Computer News Middle East December 2018 by Computernews Middle East

ISSUE 322 | DECEMBER 2018 WWW.TAHAWULTECH.COM

“MAKING DATA PUBLIC IS COMMUNIST”: MIT CHIEF DEWA’S GLOBAL DATA CENTRE AMBITIONS WHY INADEQUATE DEVELOPERS HINDER BLOCKCHAIN HOW TO INNOVATE IN A MID-SIZE ENTERPRISE

LET THE SUN SHINE

HOW THE UAE IS USING AI TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE

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

Digital #2

Autonomous Things

Digital Twins

AI-Driven Development

Blockchain

Empowered Edge

Augmented Analytics

Mesh

Smart Spaces

Immersive Technologies

Ethics & Privacy

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

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

© 2018 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner and ITxpo are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates. For more information, email info@gartner.com or visit gartner.com.

Quantum Computing

EDITORIAL

Our events

Rain or shine Our cover story this month chronicles one of the UAE’s early artificial intelligence success stories. The Ministry of Climate Change and Environment has done some brainy stuff behind the scenes and can now identify the best places to install solar panels, as well as detecting air and marine water quality, all through an AI-powered platform. Nifty. More on page 20. Simultaneously one of my smartest and angriest ever interviewees, MIT’s head of research Andrew McAfee was almost seething when asked if technological advances will result in widespread unemployment. “Are you “‘Are you out out of your mind?” he might as well have of your mind?’ responded to my not unreasonable question, looking at me as if I'd just he might as trodden dog mess into his new carpet. well have Andrew also reckons that forcing tech responded companies to make our data public is to my not tantamount to communism, and that wouldn’t make him a happy bunny. Not. unreasonable One. Bit. More on page 24. question.” Sage old owl Adam Lalani gives CNME readers a piece of his mind on page 32. Most Blockchain developers are either completely hapless or are bare-faced liars, he says. Organisations who overcome the pantomime farce that these halfwits create then find that their closest business partners don’t trust them to manage their data and are having none of it. Back to square one for most. I’ll be on holiday for some of December, which I'm sure will come as a relief to you all. In this case, 'holiday' is shorthand for swapping sunny Dubai for freezing cold Britain where my grandmother will force-feed me burnt Christmas pudding for most of the week. Have a good December and bring on 2019. Talk to us:

E-mail: james.dartnell@ cpimediagroup.com

FUTURE NETWORK AWARDS 2019

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James Dartnell Editor

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Habtoor Grand Resort, Autograph Collection, Dubai Marina Recognise your technology leader as one of Dubai’s top 100 digital leaders CNME is now accepting nominations for its 2019 CIO 100 Awards. Is your organisation’s CIO one of Dubai’s best technology leaders or are you a CIO which has made innovative and transforming changes? If so, Nominate now! The CIO 100 Awards celebrate leaders who are driving digital change in the Middle East and constantly striving for innovative practices. CIO 100 winners will receive their award at our annual CIO 100 Awards Ceremony and will also be featured in the February 2019 issue of CNME magazine. *CIOs, CTOs, IT directors and equivalents are invited to take part in the CIO 100 nominations.

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Contents

Cloud and Managed Services Partner

Transformation and Technology Specialist Partner

ISSUE 322 | DECEMBER 2018

WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM IN DUBAI

MINISTRY OF CLIMATE CHANGE & ENVIRONMENT: AI

Rack to the future

Evolve 2018

MIT RESEARCH CHIEF ON 4IR UNEMPLOYMENT

DEWA LAUNCHES FIRST "GLOBAL" DATA CENTRE

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

CNME reports from Equinix's first MENA Cloud Summit, where regional managing director Jeroen Schlosser flaunted the firm's success stories in cloud and hosting.

CNME hosted its second annual Evolve Digital Transformation Forum in October, which saw panel discussions and keynotes on the challenges of adapting to the digital age.

Clear view Ramzi Itani, Barco’s vice president for the Middle East and Africa, and FVC’s managing director K.S Parag tell CNME about how they are empowering their regional customers and partners.

32 The weak link

Tristar’s group head of IT Adam Lalani believes that issues around trust and developer expertise are the biggest factors that will inhibit Blockchain’s progress over the next few years.

38 The future of Fintech

Eli Rosner, chief product and technology officer of $2.1 billion Fintech firm Finastra, believes banks and financial institutions will need to be become digitally driven advisors if they are to retain customer loyalty.

42 Caught in the middle

Midsize CIOs can use this twopronged approach to foster innovation within their teams and across the organisation, says principal executive advisor Christopher Mixter. Publication licensed by Dubai Production City, DCCA PO Box 13700 Dubai, UAE

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NEWS

MARRIOTT FACES LAWSUIT OVER MAJOR DATA BREACH

ackers have reportedly stolen about 500 million records from Marriott International’s Starwood Hotels reservation system in an attack that began four years ago. The breach has exposed the personal data of customers including some payment card numbers. The hack reportedly began in 2014, before Marriott offered to buy Starwood for $12.2 billion in November 2015, acquiring brands including Sheraton, Ritz Carlton and the Autograph Collection to create the world’s largest hotel operator. The company closed the Starwood deal in September 2016. Marriott said that for 327 million guests, compromised data could include passport details, phone

numbers and email addresses. For some others, it could include credit card information. Marriott said it first found out about the breach after an internal security tool sent an alert on 8th September. “We’ve opened an investigation into the Marriott data breach. Additionally, under New York law, Marriott was required to provide notification to our office upon discovering the breach; they have not done so as of yet,” said Amy Spitalnick, communications director and senior policy advisor, Office of the New York Attorney General. Marriott said it would inform affected guests about the breach, and that it had reported it to law enforcement and regulatory authorities. A class action lawsuit has been filed against the hotel chain and cybersecurity experts say the whole ordeal could have been detected years ago.

DP WORLD CHIEF NAMED NEW VIRGIN HYPERLOOP ONE CHAIRMAN DP World chairman and chief executive Sultan bin Sulayem has been elected as the new chairman of Virgin Hyperloop One, taking over from replacing Sir Richard Branson, who stepped down from his post in October. Jay Walder the CEO of bike-sharing operator Motivate and the Hong Kong transit company MTR Corporation, has been appointed as its new CEO. He will also join the company’s board of directors. Walder is replacing Rob Lloyd, who served as chief executive of Virgin Hyperloop One for more than three years. According to a statement from the company, the selection of a new senior management team will allow Virgin Hyperloop One to transition its focus from technology startup to mass transportation company, beginning 6

DECEMBER 2018

with implementation of the world’s first hyperloop system running from Pune to Mumbai. “As we enter uncharted territory in implementing an entirely new kind of mass transportation system, we needed a leader with a deep understanding of public transportation, experience in

infrastructure financing, a track record of project delivery, and success working with government and private sector partners,” said Bin Sulayem. “We could not have found a more ideal candidate than Jay Walder for the next stage of the company’s development and the historic growth of this new industry,” he added. www.tahawultech.com

UBER RETURNS TO ABU DHABI

Uber has announced the re-launch of its services in the UAE capital, in collaboration with the Department of Transport in Abu Dhabi. The announcement followed the signing of an agreement between Uber

and the Integrated Transport Centre ITC, represented by Mohammed Darwish Al Qamzi, general manager of ITC and Anthony Khoury, Uber’s Middle East regional manager, at the Department of Transport

headquarters in Abu Dhabi. Uber and Careem suspended their services in Abu Dhabi in August 2016 after some of its cars were stopped by the capital’s authorities. As many as 50 drivers were held at a police station, and one driver was told 70 cars had been impounded. Uber and Careem launched in Abu Dhabi in 2013 and were only allowed to use licensed drivers from the 18 limousine companies that were registered to the capital’s Centre for Regulation of Transport by Hire Cars. Emiratis will now be able to drive on the Uber app using their private vehicles on a full-time or part-time basis. Mohammed Darwish Al Qamzi, general manager, ITC, said, “This agreement underlines our commitment to achieving the forwardlooking vision and aspirations of our wise leadership in transforming Abu Dhabi into a global leader in smart transportation.”

US CHARGES IRANIAN HACKERS OVER RANSOMWARE ATTACK The United States has reportedly indicted two Iranians for launching a major cyber-attack using ransomware known as “SamSam”. The US also sanctioned two others for helping exchange the ransom payments from Bitcoin digital currency into rials. The scheme reportedly ran over 34 months, wreaking havoc on hospitals, schools, companies and government agencies, including the cities of Atlanta, Georgia, and Newark, New Jersey, causing over $30 million in losses to victims and allowing the alleged hackers to collect over $6 million in ransom payments, representing some of the highest profile cyber-attacks on the US. The indictment charges Iranbased Faramarz Shahi Savandi, 34, and Mohammad Mehdi Shah www.tahawultech.com

Mansouri, 27 with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit fraud related to computers, and other counts accusing them of intentionally damaging protected computers and illegally transmitting demands related to protected computers, Reuters reported. Chester Wisniewski, principal research scientist, Sophos, highlighted that SamSam’s humancentered approach has proved

successful. “The attacks were more cat burglar in style – they strategically happened when victims were asleep, indicating that the attacker carries out reconnaissance on victims and carefully plans who, what, where and when attacks will happen,” he said. DECEMBER 2018

FEATURE

Equinix

RACK TO THE FUTURE Equinix’s Middle East and North Africa managing director Jeroen Schlosser told CNME about the firm’s upcoming data centre in Oman, and how its existing three UAE sites are playing a part in the region’s digital transformation. Paul Allen, Head of Tech, DLA PIPER

DECEMBER 2018

www.tahawultech.com

Victor Bishay, Regional lead, Google CLoud, MENA

idespread adoption of cloud technology, regional interconnection and digital sovereignty has all led to the growing potential for regional data centres. One key player that has already made its mark in this narrative is Equinix. Its global footprint stretches across 202 centres in 52 countries and 1,600 network providers, with about 300,000 physical cross connections. It has already built three data centres in the UAE - two in Dubai and one in Abu Dhabi - and is working on opening a new regional hub in Oman. “Equinix is a platform built on open interconnection, where everybody has free access to our data centres,” Equinix’s Middle East and North Africa managing director Jeroen Schlosser, speaking on the sidelines of the firm’s first MENA Cloud Summit, said. “When we entered the market five years ago, it was a big step for us, because this was the first region where we moved into a market where telecoms are fully regulated.” Equinix spent its initial years in the region concentrating on working with regional telcos, and worked to get all the top regional players to connect to its data centres. “The idea was to reach all eyeballs in the region and to work with our global customers www.tahawultech.com

Companies want to build resilience and do not want to be dependent on a single location or country.

and connect them to the region and put their regional assets here, so that if there is content that is used here, it can be brought into one of our facilities and distributed to the other countries as well as this region,” Schlosser said. Social media firms and global video on-demand players soon started moving their data into Equinix data centres in the UAE, Schlosser added. “The thing that really helped us grow in the region is that its governments realised that oil has an end date and efforts were made to diversify the economy,” Schlosser said. “Our global platform helped governments to put IT infrastructure in place, enabling regional enterprises to leverage and build their new digital presence in the region, but also on a wider scale.”

The momentum later brought in more players into the market. “When the government started to drive the IoT and smart city agendas, that was the point when global cloud customers took a step towards moving their platforms in to the region,” said Schlosser. Equinix’s new International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre in Barka, near Muscat, will be strategically positioned between Asia, Africa and Europe, according to Schlosser, and is expected to create a regional interconnection hub with “ultra-low latencies” between global business markets. He believes it could become a hub for organisations that have a regional network or want to create region-specific content, allowing them to benefit from the enormous capacities of bandwidth in the country. “Companies also want to build resilience and do not want to be dependent on a single location or single country, and therefore ensure they create two access nodes into the region in two different countries,” he said. “The facility will start off with 240 cabinets, and can be expanded based on demand.” According to Schlosser, the timeframe to set up new centres has significantly reduced from two-and-ahalf-years five years ago to six to nine months today. With regard to future expansion, Schlosser says Equinix keeps a close watch into where their global customers operate in the region. The prime driver for expansion into more countries will be based on customer priorities. “Based on data legislation, some customers already operate in other markets,” he said. “SAP, for example has a special node in the UAE and a separate one in Saudi, that addresses the concerns in those two markets. All countries in the region still have their own data legislation laws.” DECEMBER 2018

FEATURE

World Economic Forum

Mohammad Abdullah Al Gergawi, minister of Cabinet Affairs and the Future

PUTTING THE FUTURE TO WORK James Dartnell reports from the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils conference in Dubai, where employment and data management challenges in the Fourth Industrial Revolution were the hot topics of the day.

he UAE Ministry of Cabinet Affairs and The future took centre stage at the Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils, unveiling an “agile” data policy framework for personal data in partnership with the World Economic Forum. The Data Policy in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Insights on personal data framework’s aim is to guide policy and decision makers on how to regulate personal data while adapting to rapid technological changes. “Data policy choices are not binary decisions with clean and clear lines – 10

DECEMBER 2018

data policy is more like a 3D puzzle,” said Anne Toth, head of data policy at the World Economic Forum. Mohammad Abdullah Al Gergawi, minister of Cabinet Affairs and the Future, said, “There is a need for robust policy frameworks to govern disruptive trends. In today’s world, governments cannot create the future singularly; it is important to involve everyone from the private sector to youth, international partners and others in creating policies. The collective mind provided by technology is much smarter than the individual mind. Technology has the

potential to bring gainful employment to the world’s population and solve many of our greatest challenges.” World Economic Forum president Børge Brende followed Al Gergawi’s address, and said that the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the increased risk of cybercrime must be taken seriously in order to avoid “dire” consequences. “The new wave of globalisation, driven by the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is taking place at an unprecedented pace,” he said. “It took 75 years for landlines to reach 100 million people. The iPhone was launched in 2007, and now has 2 billion users. Globalisation can’t be stopped, but can be improved. It should be more inclusive, sustainable and create more jobs. “If you look at the digital age, we’re only in its early stages. Many of the largest companies in the world didn’t exist 20 years ago.” He then underlined how governments that failed to fully grasp the impact of cybercrime could be severely punished. “Cyber attacks are currently the number one risk in three out of eight global regions,” he said. “We need to do more to protect digital infrastructure and bolster cybersecurity with a collaborative approach. If this is not achieved, can you imagine how dire the consequences will be in the age of driverless cars, smart grids and drones?” www.tahawultech.com

World Economic Forum president Børge Brende with Mohammad Abdullah Al Gergawi, minister

World Economic Forum

of Cabinet Affairs and the Future

president Børge Brende

The Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils also hosted an enthralling discussion around the effect on jobs in the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which drew polarised opinions from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University College London experts. Andrew McAfee, MIT’s principal research scientist and co-director and co-founder of the MIT initiative on the digital economy, was of the belief that capitalism has been largely beneficial to the world, and that innovation will hold the answers in re-employing those who are displaced by technology. UCL’s professor of economics of innovation and public value, Mariana Mazzucato, took the view that a “topdown” approach to economics is shortchanging citizens in an era where GDP levels are at an all-time high. “The best response is to let innovators and entrepreneurs create jobs,” McAfee said. “Over 200 years of the industrial era shows that technological change creates jobs. Even in countries with high levels of government employment such as France, where the number is at 25%, generally, the huge majority of jobs comes from the private sector. We need robust educational systems to deliver the research that people need. We need excellent infrastructure and for governments to support basic research. www.tahawultech.com

Technology has the potential to bring gainful employment to the world’s population.

“There are something like 3 million people in the US who earn a living from driving. What happens if that’s automated? There are also roughly 1.5 million layoffs every month in the US. So yes, we could absorb losses. The problem is re-entering these people into the labour force after automation comes. An important area that research needs to tackle is this reintegration.” Mazzucato agreed that technological change will not create mass employment, but added that the world’s current economic systems may not be suited to a world that needs investment in innovation in order to create new jobs. “Economist David Ricardo wrote in 1831 that mechanisation of the time was taking jobs from people,” she said. “He then

saw however, that there was creative destruction in taking jobs, which were reappearing due to reinvestment. “Since the 1980s, we’ve lived in a world where corporate structures are about maximising shareholder value. Over $3 trillion has been used to buy back shares in the last 10 years and that hurts jobs and skills. This is the elephant in the room. Governments are there to fix market failures but that doesn’t help us to understand where technology changes are coming from. “The profit levels of GDP worldwide are at record levels. The rewards should be shared collectively through a capitalist agenda that admits where they came from.” McAfee disagreed, however. “I’ve heard about financialisation and shareholder value being huge problems for years, but I have a problem dealing with that claim, he said. “In the US, we’ve had no problems with jobs – we only have a problem in terms of job quality, not job quantity. “The world’s little guys have become the biggest beneficiaries of capitalism. The average person’s income has increased by more than 50% since 1988. The exception is the middle class and lower middle class in developed countries.” Mazzucato went on to highlight the ways that technology giants have taken control of citizen data, and said that this was symbolic of the ways that capitalism has failed the public. “We need to change our relationship with data,” she said. “How would things look if data was run by an organisation representing the people, with a governance structure which companies have to pay into? It would be a different kind of relationship. Data has been generated collectively – how is it allowed to be stored with a company? The way we’ve allowed platform capitalism to develop has come from a top-down way of thinking.” DECEMBER 2018

EVENT

Evolve Digital Transformation Forum

SINK OR SWIM

CNME and tahawultech.com hosted the second edition of the Evolve Digital Transformation Forum, which saw c-level executives gather to discuss the processes and challenges of transforming in the digital era.

DECEMBER 2018

www.tahawultech.com

igital transformation is the methodology enterprises can use to transform and create new business models and culture with digital technologies. The convergence of social media, mobile, cloud and embedded devices is presenting opportunities and rapid change. The threat landscape is also transforming www.tahawultech.com

as malware and phishing attacks are rising rapidly. In addition, increasing regulatory pressures such as the implementation of GDPR further prove the need for stronger security measures. According to IDC, by the end of 2019, spending on digital transformation will reach $1.7 trillion worldwide, while Gartner predicts that

60% of businesses will suffer major service failures by 2020 due to their inability manage digital risk. Kicking off the 2018 edition of Evolve was Ian Ohan, the CEO and founder of UAE-based startup Freedom Pizza, who sat for a one-on-one interview with CNME editor James Dartnell. Ohan said that technology is a key driver DECEMBER 2018

EVENT

Evolve Digital Transformation Forum

CNME Editor James Dartnell interviews Ian Ohan, CEO and founder of Freedom Pizza

of Freedom’s business, and has become almost as critical as the firm’s end products. The startup now has 11 corporate stores and is starting up a franchisee model to expand its operations. The company employs over 200 delivery vehicles and delivers its orders within 23 minutes. Freedom has opened a fullyfledged technology firm based out of Hungary to drive the platform that has been powering its business and aiming to deliver a superior user experience. “Today, we discover our customers,” he said. “We have to be where our customers are. If I look at our business today, the most important thing is our platform. That’s the key. We love our product, but an innovative platform is going to drive our business.” Freedom has developed a user interface on multiple platforms, and today users can order food using an Apple Watch. “In most use cases these days, I find the user experience isn’t up to the mark,” Ohan said. “If I 14

DECEMBER 2018

have to teach customers how to use something, then I have got it wrong. I look at the market as a consumer myself. I want my life to be made easier and it is the service provider’s job to make my life easier.” Freedom’s technology division now plays a critical role in its operations. “Today I work on a dashboard, not my emails. Technology has enabled us to work together in a seamless way,” Ohan said. “As we grow, we expect complexity to increase. Our system is built on a model that can be easily scaled up. That’s the key.” Ohan was followed by the day’s first keynote speaker, Injazat Data Systems digital transformation director, Antonio Antonuccio, who homed in on the ways that governments can get the best from their digital transformation efforts. “Both Abu Dhabi and Dubai governments are working towards announcing digital platforms,” Antonuccio said. “These platforms have technology and process

components as well as capabilities and culture elements. In order to be efficient and achieve seamless integration, these platforms need to have a comprehensive digital services catalogue.” Antonuccio added that user experience is a critical element in this area. “We have to keep in mind that user experiences must be simple, intuitive and seamless. “Government entities must ensure that as they are deploying www.tahawultech.com

The panel discussion on data security

Injazat Data Systems digital

If I have to teach customers how to use something, then I have got it wrong.

transformation director, Antonio Antonuccio

new technologies and use cases, their enterprise architecture is able to support the business and meet the higher requirements of these technologies and services in terms of speed, reliability, safety and so on.” A panel discussion on evolving business in the digital era followed, which was moderated by CNME editor James Dartnell. The panel included Jonathan Rawling, CFO of yallacompare.com; Janardan Dalmia, CEO of Trukkin; Mousa Yassin, cowww.tahawultech.com

founder and CEO of GEEKS and Saeed Khan, VP of AGC Networks. Dalmia said, “When commencing their digitalisation processes, businesses need to view it as a journey rather than a project. They need to think from outside the box. It is clear that companies who don’t adapt to the digital world could become obsolete.” Khan said, “We need to examine business models and look at who the end customers are. How can we keep them satisfied and also work

on gaining new customers? We must look at how effectively we can use digital technologies to enhance operational efficiencies.” According to Dalmia, speed in delivering services in the digital age is important. “Digital transformation success will often come down to trial and error. We have to test what will work best and then implement it.” Dartnell asked if operating in the digital age meant that every company would compelled to become a technology firm. “Technology helps make your business faster, more efficient and makes lives easier,” Yassin said. “We should examine how we can deliver the services that we believe in, in the best way possible. Look at two or three ways to do that successfully and then build technology around it. Technology is not mandatory, but to keep innovating and growing, we must figure out most optimum ways to deliver our services.” Khan added that organisations should examine how digital technologies can be business enablers. “Technology needs to be consultative in terms of ensuring that business, IT and customers are in sync,” he said. DECEMBER 2018

INTERVIEW

Barco, FVC

CLEAR VIEW Ramzi Itani, Barco’s vice president for the Middle East and Africa, and FVC’s managing director K.S. Parag tell CNME about how they are empowering their regional customers and partners through a range of training initiatives.

hat have been the biggest growth drivers for Barco in the region over the past few years? Itani: Barco has established itself as a visualisation pioneer globally. Since its foray into the Middle East market over 17 years ago, the company has registered a very solid performance in the region. We have delivered remarkable double-digit growth year-on-year in the region over the last six years. This is a high-growth region for us, despite the kinetic nature of the industry in which Barco plays. There is the need for constant innovation with rapidly evolving industry demands and end-customer’s preferences. Barco has continuously invested in innovation to bring in new solutions that disrupt the way we use technology in the world today. The opening of cinemas in Saudi Arabia was a huge opportunity for Barco, with us partnering on visual technology for new cinemas. Barco’s 16

DECEMBER 2018

recent achievements in this segment also include the installation of our flagship laser fleet across all Reel Cinemas screens in Dubai, which represents Barco’s largest flagship laser cineplex in the world. The growing demand in the region for advanced technological solutions also extends to visual collaborative technology in the healthcare domain for both surgical and diagnostic imaging. We see a huge opportunity for our advanced offerings with the growing requirement for imaging solutions of the highest possible quality, especially given the rise of minimally invasive surgery in the region. Barco’s regional achievements also include the delivery of the longest video wall for Saudi Aramco. Some of our most noteworthy projects also include installations for Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) in Saudi Arabia and Dubai Civil Defence. On the enterprise front, we marked huge growth in the region as we celebrated the fifth anniversary of the launch of the revolutionary Barco

ClickShare. We see this segment growing further with the rising demand for smart meeting room solutions in keeping with the rapid rise of intelligent enterprises in the recent times. How has your partnership with FVC evolved over the past five years? Itani: Barco’s partnership with FVC has been very productive for the entire region and the respective entities over the years. Barco first teamed up with FVC in 2013 to distribute our ClickShare presentation system across the MENA region. We extended this collaboration to include our corporate AV portfolio. FVC has served as an ideal partner for Barco in this region, with several strengths such as approaching and stimulating its various channels through incentives, seminars, training and promotional activities. The momentous success of this partnership has also led Barco to honour FVC with the Best Barco Collaboration Award 2017 at the ISE tradeshow and opening the first Barco ClickShare training centre in the world. www.tahawultech.com

Parag: FVC is one of the region’s leading distributors focused on providing solutions that enable the digital transformation initiatives of organisations across the region. Its business strategy is in line with that of Barco’s, where we create demand for innovative technologies with end users, and extend education, training and technical competence to support customers and partners. This partnership has resulted in organisations across the region adopting smart and efficient meeting rooms, providing video conferencing, networking, information security and wireless, and hightech presentation equipment to enhance the conferencing experience.

What has been the biggest milestone in your five-year partnership with FVC? Itani: The launch of the Barco ClickShare Certified Training Centres at FVC’s premises in the UAE in May 2018 was one of the biggest milestones. Since its launch, the centre has been a huge success in helping empower enterprise resellers with an in-depth understanding of workplace technology. The training centre has also welcomed great interest from the APAC, EMEA and US

markets – where we plan to accredit more distributors. What are your plans for growing this partnership? Parag: We anticipate a strengthened relationship going forward as our efforts in training and development have been quite positive. Through the Barco University and FVC regional training centres, we aim to continue our efforts to provide our internal and external stakeholders with more product knowledge and experience, plus optimising the productivity of our enterprise offerings. We foresee the partnership being stronger with an increased network of resellers

FVC’s managing director K.S. Parag

Ramzi Itani, Barco’s vice president for the Middle East and Africa

www.tahawultech.com

DECEMBER 2018

INTERVIEW

Barco, FVC

contributing towards our regional growth. We also intend to offer valueadded promotions and bundle offers to the resellers.

both the trainer and trainee receive a certificate with a two-year validity, after which it needs to be renewed.

What are the biggest challenges you face in the enterprise collaboration technology space in the region? Itani: When collaborating with internal or external stakeholders, organisations need to be careful when handling information and data as cybercrime is one of the most common challenges faced by enterprises in world today. As we move forward to a more collaborative environment, Barco really aims to increase its security perimeter and infrastructure and educate its employees about the importance of regulatory requirements. Further, at Barco, we have recognised that enterprise customers do not always deploy the collaborative and security functionality of technology systems such as ClickShare to their fullest potential. Often, this is based on enterprise customers’ limited understanding of workplace technology, as there is only so much technical information that resellers can convey to customers without formal training in place.

How do you see this training centre helping your customers in the region? Itani: Most of the time, enterprise customers have a limited understanding of workplace technology since not all technical information can be conveyed to customers by the resellers, without a formal training session. We understand that enterprise customers do not always deploy the collaborative and security functionality of technology systems such as ClickShare to their full potential.

You have recently launched a ClickShare Training Centre at FVC MENA. What specific training does the center offer? Itani: The centre provides two classroom training sessions for distributors – the Barco Certified ClickShare Specialist, aimed at sales professionals, and the Barco ClickShare Technical Expert, for installation engineers. Parag: Both trainings are tailored towards a broad enterprise audience, using handson exercises to showcase technology’s functionality, sales value, basic installation, management and configuration. Upon completion of the training programme, 18

DECEMBER 2018

Tell us about the new Unified Communications Programme bundle that Barco has launched in the Middle East. Itani: The use of videos for business purposes is on the rise, but due to

Enterprise customers do not always deploy the collaborative and security functionality of technology systems to their fullest potential.

interoperability, complexity and management, video technology can be quite challenging. Our new Unified Communications Programme has been integrated with video conferencing capabilities that can help enterprises overcome these issues. Under the UC environment, companies can maximise key benefits of reduced management overhead, consistent user experiences across devices, high quality of services, and easier integration into business applications. Barco looks forward to collaborating between the UC bundle and top UC brands, and also to increasing distributor and reseller revenues and to providing the end-user the benefits they need to keep growing. How does this programme aim to support your vendors? Itani: The program has helped us collaborate with many vendors for products from Zoom, Cisco, Polycom, Starleaf, Vidyo, Lifesize and Logitech SRS bundle with our ClickShare CSE-200. The bundle is applicable to Clickshare CSE-200 that are sold and invoiced together with a UC system to a designated end-user customer. The bundle is defined as the purchase by one same customer of a ClickShare associated with a UC system to serve a conferencing set up. If the UC system proposed for the bundle has an HDMI input for content sharing, it is eligible as part of the bundle. What are Barco’s growth plans across the region for the next few years? Itani: Our reseller network has had steady growth across the MENA region. In 2017, we have nearly doubled our base, and plan to see further growth in the coming years. We also plan to introduce several innovations across our enterprise, healthcare and visualisation product offerings across the region. www.tahawultech.com

FEATURE

UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment

Aisha Al Abdooli, director of the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment Green Development department

DECEMBER 2018

www.tahawultech.com

HOW THE UAE IS USING AI TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE The UAE’s Ministry of Climate Change and Environment has developed a trio of artificial intelligence services that can monitor air and marine water quality, and can identify optimal sites for the construction of solar plants.

he human race faces an undeniable, uphill battle to reduce the effects of its existence on earth. The planet’s average surface temperature has risen about 0.9 degrees Celsius since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The difference may seem negligible, but has profound effects on earth, including rising sea levels and melting of the polar ice caps. Human activity is also selfharming - according to the World Health Organisation, there are 4.2 million deaths every year as a result of exposure to outdoor air pollution, while 91% of the world’s population lives in places where air quality exceeds WHO guideline limits. Aisha Al Abdooli, director of the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MOCCAE) www.tahawultech.com

Green Development department, understands just how important the use of technology will be in tackling some of the biggest issues posed by climate change. “We want to provide accurate, real-time data that can help the environment,” Al Abdooli says. “Once you have that, it can deliver more informed decisions, and that enables the right procedures around helping the environment and improving the health of citizens.” In September, MOCCAE launched its Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in collaboration with Khalifa University of Science and Technology and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) at the Ministry’s headquarters in Dubai. Since the launch, MOCCAE has developed three AI-powered prototype tools in collaboration with the organisations. The AI Lab compiles and analyses real-time data to inform decisionmaking, and is updated every 15-60 minutes to deliver “highly accurate

and reliable” data that is accessible to the general public. Let the sun shine The bid to develop renewable energy sources is not without its challenges. Identifying optimal ways to harness power generated by the sun is a key priority; according to the United States National Academy of Engineering, most solar panels are only 10-20% efficient. In other words, the majority of energy from the sun’s rays isn’t even captured by solar systems, largely because most solar panels are stationary and can’t move to meet the sun’s direct rays. MOCCAE’s real-time solar map for the UAE and solar technology simulator is now being used to identify areas of concentrated solar energy that can serve as ideal installation sites for solar panels. The solar simulation system provides a dynamic map of the performance of solar power plants DECEMBER 2018

FEATURE

UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment

based on a set of user-defined criteria, to help with the design of future plants. “Decision makers can use this information to maximise the efficiency of solar power plants,” Al Abdooli says. “They can check the efficiency of solar panels based on the solar energy in a particular location. Anyone who wants to install solar panels, or prospective plant builders, can login via the system and identify hotspots to install solar panels.” 22

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Clear the air MOCCAE’s AI Lab has also developed a real-time environmental monitoring and forecasting system. Using satellite data and AI-based algorithms, the system monitors and predicts air quality across the country, and displays instant readings and calculated forecasts of the air quality index (AQI). It also generates maps that illustrate current and projected

Clean air is one of the basic requirements of human health and well-being.

www.tahawultech.com

concentrations of primary gas pollutants in the atmosphere – carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and ground-level ozone – as suspended particulate matter up to three days in advance. The satellite readings complement the output of the 41 stations that monitor air quality across the UAE, which cover most of the country’s territory, but are independently unable to monitor air quality in rural and remote areas. www.tahawultech.com

The UAE aims to attain 90% air purity in less than three years as part of its National Agenda 2021, with that figure currently sitting at 77%, according to Al Abdooli, and this tool could prove invaluable in that bid. As a result of a wide range of natural and human factors, air quality has decreased significantly across the world, and is closely related to the size of natural and human activity in concentrated areas. As the concentration level of air pollutants increases, human health is at higher risk of harm. A team of “20-25” staff began work on MOCCAE’s AQI algorithms at the start of 2017, according to Al Abdooli, which took a year to fully develop. “Installing a smart system can enable one thing, but our system has in-built prediction algorithms and coding,” Al Abdooli says. “It can link several inputs and predict outcomes. Air quality and pollution impacts the general health of the population, so we have to learn about ways to get information on pollutants. Clean air is one of the basic requirements of human health and well-being.” The AQI is now visible to the public via MOCCAE’s mobile app. The daily AQI indicates a value ranging from 0–500 and also shows the dominant air pollutant that is affecting air quality. “The system also enables us to monitor the movement of dust before it arrives in the country,” Al Abdooli says. “We can know three days in advance if there will be high levels of dust, and can issue warnings to take the necessary procedures.” Above water Completing the lineup of the AI Lab’s tools is a marine environment monitoring system that uses data

We can know three days in advance if there will be high levels of dust.

generated by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and European Space Agency (ESA) satellites to produce a daily assessment of water quality in the UAE. The system also tracks ocean currents and marine pollution, including oil leaks and harmful algal bloom events, and provides information to help optimise tanker routes in the GCC region. In 2014, the spill of coal-processing chemical 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol (MCHM) into the Elk River in West Virginia caused it become contaminated, running into the public water supply. Over 300,000 people were left without water for several weeks. Researchers had little information on how to measure the quantities of chemicals or their toxicity due to inexistent information, according to the United States Geological Survey. “It’s important to learn about the quality of coastal water,” Al Abdooli says. “We can gain access to physical and chemical data in real-time, and gives us complete knowledge of water quality.” DECEMBER 2018

FEATURE

Andrew McAfee, MIT principal research scientist

Andrew McAfee, the Massachusetts Institute of Technologyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s principal research scientist

DECEMBER 2018

www.tahawultech.com

“MAKING DATA PUBLIC IS COMMUNIST” Andrew McAfee, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s principal research scientist, and co-director and co-founder of the MIT initiative on the Digital Economy, told James Dartnell why he believes the Fourth Industrial Revolution puts middle-aged people most at risk of job loss and why paranoia around tech giants and our data is irrational.

I think the rationale that data should be made public is actually communist and I’m just not on board with that.

www.tahawultech.com

s there a risk that people of a certain age - say in their forties to sixties will not have access to the education that they need to remain integrated in a global workforce that is being reshaped by technology? When I look at job statistics, the biggest challenge that I see is exactly about middle-aged, less formally educated people in the rich world. Data indicates to me that when they get displaced, when they lose their factory job, when the factory closes and gets outsourced, when the job gets automated, they have the biggest problem transitioning into another job.

I’ll be honest - I don’t know what to do about that problem. I don’t have a quick playbook for solving that. It’s a vexing problem. That’s where we should be focusing our efforts, as opposed to these broader kinds of worries about big tech companies getting too powerful. Let’s actually look at the demographic groups and the communities that we know are hurting and put our efforts there. What are efforts are you able to envisage being made to help this group? I don’t think we know exactly yet. One thing I can imagine is giving immigrant entrepreneurs a visa if DECEMBER 2018

FEATURE

Andrew McAfee, MIT principal research scientist

they will set up shop in distressed parts of a country. In America, we know that immigrants are amazing engines of entrepreneurship and job creation. I think we do need to investigate how to retrain, reskill and bring people back in. The history of mid-career retraining programmes is not great in general. Let’s figure out how to actually do that. What do we currently know about how jobs can be created to run in parallel with the Fourth Industrial Revolution? One chapter that we do understand is in America, where we have 10 years of investment in infrastructure ahead of us to get us up to a level that’s commensurate with how rich we are as a country. That’s 10 years

We do not see massive technological unemployment anywhere in the world, even in the most technologically advanced large economy, the US.

DECEMBER 2018

minimum of hard-hat, classic blue collar American jobs that we should have but don’t right now. What do you believe is the biggest threat to jobs in the near future, and in the Fourth Industrial Revolution? The answer to that changes based on each economy. The challenge that we face globally is not about the quantity of jobs - we do not see massive technological unemployment anywhere in the world, even in the most technologically advanced large economy, which is the United States. We don’t have a job quantity problem, we have a job quality problem, particularly in the rich world. To me that implies that we need to rethink the educational system and safety net - the things that turn a lousy job into a good job. In the parts of the world where job growth is anaemic, we need to ask why it is that at a time when the global economy is growing pretty quickly, some countries are falling behind. My very short answer to that very complicated question is in general, the more rigid their environments are, the more trouble they have with job creation. Job creation is a decentralised, very diffuse activity led by the private sector. I would look at how healthy that activity actually is. Which areas are you researching that you think could spawn job creation? For one thing, we’re going through a huge energy transition in the first half of the 21st Century. It is amazing to me that coal, which has been powering the American economy for the 20th Century, is rapidly becoming uncompetitive,

even against unsubsidised renewable energy. It’s super clear to me that in a lot of the world, we are going to go through an energy transition. I hope there’s more nuclear power, I know there’s going to be more wind and solar. Managed correctly, that is a huge job creation engine because those plants and physical infrastructures don’t exist right now around the world. Green jobs can be a major source of job creation. In a lot of parts of the world, infrastructure is not where it needs to be. In America, roads, bridges and airports are in some ways unworthy of an extremely rich country. If we had a properly managed infrastructure plan, that would be an investment in the future of the economy, and would put a lot of people to work. I’m not a free market fundamentalist who thinks that government has no role to play in the job creation engine. It has extraordinarily important roles to play, and in too many countries those roles are being misunderstood. Could the world’s most powerful technology companies be considered a force of destruction in the global job market, and in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution? No. I have trouble identifying with job destruction associated with Facebook, for example. I don’t see it. It’s true that all large concentrations of power demand vigilance, and these are large, powerful companies. They’ve made some mistakes recently, let’s be very clear about that. But that’s different from saying that they are huge forces for job destruction, and it’s different from saying that they need to be broken up. www.tahawultech.com

What are your thoughts on how citizen data is managed? Some of these tech companies have mishandled the data they’re entrusted with, and that’s a problem. I have trouble identifying the other problems that are associated with that huge collection of data. For example, Facebook has not mortgaged my privacy, Google has not blackmailed me and threatened to release my search history unless I pay them $100 a month. These companies realise that they’ve been entrusted with a great deal of information about all of us, and a great way to ruin their long-term prospects is to mishandle that operation. In general, with some very important exceptions, these

companies have been good custodians of our data. Do I think that they should be forced to make that data publicly available? No I do not. I do not understand the rationale for that, anymore than I understand the rationale for seizing any of the other assets that a company amasses over time. The argument that it would be better if it were public is a lousy argument. I don’t think that’s true, and I don’t think that’s a rationale for a government taking Facebook’s data anymore than it’s a rationale for a government taking a factory away from General Motors and saying it would be better if that were public. I think that rationale is actually communist and I’m just not on board with that.

There’s this notion that we should be getting compensated for the data that we contribute. The last time I checked, I think Facebook’s annual profits were about $16 billion, which is big, but Facebook has 2 billion users around the world. That’s an average of $8 per Facebook user. That is not going to make an economic difference in the lives of most of the people that use it. If we took Facebook’s profits away for one year, Facebook would stop existing - people there would just go and do something else with their lives. I don’t see the money on the table for us all to be benefiting from the data that we contribute in a meaningful economic sense.

FEATURE

DEWA Data Centre

Andrew McAfee, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s principal research scientist

WHY DEWA’S “BULLETPROOF” DATA CENTRE CAN DIGITISE THE GCC Dubai Electricity and Water Authority has launched its own data centre, Moro, which will provide private cloud, colocation and managed services offerings. DEWA’s EVP of innovation Marwan Bin Haidar says the facility will be the most secure in the world and will serve customers in the Middle East and beyond. 28

DECEMBER 2018

www.tahawultech.com

Marwan Bin Haidar, Moro Vice Chairman and EVP of Innovation, DEWA

ubai Electricity and Water Authority’s head of innovation believes that the department’s newly launched data centre is the most secure on the planet, and that the breadth of services offered by the facility means it will be uniquely positioned to assist customers across the world with their digital transformation efforts. Moro currently offers a selection of data centre services, including cloud, colocation and managed services, and is the “first” LEED Platinum facility - a US Green Building Council certification for energy and resource-efficient buildings - in the GCC region. Now fully operational, Moro already offers its services to “over 22” international and local companies, its technology platform comprising a range of blue-chip www.tahawultech.com

partners, including Microsoft, Dell EMC, Cisco, SAP, General Electric, VMware, Virtustream, EY and Cisco. Marwan Bin Haidar, DEWA’s executive vice president of innovation and the future and vice chairman of DEWA’s subsidiary,

We are talking about creating a digital source for the whole region and the whole world.

says the facility is aiming to have a global impact on the technology industry. “Moro is beyond a data centre, it’s a data hub,” he says. “We are talking about creating a digital source for the whole region and the whole world. “We have enough resources and technology to make sure that this facility is bulletproof, and we are sure that we have the most secure data hub in the whole world. We have the right partners and several levels of security. We haven’t gone for number two technology partners, only for number one. We’ve given the partners a hard time because we only want top tier companies here. We’ve designed Moro to be a top tier data centre and have obtained the right certificates for it.” Bin Haidar believes that the facility is set to be a crucial asset for the UAE’s government in powering DECEMBER 2018

FEATURE

DEWA Data Centre

a range of digital services. “Moro will be the backbone of all the government’s digital initiatives,” he says. “The whole digital portfolio can be delivered from Moro. Moro will enable the right infrastructure from hosting, to AI, Blockchain, IoT and all digital services. Everyone needs storage and compute power, which Moro provides. It’s a key part of the Dubai Government’s 10X initiative, which is about wanting Dubai to be 10 years ahead of others. We need to be digitally enabled to do that. We can leverage our experience from DEWA along with our big partners to make sure this is a success.” The facility will also include office space, and Bin Haider believes this is an important bonus for companies looking to set up their IT shop with Moro. “It’s a full ecosystem,” he says. “The staff that man the facility will be a mixture of people from outside [the GCC], some from DEWA and some from our partners, 30

DECEMBER 2018

We have enough resources and technology to make sure that this facility is bulletproof. We are sure that we have the most secure data hub in the world.

so we will have the right staff for the right purpose. Beyond that it’s about how we deliver a digital hub that can transform any entity or organisation to become digital.” DEWA is striking while the iron is hot, Bin Haidar says, with the organisation already looking to launch other data centre sites under the Moro brand. He believes the project will be a success due to the ways DEWA will target customers from the global market, and not just the GCC. “In digital there are no geographical boundaries,” he says. “Customers want hosting and all digital services. We have the right combination to give them everything they need in one place. With digital, you don’t need more staff. You need brains, but the rest is done autonomously. “We’ve already started adding more sites, and they will be announced soon. One will be outside Dubai,” he says, refusing to comment www.tahawultech.com

on specifics of the location. “We have existing clients in and outside of Dubai. They’re from all over the world. We are looking at onboarding customers from all sectors, including banking, startups - you name it. We have a big plan to reach more customers. With Moro, we can transform more and empower organisations beyond the GCC.” Moro CEO Mohammed Sabunchi echoes Bin Haidar’s comments, and says the organisation is looking to capitalise on Dubai’s status as an emerging business hub for the Middle East and North Africa region, and aims to win over customers who are looking to set up shop in the region. “We’re certainly looking to capture companies who are planning to open regional centres or back

www.tahawultech.com

offices here,” he says. “An American organisation who wants to set up in Hong Kong, Dubai or London is a prime example. They have to do the necessary due diligence and consider the necessary proximity, latency, pricing and quality of service when setting up their ICT infrastructure in a new territory. This is where we compete. A company like General Electric or ABB may want to open a shop because of the growth happening in the UAE. They want to open a hub in the region, and their choice of data centre becomes a question of which country, which city and which data hub or data centre.” Sabunchi believes Moro’s value proposition lies in the breadth of technology services it can offer to prospective clients. “A lot of

the UAE’s 15 other data centres only offer hosting, where you have bring your own hardware,” he says. “Today, we offer more than that. We do digital services and operations, hosting, backup, implementation and security. We give a complete offering and don’t just do one layer, we do five. Within those five layers are about 100 types of services.” Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum set a target for government departments to deliver 80% of their services through digital platforms by 2018, and Bin Haidar says DEWA takes great pride in having exceeded these expectations. “We achieved that target in August 2017, and today, 92% of our customer services are done online,” he says.

DECEMBER 2018

OPINION

Adam Lalani, group head of IT, Tristar

BLOCKCHAIN: A YEAR ON FROM THE HYPE Tristar’s group head of IT Adam Lalani has spearheaded one of the Middle East’s standout Blockchain success stories, but believes that issues around trust and developer expertise will inhibit the technology’s progress over the next few years.

his time last year, the word Blockchain was sparking a frenzy amongst senior IT leaders in the GCC. In this very publication, many GCC CIOs predicted that 2018 would be the year of Blockchain. Now, as the year is drawing to a close, the mass adoption of the technology has failed to take off for a few reasons. For the likes of AI and Blockchain, realism is often not there because the path hasn’t been trodden. The media is definitely guilty of hyping certain technologies, and although it’s great to talk about what the future holds, we need to be realistic about the present. There needs to be a voice of sanity sometimes - it’s great to have ideas and believe that things are possible, but it’s important to be realistic. You 32

DECEMBER 2018

can only make something with the cards you are dealt. If you want to build a traditional application, the chances are you have internal expertise to do so already, or you can twirl your rolodex and call upon any number of development houses - but when it comes to Blockchain, who do you call? Unfortunately, a lot of people profess to be Blockchain developers. They claim they can help you with Blockchain projects, but that is often absolutely not the case. These days, everyone who does any kind of software development thinks they can do Blockchain. In a lot of cases that just waters down the quality of the output. Some companies haven’t got a clue, to be completely frank. They offer you

products and services, then once they’ve sold them to you, only then do they try and figure out how to actually deliver them. Until there are developers with 3-5 years of experience, I don’t think we’ll really see Blockchain fully come to fruition, in spite of what anyone says. There are very few reliable players www.tahawultech.com

These days, everyone who does any kind of software development thinks they can do Blockchain.

Tristar’s group head of IT Adam Lalani

www.tahawultech.com

in the market right now, and as a result those select few that you can work with will come at a cost. Roughly speaking, you’ll end up paying 5-10 times more to build a Blockchainbased application than you would a traditional one that performs the same function. If you have a large experimental budget like Maersk you can call upon the likes of IBM, but this option is not available to all IT leaders. This problem is exacerbated by the scarcity of seasoned and skilled professionals – and those that are out there also command a premium for their services. So far, the only successful non-cryptocurrency Blockchain implementations (or POCs) revolve around the ability for an entity or organisation to control an entire set of processes. I believe September’s cryptocurrency price collapse was actually a good thing in many respects. There was so much hype around get-rich quick schemes, with people believing the $1,000 of Bitcoins they’d bought would turn into $100,000. Just under a DECEMBER 2018

OPINION

Adam Lalani, group head of IT, Tristar

year ago, people were buzzing over the price of Ripple and Ethereum, but now nobody talks about them. People are now focused on the technology behind them - Blockchain. A handful of success stories are there: us at Tristar, flydubai’s baggage tracing Blockchain, the Dubai Government and of course Maersk. As the whole point of Blockchain is to enable trust between multiple parties that would otherwise not trust each other, this is somewhat paradoxical. An issue that some of the early movers in the commercial space have encountered is onboarding other parties to their Blockchains. There are several reasons for this, but primarily they revolve around companies not wanting to expose their confidential data (even though it is encrypted and inaccessible to those not authorised to see it) on nodes that sit outside of their control or data centre and they 34

DECEMBER 2018

Until there are developers with 3-5 years of experience, I don’t think we’ll see Blockchain come to fruition, in spite of what anyone says.

don’t want to share the significant cost involved with onboarding, despite the obvious benefits to irrefutable data. That said, the beauty of technology like Hyperledger is that independently developed Blockchains can be plugged together and thus allow interoperability between multiple Blockchains – overcoming the first hurdle of exposure of confidential data – you can just expose only what is required to move the transaction or set of processes along. Having had 18 months of experience with the technology, I envisage that this is way things will end up a few years down the line. When technology is new, it is expensive. Remember how much it cost to buy a DVD player all those years ago? Eventually, as Blockchain developer expertise increases, the cost and the ability to build Blockchains will no longer be priced out of reach of the mid-tier and more widespread adoption will begin to take hold. We will see organisations then sharing data between each other with their own private Blockchains – thus removing the two greatest stumbling blocks to mass adoption. I am often asked the question “why do we need Blockchain when we can store data in traditional databases?” In some ways, that’s a valid question. People need to understand that while you can’t tamper with data on a Blockchain, data coming into its related databases can be manipulated. That is the major current flaw with Blockchain. Nonetheless, my response to the question is always a variation of the same theme – “why do you use email when you can write a message using a quill and an inkpot and send it via horseback messenger?” A new way of doing things is always going to provoke debate and questions – and that is a good thing. www.tahawultech.com

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FEATURE

Huawei OceanStor Dorado V3

HUAWEI OCEANSTOR DORADO V3 Walid Gomaa, VP, data centre and cloud solutions, Huawei Enterprise Business Group, Middle East, gives his take on why the firm’s OceanStor Dorado is the world’s fastest all-flash storage.

n today’s competitive business environment, IT organisations need to provide a high-quality and productive IT environment for continuously growing internal users and external customers. In addition, enterprise application environments have become increasingly unpredictable as their IT infrastructure requirements grow in complexity and size. Mission-critical business application performance is highly sensitive to storage performance and latency, and highly dependent on the resilience of the enterprise IT environment. Huawei OceanStor Dorado V3 fully satisfies the high performance and resilience requirements of missioncritical business applications. It helps customers in finance, manufacturing, telecoms and other sectors to enhance their database services and virtualisation environments with the best total cost of ownership. Huawei’s OceanStor Dorado V3 all-flash storage is able to deliver 0.5 ms consistent latency by incorporating intelligent chips, NVMe architectures, and Huawei’s FlashLink® intelligent algorithms to achieve end-to-end optimisations from SSDs and controllers, which help improve the application performance threefold. It can scale out to 16

DECEMBER 2018

www.tahawultech.com

controllers and can reach to 7 million IOPS, making it capable of meeting growing business requirements. System architecture OceanStor Dorado V3 all-flash storage systems use Huawei OceanStor OS as the operating system and inherit abundant features of the operating system. The SSDs of the storage systems have been optimised to deliver optimal performance at a costeffective price. In addition, the storage systems are able to support various host ports such Fiber Channel ports, Ethernet iSCSI ports, as well as high-speed lowlatency InfiniBand (IB) ports. OceanStor Dorado implements a series of intelligent algorithms (FlashLink AI algorithms) for largeblock sequential write, independent metadata partitioning, I/O priority adjustment, and coordination between the storage controller and SSDs to optimise data layouts. The scale-out technology adopted by OceanStor Dorado V3 expands the number of controller enclosures to ensure linear growth of capacity and performance at a stable low latency, whereas the scale-up technology adds disk enclosures and disks to expand the capacity. When the capacity increases, the back-end data balancing mechanism automatically balances data among all disks. Key characteristics of OceanStor Dorado V3 Outstanding performance: Provides 7 million IOPS, 0.5 ms consistent low latency, improving application performance by 3x. Stability and reliability: Adopts abundant end-to-end reliability technologies. The gateway-free active-active solution can provide, delivering 99.9999% business availability. In additon, it can be smoothly upgraded to a 3DC solution. Convergence and efficiency: The www.tahawultech.com

inline data reduction technologies (inline deduplication and compression) can achieve 3:1 data reduction ratio and enable enterprises to reduce OPEX by 75%. Innovative chips; Huawei implemented special Intelligent chips inside Dorado: SSD controller chip: runs special algorithm to accelerate data read and write. The write latency is as short as 40 Îźs, which is 10% faster than competitors. Multi-protocol interface chip: Intelligently parses front-end protocols including 32 Fiber Channel and Ethernet protocols with forward compatibility. This module improves storage performance by 20%. BMC management chip: Implements intelligent and comprehensive fault management. Fault location accuracy is up to 93%, shortening fault recovery times from 2 hours to 10 minutes. Wide compatibility: Upgrading existing storage systems to all-flash storage involves migrating data between different storage systems that use different operating systems and application software. This can

Huawei OceanStor Dorado V3 fully satisfies the high performance and resilience requirements of mission-critical business applications.

Walid Gomaa, VP, data centre and cloud solutions, Huawei Enterprise Business Group, Middle East

be a critical challenge in terms of compatibility. OceanStor Dorado V3 is compatible with over 300 mainstream storage systems and 98% of IT infrastructures, enabling smooth upgrades that do not affect business and helping data centres transition easily to flash. Interconnection: Deploying all-flash systems at both active and passive sites increases costs for data centers. To solve this problem, the OceanStor Dorado V3 can interconnect with OceanStor V5 converged storage series, helping users build cost-effective disaster recovery protection schemes and protect their investment. DCIG evaluated 32 mainstream All-Flash Arrays (AFAs) and gave the Huawei OceanStor Dorado the Highest Recommended Ranking based on performance, management, software, hardware, virtualisation, and technical support. ESG Lab performed hands-on testing of the Huawei OceanStor Dorado V3 all-flash storage. Their five-year TCO analysis highlights the systemâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s financial advantages over hybrid and first-generation all-flash storage systems from major vendors DECEMBER 2018

FEATURE

Finastra

THE FUTURE OF FINANCE Joseph George spoke to Eli Rosner, chief product and technology officer of $2.1 billion Fintech firm Finastra, who believes banks and financial institutions will need to be become digitally driven advisors if they are to retain customer loyalty.

A Eli Rosner, chief product and technology officer, Finastra

DECEMBER 2018

n entrepreneur walks into a bank to apply for a loan. Machine learning capabilities within the bankâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s systems have already predicted that they might need additional cash. The system, meanwhile, would have analysed the actual amount the business requires, suggests suitable trading partners from within the customer ecosystem who they could partner with or even suggests they opt against pursuing the business due to probable failure. Welcome to the future of banks - where they will take on the role of a digitally driven advisor and enabler. Â www.tahawultech.com

If banks and financial institutions fail to digitally transform, we might very well see them becoming irrelevant. So says Eli Rosner, chief product and technology officer of Fintech specialist Finastra. The “third largest” Fintech firm in the world, Finastra recorded 2017 revenues of $2.1 billion and currently has over 10,000 employees. Rosner was speaking during the firm’s recent Finastra Universe conference, which discussed innovation-driven technologies in the banking sector. Finastra Universe brought together global and regional experts to explore the impact of technology on the banking and finance industries. Speakers focused on the need for financial institutions to have a strategic is estimated to have contributed digital agenda that will distinguish as much as $2 billion of that total. themselves from competitors while With a significant amount of capital simultaneously adding more value waiting to be deployed, investment in to their interactions with customers. Fintech is expected to remain strong. The advancement and high Finastra, meanwhile, is aiming to penetration of third-platform change the way the modern banking technology in the last decade software is built and distributed. has drastically altered customer Its platform-as-a-service solution, expectations, creating an arena for FusionFabric.cloud - is collaborating banks where they either compete or collaborate with new players to construct exceptional customer journeys. “Data, computing power and cloud have become the key drivers of digital innovations within the financial world and are leading the way towards a notion of openness,” Rosner said. “If banks can leverage data and trust, it will be a different game altogether. the total investment in Fintech “Fintech has been driving companies worldwide in the transformation in the retail first half of 2018. $2 billion banking industry across the of that was contributed Middle East and North Africa region,” he said. The total by the MENA market investment in Fintech companies worldwide in the first half of 2018 hit $57.9 billion, and the MENA market

$57.9 billion

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with developers worldwide to advance innovation, and has opened up its core systems so that third parties can enable them to develop applications on top. FusionFabric had a soft launch last year but will be officially launched in London in May 2019. The development part of the environment, Fusion Creator provides APIs and tools that cover almost all banking activities: retail, corporate, payment, capital markets, investment management and enterprise risk. The runtime environment, Fusion Operate, allows experts who want to develop sophisticated models to use sandboxes to develop and run them against live systems. “We go through a certification process,” Rosner said. “We ensure that they comply with security. We then give customers an environment to deploy - the run time - so that it can be tested and deployed to a secure environment. Finally it can be published into Fusion Store.” DECEMBER 2018

FEATURE

HMD Nokia

THE MAGIC NUMBER

Joseph George caught up with Sanmeet Singh Kochhar, HMD Globalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s general manager for the Middle East, who believes the firm is on target to make Nokia the number three regional mobile device player by 2022.

DECEMBER 2018

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okia owner HMD Global believes the once-loved smartphone brand could well be on its way to regaining its popularity in the mobile ecosystem. In 2017 Nokia shipped 70 million devices, and became one of the fastest-growing brand during the third quarter of 2018. According to a recent report by Counterpoint, HMD’s Nokia was the fastest growing smartphone brand in Q3 2018 with a growth of 73 per cent year-on-year mainly due to its popularity in Indian and South East Asian market. Nokia had almost disappeared from the radar after Microsoft sold the brand and discontinued its Windows phones. But thanks to HMD, the company has managed to resurrect itself through a series of consumer-friendly smartphones and feature phones. HMD’s attempt to bring back Nokia into the limelight started with the release of android devices Nokia 6, Nokia 3 and Nokia 5. This attempt wasn’t just confined to smartphones - Nokia ramped up its feature phone category with the 3310 and 8110. HMD relaunched Nokia smartphones in the region in July 2018. “We believe that we are on a strong pedestal,” Sanmeet Singh Kochhar, HMD Global’s general manager for the Middle East, said. “We are growing in 2018 in the Middle East and we will continue to do so in 2019. By 2022, we will be one of the top three brands in the region.” The UAE is a premium device market, but at the same time there is a significant contribution from other sections, he said, adding that the company has devised multiple strategies to take the brand forward. “One of them is our retail partnerships,” he said. “We want to leverage our strong presence across all organised, online and independent www.tahawultech.com

By 2022, we will be one of the top three brands in the region.

Sanmeet Singh Kochhar, HMD Global’s general manager for the Middle East

retail channels. In the UAE alone we are present in over 2,000 IR stores. The distribution network is the key. Today, our consumers - mostly millennials - try to create, share and view content using the smartphone. Therefore the screen becomes very important and imaging quality even more important.” HMD, he said, is putting extra emphasis on listening to what consumers want and has created a forum to receive consumer feedback and obtain key insights. “The focus is on the consumer,” he said. “We work closely with our fans. Most of our phones follow a pattern of what our customers are looking for and we incorporate their feedback in the forthcoming model.” A partnership with Foxconn means all Nokia devices are manufactured in Foxconn factories. “This close association with Foxconn has enabled us access to innovative technologies and materials,” Kochhar said. HMD also entered into a partnership with Google, where all of its Nokia devices will be built for

Android One, giving users a pure Android experience with the latest security updates. When asked how frequently HMD will come out with new devices, he said, “The average lifespan of a smartphone is two years. We want to ensure that our devices are futureproof and consumers get the latest OS updates.” In terms of feature phones, he said the need for a second device that is priced low and with a long battery life was driving their sales. The Nokia One was launched by HMD in an effort to bridge the gap between a smartphone and a feature phone. The android device has the features of a basic smartphone and has a standby time of 360 hours. “The size of the software itself is smaller than the OREO software,” Kochhar said. “The apps were tailor-made for Nokia One. It is an ideal platform for those who want to move from a smartphone to a feature phone. Especially popular is the Nokia 3310 and the Nokia Banana phone. The latter is a 4G feature phone. It can be used as a Wi-Fi dongle.” HMD is also working with various developers to bring the messaging feature something similar to WhatsApp - on to the feature phone. DECEMBER 2018

INSIGHT

Enterprise Innovation

HOW TO LEAD INNOVATION IN A MIDSIZE ENTERPRISE Midsize CIOs can use this two-pronged approach to foster innovation within their teams and across the organisation, according to principal executive advisor Christopher Mixter.

DECEMBER 2018

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average, midsize CEOs have made promises to drive 11% growth from the digital side of the business. This requires more than a change to technologies, it requires a business model transformation. Midmarket CEOs are looking to change the business their companies are in. Pharmaceutical is selling wellness outcomes, insurance companies are selling claims prevention. MSEs are shifting from widgets to experiences or outcomes. This means transforming the product, channel and operations to a customer-centric operation. Leading innovation in a midsize enterprise is a two-pronged approach. First, enable the IT team and then enable business teams.

hen Gartner researchers asked CIOs at midsize enterprises what digital business means to them, they ended up with more than 100 different answers. The reality is that digital business means something different for everyone. But at the CEO level, it’s about fundamentally changing the business, not optimising what you already have. This means IT teams need to innovate and foster a culture of innovation. Innovation is hard. Where at one point it meant productivity or enterprise resource planning, that’s not what CEOs talk about now. On

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Enable the IT team It’s easy to make an announcement about creating a culture of innovation, only to have everyone return to the old way of doing things in the day-to-day. To counter that, the CIO of Service King, a collision repair chain, decided to use its existing IT framework to create a culture of productisation over projects. He told his team to examine any business request that came in for product opportunities. What else can you do with the widget one business unit requested? As long as they met the original request, the team was free to innovate, experiment, fail and work with whatever teams necessary. For the past few years, the IT organisation has focused on consolidating, centralising, standardising and creating stability. It has built a culture that is extremely risk-averse, which is not an environment conducive to innovation. To bring innovation back to the IT team, CIOs need to: 1. Use product design principles in IT

2. Instill a climate of innovation 3. Align to customer workflows It paid off for Service King. The IT team filed seven patents with a total valuation of about $30 million. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in. You’ve got to find a way to disrupt. Enable the business The reality of digital business is that IT will not be able to support all the projects that the business units want to do. The good news is that most projects the businesses want to experiment with won’t scale. To enable the businesses to innovate: 1. Encourage business experiments 2. Open channels for communication 3. Formalise architecture principles We’ll never be staffed and funded for all that work and we might not be the best ones to deliver it anyway. How do we empower the businesses to lead experimentation? General Atlantic, an equity firm, set up a series of options for the business to communicate. There was a genius bar for those groups who needed a little help. People with several successful projects became “technologists”, and the team designed a collaboration portal across the company. Finally, when you set business units free to experiment, make sure you establish a short, succinct framework of architecture that they need to adhere to. This might include items such as ensuring the technology is compatible and has a better user experience. As long as the technology meets a certain criteria, the business unit is free to experiment and, if they find a technology that needs to scale across the business, IT will be there to help. DECEMBER 2018

INSIGHT

Salesforce

Salesforce’s regional vice president for the Middle East and Africa, Thierry Nicault

THE FUTURE OF CUSTOMER SERVICE Salesforce’s regional vice president for the Middle East and Africa, Thierry Nicault, believes that the way organisations develop processes around customer service will be key in their future success.

DECEMBER 2018

very day I meet with customers and talk through the challenges they face. These conversations have shown me that companies will either win or lose based on the quality of service they provide. I was really happy to see that our recent State of the Connected Customer report backs this up – 58% of consumers and a whopping 77% of business buyers say that technology has significantly raised their expectations of how companies should interact with them. Quite simply, in our connected world, customers expect seamless, personalised experiences, across channels and devices. We’ve also just released our second annual State of Service report. Reading through it, it’s clear to me that businesses are responding to this shift. In fact, 85% of execs who are responsible for customer service believe the customer experience they provide is a key competitive differentiator. www.tahawultech.com

Customer service adapts to mobile world The strongest customer service teams recognise the shift we’re seeing in customer behaviour and attitude, especially as people become more connected. They’re responding to this and are modernising to make certain they offer customers a seamless experience across all channels. For example, half of all service teams surveyed now support customers across at least five different channels, while teams offering service via mobile apps grew an incredible 196% last year. At the same time, service teams are also tuning into the fact customers are getting much more demanding and expect 1-to-1-type experiences. In fact, personalising service interactions has been one of their top three priorities over the past 12-18 months. This underscores the fact that customer service is relying more and more on data. It’s absolutely critical that service teams understand customer preferences, needs, and existing relationships. In order to do this, they need access to accurate customer data at their fingertips. Customer service teams collaborate across divisions Organisations are also realising that delivering the personal, seamless experience their customers want requires collaboration across the entire organisation. Of the service teams we surveyed, 78% believe every employee is a customer service agent. More importantly, the majority of teams are putting this attitude into practice: 63% have a formal process in place to collaborate with sales; 62% collaborate with marketing to manage and respond to social inquiries and issue; and 60% incorporate customer feedback into product development and feedback cycles. I think this cross-organisation approach is going to gain traction www.tahawultech.com

The future of customer service is conversational, intelligent and personalised.

rapidly over the next few years. This is for three reasons. First, more and more businesses are adopting cloud technology, and in doing so are breaking down data and process silos within their organisation. This makes pan-organisation collaboration a whole lot easier to achieve. Secondly, collaborative customer service increases cross-selling and up-selling opportunities. That’s a strong business imperative. Thirdly, and most importantly, customers are demanding this approach. They see no difference between customer service, marketing, maintenance or sales. To them, it’s all the same organisation, from which they expect the same service. If businesses don’t meet this expectation, their customers will walk away. Predictive intelligence is next for high performers As customer expectations continue to go through the roof, companies have to move beyond knee-jerk reactions to changing customer needs – and actually start anticipating those needs. With the advent of predictive intelligence tools, this ability is no longer stuck in the realm of science fiction. It’s real, and it will soon be

the only way to win the customer experience game. Using tools that provide timely, contextual and highly actionable insights, companies are quickly catching on to the tremendous benefits of predictive intelligence. The use of service analytics increased 166% between 2015 and 2016. To me, predictive intelligence is the foundation of proactive customer service. For example, if a service agent had IoT data coming from a customer’s water filtration system, they’d know if the water pressure was too high and could alert the customer before it caused a leak in their home. With the introduction of predictive or artificial intelligence, service agents are able to predict and personalise interactions like never before. For example, machine learning could analyse a caller’s word choice to understand emotions and recommend the next best thing for an agent to say. Today, two thirds of high-performing teams use this type of real-time conversational intelligence to build better relationships with their customers. I believe intelligent service will be one of the hottest customer service trends of 2019 as businesses realise predictive intelligence and AI tools are within their grasp. The bottom line Service is now the key means of differentiation and as a result, leading companies are empowering their service teams to be truly customercentric, and to collaborate within their organisations to support the overall customer journey. The future of customer service is conversational, intelligent and personalised and it’s the companies that prioritise this approach – by empowering service agents with the necessary tools and technology – that will succeed. In today’s world, and tomorrow’s, customer experience is the defining line between companies that will struggle – and those that will thrive. DECEMBER 2018

FEATURE

Ruckus Networks

THROUGH THE WIRE Newly appointed president of Ruckus Networks, Ian Whiting, was recently in Dubai and spoke to CNME about factors that are driving its growth across the UAE and the Middle East.

Ian Whiting, president of Ruckus Networks

DECEMBER 2018

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uckus Networks, an ARRIS company, says the UAE government’s push towards engaging and connecting citizens is a key driver for the company’s regional growth. Smart city initiatives in the UAE are more advanced than anywhere else in the region and combined with increased use of IoT, especially within the industrial space, are enabling Ruckus to deploy its connectivity solutions in the country. “Governments in the region, especially in the UAE, are looking to serve the public with innovative technologies,” Ruckus president Ian Whiting told CNME. “Ruckus technology brings high-quality connectivity for the best usercommunication experience. “In a city like Dubai, it is more about engaging citizens and connecting them. We offer a solid platform and innovative solutions.” Today, citizens are most often online - from shopping and video streaming to accessing numerous public services. These require the deployment of huge bandwidth, and network solutions often lack the ability to support growing infrastructure, according to Whiting. Especially in Africa and India, there is a huge population living with “underserved” infrastructure, with connectivity issues in hundreds of thousands of remote communities. “We work with companies like Google and Facebook in bringing those communities into the digital world,” Whiting said. Earlier this year, Ruckus announced that it is joining Facebook’s Express Wi-Fi Certified ecosystem, a programme that www.tahawultech.com

While the number of applications have increased, they also require great wireless technology.

allows access point manufacturers to build Wi-Fi hardware compatible with Express Wi-Fi. Operators participating in Facebook’s Express Wi-Fi initiative will deploy the Ruckus virtual SmartZone controllers and certified indoor/ outdoor Wi-Fi access points in hightraffic public areas in several parts of Africa and Asia. The products feature Ruckus’ adaptive antenna BeamFlex technology. The patented technique “increases connection quality and range, delivers better voice and data communication and significantly improves power efficiency”. Ruckus, Whiting said, in partnership with big companies, are bridging the digital divide. Ruckus’ target vertical markets span hospitality, education, government, service providers, residential projects, sports and entertainment venues and transportation centres.

Similarly, there has been an increased deployment of IoT solutions across industrial and manufacturing units. “While the number of applications have increased, they also require great wireless technology,” Whiting said. “Conditions are usually not so good for network penetration. There is often a bottleneck for the multitude of apps and sensors to perform at their optimum level. Either it requires building a new network or enhancing the system by using our technology. “By using a Ruckus network, you are able to get to market faster because of our rich features. Mobility, services and the integration to the network are keeping us busy. At Ruckus, our main aim is to enable mobility.” Giving an example of a recent deployment for West Japan Railway Company, Whiting said the government was keen on enabling free Wi-Fi services to encourage tourism. Wireless LAN access points are being used for the Wi-Fi service offered on JR-West Shinkansen passenger cars to meet the demand for reliable internet connectivity. Ruckus, Whiting said, is a vertical-focused company. “We identify the vertical and go about working towards that,” he said. “We mainly work through system integrators. The growth within the Middle East region for us has been phenomenal. We are anticipating the growth to continue exponentially.” Ruckus will also continue its focus on third party security integrations. “Our strategy is to partner,” he said. “All the big security players out there are constantly innovating. Having an open architecture is our preferred option. We let customers choose the best solution.” DECEMBER 2018

INSIGHT

Cloud-pipe-device strategy

HOW A ‘CLOUDPIPE-DEVICE’ STRATEGY ENABLES TRANSFORMATION Huawei’s vice president and managing director of its Enterprise Business, Alaa ElShimy, gives his take on the three key elements that he believes, when combined, can deliver technology success.

n spite of the consistent upgrades and innovations we have come to expect over the last two decades, the pace of change today is unique. We are leaving the analogue world and entering an era where the world itself is digital, from cars to clothes to coffee machines, all of which are connected. The good thing about digitisation is that some forms or components of the ICT ecosystem will result in outcomes that foster social, economic, and political development. Industry cloud, for example, is a business-driven digital transformation, and is beyond the simple combination of cloud and industry; it is the integration of technologies into businesses. Digitised enterprises of the future will be about the production, transmission and analysis of data. It follows that they will require an ICT infrastructure that integrates cloud-pipe-device, 48

DECEMBER 2018

and an open, flexible, agile and safe platform to forge close partnerships to develop rich applications and create an innovative, win-win ecosystem, which will drive the digital transformation of enterprises. Over the next five to ten years we will see all kinds of smart devices that automatically adapt to various use scenarios. All people and all things will have the ability to sense their surroundings, and devices will serve as entry points to the intelligent world. Optical and wireless networks will provide ubiquitous, ultra-broadband connections. By 2025, Huawei predicts that all enterprise IT solutions will be ‘cloudified’, and more than 85% of enterprise applications will be cloud-based. In the meantime, interconnected computers spread across the planet will aggregate vast amounts of data, forming a ‘digital brain’ in the cloud. This digital brain

will evolve in real time, and it will never age, providing intelligence that can be called upon at any time by people and machines via high-speed connections and devices. In the cloud era, enterprises are the main players, as solutions innovation will revolve around their specific needs. In this context, that’s why gaining insight into customer needs and developing innovative technology that addresses them is key. All of which could be established by providing customers with easy-todeliver and easy-to-operate hybrid cloud solutions that are based on unified and open architecture. With continuous research and development and collaborating with channel partners, the digital ecosystem will fully emerge from an idea to a reality bringing us to better connected world. We have worked to facilitate the development of industry standards. www.tahawultech.com

Interconnected computers will aggregate vast amounts of data, forming a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;digital brainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in the cloud

Through these activities, we aim to jointly create value for customers, grow the industries, achieve sustainable development, and ultimately build a fully connected, intelligent world. Huawei is an active member of more than 360 standards organisations, industry alliances, and open source communities, where we work together on mainstream standards and lay the foundation for shared success.

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DECEMBER 2018

COLUMN

Glesni Holland

HAPPY FAMILIES U

ber and Careem are like bickering siblings. This “anything you can do, I can do better” attitude has rung true in various competitive movements between the pair since Careem’s establishment in 2012 and Uber’s entrance into the Middle East in 2013. Most recently, Careem announced plans to launch a busbooking app in Cairo; a day later, Uber announced the launch of Uber Bus in the Egyptian capital. The quick succession of announcements between the pair only highlights the intensifying rivalry here in the Middle East, where they compete across various cities. Uber has recently relaunched in Abu Dhabi UAE after the service 50

DECEMBER 2018

was suspended back in 2016 amid regulation issues between the UAE capital and the ride-hailing firm. As part of the relaunch, Uber will enable Emiratis to drive on the Uber app using their private vehicles on a full-time or part-time basis. Coincidentally, just four days prior to the relaunch, Careem announced a new partnership with the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism for a “range of new initiatives in the emirate,” to improve the visitor experience for tourists in the capital. Uber is the world’s largest ride-hailing operator, with a presence in 65 countries and over 600 cities across the globe. In the Middle East, however, the company is operational in only 16

cities; compared to Careem’s 120 in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey region. However, Dara Khosrowshahi has loosely defended this lack of presence in the East, claiming that “one of the potential dangers of our global strategy is that we take on too many battles across too many fronts with too many competitors,” he wrote in a note to employees regarding the decision to leave South East Asia earlier this year. With rumours hinting that the potential for an Uber-Careem merger is still on the cards – or an acquisition of the latter - then perhaps this ongoing contest may soon be put to bed and the pair can live as happy families under one roof. www.tahawultech.com

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ISSUE 322 | DECEMBER 2018

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