since control over managed infections can lead to longer up times and greater cash f low. Features advertised as

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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST

“bot killers” are being implemented into new bots to generically kill other threats that may lurk on the same system. For example, we’ve seen one bot enumerating process memory to look for commands used by resident IRC bots. Once it finds processes that use these commands, it will kill them since they are perceived as a territorial threat.

As attackers infect machines in 2011, the value of already infected machines will increase. As a result, we’re likely to see a price increase for crime services, such as bot rentals that load malicious software on machines and malware that includes machine maintenance to maximise an infected machine’s uptime. To keep infections discrete, malware operators may turn to quality assurance services that would, say, refuse to load software that may crash a machine or otherwise impact their business. As part of the package, malware operators may also include leasing infection process time.

When the lease is up, the malware would clean up after itself, reducing the amount of load/threats on a single machine.

32- to 64 bit infections Security technologies such as address space layout randomization (ASLR), data execution prevention (DEP), virtualisation, PatchGuard/kernel driver signing and sandboxing, a technique for creating confined execution environments, are becoming more commonplace, along with the 64-bit machines running them. This evolution has certainly restricted malware stomping grounds, which will drive demand in 2011 to break through these chains. In 2010, we saw JIT-spraying and return oriented programming (ROP) used to defeat ASLR/DEP with PDF/Flash exploits. In addition, we saw 64-bit rootkits such as Alureon, which bypassed PatchGuard and signing checks by infecting the master boot record to stage the attack.

Expect more 64-bit rootkits to follow in the quest to gain a foothold on newer machines and further, innovative attacks

january 2011

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As attackers infect machines in 2011, the value of already infected machines will increase. As a result, we’re likely to see a price increase for crime services, such as bot rentals that load malicious software on machines and malware that includes machine maintenance to maximise an infected machine’s uptime. that circumvent defences like ASLR/ DEP and sandboxing.

Cybercriminals hang out the “help wanted” sign As money mules are taken off line in the coming year, there will be a need for immediate replacements. Additional jobs we see growing in demand include developers for custom packers and platforms, hosting services for data and drop-zones, CAPTCHA breakers, quality assurance (anti-detection) and distributors (affiliates) to spread malicious code. As demand grows for these resources in 2011, criminal operations will effectively expand head count. New affiliate programmes will likely create the most head count by hiring people who sign up to distribute malicious code.

Botnet operators have typically grown their botnets themselves, but, we believe more operators will begin delegating this task to affiliates (commissioned middle-men) in 2011. The Alureon and Hiloti botnets are two examples that have already grasped this concept by establishing affiliate programmes for their own botnets; paying anyone who can help infect systems on the operator's behalf. By using an army of distributors, botnets will continue to thrive.

Spreading source Malware today can appear under multiple names and aliases. Crossdetection between various security vendors is adding to the confusion as

january 2011

well. This is the result of a growing development community that is fuelled by available source code and libraries that are “borrowed” to create and sell new malware. Oftentimes, two pieces of malware we are evaluating are nearly identical in nature except for a small component inside of it that has changed.

This type of “copy and paste” malware is an indication that multiple developers have adopted the same source code.

In 2011, we predict more cyber criminals will enter the game by attempting to make money using recycled existing source code. This trend will create more threat names/variants as they begin to circulate in the wild, which, in turn, will only create further confusion and dilute the meaning of these names. While public source code will continue to create problems on the security landscape, private source code will increase in value as will jobs for adept developers. We also expect to see new cases of leaked private source that are employed by new up-and-comers, thus continuing the vicious cycle.

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round-up | month in view Arabian > Saudi General Investment Authority to deploy Cisco WebEx

The Saudi Arabian General

Investment Authority (SAGIA) will be deploying Cisco WebEXTM enterprise collaboration solutions to provide its stakeholders and employees with an easy way to exchange ideas and information with anyone, anywhere. Cisco WebEx combines real-time collaboration with voice over IP technology, so everyone sees the same thing as they converse.

Cisco WebEx is available to businesses in Saudi Arabia through the Saudi Telecom Company (STC), which has an agreement with Cisco to supply Cisco WebEx communications technology to businesses throughout the Kingdom.

SAGIA is the official investmentpromotion agency of the government of Saudi Arabia, responsible for promoting direct investment into the Kingdom.

SAGIA will deploy a number of WebEx products including Cisco WebEx Meeting Center, WebEx Event Center,

launches > Oracle Cloud Office Oracle has announced the availability of Cloud Office 1.0, a Web-based productivity suite that is set to give on-line applications from Microsoft and Google a fresh dose of competition.

Cloud Office is integrated with the on-premises Oracle Open Office, of which version 3.3 was also announced.

Like Open Office, Cloud Office is based on ODF (Open Document Format). It provides a set of spreadsheet, text and presentation applications and is compatible with Microsoft Office, according to Oracle.

Customers can use Cloud Office to collaborate on documents over the Web as well as access them on mobile devices.

Information on supported mobile devices wasn't immediately available.

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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST

WebEx Training Center and WebEx Support Center.

"SAGIA's objective is to create the best business strategy for achieving our vision of promoting direct investment into KSA, and we are always looking at ways to achieve economies of scale.

Cisco WebEx will keep us ahead of the game by enabling us to offer a costeffective meeting solution,” said Hassan Al Duhaim, networks and operations manager at SAGIA. "This is a very strategic and important deployment for Cisco in Saudi Arabia, as SAGIA is a key player in the kingdom.

SAGIA will now have access to a richer collaboration environment within WebEx, which will provide more of an 'in-person' type of experience, which can lead to greater productivity in meetings,” added Mohammad Al Rehaili, WebEx channel manager for Cisco in KSA. Cisco WebEx is often referred to as either Web conferencing because of the sharing via the Web and telephone connection, or an on-line meeting because users can take care of business on-line as they do in in-person meetings. The solution also offers phone

Cloud Office stands ready for "enterprise and carrier-grade deployment" thanks to its "Web-scale" SaaS (software as a service) architecture, but is available in on-premises form as well, Oracle said.

It will be sold to business users as Cloud Office Professional Edition. Telcos and ISPs can offer their customers Cloud Office in Home, Standard and Professional Editions, according to Oracle.

A perpetual licence for Professional Edition costs $90, plus 22% annual maintenance fees. Cloud Office Standard Edition will cost $40 per user when sold through a telco or ISP, with support acquired through the provider. Home Edition is not currently available, according to an Oracle spokeswoman.

Cloud Office is also available via subscription at $40 per user per year for Professional Edition and $20 per

january 2011

Mohammad Al Rehaili, WebEx channel manager for Cisco in KSA

conferencing options that can maximise f lexibility and minimise costs.

Cisco WebEx is software delivered as a service. The user simply subscribes to the service and can then use it from any computer with an Internet connection, and even from most smart phones such as the iPhone or BlackBerry.

SAGIA has launched four economic cities in Saudi Arabia -- King Abdullah Economic City in Rabigh; Prince Abdulaziz bin Musaid Economic City in Hail; Knowledge Economic City in Madinah; and the Jazen Economic City near Jizan City -- with a total investment of more than $60 billion. Cisco is also providing advisory services for all these economic cities.

user per year for Standard Edition, the spokeswoman said.

Cloud Office's cost could be key to its success against incumbent offerings like Google Apps for Business, which costs US$50 per user per year.

Meanwhile, new features in Open Office 3.3 include plug-ins for Oracle's BI (business intelligence), E-Business Suite ERP (enterprise resource planning) software, and Microsoft SharePoint.

While Oracle has a long way to go in catching up to competing office suites, it is hoping to close the gap by positioning its products as much more flexible and open alternatives.

Oracle has faced scrutiny this year from backers of OpenOffice.org, the open-source version of Open Office, with some fearing the company would stop supporting the effort.

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round up | month in view seals > Google $10m agreement with Jordanian government

Google and the Jordanian Ministry

of Communication and Information Technology have announced a strategic agreement of $10 million through which Google will support Jordanian organisations, efforts to promote their products and services using Google’s advertising platforms, while reinvesting $2.5 million in the local ICT sector.

“Google’s decision to play a more active role in the development of the ICT industry in the Kingdom, especially as it relates to entrepreneurship, is a testament to the maturity level of our sector” said Marwan Juma the Jordanian Minister of ICT. He also added that “this agreement will go along in building capacity as it relates to strategic digital marketing through know-how transfer from Google to local organisations…a crucial knowledge to have in this day and age”.

BI as > Treat transformation: Gartner

CIOs must ensure that business intelligence (BI) programmes are treated as a cultural transformation of the business, instead of as an IT project, according to Gartner. Leading organisations are using key parts of BI, such as decision modelling and support to ensure all workers, managers and executives can make the right decisions in a given business situation.

“Traditionally, BI has been used for performance reporting from historical data, and as a planning and forecasting tool for a relatively small number of people in an organisation that relies on historical data to plan ahead,” said Patrick Meehan, research VP at Gartner. “Modelling future scenarios permits examination of new business models, new market opportunities and new products, and creates a culture of

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L to R- Ari Kesisoglu, Google’s regional manager for the Middle East and North Africa, Marwan Juma, the Jordanian Minister of ICT and Carlo D'Asaro Biondo Google VP SEEMEA.

The agreement coincided with Google’s biggest ever event in Jordan, Developer Days bringing together more than a thousand participants ranging from professional developers and webmasters to small business entrepreneurs, computer science professors and students.

As part of the $10 million agreement with the Jordanian government, Google will reinvest 25% of the amount back into the local Jordanian market, growing local Jordanian digital media start ups, incubate venture capital, angel funding of the information technology sector and potentially training students.

Jordanian business will be able to reach customers around the world in an efficient manner thanks to their

opportunity. In this way, workers not only see the future, but often create it.”

Using information to provide intelligent insight to improve business performance is a major challenge. CIOs can provide leadership by developing a cross-enterprise perspective of information and processes supported by technology. Gartner has highlighted three initiatives that use BI to create intelligent businesses:

1. Focus BI efforts on delivering the right Information to the right people Organisations should apply a business process orientation to BI that connects horizontally across functional areas and outwardly to partners, customers and partners.

To keep strategy execution on track, BI must address all staff and management levels in the organisation.

2. Change mind-set from more information to answering the

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new ties with Google advertising.

The advertisers will be ten designated government entities including the Royal Jordanian, Greater Amman Municipality, Jordan Tourism Board, Petra Regional Authority, Jordan Investment Board, Kind Abdullah II Fund for Development, Development Area Commission, King Abdullah II for Design and Development Bureau, Business Park and ASIZA- Aqaba.

This strategic agreement aims to enable Jordanian government entities to expand their global reach in a targeted manner with a return on investment based ad model that ensures that the designated Jordanian entities have positive returns from their advertising spend.

right questions Champion the value of decision impact.

Ultimately, a relentless focus on a very limited set of burning business questions will guide users toward BI-enabled decisions that have maximum impact on business strategies and goals.

3. Create project teams based on information needs Create project teams based not just on who owns the data, but also on departmental interest in the information that will be generated. Breaking down silos of data ownership will send information flows up and down management chains as well as across functions, which in turn will create decisions with higher impact. Unless business decisions exploit organisations’ interdependencies in this manner, their impact will fall short. The business decisions with the biggest impact never exist in isolation.

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Gartner

LEADERSHIP FORUM

Exclusively for CIOs. Designed and Driven by CIOs. Discovering the path to world class IT. 28 February – 1 March 2011 • Raffles Dubai • Dubai, United Arab Emirates

europe.gartner.com/ciome Gartner Middle East CIO Leadership Forum is an executive-only program for exploring critical business, technology and leadership strategies. Created with direct input from top CIOs, Gartner Middle East CIO Leadership Forum lets executives share real-world experiences and engage in candid dialogue with peers in an exclusive, intimate setting, removed from the tactical concerns of the workplace.

Using sessions that concentrate on key issues and challenges, we will address central issues facing CIOs and IT, including: • • • • • • • •

How to deliver on expanding commitments with declining resources Which metrics best prove the business value and relevance of IT How to identify and act on enterprise growth opportunities Which technologies and approaches will drive sustained growth and innovation How to anticipate changes in the global economic climate How to meet the challenges of competing in a world of growing transparency How to effectively lead others in an atmosphere of transition and uncertainty How to strengthen your influence in strategy and executive decisions

Apply now Online: europe.gartner.com/ciome Telephone: +971 4 391 3200 E-mail: emea.registration@gartner.com

round up | month in view launches data > APC centre auditing services

APC by Schneider Electric has

announced the launch of auditing services to meet the growing concerns of companies about energy efficiency in data centres.

APC’s audit provides a vendorneutral suite of services that include a comprehensive evaluation of energy use in customer facilities with detailed reports on total data centre input power, IT load, power usage effectiveness (PUE), and power and cooling conditions.

Consultants can also provide proposals to resolve issues with a range of recommendations to suit customer needs.

Olivier Delepine, enterprise and services director for Middle-East and Africa, APC by Schneider Electric said: "More data centre managers are beginning to look at energy as a productive asset, and they need the tools to be able to help maximise the utilisation of available resources with business and regulatory climates demanding increased efficiencies within the data centres. APC’s new audit service brings significant returns on investment as customers optimise current

enables > Avaya emergency response call centre

Avaya Government Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary of Avaya, has announced it has launched one of the first modern emergency 911 call centres in the Middle East.

The project, funded by the US government under its counter terrorism and narcotics programme, was deployed in conjunction with MicroAutomation, and will support the emerging Jordanian economy by helping ensure continuity and communications and promoting public safety.

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infrastructure and plan for future growth or consolidation.”

The introduction of the audit services is backed by the appointment of qualified professionals such as Mustapha Louni as the data centre energy efficiency engineer for the region. Based in Dubai, Louni will be responsible for managing the implementation of APC audit services in the region and work closely with the services team to deliver the best service solutions to APC’s customers.

The audit service is a value-added service offered by APC to its clients in the Middle East and Africa. Through regular audits, data centres can be operated at optimum capacity and help save cost of repair or replacement of equipment that are prone to damage due to incorrect usage.

The services team audits the data centre and provides the customer with detailed proposals to improve energy efficiency. The proposal recommends a range of solutions leading to a scale of gains from minimum to maximum, so the customer can implement the changes that best fit their business needs and data centre environments.

Issues typically found in data centres are often addressed with a combination of airf low and cooling management techniques, smarter hot-cold aisle

The system, which covers Amman, Jordan, is seen as a prototype for future emergency call centres in the Middle Eastern. Avaya Government Solutions’ implementation of the system mirrors architectures and systems that have been successfully implemented in the United States.

“We are providing Amman with a modern E-911 system that will save lives and enhance public safety for the Jordanian people,” said Tim Gentry, senior VP of civilian sales, Avaya Government Solutions.

“While other telecommunications providers competed for the project, our expertise in delivering solutions that are 99.999% reliable was cited as the determining factor

by Jordanian officials.”

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Olivier Delepine, enterprise and services director for Middle-East and Africa, APC by Schneider Electric

configurations and containment systems, upgrades to UPS systems, as well as modernisation of rack enclosures with new intelligent systems.

The APC Data Centre Cooling Analysis uses Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to analyse the airf low and temperature patterns of a data centre at the rack and room level. The CFD software creates a 3D model of the physical attributes within the space, as well as the location and performance characteristics of the cooling units, IT equipment, power systems and any other significant equipment in the data centre.

The E-911 system is designed to provide a city-wide emergency telephone system which consistently provides swift and reliable assistance to the public in response to their need for public safety emergency services.

9-1-1 is the universal emergency telephone number designed to give citizens an easy to remember phone number for accessing emergency information and assistance. By dialling just three numbers, 9-1-1, callers can be connected to a trained professional in their geographical area who can provide needed information directly or route the call to the appropriate first responder organisation or entity.

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For more information please visit: Me.kaspersky.com

CASE study: Medmark

With over 20 years of

experience in the field, Medmark Health and Life is a market pioneer in the management and promotion of world-wide medical assistance, health and life insurance services in Egypt.

“Our scope is truly international, as our services and reputation are extended in Egypt and worldwide to active members in more than 100 countries around the globe. We actively market and service a range of private medical insurance solutions to individuals and organisations in the country, providing them with the highest class

finding a cure Egypt-based insurance provider Medmark implements an IP-PBX solution to improve operational efficiency and to provide customers with improved service.

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january 2011

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of international and local medical coverage,” says Saad Mohamed, IT unit manager at Medmark.

Medmark is the home of Horizon PMI, a fully-f ledged local private medical insurance plan designed specially for families and organisations in Egypt. Horizon PMI is offered in collaboration with Delta Insurance.

International medical assistance products which focus on medical evacuation and repatriation are also promoted and serviced through an experienced in-house team of medical doctors in collaboration with highly specialised international aero-medical teams, offering added peace of mind for customers.

“Over the past two decades our primary focus and competitive advantage was always the quality of our customer service. Market research conducted by ACNielsen Egypt for Medmark Health and Life in 2005 proves that we are outperforming the market in terms of customer satisfaction. The results revealed that both our corporate and family medical scheme members had the highest level of customer satisfaction in the market, when compared with other health cover subscribers,” says Mohamed.

Technology has helped give Medmark an upper hand in its dealings with customers and partners, and in establishing and maintaining itself in its current position. Mohammed and his team work diligently in order to ensure that every investment aids the business, and this is the main reason they began searching for an IP-PBX solution in early 2009.

“We were using Panasonic’s digital phones, but we needed more than these devices could provide. We wanted the ability to manage a huge number of users. The digital phone solution was not very scaleable. IP phones on the other hand are a very scalebale and reliable solution, and can manage huge number of users without any limitations,” says Mohamed.

He adds, “We also required f lexibility in our Interactive Voice

Technology has helped give Medmark an upper hand in its dealings with customers and partners, and in establishing and maintaining itself in its current position. Mohamed and his team work diligently in order to ensure that every investment aids the business, and this is the main reason they began searching for an IP-PBX solution in early 2009.

Response (IVR) systems, such that we are able to direct customers during the first instance of their call to the right departments with ease. We also required a system that would provide us ease of management of all these aspects, along with the ability of adding features when we felt the need.”

Having decided that an IP PBX solution was the way ahead, Mohamed and his team decided on a Polycom, Asterisk and Digium solution after conducting due diligence.

“We let our vendors know about the need and got proposals for the solutions.

We studied all of them and decided on this particular one, because they were very supportive of the technology. It was critical for us that the vendors and partners provided us with adequate support on the technology. We also required full functionality awareness from their end.

This was also available in plenty from the vendor. All considered, this was an easy decision for us,” says Mohamed.

Step by step According to Hussam Fawzy of Arkan Integrated Solutions, “When we f irst analysed Medmark’s needs, we found that they needed to be available 24/7 without setting up a 24/7 call center. The system needed to ensure that Medmark had to be reachable 24/7, make sure all calls are received without a change in the working hours for the team.”

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The implementation was carried out in a phased manner in order to overcome the challenges that might occur out of the deployment. The old system existed along with the new for some time, and training was provided to the different users in order to familiarise them with the new features and to prevent adoption issues.

While the base IP-PBX solution was implemented in 2009, Mohamed says that more users were connected and additional agents were brought onto the solution in 2010.

“The solution has definitely provided us with the return on investment that we needed. It also gives options for additional features, such as video conferencing, which we will look to get into place in 2011,” says Mohamed.

With an annual budget that is decided by the end of every year, Mohamed also plans on continuing investments and projects in 2011, that will aid the growth pace.

“With a customer retention level that has never fallen below 95% in the last 15 years, Medmark Health and Life has reached an undisputed leadership position in the international health cover market, and we hope to continue to offer our customers the quality of service they have come to expect from us. Technology is a crucial element of our success and we will continue to invest and use it wisely to forward our aims and provide the best of services to our customers,” concludes Mohamed.

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CASE study: JRG international

Breaking new ground Brokerage house JRG International understands the value of technology in providing and improving service levels, and finds the right partner in EHDF. JRG International Brokerage

DMCC ( JRG International) is a Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange (DGCX) registered international commodity derivatives brokerage house based in Dubai that provides, through its vast global network of financial professionals, a unique suite of alternative investment products and specialised support and services to its global clientele.

JRG International set up its international base in Dubai in 2005

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and, shortly thereafter, became the first member of the Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX) to provide full-f ledged international commodity futures trading facilities to the investing public worldwide.

For an established, and fastgrowing brokerage organisation like JRG, information technology is a powerful weapon. JRG's team understands this and has already used technology to effectively innovate and provide new services for its customers.

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“One of the major achievements for us was introducing the Client Segregated Account System, which was launched in 2009 along with Emirates NBD and DGCX. With this system, customers can transfer funds to their account, instead of the broker’s account.

With this initiative, they can track better how their money is being used and can feel more comfortable with future investments. The increased transparency gives our customers the security they require with financial transactions,” says

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Sajith Kumar, director and CEO of JRG International.

JRG also found that with the financial downturn and market volatility customers were finding it hard to move investments out of the country.

"Investors can move funds using a SWIFT transfer, but that can take upto 24 hours. To address this, we launched a service along with the UAE Exchange, where customers are provided with an investor card. They can use this card to easily remit funds for near-instant transfer anywhere in the world through an UAE Exchange branch," states Kumar.

On the home front, JRG was handling their IT needs inhouse.

“We were handling our needs via servers in our own data centre.

However, we found that our service levels had to be really high to meet the requirements of trading customers. They cannot afford to have a break in their activity. Such an incident would affect confidence - something that is difficult to win back,” says Kumar.

After due consideration, JRG decided to outsource its IT needs, especially since this would mean a drastic reduction in the manpower necessary to run internal requirements. Considering market players, JRG decided to go with e-Hosting DataFort (EHDF).

“EHDF was mainly choosen because of the connectivity options they provided, their location opposite DGCX, and relevant proximity to resources whereby any issues can be resolved quickly. We were also provided with high uptime availability and the deal would also help us reduce operational costs,” says Kumar.

He adds, “In 2005, our infrastructure started off with just one server. But now four servers are hosted at EHDF. They handle all the hardware, closely monitor the servers and prevent any failures from taking place. They also manage the operating system. Certain applications and relevant upgrades are also handled

by EHDF. All this is essential since our investors have to be constantly informed and connected during trading.”

About JRG International JRG International is licenced with and regulated by Emirates Securities & Commodities Authority (ESCA) and Dubai Multi-Commodities Centre (DMCC). In addition to the above memberships, JRG International is an active Member of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce. JRG is also involved with industry conferences, roundtables and panel discussions that cater to the global financial services sector.

In 2008, in coordination with DGCX, JRG International initiated and executed the world’s first delivery of steel futures contracts. Under the strong leadership and guidance of JRG International’s management team, which is comprised of seasoned financial experts with a wealth of industry knowledge, JRG International became the first DGCX brokerage house to launch a set of cuttingedge, bilingual (English & Arabic) internet and mobile trading platforms that enable global investors to do real-time trading directly with DGCX -- anytime, anywhere.

Today, JRG International is a recognised brokerage house known for providing personalised, hands-on professional service, support, and education so that clients can diversify their portfolios by investing in a wide array of alternative products offered by DGCX. As an active DGCX Member, JRG International has been ranked as one of the top 10 leading brokerage and clearing firms ever since JRG International’s inception.

Apart from its typical day-to-day operations, JRG International is an active liquidity provider for the DGCX Market. DGCX publishes JRG International’s bilingual (English & Arabic) research reports in its weekly newsletter.

JRG International offers a diverse range of DGCX Commodity Futures, including, gold, currencies, crude oil, silver, and steel futures, with electronic trading accessible from anywhere in the world.

As per the co-location management agreement that JRG currently holds with EHDF, the service provider also hosts the main trading platform on behalf of JRG. Tape storage is used to back-up critical data, and duplicate tapes are housed in JRG headquarters.

Touching new heights EHDF has been a business-effective investment for JRG. Kumar believes though that redundancy in connectivity, especially on the lines going into the facility, is necessary in order to remove any doubts about connection failures.

However, he remains confident that the service provider will put in extra efforts to provide them with the desired connectivity and disaster recovery options as JRG's requirements grow.

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JRG is investing continuously in growth-oriented activities. It has a separate office that is focused on software development, apart from its sales and marketing offices situated in the UAE. It is also looking to spread across the region, with an office coming up in Oman in the near future.

All of these need to be backed by investments in the IT space.

“We decide on IT budgets on an annual basis in January every year. This is mostly based on the business projects that we will be undertaking during any particular year. In 2011, we will be looking into building more redundancy into our operations and also providing great connectivity between our trading servers hosted in areas outside the region,” concludes Kumar.

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Green printing in office

believes in ECOSYS

Advertorial

Saving resources in the office really is not that difficult at all, nor does it need to cost a lot of money. An easy way of achieving a reduction in paper usage, for instance, is to send documents by email instead of by fax. Another simple way of saving resources is printing and copying documents double-sided (duplex) or merging two or even four pages into one page using the so-called N-Up function. Duplex printing is available as standard on most of our current printers, and N-in-1 is always available to our end users since it is a standard feature of our KX driver. This will reduce paper consumption (and in the case of N-Up, toner) and therefore cut expenses. With the wide, easy-to-follow touch displays of KYOCERA MFPs and the user-friendly, comprehensive KYOCERA KX printer driver, activating these functionalities is just a matter of one click. To actually start using these ecological features calls for a change in attitude though. Office workers have to get used to thinking twice before they print a document, and their awareness of their consumption of resources (paper, toner, electricity) in the office needs to grow.

In addition to using these simple tricks, people can resort to the solutions we offer. Our product portfolio includes applications like KMnet Admin, KMNET for Accounting, KYOcount and KYOcontrol. These solutions are available for print volume monitoring and cost allocation so as to encourage people to print less or at least print more efficiently.

To save resources on a management level, it would greatly benefit the environment if businesses dealt with the purchasing of their office equipment in a different way. In larger organisations, it can often be seen that different budget holders are involved in the purchase of equipment, with the Finance Manager being responsible for the payment of the initial purchasing expenses of the devices; the Facility Manager being responsible for the maintenance contract and the purchasing of consumables; the IT Manager in charge of connecting the new devices to the existing network. Each of these parties has their own interests and priorities when it comes to the selection and purchasing of devices, and there is often a conflict between them. It would make more sense if these decision makers would team up. One reason for this is that the Total Cost of Ownership of printers has to be calculated using all the elements involved: the initial machine price; running costs including supply costs like toner containers, toner cartridges and maintenance costs; electricity expenses; network management costs; and loss by machine downtime. If decision makers teamed up, they would be able to use each other’s expertise; look at a device from different angles and thus make a more balanced purchasing decision.

Similarly, it would also help if organisations tried to think more long-term and selected their office equipment on different grounds than they have done so far. More often than not, a device’s purchasing price is the decisive factor in the purchasing process, whereas both the environment and businesses would be much better off if a device’s running costs were taken into account too. A device with low running costs can often be seen to have been designed with long-life materials that save organisations money and at the same time significantly reduce the device’s environmental impact. Thanks to the long-life components of such a device, it is more reliable, which means less downtime

and lower maintenance costs. In the case of KYOCERA devices it even means that there is only one consumable to be replaced – toner.

This is because the toner of KYOCERA printers is separate from the drum and developing unit. Conventional laser printers use an imaging cartridge containing the drum, developer and toner in a single, disposable unit. When the toner is finished, the entire cartridge must be disposed of and replaced with a new unit, which represents a huge amount of waste and unnecessary cost. KYOCERA printers only require the toner container to be replaced, which results in fewer wasted parts at each toner exchange. Standard KYOCERA MITA toner containers have just four components as opposed to, for example, the 60 parts contained in an average competitor’s toner cartridge.

The fact that toner is the only consumable required by KYOCERA printers is a result of the extremely long lifetime of the components used in KYOCERA devices. The drum for instance is incredibly robust, giving it a service life that is 30 times longer than the conventional drums of other manufacturers, which are encased in fast-wearing plastic. On average, conventional drums wear out after printing between 4,000 and 12,000 pages, meaning that the cartridge has to be replaced up to 30 times in other vendor’s printer’s lifetime. KYOCERA drums, however, are designed to last the lifetime of the printer.

The toner-only design of KYOCERA printers is an integral part of our unique ECOSYS concept, which we introduced in 1992. ECOSYS is our core product concept and it covers three elements: ECOnomy, low cost per page printing and low Total Costs of Ownership (TCO); ECOlogy, no environmentally harmful cartridge to be discarded; and SYStem solutions, using modular designs with options to meet varied requirements and connectivity to all known network environments. Recognition for the environmental benefits of ECOSYS has come from all over the world, including the Nordic Swan award in Scandinavia and the renowned Blue Angel award in Germany.

Again, people’s behaviour, attitudes and mindsets need to change. Home users, corporations, government organisations and businesses need to be convinced of the benefits of going green, which vary from benefits on a smaller scale, i.e. advantages of going green for the organisation itself, to benefits on a global scale, i.e. long-term advantages for the earth and the future generations that will inhabit it. Going green does not necessarily require a huge effort. There are many quick and easy ways of reducing energy consumption and saving our planet’s natural resources. And what is more, the environmental benefits of green behaviour often go hand in hand with financial benefits. German car manufacturer BMW for instance established considerable output cost reductions by having their entire device fleet (consisting of 17,000 devices) analysed, reorganised and centralised by KYOCERA printers and MFPs, resulting in a 60% saving on installation, administration and service expenses. According to market researcher Gartner, printing and copying costs correspond to one to three percent of the turnover. The exact output costs of an organization are often not known, but it is almost certain that they include a huge potential to decrease expenses. Up to 30 percent of an organization’s output costs could be saved by optimizing their output device fleet, Gartner says.* As we say at KYOCERA MITA, ecology is economy!

For further information, please contact KYOCERA MITA Middle East on +971 4 433 0412 or www.kyoceramita.ae

feature: data centre management

Getting more Regional enterprises are building more data centres, and as they continue to invest in infrastructure the need to run them at optimal levels becomes ever-more critical. CNME looks at the issues that enterprises face with data centre management and analyses how they can achieve more.

The data centre is no longer

just one simple server room in one building. It is co-located, hosted by service providers, virtualised, in the cloud and housed in so many places enterprises can get lost where the primary ends and the disaster recovery begins. In this growing complexity of technology and people, it is essential for enterprises to ensure that they have the right amount of visibility and management into solutions and processes at all points in time.

“As the complexity within the data centre increases, and the cost of resources to manage them increase, so does the need for optimised data centre management become more critical. I believe that most data centres in the region are still utilising manual management of server and storage infrastructure, which leads to much higher costs than companies who are utilising a fully integrated management framework,” says Margaret Adam, research director for IT services in the MEA region for research firm IDC.

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“As companies grow and expand, the need to manage IT resources grows exponentially. It is very tempting to go down the tactical, silo route where you need dedicated consoles for each element of your infrastructure, but unless you keep track of the big picture, you will end up with a lot of overlap and duplication of effort. When you are a medium sized company with a single site, you can get away with four or five management interfaces, but once you start to add in extra sites and a wider variety of platforms, it can rapidly snowball if you don’t take proactive steps to maintain a certain level of control,”

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says Anthony Harrison, senior principal solutions specialist for storage and server management at Symantec.

John Stadden, director of sales and business development for storage solutions at Fujitsu Technology Solutions agrees, saying, “As businesses in the Middle East grow, effective management is needed for immediate increase in the data centre’s reliability and scalability, along with competent IT staffing for operating, monitoring and maintaining your system. Most importantly, effective management of your data centre allows you to concentrate on your own core business, improving your core services

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for greater profitability, reduce your information technology cost and risks, especially in the case of IT manpower.”

Agreeing that management is key to achieving the most out of a networking data centres is one thing, investing in solutions and applying practices to achieve the same is a different story altogether.

Walking the talk “Processes, solutions and technology are tools to deliver savings, improvements and agility. Many consolidation efforts, though, actually cause application performance to drop away, necessitating remedial action – for instance chopping down the number of servers, but forgetting about that middle layer— proxy, caching and SSL—potentially leaving an environment at least as complex as the one it meant to replace,” says Diego Arrabal, regional director for the Middle East at F5 Networks.

There are plenty of management solutions in the market (and more coming up everyday) that promise to run and maintain data centres for enterprises with absolute ease. However, the truth is that effective management lies not just with the solution that organisations choose. In fact, true management often lies with many other aspects, including the people and processes.

As Fujitsus Stadden states, “Competent IT staff and an effective monitoring solution should be in place internally in order to get the maximum benefits from your data centre investment.”

“Ideally companies need to view data centre management from a number of angles - monitoring, policy

Points to choosing a management solution • Business requirements and success metrics need to be carefully defined by both IT and business decision makers.

• The service requirements discussion needs to include security, risk management and operational policies as well as clearly defined service level agreements. By defining business needs as services, it is easier to make apples to apples comparisons.

• The key point that cannot be stressed enough is to focus on the outcome— and a strategic outcome at that. Consolidating your data centre estate for the sake of short or medium term RoI is a blind alley • Any management solution being considered should be checked against effective management of deployed IT infrastructure, capabilities to handle faults, scalability to integrate newer pieces of hardware or solutions , etc.

• Enterprises need to look at solutions that meet their growing needs.

• They need to look at their existing infrastructure and the evolution plans for the datacentre including future services such as SaaS or PaaS as well as any technology partnerships that could be put in place.

• The ability to support any new solution and train existing personnel on its operation should be also taken into consideration before any buying decision.

• As with many other aspects of business, this is a journey not a destination, so being able to claim, perhaps, a certain accreditation or a successful implementation of a methodology does not in itself bring benefits.

based automation (in a virtualised environment), governance, risk management, asset management and process based IT service management (such as ITIL) and service assurance.

There are a multitude of tools available within each of these areas, but it would be dependent on the existing environment and levels of virtualisation.

Companies are also advised to look very carefully at their operational costs and should consider outsourcing

“Everyone underestimates the cultural impact of management solutions that on the one hand promise efficiency (which the managers like) and on the other hand, threaten the very existence of other roles (such as those handson administrators).”

the management of parts of their infrastructure via a managed services type model, and build in the service level management of these engagements into their broader management framework.

Interoperability is essential within each of these areas and companies are advised to carefully evaluate, with a longer term strategy in mind, when choosing the tools or platforms to support their broader management framework,” points out IDC’s Adam.

“Next generation architectures and solutions offer innovative approaches to management. However, they will fall short without the proper processes and skilled staff in place. In brief effective management is a combination of technologies, processes, and qualified personnel,” states Tarek Abbas, systems engineering director at Juniper Networks MEA.

The path to failure The above is no rocket science. It is well

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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST

27

feature: data centre management

documented and understood that data centre management is not just about the solution. However, many Middle East enterprises continue to fail with effective data centre management, leaving infrastructure to operate at less than optimal strength, due to several factors.

Says Symantec’s Harrsion, “Everyone underestimates the cultural impact of management solutions that on the one hand promise efficiency (which the managers like) and on the other hand, threaten the very existence of other roles (such as those hands-on administrators).

Communication is critical to the success of any project like this and any time

Margaret Adam, research director for IT services in the MEA region for research firm IDC

spent building the business case with all stakeholders will pay off well in the medium to long run. You need to describe the benefits to all parties – admins will concentrate on policies and repeatability to increase efficiency, managers will have a more consistent delivery of their services that means they have happier internal customers. Vendors can describe how other customers used the technology to support their own efficiency drives, but at the end of the day, it is down to each organisation to take control of its own direction and strategy and decide how quickly and to what extent it wants to rollout these kind of management tools and their supporting processes.”

“The majority fail in either achieving the data centre competencies or failing to maintain/retain those competencies which in turn leads to the degradation of critical data centre procedures/processes which eventually leads to a perfectly effective and competently designed solution failing to meet the business expectation,” says Stadden.

Middle East enterprises are also constantly challenged by the lack of skilled personnel who can reliably run multiple data centres.

As Juniper’s Abbas points out, “Shortages in qualif ied, experienced and trained personnel have always existed in fast growing emerging markets. This impacts both the usage

“The focus for data centre optimisation, whether of process or infrastructure, should be how a centralised solution can provide a unified way to access those applications for all users—whether they be from a remote office, home office, or on the move. Taking this wider view changes the way in which the optimisation effort is viewed, and in doing so provides unique measures of RoI for the business as a whole.”

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january 2011

Anthony Harrison, senior principal solutions specialist for storage and server management at Symantec

of solutions and the implementation of people processes.”

Adam states, “It depends on the individual organisations. Companies with more legacy have more challenges in terms of operating their data centres, whilst those with a new data centre or greenfield investment, are able to build in automation and virtualisation up front.

There is a tendency in the region to try to "go-it-alone" or wholly rely on internal resources for management, which is not only more expensive but also does not allow organisations to take advantage of more sophisticated service delivery mechanisms that a third party provider could potentially provide.”

She continues, “In general, the concept of IT Service Management is still fairly immature here, but companies are starting to look a lot more seriously at areas such as ITIL and even, to a limited extent, SOA and we have seen increased adoption of managed services, particularly in terms of outsourcing the management of the infrastructure within a data centre (particularly the network) and disaster recovery sites. The challenge of people/process implementation is not unique to the region but is something that really can impact the effectiveness of a management solution. Without careful planning in terms of implementation, the full benefit of these investments can be muted.”

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feature: data centre management

John Stadden, director of sales and business development for storage solutions at Fujitsu Technology Solutions

Getting more consistently Though an alarming number of regional enterprises continue to fail miserably with data centre management, the truth is that there still exists today multiple opportunities to ensure that infrastructure and applications function the way they should in server rooms.

“The most important thing is to have the strategy control the management tools and not the other way around.

From the ground up, you will have the admin teams championing their favourites based on familiarity or resumé potential, but from the top down, you will have the overall IT strategy (eg single-vendor versus dual-vendor) and the mandate to optimise. We are seeing more companies aspiring to standards for availability and uptime, and these are increasingly difficult to achieve without comprehensive management tools in place to allow you to be proactive and avoid as many problems as possible,” states Harrsion.

“Process engineering to minimise human errors, streamline operations and enable new services should be carefully considered to gain the best out of data centres. Experienced personnel should be hired and trained on latest technologies, solutions and procedures to proactively stay ahead of the curve,” says Abbas.

It is also critical for enterprises to

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understand RoI propositions (especially when it comes to multi-faceted management issues) and to assess the same as a continuous process to gain more from every investment.

F5’s Arrabal says, “The focus for data centre optimisation, whether of process or infrastructure, should be how a centralised solution can provide a unified way to access those applications for all users—whether they be from a remote office, home office, or on the move.

Taking this wider view changes the way in which the optimisation effort is viewed, and in doing so provides unique measures of ROI for the business as a whole, solving multiple problems within the organisation that go way beyond centralising your kit.”

He continues, “To get here, it’s critical to benchmark the performance and usability of the application prior to consolidation. This allows you to judge whether your efforts have delivered similar or improved performance. If the performance is comparable, your ROI is based simply on the lower Opex of having the consolidated environment.

Should you increase performance, then your ROI can also include efficiency metrics such as: solution reduces application access by x seconds, y times across z number of employees. This can be taken against a payroll metric and

Tarek Abbas, systems engineering director at Juniper Networks MEA

represent real dollars of time that are now available for other work.”

With the current technology, CIOs of regional enterprises have ample chances to overcome the obstacles that they might face to manage their data centres the way they should be managed. However, there are no short cuts to achieving this.

Optimised data centre management is a product of very hard work with smarts to back it up. The tools exist. The question is, are IT teams in Middle East enterprises ready to put in the effort to obtain the results that they need?

The tools exist. The question is, are IT teams in Middle East enterprises ready to put in the effort to obtain the results that they need?

january 2011

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vertical focus: Healthcare

Medical institutions across the region are implementing and using technology solutions to increasingly digitise information, improve patient care and make themselves more attractive to medical tourists. CNME examines this trend in the first of a two-part series on healthcare in the region.

Healthy choices 32

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Healthcare is big in the

Middle East.

The industry, which was not a major player in the economy of the region up until even five years back, has grown in leaps and bounds over the recent time frame to become one of the bigger investors in ICT solutions in the region.

As governments across the Middle East recognise the huge potential that medical tourism offers as a continuing source of money f low, the entire healthcare industry is only likely to increase its spend on technology as institutions work to make themselves world-class in service delivery.

“There is a desire to have the Middle East recognised as a world leading provider in the healthcare space and this is certainly true in their investment aspirations. However, this does come at a cost and in some cases we see a requirement for best of breed systems, but with the desire to pay less than premium rates for these products. As a result, the region is a mixed bag of equipment requirements – ranging from Tier 1 facilities with very advanced requirements, to primary healthcare facilities where just the basics have to be provided. One distinct requirement in the region is the demand for Arabic characters and language capability on the user interface,” says Lindsey McDonald, consultant, ICT practice for the MENA at Frost and Sullivan.

Almost everybody – both within and outside the industry – believe that there is a constant and critical need for data storage and information sharing between entire healthcare institutions, patients and ministries in this geography.

As Guru Prasad, GM for strategic alliances at FVC puts it, “In a region where resources are still limited in terms of facilities and skills, there is a constant demand for knowledge sharing and information sharing.”

“The Economist magazine recently highlighted in an article that there is a growing global awareness that the region is focused on delivering world-class health services. While other markets may be looking to convert from paper patient records or images stored on film, much of the GCC has already made the change to electronic health (eHealth) systems. The focus is now on leveraging these eHealth systems as the foundation for transformative collaborative care across a city, within a given country and in collaboration with medical partners globally,” states Adam Chilcote, healthcare business development manager at Cisco.

Healthcare is not a single entity – there are various segmentations possible within the breadth of the industry.

This is especially true in a region where infrastructure varies significantly every 100km. While remote medicine demands its own set of solutions and supporting

“There is a desire to have the Middle East recognised as a world leading provider in the healthcare space and this is certainly true in their investment aspirations. However, this does come at a cost and in some cases we see a requirement for best of breed systems, but with the desire to pay less than premium rates for these products. As a result, the region is a mixed bag of equipment requirements.”

january 2011

back-end, the institutions that we are most likely to interact with (ie., most hospitals and other stationary healthcare institutions) in the region are working hard to implement solutions that will enable them to provide better patient services and thereby make them more of a pertinent choice for visitors.

These include efforts to digitise all information f low, enabling efficient data storage and security, sharing this information across multiple parties, as well as enabling employees with devicelevel technology additions that pulland-push information from them to the central systems of the medical institution.

With all these multiple needs growing in the region, vendors are falling over themselves to push the right solutions to healthcare end-users.

“The patient and caregiver always come first. As such, Cisco is focused on delivering solutions in five key areas – patient experience, clinical workf low, care-at-a-distance, healthcare systems and application integration, and healthcare technology foundations,” states Chilcote.

“Fujitsu has been working with several healthcare companies in the Middle East. We have solutions specific to healthcare requirements like Slate PCs for doctors, thin and zero clients, etc, which are backed by 24 x 7 service due to the criticality of operations. For the infrastructure side, Fujitsu offers dynamic infrastructure based computing based on our Primergy servers and virtualisation technologies in the market, and have deployed all across the Middle East many HIS , PACS systems, etc,” says Zia ul Haq Syed, director, client service department at Fujitsu Technology Solutions.

There are also quite a few vendors in the market offering solutions that cover everything from management to remote communication.

Ali Hyder, CEO of Focus SoftNet says, “Focus Softnet now offers complete solutions for hospital management, lab management and clinic management.

As part of our strategy to add vertical – specific solutions we have taken exclusive

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vertical focus: Healthcare

rights of Insta HMS, an affordable and easy-to-use end-to-end hospital management solution, which is fully integrated with our ERP.” FVC’s Prasad adds, “We offer, through our authorised partners, a complete range of video conferencing solutions for healthcare applications, including Polycom’s Immersive Telepresence technology that enable medical professionals to provide patients access to the best care regardless of time or distance constraints. In addition, we have solutions from Barracuda, TippingPoint and several other key vendors that help these medical institutions comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).”

“In most medical facilities, thousands of patients’ medical records have been digitised and put on the network, making it more efficient to operate and collaborate amongst healthcare organisations, yet increasing the need to implement the most stringent and comprehensive information technology security solutions to maintain privacy and confidentiality of these records.

Fortinet addresses these through its database security and compliance products, offering centrally-managed, enterprise-scale, database hardening; fast, comprehensive policy compliance; vulnerability assessment; and database monitoring and auditing for improved data security across the enterprise.

Database auditing records all database activity for complete and accurate audit trails along with comprehensive

Apart from a lack of reliable staff, there are elements related to technology selection, implementation and usage itself that become possible minefields for healthcare institutions.

graphical reporting compliant with related regulations such as HIPAA and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS),” adds Bashar Bashiereh, regional director for Fortinet Middle East.

Def initely the solutions exist for hospitals and other healthcare facilities in the region to capitalise on technology and take them to the next level of patient care. However, there are some specif ic challenges that these institutions have to deal with and overcome, before they can get from the full benef it of their investments.

“Domain knowledge and the availability of specialised resources has been a problem.

Moreover there are a dearth of providers that offer managed services to healthcare from a solutions perspective to meet the rapidly growing demand of technology proliferation in healthcare.”

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Identifying the problem “Almost all of the countries in the region have publicly stated that there is a great need to digitise and implement advanced solutions within the healthcare market. An example of this commitment is a country such as Oman which implemented health information Management systems years ago and has been internationally recognised by the United Nations for its efforts in this area. Similarly the government of Saudi Arabia has committed itself to healthcare reform and the effective utilisation of technology is a central part of this process.

The UAE is no exception to this trend and there is now greater emphasis on the importance of data in the healthcare field,” says McDonald.

She acknowledges though that medical institutions also have to constantly battle issues not entirely related to technology.

“A lack of specialised industry knowledge and support is often cited as the biggest challenge faced by healthcare providers. They want to be assured that their vendors really understand their business and operations. This is not always evident and there is a lack of skilled personnel to work in the healthcare ICT space,” she says.

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vertical focus: Healthcare

Prasad agrees, adding, “Domain knowledge and the availability of specialised resources has been a problem. Moreover there are a dearth of providers that offer managed services to healthcare from a solutions perspective to meet the rapidly growing demand of technology proliferation in healthcare.

More needs to be done in educating employees and contractors on data privacy and standards in protecting customer and patient information.”

Apart from a lack of reliable staff, there are elements related to technology selection, implementation and usage itself that become possible minefields for healthcare institutions.

Hyder points out, “Most of the doctors and nurses complain that the hospital IT systems are complex and not so easy to use. That is why they revert to paper and pen as that is the simplest way of recording data. The software companies need to provide them with as simple a solution as possible. Companies like Focus Softnet are also working on using newer iPad-like devices and offering easier customisation tools for data entry by individual doctors.”

Cisco’s Chilcote says, “Healthcare is about people, which means that technology, by nature, is only a part of any healthcare solution. Middle East healthcare enterprises face the task of selecting business and technology partners who are not only capable of delivering a product or solution, but who also understand the unique needs, global best practices and challenges of the local healthcare industry. All too often a solution looks great on paper or in a demonstration, but in practice is found to be cumbersome or incompatible with the healthcare institution’s approach to patient care.”

The inevitable path Despite these challenges all medical institutions across the region will inevitably move towards increased adoption of technology – whether it is in digitising existing information, sharing more data between similar organisations, centralising information repositories in government departments, enabling

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“As the remaining healthcare providers across the region move from paper and film to e-health systems, we will continue to see a strong push for integration and interoperability. This includes both between internal healthcare systems and applications as well as between entire healthcare institutions.” remote data access for hospital staff or using state-of-the-art systems at the backend for increased stability.

As Chilcote points out, “As the remaining healthcare providers across the region move from paper and film to e-health systems, we will continue to see a strong push for integration and interoperability. This includes both between internal healthcare systems and applications as well as between healthcare institutions. There is a growing understanding across the spectrum of healthcare providers that maximum quality of care gains and cost reduction can be best realized by breaking down the barriers created by unconnected systems as well as geographic distances.”

He continues, “The region is well on the way to full digitised care.

Most major hospitals have made the transition and have begun to realise the benefits: reduced waste, lowered costs, improvements in patient care and increased caregiver satisfaction. On the path from paper and film to digital records, we are seeing a significant push from local and regional government to ensure that records are shared between healthcare institutions. This ensures that patients can gain consistent care across the region, eliminates the need to recreate costly tests because patient histories from any connected hospital are available and creates a patient-centric approach to care delivery.”

As stationary healthcare institutions

january 2011

strengthen their IT investments and usage, there is also a rising interest in remote medicine or tele-medicine in certain parts of the region. As general access to and state of facilities for healthcare improve, far-f lung areas of the region or areas where infrastructure constraints exist are trying to capitalise on improvements in other geographies by obtaining medical information from diagnosis to suggested cures remotely.

“The evolution of technology solutions in healthcare is very rapid and every aspect of patient care right from hospital systems, treatment systems to monitoring systems have seen major adoption of automated systems which are integrated. While intrinsic systems are well established, e-patient services are fast evolving. Furthermore the use of visual collaboration for tele-medicine is being adopted to leverage resources or lack thereof, says Prasad.”

The technologies, processes, people and challenges involved in tele-medicine are a different kettle of fish altogether.

But they are becoming an increasingly important element of healthcare in the Middle East, and is definitely with another story altogether.

Next issue: Read the second part of our healthcare series in the February issue where we will be discussing the state of remote and tele-medicine in the region in extensive detail.

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feature: ERP

Social media meets ERP The time has come to stop fighting the tide towards social media and instead harness its power within the enterprise. ERP is the natural place for social media tools to enter. Building social mediatype enterprise 2.0 functionality into ERP will eliminate potential security risks and productivity drains.

There is a movement taking

place in the IT industry that is really driven by major consumer technology vendors including Apple, Google and Facebook. What these three companies do is really starting to set the tone for what people expect from a software application. The expectations of a software application may have historically centered around its ability to solve business problems or to enable specific types of transactions or management processes.

Today, the software application is expected to let users communicate and interact with each other the way that they can on Facebook. Organic and guided search as found on Google is also

expected, as is the intuitive usability of the iPad. In fact, employees and managers of most any business are already communicating with each other through various Web 2.0 technologies — the problem being that all of this communication is taking place outside the bounds of formal and secure IT systems.

While some business software companies work to integrate their offerings directly with online tools like Twitter or Facebook, the real business benefits will come from enterprise resources planning (ERP) and other enterprise software that mimics the functionality of these popular online tools. This serves to improve internal

While some business software companies work to integrate their offerings directly with online tools like Twitter or Facebook, the real business benefits will come from enterprise resources planning (ERP) and other enterprise software that mimics the functionality of these popular online tools.

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communication and pull company business currently taking place outside of ERP systems back into the enterprise.

Security’s role One primary deliverable of an ERP solution is the enhanced data and organisational security that result from access to company data being strictly controlled. Security is also provided by the ERP's ability to control which individuals within a company can complete various business tasks and processes and by the ability to track, after the fact, transactions that have taken place.

When technologies or individuals circumvent ERP, these security measures are rendered ineffective.

Building social media-type enterprise 2.0 functionality into ERP will leverage the inherent security benefits of the ERP system. Furthermore, the security of social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and various instant messaging services is not as robust as that of a 21st century ERP system. If executives are using these public tools to discuss mission-critical matters, this increases the risk profile of the organisation on a number of levels.

Using social media can compromise the ability to ensure that critical and

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2.0 ERP may be one of the best tools to capture and retain the knowledge of senior, expert, professionals and technicians — intellectual capital that would otherwise have been lost.

Lean on Wikis One consistent principle of lean initiatives is documentation of change over time. As processes and practices within the organisation change, it is necessary to record how things are done, why they are done that way and the resulting outcome.

By structuring the software documentation as a wiki, it becomes possible to document not only how the ERP software is being used, but the processes it is used to execute. The wiki format automates the lean mandate to document process change. As processes are altered, the wiki is updated, leaving a full history of when and how the process was changed and the results that ensued.

Wikis can also reduce the amount of value added work spent looking for information or trying to determine the proper process to follow in a particular situation. They can have an immediate and understandable impact on the amount of training required to use an ERP solution and to learn the processes within a company, speeding the time to value following a new hire. potentially damaging information is not accessed by unauthorised people, in addition, the preservation of content from conversations for legal and regulatory purposes is at risk. Free public social media on its face presents a challenge because the technology and your enterprise data are housed on servers through a licence that may be poorly understood or subject to change without notice.

Knowledge retention Building social media functionality into an ERP platform will also help ensure that employees using Web 2.0 tools like instant messaging or wikis are not leaving their working context and are likely to remain more productive.

Harder to quantify but also important

is the degree to which the workforce enjoys the tool they are using. Intuitive communication tools like enterprise 2.0 can cause workers to more closely follow updates about what is going on within the company — even when they are not at the office.

This dynamic can cut the other way as well. Intuitive enterprise 2.0 tools can make it more likely that workers will share information with others, increasing the degree of intellectual capital entering an ERP solution.

Within much of the developed world, the number of people of working age is actually decreasing. This trend is hitting some industries — including utilities, process manufacturing and other complex engineering-intensive fields — harder than others. Enterprise

january 2011

Selecting ERP with Enterprise 2.0 Once you have determined that enterprise 2.0 holds real value for your business, there are a few factors to take into consideration.

Without question, the most important consideration is integration.

Social media functionality that stands apart from ERP or lacks very tight integration with the platform as a whole will not deliver true enterprise 2.0 benefits. This integration needs to work both ways. You need to be able to search conversations and other social media data quickly so you can determine who said what to who and when they said it. You also need to be able to link any object in the application freely with

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feature: ERP

social media conversations. This allows discussions regarding customer orders, for instance, to be tied in with the relevant functionality in the application, or a question about a particular customer invoice can be linked directly to the correct document.

Integration with the application at large is also important when it comes to ensuring that wikis and other organic data structures that are a part of enterprise 2.0 allow you to truly see how your company operates and how things get done. When unstructured data like conversations and wikis are embedded directly in the working environment, your company can become a learning organisation that absorbs and retains the wisdom and collective decisions of executives, managers and employees in a comprehensible and actionable format.

It is also important to ensure that an ERP product with embedded enterprise 2.0 features addresses both types of social media communication — synchronous communication and asynchronous communication.

Synchronous communication includes things that happen in real time like instant messaging, chat, IP telephony and the like. Asynchronous communication includes tools that allow users to "time lag," including wikis, blogs and message boards. Each is useful under different circumstances.

Oftentimes, someone will first use synchronous communication to an individual or two to get an answer immediately and then, if questions still exist or clarity is lacking, they will broadcast their question using asynchronous communication to solicit feedback or thoughts from a group.

Particularly valuable synchronous communication tools allow a user to instantly communicate with any individual in the system including internal and external contacts like a customer or supplier. This is driven by a customisable contact card, and benefits f low to the organisation as each conversation or contact is documented.

This organisational memory can, for

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Building social media functionality into an ERP platform will also help ensure that employees using Web 2.0 tools like instant messaging or wikis are not leaving their working context and are likely to remain more productive. Harder to quantify but also important is the degree to which the workforce enjoys the tool they are using. instance, improve customer service as a discussion about a customer order is clearly visible to others that might interact with that customer, allowing for exponentially greater responsiveness and a more satisfied customer.

Asynchronous communication features in ERP are ideal for those situations where you have a question but are not expecting a real-time answer.

They scale particularly well to a group, and a number of people can contribute thoughts on a topic or collaborate on documentation over an indefinite period

january 2011

of time. Asynchronous communication tools of this type are very similar to Facebook, where you can post an update about a new smartphone that you have purchased along with questions about how to configure it. Your techsavvy friends, wanting to show their knowledge as well as be of service, readily chime in with specific and detailed directions.

Another killer asynchronous communication feature is to structure help text as a wiki. This allows users to change the help text and augment

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feature: ERP

it with documentation of the business process f low they are automating. This lets you become a learning organisation and, in a more immediate and practical sense, gives you the organisational memory to avoid making the same mistakes twice. As stated earlier, using the wiki to record your processes can also support lean process change documentation requirements.

Most of us have found that social media tools are extremely effective tools when it comes to facilitating communication. However, they are so powerful that many of us block access to sites like Facebook from our offices.

The time has come to stop fighting the tide towards social media and instead harness its power within the enterprise. As the system of record

Middle East shift ERP and CRM are no longer just any old software in the region. From devising the RFP to demanding essential training when it comes to implementation and post-deployment support, enterprises are getting smarter with their ERP and CRM choices.

“There have been big changes in the way enterprises demand and use ERP/ CRM solutions. The change is more for the mid-level ERP segment as against the top tier. More and more enterprises now want an integrated BI/CRM which wasn’t the case earlier. Over the years, both the users and IT managers, who deploy the solution, have gained the experience of what to expect and demand from the ERP system. Hence, they now demand greater flexibility as well as predictive analysis as against just generic requirements in the past,” says Ali Hyder, CEO of FocusSoftnet.

Shaheen Haque, territory manager for Middle East and Turkey at Interactive Intelligence states, “Customers are already smart! They are getting closely involved from reference visits to actively participating in installations with the vendor engineers. Long gone are the days where the customer is a spectator in the solution…now they form a crucial part off the whole process. It is not unheard of these days for customer engineers to have the same skill-set and knowledge of the vendor solution compare to the delivering partner or the vendor themselves.”

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What is more, many regional enterprises are beginning to realise that there are viable alternatives to traditional ERP software and are beginning to invest in them.

“Some organisations are interested in leasing options. This becomes a difficult proposition since most of the solutions are customised to the customers’ needs.

The out of the box solutions for a given vertical industry just cannot meet the local needs. In some instances, we need to provide the local language support, which is largely missing in packaged solutions,” says Vikram Suri, MD at Sage Software ME. While many options are being seriously considered, increasingly many of them centre on the over-arcing theme of software-as-a-service (SaaS), and vendors (especially smaller ones) are beginning to respond to tap into the changing dynamic.

“We see a very strong demand for SaaS/cloud in the region in the near future and we are developing all our future strategies based on this. We provide customers with two options on SaaS. The first option is standard preimplemented solution, which means customers have to sign only for the subscription license and they don’t pay any implementation charges. We sign such agreements for a minimum period of 24 months as any time frame lesser than this is not viable for us to provide installation and training services. Our

january 2011

within a company, ERP is the natural place for social media tools to enter.

Enterprise 2.0 features will result in increased utilisation of ERP, increasing the amount and quality of information available to managers and executives.

It will also eliminate potential security risks and productivity drains that result when employees use public social media sites to facilitate business discussions.

second option is full customisation and implementation services along with subscription. In this model, the customer has to pay implementation charges along with agreement of 12 months for subscription,” says Hyder.

Haque adds, “With the global uptake of SaaS or for us, CaaS(Communications as a Service) based solutions increasing in leaps and bounds, we have about 80% of our solution set available for delivery in this mode. We are looking to make available as much of our core solution as possible within the CaaS model so customers with capex issues or just wish to have a hassle free service can also benefit from the unique features of our solution suite.”

SaasS-based ERP and CRM solutions are beginning to gain mindspace in the Middle East. However, some key vendors like Sage’s Suri believe that the market is only slowly responding in adoption levels.

“We have largely SaaS-enabled our CRM solution. However, the uptake of SaaS is low. Customers in most or almost all instances are looking for enhancements to the base CRM solution and this requires localisation.

SaaS cannot address this need. Also, we need a critical mass for SaaS to be on a local cloud,” he states.

Nevertheless, the growing interest signals a shift in market perceptions, and as more vendors increase their offerings in the space, we are likely to see more innovative ‘deployments’ of ERP and CRM in 2011.

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q&a with Cisco

Switching over The world’s best known networking vendor is no longer just a networking vendor. As it spreads its girth across everything from consumer products to web-based solutions, Cisco is becoming a name that can’t be missed anywhere in the ICT market. Tarek Ghoul, director and GM of Cisco Gulf reflects on the various product groups of the firm and talks about next steps in the region.

Q: Cisco’s network division is well established in the market. How is Cisco working to promote your other solutions in the region?

A: Across a variety of industries, Cisco works to position itself to leverage significant opportunities as the world economy recovers. Its flexible array of architectural and solution offerings is based around several key concepts that we focus on; collaboration which is driving the next wave of business growth, innovation and productivity, data centre or virtualisation architectures that allow Cisco to deliver next-generation data centre and cloud-based services, enabling a quantum leap in productivity and real-time collaboration for business and consumers, and borderless network, which is Cisco’s forward-looking architecture designed to connect anyone at any time, securely, reliably, and seamlessly. Enabling new levels of innovation, agility, growth and productivity, these solutions have a profound impact across federal and local government, health, education and public safety, transport and logistics, telecommunications, financial institutions, utilities, energy and manufacturing projects, tourism, and smart and sustainable communities. Cisco’s architectures also underlie small and medium businesses, and digital lifestyle to the home.

Q: The lack of trained personnel remains one of the areas that enterprises continue to feel the pinch in the region. How is Cisco working to rectify the lack?

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A: Studies worldwide show a gap between information and communication technology (ICT) jobs and qualified candidates to fill them. The Cisco Networking Academy is an innovative education initiative that addresses this gap by delivering IT skills training to students globally. By helping students prepare for IT careers and higher education in engineering, computer science, and related fields, Networking Academy helps students improve their career and economic opportunities and help develop their local economy.

Cisco in the Gulf has further been very aggressive in its efforts to address the networking skills shortage. With the highest in the number of graduates worldwide there are now 68,886 students enrolled in 834 academies in the Middle East in 19 countries deploying the programme. The Cisco Networking Academy was launched in 1997, and has grown from a small-scale programme designed to help schools get the most out of their networking equipment to Cisco’s largest corporate social responsibility programme, with courses taught at more than 9000 academies in 165 countries. More than 900,000 students develop ICT skills through the programme each year.

In addition to this, Cisco this month announced a series of initiatives designed to increase the Gulf region's capacity to train, employ and retain highly qualified networking and systems engineers. This initiative will enable us to scale our development of IT skills to many more people where the biggest gaps in talent

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are today. The networking community enables us to scale the development of talent globally leveraging all of Cisco’s partners and customer’s knowledge and best practices.

We will provide visibility to IT leaders in the Gulf and people coming into the profession on sources of technical knowledge as well as talent. It will allow the veterans to mentor others - share their stories and ideas about their careers and their accomplishments.

It will also draw more people into the community - help us close the gap in talent to provide visibility to global trends, hiring and resources.

Authorised Cisco Learning Solutions Partners, including Fast Lane, Global Knowledge and AcademyTech, will offer a complete range of Cisco training and certification preparation courses to students and professionals in more than 40 training centers across 31 cities throughout the region.

By designating authorised Cisco Learning Solutions Partners and by opening professional training facilities, Cisco aims to help narrow the 100,000-person gap between present employment levels and the number of networking professionals the region is projected to need by 2012.

Q: What is the status of the Cisco Entrepreneur Institute in the region? What are the future plans for the same in the Middle East?

A: Successful entrepreneurs are the largest contributors to economic development and have the potential to be the greatest source of innovation and growth. At Cisco we are

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Tarek Ghoul, director and GM of Cisco Gulf

dedicated to supporting and strengthening the efforts of entrepreneurs.

Cisco Entrepreneur Institutes support entrepreneurship worldwide by working with local government and business organisations to foster the creation and success of smalland medium-sized businesses. They provide practical business insights, tools, and technologies that lay the foundation for success. The result-oriented approach creates long-term economic and social prosperity for entrepreneurs, communities, and nations. At the same time Cisco Entrepreneur Institutes help extend Cisco’s business and social impact around the globe.

In April 2010, Cisco announced the opening of a Cisco Entrepreneur Institute Training Center in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in conjunction with Knowledge Horizon, an international knowledge transfer organisation that

promotes excellence in all aspects related to the acquisition of knowledge and skills. The Cisco Entrepreneur Institute at Knowledge Horizon offers a range of learning and business success tools through workshops, videos, simulations and an ‘Entrepreneurs Oasis’ website. Workshops will include Starting a Business; Growing a Business; iExec Enterprise Essentials and Establishing an Entrepreneurial Mindset.

Recently, the Abu Dhabi University (ADU) Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre announced that it will host its first Cisco entrepreneurship training course.

The ‘Starting a Business' course aims to give entrepreneurs practical training in the skills of how to start and run a business. The course includes various elements such as choosing the right type of business, an understanding of legal requirements, accounting, management, and marketing, and how to use a business

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plan to pull all of these elements together.

The course has been tailored to be relevant to Abu Dhabi, and the University will also have contributions from local guest speakers.

Cisco® Entrepreneur Institute and Abraaj Capital recently joined forces to support the launch of www.wamda.com, a platform created by Abraaj Capital and its subsidiary Riyada Enterprise Development (RED) to facilitate entrepreneurship in the MENASA (Middle East North Africa & South Asia) region. Through the Entrepreneur Institute, Cisco will enable entrepreneurship and small and medium business (SMBs) success in the region. As a knowledge partner of Wamda, and through its collaboration with Abraaj Capital, the Cisco Entrepreneur Institute will help build and strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.

Cisco Entrepreneur Institutes are already established in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. In the Middle East North Africa Levant (MENAL) region there are institutes in eight countries with fifteen Cisco Entrepreneur Institutes in total.

The success of entrepreneurs has significant economic and social benefits for individuals, communities and nations.

The institute fosters innovation, growth, and prosperity by working with successful entrepreneurs who share their expertise with new business owners to help them compete and thrive.

Q: What are your cloud solutions and strategy for the region?

A: Cisco envisions the next era of IT ecosystem where the networked cloud transforms the way we live, work, play and learn.

Our approach to cloud is to maximize customer choice and industry innovation.

In concert with our partners, we provide platforms, solutions and services that lever¬age the network platform to: speed time to capability and business impact; achieve transformational agility and efficiency; unlock more effective collaboration with employees, customers and partners; and enable others to build advanced function¬ality and offer innovative services.

Four core beliefs about the future of

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q&a with Cisco

cloud underpin our vision: Adoption will be motivated initially by cost and agility. The network platform is required to deliver on the full promise of cloud. Multiple approaches are required to accommodate diverse customer objectives, and innovation will flourish across the IT industry Across Cisco, we are investing and innovating to lead in four broad cloud product and service areas: Cloud-enabling Infrastructure, Cloud Applications/Services, Cloud Trust & Security solutions, and Professional Cloud services.

Cisco is delivering cloud computing capabilities on several fronts. Our communication and collaboration solutions (e.g.

SaaS and –Premise, Collaboration and Unified Communications) connect geographically dispersed organisations, communities, and individuals through rich, real-time experiences.

Cisco is the market leader in unified communication and collaboration, providing the broadest array of cloud-based applications through partner-delivered solutions.

We provide cloud-enabling solutions through our Data centre 3.0 portfolio, Unified Service Delivery, Unified Computing System and Unified Fabric. Our comprehensive security suite enables pervasive trust and security for the cloud, from the cloud and in the cloud. Cisco’s Professional Cloud services help our customers build, operate and transfer private, public and hybrid clouds. Cisco Services provides world class expertise and proven delivery capability.

We are working among industry leaders like VMware, EMC and Netapp with standardisation bodies to bring standards to the market to allow our vision of cloud computing to be recognised. This can potentially offer great advantages in building state-of-theart datacentres based on fully virtualized environments. Cloud computing can bring to the region international content, regional flavour, and quicker access to datacentre services for local and regional businesses.

This in turn will be the element that brings economic benefits and great returns.

According to industry research, cloud adoption and growth are predicted to outpace growth of other spending over the next three years. Cloud is expected to represent 25% of incremental new project spending by 2012.

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“Studies worldwide show a gap between information and communication technology (ICT) jobs and qualified candidates to fill them.

The Cisco Networking Academy is an innovative education initiative that addresses this gap by delivering IT skills training to students globally.”

Q: How is the data centre of the future going to look in the region?

A: The data centre has traditionally been a cost center comprised of silos of technology – silos that create multiple points of integration, reduce control and visibility and add complexity, cost and risk.

The journey to the crowd is the next era of the IT ecosystem. Cisco’s network-centric data centre is best positioned to enable the journey to the networked cloud.

Cisco is transforming the data centre through continuous standards-based innovation so organisations can quickly deliver new capabilities, new delivery models, and enter new markets. Cisco is also unifying storage, compute and networking through a systems approach which dramatically reduces complexity to create an agile and efficient data centre capable of responding to rapidly changing business demands.

Last year, Cisco unveiled an evolutionary new data centre architecture, innovative services and an open ecosystem of best in class partners to help its customers in the Gulf develop next-generation data centres that unleash the full power of virtualisation. With this new architecture, Cisco is delivering on the promise of virtualisation through Unified Computing — an architecture that bridges the silos in the data centre into one unified architecture using industry standard technologies. Key to Cisco’s approach is the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) which unites compute, network, storage access, and virtualization resources in a single energy efficient system that can reduce IT infrastructure costs and complexity, help extend capital assets and improve business agility well into the future.

Cisco and EMC, together with VMware, also introduced the Virtual Computing

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Environment coalition, an unprecedented collaboration of industry leaders that will simplify and accelerate virtualisation and help customers transition to private cloud infrastructures. The coalition is focused on development, a unified sales, service and support experience partner ecosystem enablement. The first products of our development collaboration are three Vblock Infrastructure Packages, business-ready IT infrastructure packages, with integrated services and support.

Q: Can you tell us more about the Cisco Live 2011 event in Bahrain and what are the main issues that will be discussed?

A: Following the success of the first Networkers Bahrain 2010 in the region, attracting more than 4000 attendees live and online, Cisco recently announced that it will be bringing an even bigger networking forum to Bahrain next year - Cisco Live 2011.

Cisco Live is Cisco's flagship event designed with the concept of a unique conference with Cisco Networkers at its core, Cisco Lives' tracks help organisations recognise the synergies between business and technology.

The Cisco Live Middle East forum in Bahrain will offer four distinct event programs creating the perfect mix of high-level visionary insights and deep-dive technical education. It will be a 3 day conference with the option to purchase an additional one day Technical Seminar Pass for Sunday 10th April 2011.

Cisco Live! events provide education and training to information and communications technology (ICT) professionals through compelling forums with in-depth technical demonstrations, networking opportunities and glimpses of current and future trends.

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INSIGHT

Charting the weather Looking ahead, CNME discusses ten developments that we are likely to see in cloud computing for service providers and enterprise users.

It's been an incredibly

interesting, exciting, and tumultuous year for cloud computing. But, as the saying goes, "you ain't seen nothin' yet".

Next year will be one in which the pedal hits the metal, resulting in enormous acceleration for cloud computing. One way to look at it is that next year will see the coming to fruition of a number of trends and initiatives that were launched this year.

The end of a year often brings a chance to take a breather and think

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about what lies ahead. Therefore, I've put together this list of what I foresee for 2011 vis a vis cloud computing. Here are ten developments I expect to see next year, broken into two sections: one for cloud service providers, and the other for enterprise users.

Cloud Service Providers

#1: The CSP business explodes...and then implodes.

CSPs will continue to pour money into building cloud computing offerings.

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Large companies will invest billions of dollars constructing data centres, buying machines and infrastucture, implementing software platforms, and marketing and selling cloud services.

Regional and local players will likewise do the same, albeit on a smaller scale.

There will be a frenzy of activity as every colocation, hosting, and managed service provider confronts the fact that their current offerings are functionally deficient compared to the agility and low cost of cloud computing. However, by

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software stack will become clear, and interest and adoption worldwide of OpenStack will grow during the next year.

I'm generally pretty skeptical when large companies like RackSpace create open source projects, as they often execute it through other vendors. The right (and only) way to do something like this successfully is to launch and support an open source project, while (and this is crucial) building a community of participants who take part to fulfill their own objectives (viz IBM and Eclipse).

Thus far, Rackspace appears to be leaning toward the IBM model. The power of a community-based open source initiative can be seen in Linux, which does it brilliantly, and OpenStack could become an analogous project that provides a free and extensible cloud

the end of the year it will become obvious that being a cloud provider is a capitalintensive, highly competitive business with customer demand for transparency in pricing.

Many new entrants to the business will conclude that this is a battle they can't win and will hastily exit the business.

And don't imagine those retreating will only be small, thinly capitalized companies. Sometimes large, publiclyheld companies are the worst in terms of sticking with opportunities that require delayed gratification in terms of profits. I expect that late next year or early in 2012 a private equity play will emerge in rolling up CSP offerings whose owners want to off load their failed CSP initiatives.

#2: Market segmentation via customer self-selection. Many vendors and commentators feel that the SMB market is a natural for IaaS computing because of their lack of large, highly skilled IT staffs. Sometime next year everyone will realise that removing hardware still leaves plenty of challenging IT problems, and cloud computing

By the end of the year it will become obvious that being a cloud provider is a capital-intensive, highly competitive business with customer demand for transparency in pricing. Many new entrants to the business will conclude that this is a battle they can't win and will hastily exit the business. delivers a few new problems besides.

Once that realisation sinks in, everyone will agree that SMBs are a natural fit for SaaS and that only larger companies should imagine themselves as IaaS users.

Consequently, SaaS providers will gain an even higher profile as adoption rates increase. However, SaaS will by no means be only an SMB phenomenon — far from it. SaaS will become the default choice for organisations of all sizes that wish to squeeze costs on non-core applications.

#3: OpenStack will come into its own. The attractiveness of a complete open source cloud computing

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platform. For budding CSPs in emerging economies, an inexpensive platform is crucial, and OpenStack will prove to be an attractive option. For CSPs in developed economies, OpenStack can provide a path to high-quality software without taking on the entire burden of development.

#4: Cloud computing takes off in emerging economies. Much of the angst about what form of cloud computing end user organisations should use (see End User Predictions below) doesn't exist in emerging economies. Most companies have no significant installed

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INSIGHT

base of infrastructure, so the urge to repurpose existing hardware (or, more realistically, avoid prematurely writing off undepreciated assets) is not relevant.

Consequently, IT organisations have no reason to avoid using public cloud computing; after all, the choice is between nothing and something, rather than an existing something and a new something.

A good analogy for what is going to occur with cloud computing in emerging economies is what happened with telephony. Most of these countries, as their economies developed, hopscotched right over fixed-line telephony, and moved directly to mobile as the primary form of telephony, based on its convenience, f lexibility, and lower cost.

Likewise, we'll see a rush to cloud computing since it does not require significant end user investment in wasting assets. Don't be surprised if the growth rates of cloud computing in emerging economies far outstrips that in more developed nations.

#5: Rapid innovation by CSPs and SaaS companies.

Many people point to the astonishing rapidity with which AWS continues to roll out new features and service offerings. Its launch this week of Route53, a robust and inexpensive DNS service, is just one example of the company's continued innovation.

However, AWS is by no means alone regarding innovation and creativity. Next year we will continue to see amazing new offerings from companies that create services based upon cheap and scalable infrastructure. One I ran across this week is from Qik, which provides the ability to stream video from a mobile device.

While that's interesting, my friend David Spark pointed out some additional features that make the service irresistible — when he starts streaming, his Twitter followers are alerted that he is streaming something, and they can react to his stream with questions or observations — which are displayed in his app so that he can respond in real-time. That's cool — and cloud.

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End-users

#1: Focus on cost and transparency. I admit it, I carry an economics bias. While many people point to the undoubted advantages of cloud computing — agility, elasticity, self-service — my perspective is that the cloud computing revolution is that these characteristics are not new or even specific to cloud computing.

The revolution of cloud computing is that, due to scale and automation, for the first time those characteristics can be achieved at an attractive price point — which makes all the difference.

Moreover, they are delivered by CSPs in a completely transparent manner — listed in black and white on the provider Web site.

What this economic revolution and cost transparency will translate to in 2011 is a demand that internal IT groups provide the same level of transparency, and woe betide the CIO who proffers feeble excuses like "we're not really set up to identify specific costs" — next year that will be a formula to be bypassed or banished. The uptick in conversations with IT executives wanting to be able to identify specific costs has skyrocketed, and most of them are focused on figuring out the real costs associated with providing a private cloud infrastructure.

This transparency demand will assuredly impose discomfort on IT groups, but it provides the foundation for the next revolution in IT, which is the explosion of applications in terms of numbers and types. Returning to economic theory, applications are the complementary good to infrastructure, and when one good's price is reduced, the demand for its complementary good increases. Since we believe that cloud computing represents an order

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of magnitude reduction in the cost of infrastructure, it is to be expected that we will see — at least — an order of magnitude increase in applications.

Of course, the application explosion will bring its own problems, but at least they're associated with delivering business functionality, which is the point of IT, right?

#2: Public/private cloud confusion.

The current debate raging about what the right mode of cloud use will continue, unabated, and may even get worse. There are valid arguments for both options and I won't go into them here, as I've addressed the topic several time. However, it can be said with confidence that the pressure to provide some cloud option is only going to increase.

The desire by application groups and business units to grasp the benefits of cloud computing is palpable; one example surfaced, when the US Federal government announced that, starting in 2012, federal agencies are being told to default to cloudbased solutions "whenever a secure, reliable, cost-effective cloud option exists." What this means is that, if you're a CIO, whatever form you want to deliver cloud computing in, it had better be ready in 2011. Extended rollout plans based on lengthy private cloud initiatives won't cut it in the fervid rush to deploy cloud computing.

#3: More hybrid cloud confusion. I see more vendor hype and end user wishful thinking on this topic than any other in cloud computing.

Vendors breezily assert and end users blithely repeat that the future will be applications effortlessly, transparently, and automatically migrating between internal IT infrastructures and external cloud providers.

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No cloud vendor, no matter how large or smart, can repeal the laws of physics, and migrating workloads and (especially) data between sites confronts the issue of "the skinny straw", which is the fact that the connectivity between internal sites and public cloud providers is much lower than that within either of those environments.

Furthermore, supporting seamless migration requires a sophisticated IT infrastructure and operations capability, which translates into investment and skill building. While these factors can be procured or created, it's not a trivial task to do so.

Both of these challenges will make IT executives realise that the all-moving hybrid cloud strategy is overly ambitious and needs to be scaled back. Trying to implement such a vision, for many organisations, will prove to be a bridge too far.

In 2011, people will come to recognize that the key to a hybrid strategy is proper placement of workloads depending upon cost and operational and compliance factors, and will create appropriate plans to leverage a mixed environment.

#4: Architecture challenges.

As IT organisations deploy their first cloud computing applications, they'll find achieving agility and elasticity is hard — and requires new application architectures.

Implementing robust applications to run on less-than-robust infrastructure imposes design requirements for redundancy, failover, and session isolation. Designing elastic applications that can automagically grow and shrink in response to application load necessitates functionality that allows graceful on-the-f ly configuration without human intervention.

The more questions that cannot be answered at the local office, the higher the likelihood that your training is not effective. If you see a dramatic drop from any area, do not rush to say, "problem cured". Check the performance metrics and compare the outputs and process to expectations.

As you might imagine, this demands a new set of technical skills for architects and software engineers. This pattern of new skills being called forth in response to the shift to a new computing platform is nothing new — and won't change in the case of cloud computing, either. But every time an emergent platform collides with existing skill sets, IT executives are shocked anew that employees aren't prepared.

Expect to see many, many articles next year about the technical skill challenges associated with cloud computing.

#5: IT operations challenges.

Operations will be challenged in three ways during 2011. The first challenge is associated with process re-engineering.

The manual operations practices in place at most organisations aren't sufficient for the self-service vision of cloud computing. Application groups will clamor for the immediate resource availability associated with the public cloud providers, and will expect internal IT operations to respond as quickly.

That's challenge number one.

The second challenge for IT operations is associated with managing the dynamic application topologies that are fundamental to cloud computing apps. The vision of cloud computing is applications that have additional resources joining or leaving the application topology in response to load, response times, etc. IT operations will

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have to figure out how to implement management practices to support that vision. New types of system management software will be needed that supports dynamic operations, which circles back to the previous predication about organisational skill building.

The third challenge is one of scale — not of individual apps, but of the total number of apps that the business wants to run. As noted in the first-enduser prediction, above, the number of applications companies will be running is going to explode. Operations practices appropriate for one scale of application numbers will fall over when confronted with ten times as many applications.

It's unclear how this will turn out, but it's very clear that existing operations practices will be stressed as never before.

And, by the way, this is all without the previously-developed public cloud applications being dropped off at Operations doorstep with a note asking it to take responsibility for this abandoned child (we call this phenomenon the cloud boomerang).

So there you have it. My list of ten things we can expect to see next year in cloud computing. If you thought 2010 was exciting, you'll find 2011 exhilarating. If you found 2010 full of cloud hot air (fog?), you'll hate 2011. What do you think? Are there other developments we can expect?

If you have thoughts of your own, please feel free to comment.

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How To

Craft a chargeback strategy Cloud provides businesses with a great opportunity to get their strategic approach to IT funding in order, says Mark Settle, CIO at BMC Software.

Here's his advice on building the right chargeback strategy for your business.

While the cloud is certainly not

Shifts in responsibility

the IT industry's first attempt to harness cheap commodity computing power "on the f ly", the hype around it has been fuelled by the high levels of uncertainty prevailing over the slow recovery of the economic climate.

In this context, for all the promise cloud computing offers to reduce capital expenditure and management burden, while increasing speed of response and ability for IT to f lex and scale with business demands, it also reignites the knotty issues of IT chargebacks — an approach to IT funding that, due to its complexity, was in the past somewhat of a recurring nightmare for CFOs and CIOs.

IT budgets can be assigned by business unit, project or overall annual requirements. But cloud computing, as a centralised IT resource charged on a usage-based billing model, blurs traditional budgetary lines, reviving the concept of the IT function charging its costs back to individual departments. Despite the daunting challenge of developing a costing model and socializing this new financial agreement throughout an organisation, IT chargeback methods are just as important as architecture, support or lifecycle considerations when building a cloud.

In the past chargebacks have been difficult to implement, as calculating the full cost of service delivery is an extremely complex process due the range of variables associated with it. With cloud computing, organisations can build f lexible IT resourcing into their operational expenditure for managing cheaper, sustained and predictable business workloads. At the same time, they can access extra resources on-thef ly when a business unit needs it, to get a new project up and running quickly for example, without having to factor in the extra hardware, power, maintenance and labor costs usually associated with new IT capital expenditure.

Putting IT in control

IT budgets can be assigned by business unit, project or overall annual requirements. But cloud computing, as a centralised IT resource charged on a usage-based billing model, blurs traditional budgetary lines, reviving the concept of the IT function charging its costs back to individual departments.

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january 2011

On the face of it, the fact that cloud computing is fundamentally based on a chargeback model would seem to put the CIO firmly in control of IT as a central business resource and enable him to alleviate some of the pressure on the CFO. Reducing capital expenditure is almost always a good thing, but decentralized, tangible resources allow for more traditional, consistent and obvious budget and resource division.

Problems can arise when a department

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Get it right and IT funding becomes a vastly simpler process, guaranteeing that business departments pay only for the resources they consume

queries their share of the cloud services budget in comparison to other departments or as a proportion of the IT bill to the business overall. While the benefit of a flexible environment is to address peaks and valleys in usage, these patterns can also engender concern about how costs are allocated between different groups.

This is why it is essential that any CIO considering a move to cloud computing must work with the CFO to agree on standard procedures upfront for procuring, accessing and monitoring cloud resources and service levels to ensure each business unit only pays for the IT they need and use. Private clouds, at first glance, seem as though they'd be reasonably straightforward chargeback environments. However, questions of ownership still do manifest themselves, namely: What department should pay for the operating, support and maintenance expenses linked to the cloud? The answer is that all departments partaking should own a part of the operating expenses.

Unlike in a public cloud governed by a third party, in a private cloud direct application usage expenses are not the only cost that must be issued as a chargeback to an IT department. Thus, the additional costs must be split based on fair usage

statistics. The good news is that this is a fairly simple proportion to figure out when given the right tracking information; the difficult part is finding the appropriate management systems to monitor and control usage of the private cloud.

The fundamental components, therefore, of implementing a robust chargeback infrastructure include: • Coming to an agreement with the business around the appropriate pricing model for cloud resources • Collecting accurate usage information through a cloud lifecycle management solution • Ensuring this utilisation information, as well as the associated costs, is visible by the user through the services portal from which they manage their cloud services and request new cloud services • Aggregating these costs according to relevant business entities, whether project-based or departmental, to roll up meaningful costs and enable future business decisions with solutions • Aligning this new pay-per-use model with the financial systems and decision processes of the business IT departments with well-developed business service management (BSM)

january 2011

software deployments that allow them to align IT resource with business demand will already have a head start into the cloud. BSM enables businesses to align IT service delivery with the priorities of the business — ensuring that IT is supporting the business in the places it needs it most.

Management software is key to managing this process and can be used to ensure that in the case of pay-as-you-go computing, budgets can be set depending on the relevance each user group has to the business priorities at any one time.

Get it right and IT funding becomes a vastly simpler process, guaranteeing that business departments pay only for the resources they consume and ensuring that the post-recession CFO has one less challenge on his plate.

About the Author: Mark Settle, chief information officer for BMC Software, joined the company in 2008. He has served as the CIO of four Fortune 300 companies: Corporate Express, Arrow Electronics, Visa International, and Occidental Petroleum. Settle has worked in a variety of industries including consumer products, high-tech distribution, financial services, and oil and gas.

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Gaga over gadgets CNME gets down in the dust with the latest in productivity solutions and gadgets, and gives you the verdict.

Always VPN There are plenty of powerful tools that hackers can use to steal private information from you not just specific Web sites, but wherever you are on the Web, or when you use other Internet services, such as client-based e-mail and instant messaging. The for-pay AlwaysVPN (pricing varies with bandwidth) does a great job of keeping you safe no matter what you do and where you go on the Internet.

AlwaysVPN uses Virtual Private Networking technology to encrypt all of your communications, and it's especially useful for those who connect at public Wi-Fi hot spots, where all communications are in the open and not encrypted.

The AlwaysVPN service uses its own version of the open source OpenVPN software as a client. When you sign up, you download a version of OpenVPN to which AlwaysVPN has made changes so that it works properly with the AlwaysVPN service. (If you already have the unflavored OpenVPN client, you'll need to download the AlwaysVPN version.) Unlike most for-pay VPN services, you don't have to pay a monthly or annual fee. Instead, you pay for the total amount of

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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST

january 2011

bandwidth you use. The starting point is $8.50 for 5GB of bandwidth, and range to 80 GB for $47 for more frequent users.

After you pay and install the software, you connect using the AlwaysVPN-customised OpenVPN client by right-clicking its icon.

You can choose one of two modes--the AlwaysVPN-Compatible mode, which is more secure but slightly slower, or the AlwaysVPN mode, which is slightly less secure but faster. On Windows Vista and Windows 7, you should run the software as an administrator. When you're done using it, right click its icon in the taskbar and disconnect from the service to avoid paying more bandwidth than you need.

You can also check how much bandwidth you've used for your account and how much remains by logging in to the AlwaysVPN site.

AlwaysVPN is inexpensive and simple to use, and given how easily information can be stolen these days on-line, it's the kind of service that literally anyone should consider. An alternative is the free Hotspot Shield VPN software and service. Although Hotspot Shield is free, it delivers ads, and you need to be careful during its installation that it doesn't make changes to your PC that you don't want. So if you don't mind spending a very little bit of money, AlwaysVPN is a great choice for your data's safety and your peace of mind.

Verdict: Aye, go for it

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Take control of e-mail

$15, which also might be a bit too much to pay if you can live without the conversation view and the personal notes features. But if you aren't already using NEO Pro, use the 60-day free trial to take it for a test drive. You might find that the time it saves you is worth the price.

Verdict: Aye, but make sure it fits your wallet

E-mail is supposed to increase our productivity, but all too often, managing e-mail becomes a job in itself. NEO Pro, now available in version 5, can help. This handy Outlook add-on cuts down on the time you spend dealing with your inbox, though it takes a bit of time to get fully up to speed with it yourself.

The first time you launch NEO Pro after installation, it will catalogue all of your messages. The process is quick--it took less than 15 minutes on my machine--and Caelo Software (the app's creator) wisely recommends that you use this time browsing a helpful selection of "getting started" tutorials. I did so, and it was time well spent. That's because although NEO Pro looks a whole lot like Outlook, it's just different enough to require a bit of acclimation before you dive in.

Like previous versions, NEO Pro 5 runs alongside Outlook, and you can use it to manage all of your messages from within its Outlook-like interface. Version 5 features an updated interface with a Microsoft-like ribbon view that will be familiar to anyone who's used the latest versions of Office. (Like previous versions, NEO Pro 5 still allows you to use Outlook as your primary access point for your e-mail. You can use NEO Pro only for locating and organizing messages, if you prefer.)

Also like previous versions, NEO Pro 5 sorts your messages by correspondent, date, bulk mail, category, status, and attachments.

This allows you to easily find messages that might otherwise be buried in an overflowing inbox. It's especially helpful that NEO Pro allows one message to reside in multiple locations, which allows you to find it more easily. If you know that an important message came with a .bmp file as an attachment, you can, for example, locate it easily in the attachments folder. Alternatively, if you know that the message arrived last week, but you can't remember the name of the attached file, you can search for it by date.

New in NEO Pro 5 is a conversation view that lets you track e-mail threads with more ease than with Outlook itself. This feature is particularly helpful when you're searching for one message in a sea of replies and forwards, and it's easy to collapse and expand the conversation view when needed. Also new is the ability to add personal notes to individual messages; this is helpful for forgetful folks (like me) who often flag messages, but then can't recall why.

The biggest downside of NEO Pro 5 is its price. Like previous versions, it costs $50 for a new licence, which is a bit steep if you've already paid for Outlook. Upgrading from version 4.x will cost you

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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST

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Gaga over gadgets CNME gets down in the dust with the latest in productivity solutions and gadgets, and gives you the verdict.

Security apps for your Android phone You back-up data on your computer in case it crashes, and you might install LoJack on your car to help recover it in case someone steals it--so why shouldn't you protect your Android phone? Most people carry a lot of sensitive data on their phones. If someone steals your handset or if you happen to lose it, all that personal information is suddenly not so personal anymore. Your phone is an investment, so you should safeguard your contacts, photos, texts, videos, and music.

Even if you never lose your phone, certain downloadable apps can easily access and distribute your information. Not all the apps you find are 100% honest about what they do.

Thankfully the Android Market offers a variety of security options-some better than others, and all with different features. Here are some of our favourite apps for securing an Android phone.

Lookout Mobile Security (Free; Premium version available) Our favorite app of the bunch, Lookout Mobile Security should be one of your first stops on the Android Market after you buy a new Android phone. Lookout accounts come in two flavours, free and premium. A free account lets you scan your phone for malware, back up and restore your data online, and use GPS to locate your phone should it ever get lost or stolen. Lookout has even been in the news for helping someone recover a stolen phone.

You can upgrade to a premium account for only $3 per month (or $30 per year) and gain remote locking and wiping capabilities, as well as enhanced backup and Privasy Advisor. The latter gives you a detailed look at which apps can access certain information, such as location and identity information, and outlines the risks of having such applications on your phone. The free version is great for basic phone protection, but you'll likely want to shell out the cash for the extra features.

Norton Mobile Security Beta (Free) Smartphones hold a lot of valuable data. Text messages, e-mail, and even credit card numbers can reside on the device, where they're easily accessed. If you lose your phone, you run the risk of having your identity stolen. Sure, you can set up a lock pattern, but we have seen such measures circumvented in the past.

Symantec’s Norton Mobile Security (beta) allows you to remotely lock and wipe your phone by text message, so that whoever finds it

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can't immediately go on a shopping spree in the Android Market with your money. You can even lock down the SIM card so that a thief can't swap it out to another phone. Beyond that, Norton permits you to block calls and text messages, as well as to scan your phone for malware.

Although the program is still in beta until the end of the year, Norton Mobile Security is a superb choice for anyone who wants complete cell phone protection.

your apps, settings, media, and phone contents in search of suspicious files. Have a text message with a shady-looking link attached? Run the scanner to see if it's a possible threat to your phone's security. Features that the creators will add in the future include the ability to lock apps and back up data. As the utility stands now, if you seek only to keep your phone malware-free and you don't really care for the extras, AVG Antivirus will fit your needs.

WaveSecure Mobile Security (Subscription)

NetQin Anti-virus (Free)

WaveSecure Mobile Security offers many of the same features as Norton but requires a $20-per-year subscription for you to use them all. Like Norton, WaveSecure gives you the option to wipe and lock down your phone remotely. Unlike Norton, however, WaveSecure doesn't scan your phone for malware; instead, this application backs up your phone data and allows you to restore the files to another device.

If your phone breaks or someone steals it, you can restore your phone from a backup quite easily. If you are worried that a phone thief will recognise the app and try to uninstall it, you can download WaveSecure UninstallProtection, which will prevent a user from uninstalling WaveSecure without first typing in a password.

AVG Antivirus (Free) Another big name in computer security, AVG Antivirus Free scans

Although NetQin Anti-virus provides features similar to those of Lookout, its focus seems to be on helping you recover your lost or stolen phone. With NetQin's Anti-lost feature, you can track your phone, erase its contents, lock it down to prevent "illegal use," and have your phone emit an alarm that sounds similar to a loud police siren.

NetQin Anti-virus is perfect for people who are constantly losing their phones and who don't want to pay extra money to replace them.

Any of the above apps may help you prevent information theft, but it's still important that you remain aware of your surroundings when using your phone. The best way to prevent phone theft is to keep your valuable electronics out of sight when you're not using them, and to try not to use them when you are walking outside in the dark alone.

Verdict: Aye, choose what works for you

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What we’re reading..

Faulty software

The Joy of Tech Comic: Laughter Is the Best Tech Support

Jeff Papows

Nitrozac and Snaggy Book We tend to think of glitches as little more than minor annoyances that come with our wired lives. But some are much more serious—they can cost a company like Toyota billions, invite cyberterrorism or even kill, as did malfunctioning radiation-treatment software Papows describes. The former CEO of Lotus outlines the risks of software glitches and explains how executives, developers and legislators have to work together to reduce their impact on society.

Blog Two self-professed geeks write and draw this Web comic, which is updated three times a week. Together they tackle all things tech, including the Apple-Google clash, Facebook privacy and Prince’s declarations on the fate of the Internet. And with over 10 years’ worth of archives and a similarly themed blog, the site could keep you entertained for a long time.

Glitch: The Hidden Impact of Faulty Software (Prentice Hal)

www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/index.html

Getting buy-in

Mary Gentile

Voicing values

John Kotter and Lorne A. Whitehead Book Lots of good ideas never get implemented because their proposers don’t know how to counter naysayers effectively.

Kotter identifies four categories of obstruction—confusion, death by delay, fear mongering, and ridicule or character assassination—and 24 lines of attack used to quash ideas, and gives simple, respectful ways to counter them. Rather than merely getting good ideas approved, he says, this approach will get more people strongly behind them, giving your project a better chance of overcoming implementation snags and actually coming to fruition.

Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down (Harvard Business Review)

Book We usually know when something isn’t the right thing to do, says Gentile; the tricky part is finding the courage to speak up about it. To help, she combines research and anecdotes to develop general tips—such as recruiting allies—and specific scripts that coach you through delicate situations.

One approach Gentile recommends is creating your own narrative of who you are and how that enables you to act on your values, as well as how it puts you at risk. This frames challenges for you to help you decide your course of action.

Giving Voice to Values: How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What’s Right (Yale University Press)

Achieving success

Randal Pinkett, Jeffrey Robinson and Philana Patterson Book Pinkett is the first African-American winner of Donald Trump’s The Apprentice and the co-founder and CEO of an IT and management consulting firm, so he knows better than most that the rules of the corporate game are subtly different for people of color. He combines general tried-and-true advice with tips for gaining strength from your cultural identity, how and when to fight for what you believe in, as well as how to build your network and address race in mentor-protege relationships.

Black Faces in White Places: 10 Game-Changing Strategies to Achieve Success and Find Greatness (AMACOM Books)

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Copyright © 2010 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec, the Symantec Logo, Norton and Norton 360 are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affi liates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

1) The product key for a NFR copy of Norton 360™ Version 4.0 is a full version of the product. It is an exclusive Norton Partner Portal benefit and entitles for only one download per reseller (Primary Contact) during the term of the Norton Partner Portal Program.

2) Based on Symantec internal data comparing features of competitors all in one security solutions.

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Every click matters. Global cybercrime turns over more money than drug trafficking – malcodes, viruses and bots threaten our digital freedom. Norton™ 360 offers the industry’s most comprehensive, all-in-one protection against digital dangers.2 It helps guard against online threats, automatically backs up important files, and keeps the PC running at optimal performance.