Computer News Middle East November 2019

ISSUE 332 | NOVEMBER 2019 TAHAWULTECH.COM

GOVTECH: ABU DHABI DIGITAL AUTHORITY

INDUSTRY GAME CHANGER CLOUDHOST CO-FOUNDERS RAJESH SAJNANI AND NIKHIL KATARA ON THEIR NEW INNOVATIVE E-COMMERCE PLATFORM, CLOUDSOUQ

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The impact assessment report found that GITEX generated AED 1.6 billion in revenue.”

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ITEX Technology Week was another phenomenal success for CPI Media Group and for all those that participated in the region’s flag bearing IT conference.

A recent report issued by Dubai World Trade Center also illustrated the economic importance of GITEX to the UAE economy. The impact assessment report found that GITEX generated AED 1.6 billion in revenue, whilst it also contributed AED 919 million to Dubai’s overall GDP. CloudHost have been a disruptive force in the increasingly competitive cloud market in the MENA region since their inception in 2015 - and are the focus of our cover story for November. We spoke to co-founders Rajesh Sajnani and Nikhil Katara to find out more about their unique new e-commerce platform CloudSouq.

I was also off on my travels last month and got the opportunity to return to my homeland of Ireland for Microsoft’s Digital Summit. I spoke to Microsoft executives John Frank and Ann Johnson about the ethical implications of AI and the current challenges in the cybersecurity ecosystem.

Deputy Editor Giorgia Guantario interviewed H.E. Dr Rauda Al-Saadi, Director General, Abu Dhabi Digital Authority to find out the role it is playing in terms of helping to raise the wellbeing of Abu Dhabi’s citizens through service excellence and innovation.

We also met with Emaar’s CIO, Binoo Joseph and Oracle’s Vice President of Business Applications Rahul Misra, to discuss how the two organisations are working together to build the future of property and IT. Majid Al-Futtaim are one of the most recognisable brands in the UAE and we sat down with Joe Abi Akl, Acting Chief Corporate Development Officer at the holding company to understand its own digital transformation journey and find out how it is delivering incredible customer experiences.

Mark Forker Editor

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CONTENTS

Advanced Computing Partner

Digital Innovation Partner

ISSUE 332 | NOVEMBER 2019

CloudHost

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EMAAR AND ORACLE

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GOVTECH: ABU DHABI DIGITAL AUTHORITY

News CNME rounds up the biggest regional and global developments in enterprise technology, including DGW partnership with Finesse, Huawei’s 5G OpenLab and Veritas’ research.

34 Leading the way on 5G standardisation

with AWS

John Frank, VP of European Union Government Affairs at Microsoft, calls on technology providers to be more transparent in terms of the capabilities of their AI products.

The customer comes first

In a fascinating case study, we find out how Amazon Web Services (AWS) has helped reduce the costs of Al Tayer Insignia by a phenomenal 79 percent.

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

Shaping the future of computing Huawei is reshaping the future of computing by betting on statistical-based computing, AI and 5G, says Alaa Elshimy, MD & VP at Huawei Enterprise Business Group Middle East.

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Alp Uysal, VP and Head of Strategy, Technology, Innovations and Government & Industrial Relations at Ericsson Middle East & Africa, discusses the company’s approach to 5G.

54 Reducing costs by 79%

Microsoft on AI and cybersecurity

Joe Abi Akl, Acting Chief Corporate Development Officer at Majid Al Futtaim, discusses the digital transformation the company has underwent using Big Data & Analytics.

FUTURE ENTERPRISE AWARDS 2019

DIGITAL SERVICES Web Developer Jefferson de Joya Abbas Madh

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NEWS

DUBAI GOVERNMENT WORKSHOP PARTNERS WITH FINESSE TO ACCELERATE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY

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Dubai Government Workshop (DGW) revealed that it has reached a collaboration with Finesse to assist with the acceleration of its digital transformation journey, which aims to redesign traditional processes that support various business functions and decisions. As part of the partnership, Finesse will oversee digital automation of numerous

services and provide analytical solutions to ensure operational excellence at DGW. Fahad Alraeesi, Deputy of CEO, DGW, said, “DGW is committed to maintaining and enhancing our services and increasing operational efficiency through significant investment in technology. Keeping pace with the latest technological

innovations aligns with our commitment to achieving digital transformation and implementing digital solutions ranging from automation of customer journey touchpoints and internal processes, along with the provision of business insights to executive management and employees, will elevate our user experience to the next level.”

Eljo JP, Global Business Development Director, Finesse, added, “Our collaboration with DGW is strategic for Finesse as we comprise our solutions to meet specific public sector requirements, in line with the vision of the wise leadership. Our solutions for analytics and RPA will significantly transform the entire business process at DWG, ensuring the Department has the latest technological innovations at its disposal moving forward.”

HUAWEI PRE-LAUNCHES 5G OPENLAB IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Zhang Dong, Vice President of Huawei 5G Marketing & Solution Sales

The pre-launch of the Huawei 5G OpenLab in the Middle East was announced during GITEX 2019 by Huawei, a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT). The Huawei 5G OpenLab in the Middle East aims to boost 5G services throughout the Middle East region, prompting NOVEMBER 2019

innovation and collaboration across markets with the intention of creating an open ecosystem that will further ICT development across the region.

Huawei 5G OpenLab in Middle East will mainly focus on the 2B market, including artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, fixed wireless access (FWA), CCTV, campus private line, and more. Consumer services, such as cloud gaming, will also be a focus of the OpenLab. “5G development is accelerating at speeds beyond imagination, with roll-out imminent in markets across the Middle East and the wider world,” said An Jian, President of Carrier Networks Business Group, Huawei Middle East.

“By introducing the Huawei 5G OpenLab concept in the Middle East, we are providing the local ICT sector with a real

5G network environment in which they can experience, innovate, and verify the latest 5G applications with operators and partners. This will contribute to the development and strengthening of the local ICT sector, enabling the introduction of next generation technology that will contribute to building a fully connected, intelligent world.”

Zhang Dong, Vice President of Huawei 5G Marketing & Solution Sales, said: “5G OpenLab is a crossindustry platform through which operators, third parties and vertical industries in the Middle East can work together to understand business scenarios, develop innovative services, and build the 5G ecosystem.”

Huawei 5G OpenLab in Middle East is scheduled for launch in December 2019. www.tahawultech.com

88% OF TOTAL COMPANY DATA IS DARK OR ROT DATA: VERITAS Veritas Technologies, a worldwide leader in enterprise data protection and software-defined storage, unveiled the third edition of its Middle East Databerg Report. The key findings highlight that the UAE businesses surveyed are failing to manage their dark (unclassified) and Redundant, Obsolete or Trivial (ROT) data, which is slowing cloud adoption. Sitting at 88 percent of total company data, dark and ROT data has significantly contributed to respondents failing to reach their own targets for cloud migration. While last year’s prediction of cloud storage uptake was 55 percent, the actual uptake this year was just 45 percent.

The report, which surveyed 100 IT leaders across all key business sectors in the UAE, focuses on identifying the pervasiveness of ‘databergs’

– reflecting the surveyed UAE organisations’ data hoarding culture.

The report indicates that the volume of data which is either dark or ROT has remained consistently high over the past three years.

Johnny Karam, Vice President of Emerging Markets at Veritas, said: “Data is central to the digital transformation in the UAE and yet, our study reveals that businesses are crying out for a better and simpler way to manage their data in order to reap the rewards of the cloud.

Unfortunately, the UAE businesses surveyed fail to realise the true potential of the cloud because of poor data management, creating a vicious circle of rising IT costs and missed opportunities. Embracing a hybrid cloud model will enable businesses to better manage their budgets while

Johnny Karam, Vice President of Emerging Markets, Veritas

benefitting from improved backup and ransomware protection capabilities. In addition, prioritising the management and protection of valuable, missioncritical data, while illuminating dark and deleting ROT data, will help boost operational efficiencies and business transformation.”

EVENT Future Enterprise Awards

PAVING THE WAY TO THE FUTURE

TAHAWULTECH.COM AND CNME HOSTED A NEW EDITION OF FUTURE ENTERPRISE AWARDS TO CELEBRATE AND RECOGNISE ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN THE REGIONAL IT LANDSCAPE.

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Huawei wins ICT Innovation Vendor of the Year

Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s team

CNME Editor Mark Forker

NOVEMBER 2019

Injazat – A Mubadala Company wins Digital Transformation Vendor of the Year and Smart Cities Solution Provider of the Year.

www.tahawultech.com

Future Enterprise Awards 2019 winners

Mohammed Amin, Senior VP, META and Russia, Dell Technologies

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he Future Enterprise Awards, which took place at Jumeirah Emirates Towers in Dubai on October 6, saw hundreds of IT leaders coming together to honour individuals and organisations who are leaving a mark in the Middle East’s digital sector. www.tahawultech.com

The awards recognised 38 organisations and IT leaders who are transforming and evolving the technology ecosystem in the region.

The winners demonstrated not only that they were able to create new value using technology, but also that they did so in uncommon, innovative ways. Be it pioneering a new technology, applying an existing technology to a new purpose, or just setting the bar high.

The awards also honoured projects that, due to their scope and impact, are helping organisations to a more profitable future.

Road & Transport Authority (RTA) scooped the Best Technology Implementation in Government award, while Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank won Best Technology Implementation in Banking.

The AI Vendor of the Year went to Dell Technologies, while Senior VP for META and Russia, Mohammed Amin also won the Visionary Technology Leader of the Year.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise brought home two awards for Disruptive Technology Vendor of the Year and Innovation Vendor of the Year; so did Injazat – A Mubadala Company which was honoured with the Digital Transformation Vendor of the Year and the Smart Cities Solution Provider of the Year.

Tahawultech.com and CNME would like to congratulate this year’s winners and applaud them for paving the way to the future of the IT industry in the region.

NOVEMBER 2019

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EVENT HPE

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A SUCCESSFUL WEEK HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE, THE GLOBAL IT-LEADER, DEMONSTRATED THE CAPABILITIES OF THEIR SOON-TO-BE OPEN HPE DIGITAL LIFE GARAGE AT GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK 2019.

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ITEX 2019 was a successful week for USbased company Hewlett Packard Enterprise, as the IT-leader signed a new strategic partnership with Abu Dhabi Digital Authority, welcomed Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, at their stand to discuss their great vision, and celebrated their partners and alliances at this year’s HPE Middle East Channel Awards.

The Digital Life Garage, a global project that HPE decided to first launch in the UAE, was the main focus of the company at the ICT flagship event of the region. The innovation centre will

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bring together regional and global innovators to provide solutions to enhance the way people live and work.

Wolfgang Egger, HPE’s recently appointed Vice President and Managing Director for the Middle East and South Africa, discussed how the centre will benefit their customers, as well as the whole UAE’s digital transformation journey.

“The Digital Life Garage will launch early next year, but we are already teaming up with partners and customers. In parallel we are also working with government entities to support the smart city vision of the country – I think the Digital Life Garage will be the seed to create a “Silicon

Valley” in the Emirates,” he said.

Egger also explained how the organisation is investing in the Middle East, specifically the UAE and KSA, because of the great opportunities the region offers to innovate and deliver HPE’s vision.

HPE recently opened a new Dubai office, which according to Egger offers a new “style of work” to their employees. The office also supports HPE’s commitment to sustainability by introducing a strict no-plastic policy in the workspace.

“Sustainability is a topic very close to my heart. I believe we really need to take care of the future of our planet for the next generation of innovators. www.tahawultech.com

into the future and as technology consumes more and more energy by the day. It’s our responsibility as tech leaders to understand this and take actions to promote tech sustainability. HPE is focusing on efficiency, reusability, recycling and upcycling technology to be put back in the economy in a continuous circle,” said Waters.

Fast-tracking ADDA’s digital transformation journey HPE also announced a new data partnership with Abu Dhabi Digital Authority (ADDA) to support them in accelerating the execution of its ambitious data federation vision, which in turn, bolsters the Emirate’s digital transformation efforts.

Under the terms of the agreement, both parties will work closely together in the move to create and promote a culture for growth and innovation leveraging HPE’s global expertise in change management, focusing on culture and behaviours, IT organisation transformation, knowledge, and skills. The new partnership follows and serves as an extension to an existing Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by ADDA and HPE in March this year to bring in the latest disruptive technologies to the authority, which will play a key role in its commitment to offer extreme agility, scalability and security.

John Schultz, Executive Vice President, Chief Legal and Administrative Officer and Corporate Secretary, HPE, said, “We are delighted

The Digital Life Garage will be the seed to create a ‘Silicon Valley’ in the Emirates” I am a big advocate of the no-plastic policy in place in our new office, and I also believe in the power of a circular economy – something we really support at HPE with our solutions,” continued Egger.

Building on the topic of sustainability, Marc Waters, Managing Director for the UK, Ireland, Middle East and Africa at HPE, also present at GITEX, discussed how the company’s purpose has been embedded at their core since its inception. Bill Hewlett and David Packard founded the company with the core purpose to advance technology and humanity, he said, and part of this mission includes fighting the planet’s environmental challenges.

“We have been through a lot of changes over the years, but our values have never changed. Something we truly believe in is tech sustainability.

This is a huge issue as we look www.tahawultech.com

with this new agreement, which is a follow up to our already successful partnership with ADDA. This new data partnership is exciting and highly strategic, and we are proud to help bring enhanced public services to Abu Dhabi. As a company we place special emphasis on the UAE market and we are committed to supporting the country’s technological and economic development.”

The strategic partnership is expected to help ADDA in its continuing efforts to create and establish an autonomous infrastructure that will enrich its service experience and accelerate digital transformation journey in the emirate.

Better together On the third day of GITEX, the ITleader recognised the continuous efforts of their partners, distributors and alliances in the Middle East at their annual HPE Middle East Channel Awards 2019.

The awards brought together partners and alliances from across the region to connect and network, but especially to reward them for their contribution to HPE’s success.

In a compelling opening speech, Kinda Baydoun, Channel and Alliances Manager at HPE Middle East thanked her team, as well as the company’s partners, for their continuous effort in making HPE a tech leader in the Middle East and across the globe.

“HPE continues to grow at a rapid pace. Bill [Hewlett] and David [Packard] founded the company 80 years ago in a garage in Palo Alto to build technology that would contribute to the advancement of science.

“80 years later we are still living by those same values. We are still working to help our customers and partners advance the way people live and work through our technology,” said Baydoun.

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EVENT HPE

HPE SIGNS MOU WITH MORO

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced that it has signed an agreement to become a preferred digital transformation partner to Moro, one of the UAE’s leading digital service providers. The MoU between the parties states that the two companies will collaborate to

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draw up an innovation roadmap for government and enterprises in the UAE to transition from traditional technology platforms to futuristic services. Moro also joins the HPE Partner Ready Service Provider program as a Gold partner for the UAE.

HPE SIGN MOU WITH INGRAM MICRO

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced it has signed an MoU with Ingram Micro agreeing to collaborate in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Middle East. In response to growing market demand in the Middle East, HPE together with Ingram Micro will bring their international AI experience to support digital transformation in the region.

HPE and Ingram Micro have committed to supporting social and economic development in the Middle NOVEMBER 2019

East, including the development of youth and professional talent for new digital technologies, the fostering of innovative entrepreneurship across different market verticals, and creating a digital culture and expanding knowledge.

The agreement states that the two parties will work together on a number of projects to support the region’s GDP growth and increase in youth employment, as well as enhancing the efficiency and transparency of public administration.

Moro will work with HPE to launch cloud services for mission critical applications and business continuity services for customers in UAE that will be hosted in Moro’s state of the art data center. Moro will join Cloud28+, HPE’s open community of cloud service providers, ISVs and systems integrators and the new cloud services will be featured in the Cloud28+ service catalogue.

“HPE is pleased to partner with Moro to help government and enterprises in the UAE transition to next-generation IT systems of the future”, said Wolfgang Egger, Managing Director, Middle East at HPE. “By working with our HPE Pointnext experts, customers will be able to make the right decisions on moving to Moro’s hybrid cloud and next-generation services.”

HPE and Ingram Micro will work together to build an AI Innovation Lab for the development of AI knowledge and to showcase AI use cases. They will also develop AI training programs so that enterprises can build AI knowledge and adopt the right technologies for their industries.

“We are pleased to collaborate with Ingram Micro to bring our combined Artificial Intelligence expertise, solutions and partner ecosystems together to help our customers accelerate their transformation,” said Kinda Baydoun, Channel and Alliances Middle East, HPE. “AI is already affecting many aspects of our everyday life and has great potential to shape our future.

Collaboration and engagement between different parties in society will help speed adoption and implementation and this collaboration with Ingram Micro will form a baseline for co-innovation and knowledge enablement in AI in the Middle East.” www.tahawultech.com

EVENT Microsoft

MICROSOFT EXECUTIVES DISCUSS AI AND CYBERSECURITY AT DIGITAL SUMMIT JOHN FRANK, VP OF EUROPEAN UNION GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS AT MICROSOFT, HAS CALLED ON TECHNOLOGY PROVIDERS TO BE MORE TRANSPARENT IN TERMS OF THE CAPABILITIES OF THEIR AI PRODUCTS. CNME MANAGED TO SECURE AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH PROMINENT MICROSOFT EXECUTIVES ANN JOHNSON AND JOHN FRANK AT THE US IT LEADER'S ANNUAL DIGITAL SUMMIT IN DUBLIN.

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n two fascinating and in-depth interviews both Frank and Johnson discussed how Microsoft is addressing major issues in the IT world ranging from cybersecurity, data protection and AI. Frank’s primary responsibilities at Microsoft include working with governments and other key industry players to create rules for this new era of cloud computing and data science that benefits both customers and society at large.

The VP of EU Government Affairs at the US behemoth is also focused on data protection and cybersecurity in a bid to establish frameworks for when law enforcement can get access to government data.

It’s an exciting time for the IT industry with so many disruptive technologies continuing to emerge and 5G networks becoming commercially available.

However, there has been somewhat of a technology backlash in recently

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triggered by high-profile breaches of trust such as the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal.

There is now a lot of distrust towards technology companies as users become better educated on how the misuse of technology can dramatically impact their lives.

Technologies such as RFID and biometrics has been advocated in a bid to tackle crime and better safeguard us as a society, but distrust is rampant, and opponents say these technologies impinge on our privacy and human rights. AI has been credited with the ability to transform major industries as we know them but concerns over a lack of ethical and regulatory control in terms of its implementations has created skepticism and fear.

Frank believes it’s important to establish is the technology being implemented for the right reasons.

He said, “I think in relation to this

Ann Johnson, Corporate VP - Cybersecurity Solutions Group, Microsoft

topic particularly there is two questions to ask. Should it be used for this? How good is at it? There are some aspects of the technology that is quite good. For example, you can login to Windows10 on your laptop by using your face which is much more secure than using a password. I can also login to my smartphone and baking app by also using facial recognition.”

He highlighted the positives of AI and cited Microsoft’s “Seeing AI” program as an illustration the technology can be deployed as a force for change.

“We have a project called `Seeing AI´. So, basically this means that people who are visibly impaired can use the camera on their smartphone and it will tell them about the world around them.

So that’s an example of very interesting use-case of AI which is providing a great service for the end-user.”

However, he conceded that technology providers need to be more responsible and transparent in terms of www.tahawultech.com

John Frank, VP of European Union Government Affairs, Microsoft

its capabilities and said there are flaws with many AI products. “ With AI we’ve seen uses of it that are things that the technology just isn’t meant to do. We had a Police Department in the US that wanted to deploy Face VPI and the cognitive service with their body cameras which would give them a real-time confirmation.

It’s not a silly question to ask, but the results aren’t good enough for you to deploy the technology for this because you’re going to get some false positives and you’re going to get them in a racially disparate way. When we communicate this to law enforcement there like `OK, we get it´. However, the problem is that providers of the technology need to make disclosures about what the technology can do and not do. They also need to allow third parties to run test suites to audit the accuracy of the technology, but that’s not happening.”

Ann Johnson, Corporate Vice President - Cybersecurity Solutions Group, was recruited by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in 2015 and was tasked with the responsibility of heading up their new Enterprise Cybersecurity Solutions Group, which was later renamed to Cybersecurity Solutions Group.

Nadella has always been relentless in making several endeavors on cybersecurity front to better protect its customers, so he involved Johnson to support his vision and help them get their message out that the US technology conglomerate was serious about security.

Johnson said, “I was recruited by Microsoft in 2015 to lead this new team which was initially called the Enterprise Cybersecurity Solutions Group. I’ll never forget what Satya said to me in the interview. He said, `we build and have a tremendous amount of security technology with over 3500 security engineers, but we don’t know how to talk to anyone about it. Nobody views us as a security company even though we’re investing a billion dollars a year into this space´.”

The CVP of Cybersecurity Solutions Group at Microsoft added that it was ultimately her role to talk to customers and partners in the market and identify where the gaps were.

They rebranded the group because customers initially thought they were focused exclusively on enterprises.

The group has grown remarkably in the last four years, but the only metric Johnson is

I’ll never forget what Satya said to me in the interview. He said we build and have a tremendous amount of security technology with over 3500 security engineers, but we don’t know how to talk to anyone about it.”

www.tahawultech.com

interested in is customer satisfaction.

She added, “We’re not just talking to the biggest companies in the world, we talk to everyone. It’s been a huge success since we’ve started and we’ve grown the group considerably, we don’t disclose our security numbers, but the most important metric that I’d give you is that our customers are extremely satisfied and that is what we strive to achieve.”

During her keynote presentation at Microsoft’s Digital Summit, Johnson discussed a recent security report conducted by Microsoft in Ireland which discovered that 44 percent of respondents had never received any type of security training. Johnson firmly believes that employees need to play a more central role in addressing cybersecurity issues.

Johnson said, “Once a year, most organisations will do some sort of security training and believe that is sufficient enough and they’ve ticked a box. They think, `we’re compliant now because we’ve done our training´, but that’s the challenge as many organisations are simply not doing enough continual training. You need to make employees part of the cybersecurity solution. At Microsoft we involve our senior leadership team in table top exercises at least twice a year. You’ve got to create this top down mindset to build that muscle to ensure it is infused in the culture of the organisation but on top of this you still have to do continual employee training.”

According to Johnson one of the fastest growing fields in cybersecurity in terms of revenue is employee training.

She concluded by saying, “The software companies who focus on cybersecurity and employee training are growing at a rapid pace because organisations have realised that they have to do better.”

NOVEMBER 2019

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INTERVIEW Focus Softnet

ERP MEETS AI ALI HYDER, GROUP CEO AT FOCUS SOFTNET TOLD CNME HOW THE ERP MARKET LEADER IS ALSO ESTABLISHING ITSELF AS A LEADING SOLUTION PROVIDER IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WITH ITS NEW CLOUD-BASED AI PLATFORM, AIFA. Ali Hyder, Group CEO, Focus Softnet

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OCUS SOFTNET HAS ESTABLISHED ITSELF AS A MARKET LEADER FOR ITS ERP OFFERING. HOWEVER, AT GITEX, YOU ALSO LAUNCHED YOUR CLOUD-BASED AI PLATFORM CALLED AIFA. CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT THIS? Focus Softnet has been at the forefront of offering new and ground-breaking technologies to help its customers scale and accelerate their journeys into the digital era. With business applications undergoing yet another paradigm shift, we began integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into our ERP solutions to further assist users to optimise the latest technologies.

During this process, we realised that the platform that was being added could be used seamlessly for other ERP and business applications without any alterations.

This resulted in establishing AI as a separate business division, where we developed a platform that can be

NOVEMBER 2019

universally integrated and deployed across enterprise applications – Artificially Intelligent Futuristic Applications (AIFA). It’s an advanced and automated platform created to enhance business, increase productivity and reduce investments in human trainings. The platform allows speech recognition, face recognition, machine learning and predictive analysis.

THE AIFA PLATFORM IS DESIGNED TO ACT AS A PLUG-IN FOR MAJOR ERP AND CRM PROVIDERS, BUT HOW WILL THIS NEW AI PLATFORM ENHANCE THEIR ABILITY TO PROVIDE BETTER SOLUTIONS IN THE ENTERPRISE SEGMENT OF THE MARKET? While change is inevitable, it is also the most dreaded experience for any enterprise user. Historically when a new technology had to be implemented, enterprises had to go through the process of upgrading existing ERP/CRM or other business www.tahawultech.com

applications. However, organisations can now enjoy the added benefits of AI, thanks to its ability to sit over existing applications without changing anything. AIFA will greatly enhance enterprises’ capabilities to provide better solutions and services for their customers.

The plug-in AI platform enables businesses to effortlessly receive responses to ad-hoc queries.

As an advanced AI chatbot that uses machine learning, AIFA will understand queries and respond smartly. Businesses can get insights and predictive analysis to lower their operational costs, improve services and user experiences. A single deployment of AIFA can strengthen a company’s ERP or CRM platforms with Voice User Interface (VUI) and boost Payroll & Attendance systems with face-recognition feature. The face recognition feature also helps in contributing to the increase in sales by getting maximum information of walk-in customers in retail sales. The Robotic Process Automation (RPA) feature in AIFA allows organisations to automate routine tasks that can be integrated with business application.

Additionally, businesses can analyse data and support their customers in data entry tasks.

THE SCALE OF INVESTMENT INTO AI ACROSS MULTIPLE INDUSTRIES ONLY SERVES TO REINFORCE THE BELIEF THAT IT IS GOING TO BE THE PROMINENT TECHNOLOGY IN INDUSTRY 4.0. HOWEVER, ARE YOU CONCERNED AT THE LACK OF ETHICAL AND REGULATORY FRAMEWORKS AROUND THE TECHNOLOGY? Any kind of system implementation must be protected with adequate institutional frameworks so that companies are bound by it. This also www.tahawultech.com

has to be in place to ensure critical data assets are not stored or shared outside the domain. We believe building these frameworks are a work in progress and will have a more definite structure as we continue to innovate with the technology.

Defining the boundaries of what is acceptable and necessary without intruding unduly into the privacy of individuals or enterprises is the job of AI deployment teams. This definitely requires both end-users and service providers to play their roles in outlining the levels of security and information access that needs to be granted to different departments.

FOCUS SOFTNET HAS BEEN AN IT LEADER SINCE ITS INCEPTION IN 1992.

HOWEVER, IN YOUR OPINION WHAT ULTIMATELY DIFFERENTIATES THE COMPANY FROM ITS MARKET RIVALS? Focus Softnet has been continuously pushing its R&D to deliver stateof-the-art applications ahead of competitors. Our true differentiator lies in the fact that we allow customers to provide seamless experiences without disruptions to their core business as they adopt and adapt to new technologies.

This offers a competitive advantage to end-users. We are redefining the

AIFA will greatly enhance enterprises’ capabilities to provide better solutions and services for their customers.”

ERP and CRM space with pioneering AI-led innovations. We understand customers’ challenges and offer genuine value-add to help them drive their objectives for a digital future.

WHAT ARE THE MAJOR CHALLENGES FACING YOUR CUSTOMERS TODAY, AND HOW ARE THE INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS PROVIDED BY FOCUS SOFTNET HELPING THEM TO ADDRESS THEIR PROBLEMS? Rising costs and operating efficiently in increasingly tougher market circumstances are two of the biggest challenges that customers face today.

Companies are overwhelmed with how they can grow successfully or at least retain bottom-line constant figures in such an environment.

Today everyone is looking at enhancing competencies in business processes so that they can save costs by completing tasks faster or by automating them. Digital transformation technologies such as Machine Learning, AI and Robotic Process Automation are improving the quality and efficiency in processes.

To thrive in these challenging times, customers have to implement business transformation and automation technologies.

In this regard, at Focus Softnet, our continuous goal is to be customers’ partner of choice for their end-to-end automation and transformation requirements. Focus Softnet products have been known to deliver hi-tech and modern applications, which in many cases are ahead of its competition and are offered at competitive price ranges.

Our revolutionary solutions propel customers to reinforce their digital commitments and help them future proof their businesses.

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Rajesh Sajnani, Co-founder and Managing Director of CloudHost

Nikhil Katara, Co-Founder and Director Operations of CloudHost

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INDUSTRY GAME CHANGER CNME EDITOR MARK FORKER MANAGED TO SECURE AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH RAJESH SAJNANI, CO-FOUNDER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR OF CLOUDHOST, AND NIKHIL KATARA, CO-FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OPERATIONS OF CLOUDHOST, BOTH OF WHOM ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR DRIVING THE PHENOMENAL GROWTH OF THE CLOUD COMPANY OVER THE LAST NUMBER OF YEARS.

NOVEMBER 2019

www.tahawultech.com

COVER FEATURE CloudHost

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loudHost has been a market disruptor since its inception in 2015, and the innovative cloud solutions provider is continuing to make waves in what is becoming an increasingly saturated and competitive cloud market in the MENA region.

In a candid interview, both cofounders highlighted how customercentricity has been a key component in its success and is what ultimately differentiates them from their market rivals. Rajesh Sajnani has built a retail empire that continues to enjoy huge growth, but he stressed that even though technology and retail are two very different verticals, the core principles remain the same, which is ensure the delivery of great customer experiences.

The duo explain how customer experience has always been in its DNA and that the ever-changing landscape of the IT industry has forced them to realign their initial business model – and was the primary reason they developed their new end-to-end e-commerce platform CloudSouq, tipped to be an industry game changer.

Katara said, “We started four years ago as a cloud provider, and there’s always a constant need for innovation. The continuous evolution of technology has seen us transition from being a regular cloud provider to an enabler of digital transformation and end-toend solutioning for our customers.

We identified that traditionally cloud providers offer infrastructure as a www.tahawultech.com

service and hosted applications, but nobody went beyond that.”

“We decided that we wanted to make the customer experience better, and that’s why we developed an endto-end one stop solution that catered to all the needs of our customers.

Our mission is to allow businesses to look after their operations and let us manage their technology.”

Sajnani talked about the many new and disruptive technologies that have penetrated the ICT ecosystem, and that in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution it was imperative that enterprises embrace change.

Sajnani said, “We’ve invested a lot in new technologies, and we’ve illustrated this with our investment in our CloudSouq e-commerce platform. We make businesses ‘future-ready’. In this era which has been described as Industry 4.0, it’s impossible for a business to know what the future of technology is going to look like. However, what we do is make enterprises future-ready so there are able to adapt and capitalise on the opportunities when these new disruptive technologies emerge.”

According to Sajnani, CloudSouq allows businesses to integrate new technologies into the platform without causing disruption to their day-to-day business.

He said, “The platform has been built to enable enterprises to implement new technologies such as Internet of Things, Big Data and AI into their business at any stage in the future. This can be done in a seamless way which doesn’t disrupt their existing operations.

We’re the only company that is offering these types of cloud services, so we’re incredibly unique to the market.”

19 Through CloudSouq, companies can have access to a state-of-art cloud solution on a Private Cloud, from website hosting and domain to ERPs on business applications to DataRecovery. The platform also ventures out to Fusion Cloud, AI and Security. Covering a complete cloud portfolio on a single pane of glass.

By simplifying how organisations manage their IT assets, CloudSouq makes migration to cloud much simpler and highly appealing.

Sajnani warned enterprises that resist change and said those hesitant to new technologies run the risk of becoming obsolete, before amplifying how CloudHost is uniquely positioned to help businesses navigate their way through the choppy waters of digital transformation.

The co-founder and Managing director said, “Businesses can’t be idle and then wake up in 5 years and say I want to get here when they’re NOVEMBER 2019

COVER FEATURE CloudHost

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not ready to do it. This is what digital transformation at its core means.

We take companies on this journey towards digital transformation without forcing them to make a huge CAPEX investment, whilst at the same time helping them to reduce the overall costs of their operations, make them lean from a technology perspective - and ultimately accelerate their growth.”

Katara interjected by saying the CloudSouq platform doesn’t discriminate. He said, “It doesn’t matter to us if you’re a startup with three users or a multinational conglomerate with 50,000 employees. We can scale at the pace the customer wants and we offer flexibility and customization.”

In terms of why they devised the CloudSouq platform it became evident from their discussion with key industry stakeholders that many were reluctant to surrender control over their data and wanted to have full autonomy on their business.

Katara said, “We’ve encountered a lot of businesses that were skeptical about transitioning towards the cloud. Their attitude was that their data should reside with them and they didn’t want to give it to anyone.

They knew all about the cloud and they were acutely aware of its capabilities but their embracement of transitioning towards the cloud was laced with skepticism.”

“They expressed concerns that they’d no longer have control over their data and questioned if it would be secured. What would happen if the data was lost? We listened to all this feedback and we developed a platform that gave customers the autonomy and control they NOVEMBER 2019

We decided that we wanted to make the customer experience better, and that’s why we developed an end-to-end one stop solution that catered to all the needs of our customers.” wanted. Our CloudSouq platform is empowering our customers. We’re allowing them to provision, control and manage everything that they want to do.”

Sajnani pointed out that the CloudSouq platform is completely unique and is an innovation that is set to completely transform the cloud industry in the Middle East.

He said, “We’re the only company that is offering these types of cloud services, so we’re incredibly unique to the market. We’re the first provider to launch a transparent cloud platform in the private hosted domain. We’re the only provider in the Middle East offering this type of service, and in fact there are very few in the world doing what we’re doing.”

Katara also spoke about how CloudHost was approaching the topic of digital transformation in an altered

way to its industry rivals.

He said, “When you talk about digital transformation in the ICT industry, everybody talks about digital transformation from the perspective of a customer, but nobody looks at it through the lens of an internal customer who is serving the customer. If the internal customers receives’ a better experience - then he will be able to serve his end customer in a much more efficient way. This is a gap in the digital transformation space that nobody is looking at. In other words, we’re transforming the transformers.”

Sajnani said that he believes that CloudSouq will resonate with customers because of the incredibly diverse range of options the solution provides.

Sajnani added, “The economy as we all know can be volatile and businesses want to reduce their costs whilst at the same time maintaining efficiency, so that’s why the CloudSouq e-commerce platform is the right platform for them to integrate it into their operations as it reduces the cost of your IT spend by a minimum of 20-45%.

“In summary the platform reduces costs, enhances efficiency, makes your business future-ready, is integrated with the latest technologies, has speed, scalability and flexibility - and enables you to expand to any other countries across the world.”

CloudHost has also struck a chord in the market with its solutions CloudScales, Applite and CloudApps. According to Katara, CloudScales has been the base for every cloud company which is providing infrastructure as a service.

Infrastructure as a service was typically on a plan-based model, but www.tahawultech.com

now we’ve taken this infrastructure as a service to new layers in the form of standard off the shelf, user-based and resource-based.

Solutions offered by CloudHost, such as CloudScales and AppLite are featured on CloudSouq as a must have solutions for growing organizations.

This unique offering is available to all MENA’s SMB’s and enterprises.

With the current market standing, companies do appreciate flexible payment structures and the ability to scale resources without any additional commitments. Platform will cater to user-based solutions, plan based and resource-based solutions giving full provision and control over payment, services and the contract. Single stop solution.

Single Invoice. Single SLA for all services. One point of contact, one managed service provider. There is no other provider who is giving an end to end service for cloud.”

Katara said, “We engaged in a lot of consultations with our R&D, and as a result we’ve designed a platform that would give customers a sense that they had their own data centres.

Typically, the IT manager or the CIO would buy hardware and build it up using his own rack. However, we’ve transformed this process in such a way that the customer or the IT manager can purchase chunks of resources at the flick of a button and customize it the way he wants it.

“In order to achieve this, we make it transparent, we empower the customer and we give him full autonomy and control. At the same time, we’re assisting with all their managed services to make sure they’re supported in every aspect.” www.tahawultech.com

Sajnani concluded by highlighting that customer-centricity is fundamental to everything they do and design, and that the fact its solutions are flexible and empower the customers is what they firmly believe will be a recipe for their longterm success in the cloud market.

He said, “Flexibility is key to what we do and what we offer. We’re empowering the customer so we’re giving him the opportunity to take it in any direction they want. For example, in terms of billing options we also offer flexibility. We give customers all the three options of billing, but the question for us was how do we make it more unique?

What we did was engage with application vendors like Sage, Epicor and Focus to devise a plan for them for their own user-based platform.

If a customer needs to use Sage’s private cloud, he can subscribe for it on a per-user base, when he adds

We’ve invested a lot in new technologies, and we’ve illustrated this with our investment in our CloudSouq e-commerce platform.”

one more user he can pay for the user as if he were buying a SaaS model. This simplicity and flexibility are what is differentiating us from our competition, and we believe will lay the foundations for our continued growth and success in the cloud market.”

Some of the features of its Cloud Billing and Cost Management portfolio include: Consumption or Subscription Billing: Quickly generate accurate, easyto-read bills across public, private, and hybrid clouds. Simplify and streamline invoicing and billing for your products and services.

Combine usage billing with recurring subscriptions to optimize your revenue mix.

Custom Pricebooks: Optimize margins with flexible payment models and customerspecific pricebooks. Define prices from single line items to entire pricebooks for each customer or customer tier.

Integrated Dashboard: Aggregate billing data across clouds and providers into a single-pane dashboard. Easily access and analyze detailed, user-level behavior and cloud cost information.

Third Party Cloud Integration: Accurately parse customer-level billing reports with complete integration of cloud infrastructure provider billing data. CloudSouq supports Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, CenturyLink, IBM SoftLayer, Acronis, SingleHop, Intermedia and more.

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FEATURE Majid Al Futtaim

THE CUSTOMER COMES FIRST CNME EDITOR MARK FORKER SECURED AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH JOE ABI AKL, ACTING CHIEF CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT OFFICER AT MAJID AL FUTTAIM, IN A BID TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IT HAS UNDERWENT, HOW THE IMPLEMENTATION OF BIG DATA & ANALYTICS HAS EMPOWERED THE COMPANY TO MAKE BETTER INFORMED DECISIONS, AND ITS STRATEGY FOR THE FUTURE.

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ajid Al Futtaim is one of the most recognisable brands in the United Arab Emirates, and innovation has been in its DNA since its inception. However, the powerful company like so many other enterprises and organisations has embarked upon its own digital transformation journey as part of an effort to integrate new technologies designed to enhance the services and products it provides for its customers.

In a brilliant interview, the executive articulates how the holding company is delivering exceptional customer experiences

NOVEMBER 2019

and outlines how the primary responsibility of his job remit is to support the business in terms of identifying and incubating capabilities that are required to ensure they deliver on their growth strategy objectives.

He explains the different teams he oversees in more detail and explains their primary functions and aims.

Abi Akl said, “The business development team is more about strategic partnerships and looking at the outside world to bring in new innovations and capabilities to serve the group. The other teams we have are focused on in-house capability building across analytics www.tahawultech.com

Joe Abi Akl, Acting Chief Corporate Development Officer, Majid Al Futtaim

and technology. We initially started this as a center of excellence, but it has now evolved into shared services for the group.

“We’re also looking at digital, not only from a strategy, partnership and capability perspective, but we’re looking at what digital skills we should bring in collectively for the group, and we’re calling this a ‘digital kitchen’. The corporate development team in summary is responsible for the strategic direction of the group and the incubation of capabilities and new verticals for Majid Al Futtaim.”

In 2016, the company began its digital transformation journey.

At the time, the business model www.tahawultech.com

We’ve been doing a lot in terms of defining what customer experience means to us, from setting the guidelines and the principles on how to deliver it and working with the businesses to put this into action.”

consisted of 12 different businesses that were operating, according to Abi Akl, in an autonomous manner.

There was no real desire to disrupt the status quo as the companies were growing exponentially and nobody wanted to stifle the businesses. However, to take the company to the next level, a different approach was required.

Abi Akl said, “Firstly, we set about defining our long-term strategic direction of being a regionally focused lifestyle conglomerate with a stellar international reputation.

As a holding company, our role changed from being a passive investor to more of a strategic architect – which means we were

working to define the strategic direction of the group, whilst also working with the businesses in terms of supporting their development and growth.”

Abi Akl added that to able to deliver on this, the company really needed to bring the group together, taking the different businesses and fusing them into one lifestyle proposition.

As aforementioned, Majid Al Futtaim began its digital transformation journey in 2015 and he acknowledged that with a workforce of 44,000 employees it was only natural that they would face some obstacles when undergoing such a large-scale transformation. However, the group NOVEMBER 2019

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FEATURE Majid Al Futtaim

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identified that customer experience and talent would form the key components of its overall strategy.

Abi Akl said, “We have identified customer experience and talent as two key pillars of our strategy.

We’ve been doing a lot in terms of defining what customer experience means to us – from setting the guidelines and the principles on how to deliver it and working with the businesses to put this into action. Obviously, launching a groupwide loyalty program is in line with that strategy of having one lifestyle proposition with all brands and assets included, and we recently did this with the introduction of our rewards programme, SHARE.” Majid Al Futtaim has embraced disruptive new technologies like Big Data and predictive analytics in a bid to ensure it delivers on its customer experience aspirations.

Abi Akl added, “To truly deliver signature customer experiences, we realised that we needed to understand our customers better because as a traditional offline player we were at a disadvantage compared to online players such as Amazon. Companies like Amazon were born online, they’re digital natives and they know their customers immediately because of what technology brings them. At the outset, we didn’t have that same advantage on the offline side, so we had to bridge that gap.”

On talent, Majid Al Futtaim has established a Leadership Institute designed to develop the next NOVEMBER 2019

You have to help your employees transform from a leadership perspective, with soft skills as well as hard skills in technology, analytics and other emerging trends.” generation of leaders for the company. The Majid Al Futtaim Leadership Institute has incubated two schools, one of which is for analytics and technology and the other for ‘great moments’ which is based around delivering better customer experiences.

Abi Akl continued, “You have to help your employees transform from a leadership perspective, with soft skills as well as hard skills in technology, analytics and other emerging trends. Secondly, if you want to start transforming an organisation you can’t only rely on attracting people from outside the region to come here. The talent pool in the region when it comes

to digital and analytics is shallow, so you want to attract the right people but in parallel, if you want to transform the organisation you can’t rely on the 500 people you’re bringing in. If your existing people don’t change, your transformation will ultimately fail.”

Majid Al Futtaim is sitting on oceans of data and has cleverly used analytics to harvest all that data to help better understand its customers and drive value.

Abi Akl added, “We started collecting data from multiple touchpoints, including Wi-Fi, loyalty programmes, offline assets, and online platforms within our ecosystem. Today, we have a depth of data in our group that www.tahawultech.com

doesn’t exist anywhere else. Data that used to sit in each business is no longer held separately, it’s shared for the betterment of the group. It’s the same way we look at financial capital, or human capital, we have data as a third pillar in that ecosystem. Data should be owned by the group and should be benefiting the whole set of businesses.”

It is human nature to resist change and companies that are reluctant to embrace change run the risk of becoming obsolete.

Abi Akl said that like all digital transformation journeys there can be some initial resistance - but stressed that there was a lot of support for the agenda across www.tahawultech.com

the group and a realisation that it was the right step to take. He said delivering successful use-cases was one way to eradicate any resistance or skepticism.

Abi Akl said, “We built a common database and we started testing it in order to start proving value to people, so any resistance you may have faced initially when embarking upon this type of transformation is immediately eliminated. What we did was take a few use-cases with the businesses and showed them that the data we’re collecting from Carrefour, for instance, can give you three times the value if you use it properly.

“We then merged the data with VOX Cinemas data and when we

went back to the businesses and showed them that instead of 3X you can now get 30X, this changed the conversation. Ultimately, the data is now so enriched that it is much more useful for the business to optimise their processes, improve marketing and to create new sets of products and services that you couldn’t have created before because you didn’t really know what the customers wanted.”

After Majid Al Futtaim had illustrated its success, the next move was to scale the process across the entire group, and the creation of an analytics group within every business was a critical step in terms of accelerating the speed at which the company scaled its operations.

Abi Akl said, “Once we started getting traction, we decided to move on to the next phase of the project which was to figure out how can we scale this across the group to make sure that data is embedded in every single decision.

To be able to do this you can’t rely on a central team to do it across 12 businesses, you need to embed analytics in the group, so we created a federated model in which we had a center of excellence that is working very closely with the dedicated analytics team at every business. These analytics teams are at the central level and are in each function in each country - they're one of the fundamental reasons Majid Al Futtaim is achieving its vision of creating great moments for everyone, everyday”.

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INTERVIEW Infosysta

DELIVERING AGILE TRANSFORMATION FERAS EL HAJJAR, MANAGING DIRECTOR AT INFOSYSTA TOLD CNME HOW THEY ARE HELPING THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTOR ADOPT A STRONG AGILE TRANSFORMATION STRATEGY.

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OU WORK EXTENSIVELY IN THE UAE AND GCC’S PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTORS IN THE AGILE TRANSFORMATION MARKET. CAN YOU GIVE US A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF INFOSYSTA AND YOUR STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP WITH ATLASSIAN? Infosysta is a multi-national software expert and Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner in EMEA. Our Experts are specialised in the Agile processes’ implementations on top of Atlassian softwares like Jira and Confluence. We have been in the market since 2012, headquartered in Dubai with offices in Beirut, Riyadh, Cairo and London.

Our offer focuses on areas related to enhancing collaboration within the organisation, implementing the “do more with less” Agile culture on top of business solutions like Agile Project and Task Management, ALM, SDLC, DevOps, ITSM, Content Management, Collaboration and Workflow Solutions, Demand Management, Capacity Management, NOVEMBER 2019

Release Management and more. We have hundreds of success stories in both public and private sectors, in different industries.

Our unique technical expertise and service catalog have been instrumental in strengthening our role in promoting the development of Arab governments and enterprise institutions, especially in the GCC. ACCORDING TO A REPORT BY ALLIED MARKET RESEARCH, THE MARKET OF AGILE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION HAS BEEN ESTIMATED TO REACH $18.19 BILLION BY 2026. WHY DO YOU THINK THERE IS SUCH SCOPE FOR GROWTH IN THE AGILE TRANSFORMATION MARKET? The growth of the enterprise agile transformation market is attributed mainly to the increase in the need for accelerated product development and the critical need to improve teamwork and communication in enterprises – all of these needs are pushing organisations to think differently and to break silos between their departments to enhance

collaboration and teamwork over efficient Agile workflows.

Both private and public organisations will look for more flexibility, quicker time to deliver, better predictability and quality, and early risk detection to boost their productivity.

AGILE TRANSFORMATION REQUIRES A COMPLETE MINDSET AND CULTURAL SHIFT WITHIN THE ORGANISATION TO ADOPT PRINCIPLES OF CUSTOMERCENTRICITY, INTERACTION, COLLABORATION, TRANSPARENCY, AND ADAPTABILITY. HAVE YOU SEEN ANY RESISTANCE FROM ORGANISATIONS WHEN IT COMES TO ADOPTING THIS SHIFT? Few people in the world like change!

Adopting digital transformation is about more than just gaining a competitive edge. It’s also about unleashing new operational efficiencies and raising employee productivity.

Employees’ resistance is one of the most complex barriers to change, indeed. At Infosysta, our Experts www.tahawultech.com

to get their job done, efficiently. It is also great for agile teams who need to plan sprints on a regular basis and require real-time visibility of tasks.

Feras EL HAJJAR, Managing Director, Infosysta

consider this challenge very seriously by tailoring the needed change management taking into account all factors like the knowledge capacity, the type of trainings, the buy-in of different stakeholders, with an active support on-site and more.

YOUR FLAGSHIP PRODUCT, JIRA, INCREASES COLLABORATION AND PRODUCTIVITY FOR LARGE TEAMS. WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF IMPLEMENTING THIS SOLUTION? Customers usually tell us about their non-efficient workflows, unstructured email threads, multiple spreadsheets, manual approvals with pdf templates and all the problems they come with. They usually have dozens of bottlenecks even in simple collaboration workflows, and eventually lack visibility on KPIs that helps them to take the right decisions.

Jira has different levels of collaboration; the ultimate level is when you’re trying to coordinate lots of work in a large team putting both Business teams and IT teams www.tahawultech.com

on the same framework for better collaboration. This is where Jira really starts to shine, since you can manage hundreds of projects and unlimited number of tasks with its boards, connecting team-mates and stakeholders in a user-friendly software, which is also a leader in the magic quadrant of Gartner.

Jira is a team collaboration software by excellence that meets the needs of different industries. It is dedicated to help users capture, assign, and set priorities to their work. It offers an intuitive interface that allows them

Jira is a team collaboration software by excellence that meets the needs of different industries.”

INFOSYSTA SUPPORTS BOTH THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTORS IN THE MIDDLE EAST WITH THEIR AGILE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION STRATEGY. HOW ARE YOUR PRODUCTS AND SOLUTIONS SUPPORTING THE UAE GOVERNMENT’S VISION 2021 AND THE SAUDI GOVERNMENT’S VISION 2030?

UAE government’s Vision 2021, along with KSA 2030 Vision, were created to fulfill a roadmap for economic growth and national development in UAE and KSA. Digital transformation will be one of the most significant value drivers unlocking major economic growth and enabling the diversification that the Saudi Arabian and UAE economy is looking for.

Currently, we are working with a wide range of private organisations and government departments in UAE and KSA, handling the Agile Transformation of their projects and tasks management, innovating the way they are tackling their challenges when it comes to improve productivity with efficient workflows and tools.

FINALLY, WHAT DIFFERENTIATES INFOSYSTA FROM YOUR COMPETITORS IN THE AGILE TRANSFORMATION MARKET? Infosysta is an Atlassian authorised Platinum Solution Partner. Our consultants are Atlassian Certified Experts have the know-how to provide customers with both enterprise IT and Business expertise.

Our experts provide customers with high-grade quality consultancy service and the right solution for their challenges, standing side by side with them to increase effectiveness, improve performance, and reduce cost through a transformation process.

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BUILDING THE FUTURE DEPUTY EDITOR GIORGIA GUANTARIO SPOKE TO EMAAR’S CIO, BINOO JOSEPH AND ORACLE’S VICE PRESIDENT FOR BUSINESS APPLICATIONS, GULF, RAHUL MISRA TO DISCUSS HOW THE TWO ORGANISATIONS ARE WORKING TOGETHER TO BUILD THE FUTURE OF PROPERTY AND IT. 28

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www.tahawultech.com

FEATURE Emaar and Oracle

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very industry is undergoing some form of digital transformation - some faster than others. Retail and hospitality are arguably some of the fastest adopters of new technologies and have reshaped the way we experience the world around us. On the other hand, the property sector has seen a slower adoption due to the complexity of the industry.

However, property and real estate software solutions and technologies are evolving, pushing the sector to modernise and meet the increasing demands of customers.

Well aware of the need for change is UAE-based property developer Emaar.

MODERN PROBLEMS NEED MODERN SOLUTIONS Emaar has a long history of innovation which helped them become the largest property developer outside of China. At the same time, the complexity of the business, which operates in many different verticals, has made their digital transformation journey a lengthy, yet necessary one.

To fast-track their digital-ready infrastructure, the property-giant has decided to tap Oracle Cloud Applications. This allowed them to transition their core business processes from an on-premises to an integrated Oracle Cloud ecosystem that includes Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Cloud, Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Cloud and Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud. www.tahawultech.com

Binoo Joseph, CIO at Emaar, explained that the main drivers behind this decision were to further standardise enterprise systems, data and automation use cases.

“Two things are key for us – automation and data visibility. Both of those can only be achieved with modern solutions. The way the data is structured within Emaar is complex: we have a lot of business verticals and the amount of data is growing at a very fast rate. Without better technology solutions, this data would be hard to obtain and retain.

“Our transition to Oracle Cloud is part of an overall business strategy.

We are hoping to have seamless integration across our own data centres, Azure and Oracle solutions.

Oracle Cloud brings in an element of ease of use and ease of operation which we needed to move forward,” said Joseph.

Data is indeed at the centre of everything a modern business does, or needs to do, to succeed in today’s digital economy. Gartner predicts that by 2022, worldwide spending on data and analytics software will reach $104.1 billion. However, data visibility is still a major pain point for many businesses.

“Today we need to have data available when we need it, where we need it, that too as insight. That’s only partially possible on the existing technology stack, but Oracle is helping us to make it cohesive across the board. We hope to be able to build an information architecture that will allow us to fully leverage next generation technologies, may this

be AI, machine learning or others,” continued Joseph.

“The ability to drive insights and better decision making is what we are aiming for. We have been running big scale automation programs for the past year. These have allowed us to have faster decision making, augmenting functions and ultimately delivering better customer experience.”

Joseph was very keen to highlight that automation doesn’t mean a loss in jobs, but rather augmenting their functions. “Automation connects our employees to the system – mundane work is reduced, and thanks to better insight, we make better decisions,” he explained.

The emphasis on data and decision making highlighted by Joseph comes from their overall mission to meet the growing demands of customers – like in the case of the property sector, in managing communities. Emaar manages a portfolio of six Master Communities, each comprising smaller sub-communities and each presenting their own unique set of characteristics and challenges.

Property companies that manage communities can manage and enhance the wellbeing of the property and lifestyle of the residents in their care only through a deep understanding of these residents, explained Joseph.

“Customer experience is key across all verticals. When it comes to property, you need to look at a whole set of factors – how does the person interact with the building and community; is it a family or a NOVEMBER 2019

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FEATURE Emaar and Oracle

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single person; what are the services used; how easy it is to book facilities or services; how seamless service payments are, etc. The aim is to sell a lifestyle experience, however to successfully do that there is a need for an omnichannel approach. Every point of interaction needs to be understood and personalised based on data so that they lead to a better experience for the customer.

“That kind of insights is what delivers the best communities, but to do that you also need to leverage the best technologies to harness your customers’ data. Only when we can fully understand the customer, we can improve efficiency and meet their demands,” continued Joseph.

To deliver what property companies are aiming to achieve, Oracle Cloud Applications is built on machine learning to provide a complete, fast and flexible solution.

Having a singular instance running across group companies, embedded with these AI capabilities, will allow the property developer to process and analyse data faster. According to Joseph, a modern ERP system, such as Oracle’s, will allow companies like Emaar to have a clear view of

their data to allow faster and better decision making.

THE JOURNEY INTO THE FUTURE The partnership between Emaar and Oracle has been a long and enduring one that has seen both companies change significantly over time.

Oracle understood the vision of Emaar to become the brand of choice in the property sector, and through different workshops, business cases and multiple meetings they were able to fully understand the needs of their customer – just like Emaar hopes to understand theirs thanks to Oracle’s solutions.

Rahul Misra, Vice President for Business Applications, Gulf at Oracle, explained that although the journey wasn’t always easy, it has been a very fulfilling one.

E ̏ maar’s mission is to lead the property

Only when we can fully understand the customer, we can improve efficiency and meet their demands.”

Binoo Joseph, CIO, Emaar

NOVEMBER 2019

market, but to do that we understood they needed to understand their customers and leverage the fully connected world they live in.

“This process was never about technology being replaced by technology, that wouldn’t have added any value to either us or Emaar. We set out all the objectives we wanted to achieve in the next five to ten years by leveraging our technologies in a way that worked for them. At the time, Oracle Cloud worked for some areas of their business and not for others. Hopefully moving forward, we can see how we can bring it all together. It’s a step by step journey we are taking with Emaar to transform their company,” said Misra.

At the same time, Oracle is also undergoing its own transformation over the years from a product company to a service company.

The tech-giant moved from being a traditional database company towards exponentially investing in applications technology. Thanks to the company’s tech background, explained Misra, they were able to succeed where others couldn’t – bringing applications together for a seamless experience.

“We took a strategic decision years ago to help customers manage their business so they wouldn’t have to. At the time, 80 percent of an organisation’s budget would go towards keeping the light on, rather than driving innovation.

“We re-wrote our entire stack to provide for all the enterprise-wide needs to move forward – that made us different from our competitors and gave us an advantage in the market. It was a hard choice, but it has paid off.” www.tahawultech.com

Data is at the core of Oracle’s offering as the driver of game changing technologies such as AI and machine learning. Oracle Cloud Applications, built on machine learning, allow businesses to iterate and add new capabilities such as digital assistants, voice commands, and other technologies to align with their core missions.

“Nowadays everything is datadriven. AI and machine learning have been around for a while, but they’re now part of our daily lives – from YouTube to Netflix recommendations.

In the same way, we are leveraging these technologies for the enterprise world. We augment the working environment using the capabilities within our applications which are all seemingly sitting on our technology, from the database to the application,” continued Misra.

“We want customers to understand they need to shift into new autonomous and embedded technologies to leverage and harness their data. At Oracle, we are focusing on improving our customers’ experience, augment their workplace and drive better decision making using next generation technologies that are already embedded in our solutions.”

At Oracle Cloud World 2019, Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison explained that Oracle is the only cloud applications company that is also in the cloud infrastructure business, giving them a great advantage over their competitors.

The tech-giant praises itself for the array of choices they give their customers, whilst making their experience with the technology as seamless as possible. www.tahawultech.com

Misra said he has seen a shift in the region when it comes to customers’ traditional data centres, as more and more have decided to move to the cloud.

“Given its geopolitical situation, we were very surprised when we introduced Oracle Cloud in the region. An increasing amount of companies who started with hybrid are now deciding to do a complete lift

We are getting better and better by the minute by offering more to our customers and making sure they have a smooth transition from on premise to cloud.”

Rahul Misra, Vice President for Business Applications, Gulf, Oracle.

and shift to leverage a single suite of applications.

“We are getting better and better by the minute by offering more to our customers and making sure they have a smooth transition from on premise to cloud. The numbers are very exciting for us – we see more than a few hundred transitions a year in the region, through Oracle Cloud technologies or our applications,” said Misra.

2019 has been a successful year for Oracle: back in June Oracle ERP Cloud was recognised as a Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for the third year in a role – it wasn’t by coincidence, said Misra, but the result

of hard work and customer success.

“Our ERP Cloud is fundamentally different from our competitors because it’s a far more complete, integrated and secure solution. Most of our competitors still work on legacy technology – I know for a fact that customers don’t want to spend millions on replicating the past, they want to build their future.

“For the past five years, our customers have seen the real value of our embedded technologies and how these can help them run their business better. The relationships with our customers are stronger than ever and we are working with them for the long run,” concluded Misra.

NOVEMBER 2019

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INTERVIEW Ogloba

REINVENTING DIGITAL PAYMENTS NIKOS ISSAIADIS, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT CEMEA AT OGLOBA, EXPLAINS HOW THE FINANCIAL AND LOGISTICS PLATFORM PROVIDER HOPES TO EXTEND THEIR REACH IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND WHAT DIFFERENTIATES THEM FROM THEIR COMPETITORS.

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AN YOU GIVE US A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF OGLOBA? We are a service provider for non-banking transactions – our solutions include closed loop branded gift card solutions and a reliable, secure and scalable pre-paid top-up platform which can process millions of top-up transactions a day. We have large clients in the Middle East, processing their pre-paid cards for activation, redemption and reload in store.

Nikos Issaiadis, Executive Vice President CEMEA, Ogloba

NOVEMBER 2019

GIFT CARDS HAVE BEEN AROUND FOR YEARS, BUT THEY ARE OFTEN CONFUSED WITH PAPER VOUCHERS. WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS FOR RETAILERS TO IMPLEMENT PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL GIFT CARDS? The main reason a retailer would think about adopting pre-paid cards is driving more traffic to the store. When you sell one of these cards in store, the customer is already there, so the objective shifts a little. Increasing store www.tahawultech.com

traffic is a process that comes in stages – you start with the physical, where the customer buys the card as an impulse purchase. They might then give it to someone else as a gift, so that person comes into the store and you have achieved an increase in store traffic.

There are then plenty of market studies on the purchase behaviour of customers who use gift cards. In short, they will always up spend – if they have an AED100 gift card, they will probably spend AED120. Because there is this element of up spending, stores are willing to give discounts, and we implement those with our digital platform.

Ogloba provides retailers with a reliable and straightforward omnichannel approach that covers physical stores, online stores and mobile app. Shoppers are able to use the card in store, as well as on the retailer’s website. The mGiftCard (mGC) app adds an extra element with the retailers giving “bonuses”, or discounts to the customer – essentially further increasing the shopper’s spending.

HOW DID YOU DEVELOP THE APP? DO YOU RELY ON ANY TECHNOLOGY FROM IT PROVIDERS? We use Oracle’s databases, but we’ve created the app in-house. We have a development team in Taiwan, and we build everything in-house.

YOU HAVE BEEN OPERATING IN THE MIDDLE EAST FOR WELL OVER A DECADE. WHAT IS YOUR STRATEGY IN THE REGION AND WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE NEXT FEW YEARS? The nice thing in the Middle East is that there usually aren’t many “single” brands, but they’re part of a group, like Landmark or Carrefour.

This means they have the same IT infrastructure in the store, www.tahawultech.com

which makes it easier for us to implement the technology into the cash register.

In the next few years, we hope to continue signing up and delivering our solutions to the remaining retailers here.

Many retailers haven’t yet launched their own gift card, or they have tried it on a homemade platform and haven’t succeeded. Our existing clients prove that we have a reliable system – our solutions don’t get replaced; we usually replace other systems.

Ogloba provides retailers with a reliable and straightforward omnichannel approach that covers physical stores, online stores and mobile app”

YOU’VE SAID YOU REPLACE OTHER SYSTEMS – WHAT MAKES YOUR SOLUTIONS THE GO-TO PLAYER IN THE MARKET? I believe there are two main differentiators – the first one is that we are completely tech-oriented.

Unlike many other players in this market, we don’t sell any side content with our platform. We provide the technology without any side businesses linked to that, because we have seen that retailers don’t really like having those type of links.

The second differentiators is that we have a very reliable platform.

We provide 24/7 support to our customers – we provide a payment solution, and we understand no one wants to wait hours or days to use their money. We also have extensive technical experience – we have been growing continuously for fifteen years in this industry and we’ve gone

through different generations of platforms.

We keep on improving our product to meet the growing demands of our customers.

YOU MENTIONED YOU ALSO OFFER PRE-PAID TOPUP PLATFORM. CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT THIS SIDE OF YOUR BUSINESS? The telecom business is our “steady horse”.

In short, we manage pre-paid transaction to recharge a pre-paid account. We work with mobile operators, such as STC, du or Etisalat, and their distribution companies. We provide a digital platform to manage our customers’ chain stores, dealers and resellers accounts. Although we only get a small fee, the size of the business is very big. The pre-paid market in the Middle East is worth about $8 billion annually and in Saudi Arabia, top-ups still account for 80 percent of mobile phone turnover.

WHERE DO YOU SEE OGLOBA IN THE COMING YEARS? Digital wallets will be the future. We see a transformation in the way users make their purchases – they will be able to load their wallets with funds in order to select from various stores within an app and redeem them in the retailer environment. The app will allow them to manage, spend and reload their funds. The future will be digital and that’s where we hope to make a difference.

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FEATURE Ericsson

LEADING THE WAY ON 5G STANDARDISATION CNME EDITOR MARK FORKER SPOKE TO ALP UYSAL, VICE PRESIDENT AND HEAD OF STRATEGY, TECHNOLOGY, INNOVATIONS AND GOVERNMENT & INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS AT ERICSSON MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA TO DISCUSS THE COMPANY’S APPROACH TO 5G.

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S Alp Uysal, Vice President and Head of Strategy, Technology, Innovations and Government & Industrial Relations, Ericsson MEA

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wedish telecommunications vendor Ericsson has positioned itself as a leader in 5G technology due to a combination of a measured long-term strategy and significant investment in its R&D. The ICT behemoth has always been recognised as a pioneer in terms of championing new technologies, so it should come as little surprise to anyone that it is at the forefront of the development of next-generation technologies specifically designed to fundamentally reshape the world we live in.

Ericsson has secured major 5G deals with some of the world’s biggest telecommunication operators www.tahawultech.com

such as Verizon, Swisscom, Etisalat and SK Telecom to name but a few and this has solidified its status as one of the go-to players for communication service providers who are looking to rollout and deploy commercial 5G services.

In a forthright discussion with Uysal, the Ericsson executive highlights the role it is playing in terms of delivering its 5G aspirations, estimates when consumers will start benefiting from the technology and its efforts in achieving standardisation.

Speaking on the floor of GITEX, Uysal praised the progressive approach from countries in the GCC in relation to 5G technology.

Uysal said, “The deployment of 5G networks in the Gulf region is something we are proud of. We’ve engaged with a lot of the major operators to ensure 5G is now commercially available. GCC region along with South Korea and the United States are at the forefront of 5G development. I think its approach to 5G perfectly illustrates the ambition of the operators and regulators in the region. We’re contributing significantly to this with flexible portfolio options, so I believe we will start seeing the benefits of the technology very soon.”

Ericsson hedged its bets on 5G, and its long-term investment in the next-generation technology is now starting to pay off in the form of some major 5G deals. Uysal said, “We’ve been a leader in the ICT industry for years and are known for being innovative and reliable. Our long-term strategy on 5G is starting to thrive. We have a flexible portfolio with our 5G platform that enables telecom operators to smoothly switch on 5G on their existing 4G networks. www.tahawultech.com

The Ericsson Radio System hardware has been 5G-ready since 2015 and can also be used for 5G NR with a remote software installation.

This means we have already shipped more than 4 million 5G-ready radios to our customers worldwide.”

Uysal also highlighted the role the ICT vendor is playing in driving standardisation on 5G. He said, “One other part of the thought leadership is our role along with other industry partners in driving the standardisation effort.

Ericsson is deeply involved in all areas of the process, ensuring aggressive performance targets of the end-to-end system in the 5G standardisation work. Now that we see wide-scale deployment, Ericsson is ready to advance industries and society on their digitalisation journey. One significant proof point of our involvement is the foundation application that Ericsson filed in 2017. This patent application, which combines the work of 130 Ericsson inventors, is the largest in cellular communication in terms of number of inventors, anywhere in the world.”

Asking when we can expect to start experiencing the benefits of 5G technologies from a consumer perspective, Uysal said:” In the Middle East and North Africa, we anticipate commercial 5G deployments with leading communications service

providers during 2019, and significant volumes in 2021 with an increase in the adoption and availability of 5G-enabled devices.”

He added, “In terms of this region in relation to the consumer end, if you look at the devices, smartphones are very prevalent.

I think the smartphones’ 5G support is going to be key. U ̏ ysal added that with EXPO 2020 just around the corner he is expecting to see lots of interesting new applications to emerge on the consumer front.

He said, “We’re already witnessing applications around gaming that are providing interactive experiences for end-users without the need of a console. VR and AR entertainment experiences hosted on a 5G network will also become much more prevalent as we proceed.”

Uysal concluded a terrific interview by highlighting the importance of 5G in enabling the empowerment of autonomous cars and smart cities.

He said, “You’re going to have multiple devices such as your smartphone, laptop and notepad all the way connected to smart lighting.

Smart cities, autonomous cars and the use of robotics in healthcare and manufacturing are among the first use cases to flourish using 5G. To enable this new level of connectivity, you need 5G.” .

We have a flexible portfolio with our 5G platform that enables telecom operators to smoothly switch on 5G on their existing 4G networks”

NOVEMBER 2019

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FEATURE NetApp

WEAVING DATA FABRIC CNME SPOKE TO MATT WATS, DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY AND STRATEGY AT NETAPP, TO UNDERSTAND HOW THE HYBRID CLOUD AND DATA SERVICES FIRM AIMS TO CAPITALISE ON THE HYPERSCALERS’ OPENING OF MIDDLE EAST DATA CENTRES.

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Matt Wats, Director of Technology and Strategy at NetApp

NOVEMBER 2019

he entry into the Middle East of the major cloud providers will benefit NetApp, the company’s director of technology and strategy has said.

Matt Watts, a 14-year veteran of the hybrid cloud and data services firm, said the upside for NetApp, while initially “counter-intuitive”, will result from the way in which the company’s technology is tied in with that of the hyperscalers.

NetApp’s Data Fabric is central to this. This architecture takes in different endpoints ranging from on-premise to multiple private and public clouds.

Watts said that NetApp’s technology is “embedded in that of the hyperscalers”, among them Microsoft, Amazon, Google and others.

With Microsoft, for example, there is Azure NetApp Files, described as www.tahawultech.com

offering “enterprise-grade Azure file shares powered by NetApp”.

“That’s our technology inside Microsoft providing that. We have the same with Amazon and Google,” said the UK-based Watts, who was speaking at GITEX. “We believe we’re the only company that can enable companies to build their data fabrics and span multiple cloud providers. There’s on-premise technology and any of the clouds from major hyperscale providers.

“That’s how our business is developing in other regions that are further ahead in terms of cloud adoption.”

Watts is in a good position to talk about what is likely to happen to the data industry in the years to come, since this is central to his role at NetApp. He spends much of his time talking to NetApp’s largest customers to understand their strategy and how they are looking to develop.

Watts also works closely with NetApp’s Advanced Technology Group to look at the technology, investments and trends that will affect NetApp in the years beyond the company’s immediate road map.

It is about, he said, trying to think about how the landscape will look beyond two, three, four or even five years from now.

Among the trends Watts focuses on is “the huge move towards how we use the cloud”, such as through the increased deployment of software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS).

A key issue, he said, is how the cloud is used to deliver new capabilities, while the way in which cloud-like solutions can be delivered on-premise is also one of www.tahawultech.com

We believe we’re the only company that can enable companies to build their data fabrics and span multiple cloud providers.” his key interests.

“Part of the challenge is how do you build something that’s flexible enough to be what you want it to be going forward,” he said.

While describing the UAE as “very advanced”, Watts said that the Middle East is behind some other parts of the world in terms of cloud adoption because the major cloud providers have been slower to build data centres here.

However, with the hyperscalers having opened data centres in the UAE this year, offering locally based cloud storage, the situation is set to change.

As Watts put it, the hyperscalers are now “starting to build their presence here” and increased cloud adoption in the region is, as a result, “simply a matter of time”.

Oracle announced in February that it had opened a data centre in Abu

Dhabi, something that, according to the company, would “support the rapid adoption of Oracle Cloud in the UAE”.

In June Microsoft launched data centres in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, its first in the Middle East. At the time, the company said that the data centres would offer “resilient cloud services while maintaining data residency, security and compliance needs”.

This was followed the following month by an announcement by Amazon Web Services that it had launched three data centres in Bahrain, its first in the Middle East.

Google, meanwhile, has selected Saudi Arabia for its first Middle Eastern data centre.

Once hyperscalers open data centres in a region of the world, there is typically a lag before local organisations start to migrate to the cloud in earnest, according to Watts.

“When the cloud isn’t in your region, a lot of people have a natural fear of it: ‘If things go to the cloud, I will lose my job,’” he said.

“People think their data will never go to the cloud because it’s not secure. There’s the challenge of how you use the cloud and make it part of your strategy. That’s how people fear it.

“Then Amazon or Microsoft bring a data centre into the region. It takes about 12 months for companies to say: ‘We have to use it; we have to build a strategy.’

“Oracle are making an investment here and Azure are coming into the region. In some way, we see Dubai as a big hub for us. I am sure the hyperscale providers are looking at it in a very similar way.”

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INTERVIEW Centena Group

TRANSFORMING PEOPLE’S LIVES CNME SPOKE TO SANJAY RAGHUNATH, CHAIRMAN AND MANAGING DIRECTOR AT CENTENA GROUP, TO UNDERSTAND HOW THE UAE-BASED MULTINATIONAL CONGLOMERATE IS DRIVING INNOVATION TO TRANSFORM PEOPLE’S LIVES.

Group to spearhead a digital transformation in all of our divisions.

It gives us great pride that most of our homegrown leaders have been with us for over two decades. We are truly grateful for their commitment and dedication to strengthening the Centena brand.

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Sanjay Raghunath, Chairman and Managing Director, Centena Group

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ENTENA GROUP’S MISSION IS “TRANSFORMING PEOPLE’S LIVES”. CAN YOU PLEASE TELL US MORE ABOUT THIS? Digital transformation is all about using technology to solve global problems and making life easier for humankind.

Often companies stress upon the technology side and don’t focus enough on its impact on people.

NOVEMBER 2019

On the other hand, the Centena Group has always strived to evolve our business, keeping in mind that technology is here to facilitate human needs and make life hassle-free for our customers.

We believe that the concept of transforming lives should begin within the organisation. We have been empowering our employees and grooming leaders within the

HOW IS SCREENCHECK, A CENTENA GROUP COMPANY, TRANSFORMING HUMAN LIVES THROUGH TECHNOLOGY? ScreenCheck, a part of Centena Group, offers AI-backed solutions to improve efficiency and provide security using Biometrics and RFID. The company also distributes the world’s leading brands in Identification, Biometrics, RFID, and Video Surveillance. ScreenCheck is the official distributor for Zebra, Evolis, Datacard, Bravo, Suprema, Impinj, and CMITech.

As modern life becomes more hectic, people spend more time at the workplace, and this negatively affects their work-life balance. The entire gamut of solutions provided by ScreenCheck ensures that society is secure, business access is efficient, and work-life balance is achievable. www.tahawultech.com

DO YOU THINK COMPANIES SHOULD INVEST MORE IN INNOVATION FOR THE BENEFIT OF SOCIETY? The technological advance should primarily target the improvement of the human experience, and we believe that all companies should invest in innovation for society.

Without the growth of society as a whole, all-round development is challenging to achieve.

ATLAB, a Centena Group venture, is a perfect example of a company that is innovating for the benefit of society. ATLAB is at the forefront of pushing technology and works closely with schools, academic institutions, and other education bodies in encouraging students to develop skills related to STEM and STEAM, coding, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

Our dedication towards innovation and keenness to enhance the knowledge of young people will have a positive effect on society for years to come.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IS THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING CORE VALUES THAT FOCUS ON BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE COMPANY GROWTH STRATEGY? We believe that it is not possible to build a sustainable company that does not adhere to its core values.

Centena Group has been conceived as an enabler of human well-being, and we are consistently investing in technology and people up-gradation to keep up the momentum.

An example in this regard is Emphor IAD, a Centena Group company that provides critical process and industrial automation solutions. The efforts of Emphor IAD to reduce manual activity and replace it with automation has reduced the risk to human lives in all high-risk areas. www.tahawultech.com

HOW ARE YOU EDUCATING YOUR EMPLOYEES TO GIVE BACK TO SOCIETY? As the world progresses, we are all challenged continuously by environmental concerns and business pressures. Brands that educate their employees that the real purpose of life is to give back to society will always and consistently win in the long run.

Centena Group of companies prides itself as a stable company and a frontrunner in innovation, human capital development, and corporate governance” In recent years, pollution in the marine environment has become a critical issue with global repercussions. Maritronics, a Centena Group company, is at the forefront of all technologies that are evolving to help save the environment.

We have an expert team in Maritronics who provide Ballast Water Treatment Systems and emission controls to help minimise pollution of the marine environment.

Another Centena Group company, Life Analytical Sciences (Emphor LAS), is into quality testing of an entire chain of products from raw materials to finished products for consumption. Be it water, food,

or plastic; we test everything that people use.

HOW ARE CENTENA GROUP’S DIVERSE INVESTMENTS MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD? Centena Group has invested heavily in innovation and strategically chartering its way forward. The Group has a clear idea of what it wants to achieve through digital transformation and has assembled the right team to make it happen.

Over time, the company, which has concerns in marine electronics, industrial automation, life & analytical sciences, identification & security, and educational training systems, has discovered that as a business grows, so does the complexity of its operations.

Digital transformation is helping us to streamline operations and simplify the decision-making process. All of this is making us a more efficient and profoundly productive organisation.

From marine engineering to bioeconomies, 3D printing to artificial intelligence-driven access control, we are witnessing dramatic advances in science and technology that are pushing our exploratory limits.

As humanity takes the lead to quantum computing, the Centena Group is at the forefront of all these technologies that have already begun to shape the future of humanity by allowing us to reimagine what is possible.

With over three decades of business expertise, Centena Group of companies prides itself as a stable company and a frontrunner in innovation, human capital development, and corporate governance, which has resulted in the Group being featured twice in Dubai’s Top 100 SME companies.

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CASE STUDY AWS

REDUCING COSTS BY 79% WITH AWS AMAZON WEB SERVICES (AWS) HAS HELPED REDUCE THE COSTS OF AL TAYER INSIGNIA BY A PHENOMENAL 79%. THE GROUP IS ONE OF THE LARGEST PRIVATELY HELD CONGLOMERATES IN THE UAE, AND IN THIS FASCINATING CASE STUDY IT DOCUMENTS HOW INCORPORATING AWS INTO ITS BUSINESS HAS SLASHED ITS COSTS WHILST MAINTAINING ITS EFFICIENCY.

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OCUSING ON SCALABILITY, HIGH AVAILABILITY, AND COST SAVINGS Al Tayer Insignia is one of the largest privately held familyrun conglomerates in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Headquartered in the UAE, the group operates in six countries across the Middle East and manages more than 200 stores.

To cater to a young and rapidly evolving consumer base in the Middle East that is increasingly shopping online, Al Tayer’s retail division turned to AWS to accelerate its digital transformation efforts and reliably launched four e-commerce platforms, alongside Android and iOS apps, all within a year.

The company manages four e-commerce sites, which have been steadily growing in popularity, gaining a 50 percent increase in their website traffic.

Relying on an on-premises infrastructure had made it challenging for the company to scale websites and ensure high availability. In order to

NOVEMBER 2019

manage growth, they needed to add compute capacity more easily while also controlling costs.

The retail division’s small IT team sought a way to more easily manage its overall website environment. “We follow a DevOps model and needed more agility to support that,” said Mustafa Kirimli, lead DevOps engineer for Al Tayer Insignia. “We wanted to focus on development instead of infrastructure management.”

MOVING AN E-COMMERCE PLATFORM TO AWS To address its business challenges, Al Tayer Insignia chose to adopt Amazon Web Services (AWS).

They www.tahawultech.com

identified AWS as the best choice for them because it offered reliability and scalability, and AWS understands the business requirements of e-commerce and digital retail.

Al Tayer Insignia now runs its e-commerce platform—consisting of four website portals—on AWS, using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) M4, R4, and R5 instance types, powered by Intel processors. The website front ends run on a self-managed Kubernetes cluster for container orchestration, part of the organisation’s microservices architecture approach. Al Tayer also uses a Magento content management system, with Amazon Aurora as the primary database service. Relying on Amazon Aurora, Al Tayer cut costs by 40 percent, while also increasing performance by 400 percent, compared with proprietary database technologies.

More recently, Al Tayer migrated its Kubernetes clusters and full website production environment to Amazon EC2 Spot Instances to save money.

Spot Instances are spare Amazon EC2 capacity offered at up to a 90 percent discount over On-Demand prices. It also migrated its on-premises data warehouses to Amazon Redshift to further reduce costs and improve query times.

SCALING TO MEET NEW GROWTH, LAUNCH NEW BRANDS Using AWS, Al Tayer Insignia can easily scale its e-commerce sites to support the corporate retail division’s launch of digital brands such as Gap, Mamas & Papas, Nisnass.com, and Ounass, a website that is home to more than 150 luxury brands.

“Using AWS, we have the agility and scalability to support the rapid growth in website traffic and facilitate the launch of new e-commerce sites for thousands of customers,” said Kirimli.

“This helps us enable our company’s digital transformation and ensures we can give our customers the best experience, from order to delivery.”

LOWERING OPERATIONAL COSTS BY 79% By running its website production environment and Kubernetes clusters on Amazon EC2 Spot Instances, Al Tayer Insignia has reduced its operational costs by 79 percent, while continuing to add compute capacity to support website traffic growth. “Our business continues to grow, but our costs have not increased because of the cost savings we get with Amazon EC2 Spot Instances,” said Kirimli.

“Instead, we can put the money we save into innovation.”

In addition, the company has the high availability it needs to provide a reliable experience for customers

Our business continues to grow, but our costs have not increased because of the cost savings we get with Amazon EC2 Spot Instances. We can put the money we save into innovation.”

Mustafa Kirimli, Lead DevOps Engineer, Al Tayer Insignia

www.tahawultech.com

buying and selling retail goods around the clock via the e-commerce platform. “High availability is critical for the customers making purchases on our websites, and we can ensure reliability and high availability 24/7 in six countries by running our platform on AWS,” Kirimli added.

By delegating the management of its environment to AWS, Al Tayer has given its developers more time to create new customer experiences. “Our developers no longer spend their time managing the backend e-commerce infrastructure,” says Kirimli. “Now, they can focus on innovation and making our websites even better. As our company keeps expanding our digital presence, this will help us improve the overall customer experience.”

LOOKING AHEAD: PERSONALISING RETAIL WITH MACHINE LEARNING Al Tayer’s next phase of AWS adoption will include artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies such as Amazon Personalise and Amazon SageMaker to better understand their customers. Using AWS machine learning technologies, Al Tayer will be able to optimise their marketing spend and better predict demand for the thousands of SKUs they offer to their customers using the omnichannel retail strategy.

ABOUT AL TAYER INSIGNIA Al Tayer Insignia is one of the largest privately held conglomerates in the Middle East, offering products for automobile sales and service, luxury and lifestyle retail, hospitality, perfumes and cosmetics, engineering, and other segments. The group’s portfolio includes some of the world’s leading brands. Al Tayer Insignia operates in six countries in the Middle East and manages more than 200 brick-and-mortar stores.

NOVEMBER 2019

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Š 2019 Fluke Corporation

MAKING THE RIGHT CONNECTIONS

2019 ISSUE 23

FUTURE-READY LEADING CABLING PROVIDERS SHARE THEIR INSIGHTS INTO THE MARKET’S TRENDS

CABLING PLANNER Fluke Networks

DRIVING THE CABLING MARKET GROWTH WERNER HEEREN, REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR AT FLUKE NETWORKS, DISCUSSES WHAT DIFFERENTIATES THEM FROM THEIR COMPETITORS, THE IMPACT OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES ON THE CABLING MARKET AND ITS GROWTH IN THE MIDDLE EAST. 44 Werner Heeren, Regional Sales Director, Fluke Networks

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HAT IS DRIVING THE GROWTH IN THE CABLING MARKET IN THE MIDDLE EAST? Although there are probably more, we see three main drivers supporting the uptake of CAT 6A solutions in Middle East. There is the high demand for IoT, including CCTV security systems and related access control. Secondly, there is more and more wireless requirement, especially for the new WiFi 6. Thirdly, Cloud requirements fulfilled with data centre infrastructure deployments.

We see a huge increase in cabling systems for intelligent buildings.

There have been no significant advances in building technology for the last 50 years, up to now. Not so long ago, a typical office property supported very basic services like NOVEMBER 2019

phone and electrical systems, HVAC, and an IT computer network – an average building of today is more digital and extremely complex. Subsystems like security cameras, lighting, advanced sensors, badging systems, etc. are siloed and difficult to manage. All these systems are more prone to failure and hacking.

Buildings of today have www.tahawultech.com

a lot more needs than buildings of yesterday and need to be enhanced with connectivity. The question is how you bring it all together. That’s why building networks convergence has become a necessity.

For Fluke Networks, IoT brings new opportunities, as all these sensors and devices will require Power-overEthernet (PoE), hence improved quality norms, which in turn will require additional measurement standards and increased cabling quality. For example, CAT 6A cabling can better withstand temperature increase for higher PoE requirements compared to CAT 6 cabling.

The second driver is wireless. Due to the exponential growth of mobile devices that are connected through wireless, there is a large demand of more wireless access points. Each Wireless Access Point (WAP), still needs a cable to be connected to the switch.

On top, the higher data speed through wireless is requiring CAT 6A on the physical cabling level into the WAP. Thirdly, legal requirements of providing data through the cloud is supporting the expansion of local data centres. This means more infrastructure cabling to connect all these servers, storage, back-up servers, etc. This growth in data centres is not only driving growth in cabling in general, but also pushing the envelope for band-with requirements, meaning CAT 6A or even CAT 8 installations.

HOW DO NEW TECHNOLOGIES SUCH AS AI INFLUENCE THE CABLING MARKET AND NEW SOLUTIONS? Artificial Intelligence makes it possible to provide better guidance for cable installers onsite when troubleshooting failing links. Once an installed Permanent Link is not meeting the standards, the clock www.tahawultech.com

starts ticking and lot of time is wasted in ҅trial and error҆ when trying to rectify the problem. Should the installer change the whole cabling? Or change a connector? If so, which connector? Fluke Networks solutions will provide this guidance on what to do next to get the link passing the standards again.

Due to our 25 years expertise in testing, we can recognise patterns in the frequency domain analysis as well as time domain analysis and use proprietary digital signal processing

fibre certification since 1992. Not only our customers will be instantly recognised as a “Pro”, but our testers will enable them to become more competitive too whilst increasing their profit margin at the same time.

The DTX CableAnalyzer™, introduced in May 2004, was the world’s most popular tool for certifying copper and fibre cabling installations until the new Versiv™ Cabling Certification System was introduced. We believe now it’s the perfect time to migrate to our next generation Versiv platform that supports all current copper and fibre certification standards as well as future cabling certification needs.

For Fluke Networks, IoT brings new opportunities, as all these sensors and devices will require Power-over-Ethernet”

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHANGE YOU’VE SEEN IN THE CABLING MARKET DUE TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION? Digital Transformation will drive innovation accelerators in the region.

IoT, AI, Blockchain, 3D printing, Virtual Reality, Robotics will all require more infrastructure to connect the devices which each other and with the required servers for processing.

The largest change in cabling market due to digital transformation is the requirement to be online and to capture more data. More specifically, Fluke Networks has developed a cloud-based solution in their Versiv products called LinkWare Live to transfer test results from the testers in the field to the cloud. This process allows the technicians to share the results with the project managers, architects, and even consultants to monitor project progress, manage assets, and take an action on fixing problematic links without being on site. LinkWare Live uses mobile phones or tablets to show this progress which accelerate access to information and cut down the certification testing time by 65 percent.

techniques to detect connections.

Older CableAnalyzers (or competitive testers) relied solely on differential mode analysis which was state of the art at that time, so you can expect the latest DSX CableAnalyzer to be more precise in its diagnostics, especially for Category 6A and Class EA links.

Unique to the DSX CableAnalyzer is the ability to detect RJ45 connections in the link. If there is an RJ45 consolidation point, the FAULT INFO will give you the distance to that connection.

WHAT DIFFERENTIATES FLUKE NETWORKS’ OFFERING IN THE MIDDLE EAST CABLING MARKET? Fluke Networks has been the trusted brand in the field of copper and

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CABLING PLANNER Norden Communication

MEETING CUSTOMERS’ INCREASING REQUIREMENTS ASHICK C.A., SALES MANAGER AT NORDEN COMMUNICATION MIDDLE EAST FZE, DISCUSSES THE LATEST TRENDS IN THE CABLING MARKET, INCLUDING THE UPTAKE OF CAT 6A SOLUTIONS, FIBRE VERSUS COPPER, AND THE DATA CENTRE APPLICATION MARKET.

46

Ashick C.A., Sales Manager, Norden Communication Middle East Fze

A

CCORDING TO A RECENT RESEARCH BY BSRIA, THE UPTAKE OF CAT 6A SOLUTIONS IS HIGHEST IN EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST. IN YOUR OPINION, WHAT IS DRIVING THE REGION’S CABLING MARKET GROWTH? Future oriented approach from the public and private sector customers calls for a minimum of CAT 6A solution to carry 10G on the single network point connectivity.

The high bandwidth requirement, along with the increase of

NOVEMBER 2019

connected hardware which require fast connectivity, are the key elements to bring CAT 6A into picture on most of the projects in this region.

Each cabling infrastructure must be highly functional, and it needs a reliable high-performing IT network.

The main goals and requirements in the region are to provide Wi-Fi compliant with IEEE 802.11ас and cable networks which can deliver 10 Gbit data and voice transmission.

The Health care, hospitality, education, and public sectors tend to be far more concerned about their fast and safe connectivity, which leads upcoming projects to upgrade their solution to CAT 6A. More and more foreign investments focused in the Middle East are coming up with upgraded specifications for high www.tahawultech.com

quality services, which makes it easy for the present generation to do far more.

The network cabling industry is moving forward by adapting every aspect of connectivity with minimum requirement of CAT 6A as a standard to fulfill end users’ need. New mobile technologies like 5G also create increased fibre cable requirement for feeder cables, which will replace existing RF cables usage by 4G and earlier systems.

WHAT IMPACT DO LOW COMPATIBILITY WITH OLD COMMUNICATION INFRASTRUCTURE, FLUCTUATING COPPER, AND FIBRE OPTIC CABLE PRICES HAVE ON THE MARKET? Initially, when fibre solution was introduced in the market, cost was double or triple than the present market condition. Now there is little difference between copper and fibre, as both the components’ prices have decreased. Most of the office network is made of copper cabling, which has cheap components for a bandwidth of 10 Gbps in the high side – benefiting both investors and economy of the company.

However, fibre cable, with its reduced cost and increased bandwidth, as well as high speed and long transmission distance, reliability and security, is a more trustworthy option when it comes to long distance, security and reliability.

In fact, fibre optic works for a distance of 12 miles with high speed of 10,000Mbps; whereas copper works at a speed of 1,000 Mbps for 300 ft distance – it’s clear that copper is more into LAN performance compared to WAN for fibre optic.

When it comes to security, fibre is difficult to tap, while copper is more susceptible to tapping. Fibre optic is also easier to handle since it’s light www.tahawultech.com

Fibre cable, with its reduced cost and increased bandwidth, as well as high speed and long transmission distance, reliability and security, is a more trustworthy option” weight, thinner in radius and give a strong pulling strength.

Fibre optic has a lifetime of between 30 and 50 years, while copper has a period of about five to ten. Although copper is perfectly adequate for a voice signal, it has very limited bandwidth – fibre provides standardised performance up to 10 Gbps and beyond. In addition, the signal loss over 500 meters in fibre is acceptable, while copper has very high loss at high frequencies.

Moreover, fibre optic cable is much less affected by various environmental factors than copper cable.

Finally, signal correction or interruption of fibre can be identified easily via various techniques, but damaged or cut copper need to be removed completely.

EVERY ORGANISATION IS GOING THROUGH A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY TO STAY AHEAD OF THE CURVE IN TODAY’S DIGITAL ECONOMY. WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHANGE YOU’VE SEEN IN THE CABLING MARKET DUE TO THIS? The public sector is the main role

model for most organisations in the Middle East, including when it comes to cabling solutions. For example, tourism, hospitality, or banking have almost all moved to the latest solution, CAT 6A, and highspeed cabling, thus providing people better and faster services.

Each organisation is trying to be topper in the country to serve better and smarter solutions, which creates the need for higher specification and material requirement within their time frame.

Often, we try to reach out with the best solution for our customers.

The market now sees all organisations securing their data premises using monitoring systems like CCTV. This requires more cabling since most of the cameras used are now IP based. Requirements for network systems have increased dynamically to meet all these needs.

MANY HYPERSCALERS ARE LAYING BRICK AND MORTAR IN THE REGION WITH NEW DATA CENTRES. DO YOU SEE THE DATA CENTRE APPLICATION MARKET GROWING FASTER THAN LAN IN THE REGION? The future lies within data centres, and the requirements for data centres in the cabling market has increased. Norden provides data centre solutions that feature the latest innovations to meet our clients’ requirements. Large amount of data stored in data centres, and cloud accessed through wired, wireless and mobile networks, will drive the data centre application requirements.

At the same time, the growth of LAN and faster network access requirement will continue to grow for some time, with technologies like IoT requiring more and more gadgets and machines to be connected.

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NOVEMBER 2019 TAHAWULTECH.COM

ENABLING ‫تمكين‬ GOVERNMENT ‫حكومة‬ OF THE FUTURE ‫المستقبل‬ PUBLICATION LICENSED BY DUBAI PRODUCTION CITY, DCCA

GovTech Abu Dhabi Digital Authority

50

H.E. Dr Rauda Al-Saadi, Director General, Abu Dhabi Digital Authority

D

igital transformation has become a necessity for leading organisations around the world and in the Middle East region to stay ahead of the game in today’s digital economy. According to Gartner, nine out of ten corporate leaders view digital as a top priority – harnessing the power of new technology is not an option anymore, it’s a must.

In this time of transformation, the UAE government has been leading at the forefront of the digital transformation of the

NOVEMBER 2019

country and the region. The most recent report from The IMD World Competitiveness Centre shows that the UAE has achieved the rank of first place for the Arab Region in all three main factors of the report: “Technology”, “Future Readiness”, and “Knowledge”.

At the centre of these incredible achievements are the continuous efforts of government entities such as Abu Dhabi Digital Authority – established to lead excellence and innovation in government services delivered to the public by www.tahawultech.com

ENABLING GOVERNMENT OF THE FUTURE THE UAE GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN LEADING AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE COUNTRY AND THE REGION, AND PART OF ITS SUCCESS CAN BE TRACED BACK TO THE CONTINUOUS WORK OF ABU DHABI DIGITAL AUTHORITY IN PROVIDING WORLD CLASS SERVICES TO THE EMIRATE’S CONSTITUENTS. DEPUTY EDITOR GIORGIA GUANTARIO SAT DOWN WITH H.E. DR RAUDA AL-SAADI, DIRECTOR GENERAL AT ADDA, TO DISCUSS THEIR UPCOMING EVENT “DIGITAL NEXT SUMMIT” AND THE ENTITY’S DIGITAL AGENDA.

leveraging emerging technologies and technological expertise.

ADDA is led by Her Excellency Dr Rauda Al-Saadi, Director General, who has an extensive experience in the UAE public sector and technology.

“ADDA’s laudable vision”, H.E. Dr AlSaadi tells us, “is to raise the wellbeing of Abu Dhabi’s citizens through service excellence and innovation.”

“Our vision is to lead the digital future of Abu Dhabi. To do so, we work closely with government entities, as well as the big technology players in the private sector, leveraging their www.tahawultech.com

expertise when it comes to digital transformation.

“We are focused on providing a seamless customer experience for the citizens of our Emirate, and we believe that through world class services, we will be able to raise the wellbeing of all the constituents of Abu Dhabi.”

Digital transformation is however not a simple, nor straightforward process.

83 percent of organisations struggle to make meaningful progress on digital transformation, according to Gartner.

H.E. Dr Al-Saadi is well aware of the challenges organisations and

51

governments face when it comes to this.

“In December we will hold our first-ofits-kind ‘Digital Next Summit’ event under the theme of ‘Enabling Government of the Future’. We will bring together expertise and thought leadership to discuss four key areas around technological advancements and digital transformation. We will address the challenges that the public and private sectors face, as well as the opportunities arising from emerging technologies.

“The technology sector is moving at an unprecedented rate, and NOVEMBER 2019

GovTech Abu Dhabi Digital Authority

52

organisations are all trying to move as swiftly as possible to catch up. We have new technologies emerging on a daily basis, and ADDA understands the need to fully understand these technologies in order to accelerate the implementation of a digital agenda,” continued H.E. Dr Al-Saadi.

The Digital Next Summit will focus on four key pillars of digital transformation and aims to foresee future trends and challenges of today’s digital economy.

The four thought provoking dedicated tracks to accelerate digital transformation are called ‘GX Next’, focusing on the future of government services and citizens’ “Government Experience”; ‘Technology Next’, highlighting the common technology solutions governments can use to enhance their operations and efficiency; ‘Cyber Next’, which will explore the key issue of cyberattacks and what tools and process should be put in place to develop a strong cybersecurity eco-system; and finally, ‘Data Next’, discussing the undoubtedly importance of data for any organisations, and data driven by new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

H.E. Dr Al-Saadi added, “Within each pillar there will be keynote speeches and several panel discussions, delivered by global experts and industry leaders. These will address different fundamental technology aspects that both the public and private sector should be aware of and act upon.”

In addition to featuring an array of speakers from the technology private and public sector, the event also features a very unique group NOVEMBER 2019

We are focusing on providing a seamless customer experience for the citizens of our Emirate, and we believe that through world class services, we will be able to raise the wellbeing of all the constituents of Abu Dhabi.” of Conference Advisors who gave their time to share knowledge and expertise for the successful realisation of the Summit.

These experts, explained H.E. Dr Al-Saadi, shared their knowledge and experience to shape the entire agenda and theme of the event.

The advisory board includes wellknown names such as H.E. Wesam Lootah, CEO of Smart Dubai and Khaled Al Melhi, CEO of Injazat – A Mubadala Company; as well as several key members of Abu Dhabi Digital Authority and industry leaders.

The event, organised by Messe Frankfurt Middle East, will be held from December 8th to the 9th, but H.E. Dr. Al-Saadi tells us the months

building up to it have also been very exciting for ADDA, which has formed several partnerships with the private sector to leverage their expertise and deliver better services.

“The private sector is driving innovation in all aspects of our lives, not just in technology. Part of ADDA’s mandate is to accelerate the digital agenda, and to do so we leverage innovative solutions and emerging technologies to simplify the lives of our citizens. The public and private sectors work hand-in-hand to do this.

“For example, our TAMM programme sees the support of both government entities and the private sector to provide end-toend ‘journeys’ for all our customers’ needs. This touches many aspects of their daily lives, from transport and health, to education and tourism; all are being enhanced and supported through innovative digital services. www.tahawultech.com

“Today we have created 13 integrated journeys and integrated more than 90 services through our TAMM channels to meet the requirements of our citizens in a fast, proactive, convenient and personalised manner” explains H.E. Dr Al-Saadi.

“Abu Dhabi Digital Authority”, H.E. Dr Al-Saadi explains, “is also pushing the boundaries of innovation by looking at how to leverage lifechanging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence.”

During GITEX Technology Week 2019, ADDA launched the first-ever AI Lab in Abu Dhabi in partnership with IBM, which offers high-performance computing abilities. The AI Lab has been made available for all Abu Dhabi government entities as a service to develop different use cases and to learn how to leverage the power of AI. H.E. Dr Al-Saadi said, “We fully www.tahawultech.com

Today we have created 13 integrated journeys and integrated more than 90 digital services through our TAMM channels to meet all the requirements of our customers in a fast, proactive, convenient and personalised manner.” understand how important it is to understand and leverage new technologies. As well as establishing the first Abu Dhabi AI Lab, we also worked with IBM to conduct a full AI training program for government entities’ employees.

“We have just completed a very successful first phase and are looking

53 forward to moving onto the next one.

The programme saw 80 percent of candidates completing it already, while the remaining 20 will complete it by the end of the year.”

Innovation is clearly the core of ADDA’s business and strategy, and as the leader of the Emirate’s digital agenda, H.E. Dr Al-Saadi recognises the responsibility they have to provide cutting-edge solutions for the benefit of the Abu Dhabi government and its constituents.

“Next year, we will continue developing our TAMM programme through more journeys, services, and platforms. In addition, we are also working very closely with the government entities to realise a data management program, which will include an open data platform, as well as continuing to work on exploring tangible use cases using AI and Blockchain technologies,” concluded H.E. Dr Al-Saadi.

NOVEMBER 2019

‫تمكين حكومة‬ ‫المستقبل‬ ‫تعترب حكومة دولة اإلمارات العربية املتحدة‪ ،‬حال ًيا من الدول الرائدة يف مسرية التحول‬ ‫الرقمي يف املنطقة‪ ،‬ويمكن أن نعزو جزءاً من عوامل نجاحها إىل العمل املستمر لهيئة‬ ‫أبوظبي الرقمية يف تقديم خدمات عاملية املستوى‪ .‬قابلت نائب رئيس التحرير "جيورجيا‬ ‫غوانتاريو" سعادة الدكتورة روضة السعدي‪ ،‬املدير العام لهيئة أبوظبي الرقمية‪ ،‬ملناقشة‬ ‫الحدث املقبل الذي تنظمه الهيئة يف ديسمرب وهو " قمة املستقبل الرقمي"‪ ،‬باإلضافة إىل‬ ‫مناقشة جدول األعمال الرقمي للهيئة‪.‬‬

‫يرأس هيئة أبوظبي الرقمية سعادة‬ ‫الدكتورة روضة السعدي‪ ،‬املدير العام‪،‬‬ ‫التي تتميز بخربتها الواسعة يف القطاع العام‬ ‫والتكنولوجيا يف اإلمارات العربية املتحدة‪.‬‬ ‫تقول سعادة الدكتورة روضة السعدي‪:‬‬ ‫"تعمل هيئة أبوظبي الرقمية عىل تعزيز‬ ‫مستوى الرفاهية يف إمارة أبوظبي من خالل‬ ‫تبني التميز واالبتكار يف تقديم الخدمات‬ ‫الحكومية"‪.‬‬ ‫"وتتمثل رؤيتنا يف قيادة املستقبل الرقمي‬ ‫ألبوظبي‪ ،‬حيث نتعاون بصورة وثيقة مع‬ ‫كافة الهيئات والجهات الحكومية‪ ،‬وكذلك‬

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‫مع الجهات وكربى شركات القطاع الخاص‬ ‫الفاعلة يف مجال التكنولوجيا‪ ،‬واالستفادة من‬ ‫خرباتها عندما يتعلق األمر بالتحول الرقمي"‪.‬‬

‫ً‬ ‫جيدا‬ ‫وتدرك سعادة الدكتورة روضة السعدي‬ ‫التحديات التي تواجه املنظمات والحكومات‬ ‫عندما يتعلق األمر بذلك‪.‬‬

‫نحن نركز عىل توفري تجربة متعاملني سلسة‬ ‫ملجتمع إمارة أبوظبي‪ ،‬ونعتقد أنه من خالل‬ ‫الخدمات ذات املستوى العاملي‪ ،‬سنكون‬ ‫قادرين عىل رفع مستوى الرفاهية لجميع‬ ‫أفراد املجتمع يف اإلمارة‪.‬‬

‫تقول سعادة روضة الدكتورة السعدي‪" :‬يف‬ ‫ديسمرب‪ ،‬سنعقد أول حدث فريد من نوعه‬ ‫بعنوان "قمة املستقبل الرقمي" تحت شعار"‬ ‫تمكني حكومة املستقبل"‪ .‬ويف إطار هذا‬ ‫الحدث‪ ،‬سوف نجمع بني الخربة والقيادة‬ ‫الفكرية ملناقشة أربعة مجاالت رئيسية تتعلق‬ ‫بالتحول الرقمي والتطورات التكنولوجية‪.‬‬ ‫كما ستناقش القمة التحديات التي يواجهها‬ ‫القطاعان العام والخاص‪ ،‬باإلضافة إىل‬ ‫الفرص التي توفرها التقنيات الحديثة‪.‬‬

‫لكن التحول الرقمي ليس عملية بسيطة وال‬ ‫مباشرة‪ ،‬إذ أن ‪ % 83‬من املنظمات تكافح‬ ‫من أجل تحقيق تقدم ملموس يف التحول‬ ‫الرقمي‪ ،‬وفقا لجارترن‪.‬‬

‫‪NOVEMBER 2019‬‬

‫جوف تك‬ ‫هيئة أبوظبي الرقمية‬

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‫سعادة الدكتورة روضة السعدي‪،‬‬ ‫مدير عام هيئة أبوظبي الرقمية‬

‫أصبح‬

‫التحول الرقمي‬ ‫ضرورة للمؤسسات‬ ‫الرائدة يف جميع‬ ‫أنحاء العالم ويف منطقة الشرق األوسط‬ ‫للبقاء يف لعبة املنافسة عىل صدارة االقتصاد‬ ‫ً‬ ‫ووفقا ملا ذكره تقرير جارترن‪،‬‬ ‫الرقمي اليوم‪.‬‬ ‫فإن ‪ 9‬من كل ‪ 10‬من قادة الشركات يعتربون‬ ‫التحول الرقمي أولوية قصوى‪ ،‬حيث أن‬ ‫االستفادة من التكنولوجيا الحديثة لم يعد‬ ‫خيارًا بعد اآلن‪ ،‬بل إنه أمر حتمي ال مفر منه‪.‬‬ ‫يف هذا الوقت من التحول‪ ،‬تقود حكومة‬ ‫دولة اإلمارات العربية املتحدة مسرية التحول‬ ‫الرقمي يف املنطقة‪ ،‬حيث ُيظهر أحدث‬

‫‪NOVEMBER 2019‬‬

‫تقرير صادر عن مركز التنافسية العاملية‬ ‫التابع للمعهد الدويل للتنمية اإلدارية أن‬ ‫دولة اإلمارات العربية املتحدة قد حصلت‬ ‫عىل املركز األول يف املنطقة العربية يف‬ ‫جميع العوامل الرئيسية الثالثة للتقرير‪:‬‬ ‫"التكنولوجيا"‪" ،‬االستعداد للمستقبل"‪،‬‬ ‫و"املعرفة"‪.‬‬ ‫ويف قلب هذه اإلنجازات املذهلة تأيت الجهود‬ ‫املستمرة للجهات الحكومية مثل هيئة‬ ‫أبوظبي الرقمية‪ ،‬التي أنشئت لقيادة التميز‬ ‫واالبتكار يف الخدمات الحكومية املقدمة‬ ‫للجمهور من خالل االستفادة من التقنيات‬ ‫الحديثة والخربات التكنولوجية‪.‬‬

‫‪www.tahawultech.com‬‬

‫أطلقنا ‪ 13‬رحلة‬ ‫متكاملة لتلبية جميع‬ ‫متطلبات عمالئنا‬ ‫بطريقة سريعة‬ ‫واستباقية ومصممة‬ ‫وفقا الحتياجات‬ ‫المتعاملين ‪".‬‬ ‫عىل سبيل املثال‪ ،‬تتلقى منظومة أبوظبي‬ ‫للخدمات الحكومية املوحدة "تم" التابعة‬ ‫للهيئة دعماً وتعاونا كبرياً من كافة الجهات‬ ‫الحكومية والقطاع الخاص‪ ،‬لتوفري " رحالت"‬ ‫خدمية متكاملة ومصممة وفقاً الحتياجات‬ ‫املتعاملني‪ ،‬التي تؤثر إيجابيا يف العديد من‬ ‫جوانب حياتهم اليومية‪ ،‬كالصحة والتعليم‬ ‫والسياحة والنقل؛ والتي يتم تعزيزها ودعمها‬ ‫من خالل خدمات حكومية رقمية مبتكرة‪.‬‬ ‫وتؤكد سعادة الدكتورة روضة السعدي‪:‬‬ ‫اليوم قمنا بإطالق ‪ 13‬رحلة متكاملة من خالل‬ ‫قنوات " تم" لتلبية متطلبات الجمهور بطريقة‬ ‫سريعة واستباقية وسهلة ومصممة لتناسب‬ ‫احتياجات املتعاملني‪." .‬‬ ‫وتضيف سعادة الدكتورة السعدي‪" :‬تعمل‬ ‫هيئة أبوظبي الرقمية ً‬ ‫أيضا عىل دفع حدود‬ ‫االبتكار من خالل االستفادة من التقنيات‬

‫‪www.tahawultech.com‬‬

‫التكنولوجية التي تغري طبيعة الحياة مثل‬ ‫تقنيات الذكاء االصطناعي"‪.‬‬ ‫خالل أسبوع جيتكس للتقنية ‪ ،2019‬أطلقت‬ ‫هيئة أبوظبي الرقمية أول مخترب للذكاء‬ ‫االصطناعي يف أبوظبي بالشراكة مع شركة‬ ‫‪ ،IBM‬حيث يوفر املخترب قدرات حوسبة عالية‬ ‫األداء‪ .‬هذا وقد قامت الهيئة بجعل املخترب‬ ‫متاحاً لجميع موظفي الجهات الحكومية يف‬ ‫أبوظبي كخدمة منها لتمكينهم من تطوير‬ ‫حاالت استخدام مختلفة‪ ،‬ولتعلم كيفية‬ ‫االستفادة من قوة الذكاء االصطناعي‪.‬‬ ‫وتقول سعادة الدكتورة السعدي‪" :‬نحن نقدر‬ ‫ً‬ ‫تماما مدى أهمية فهم التقنيات الجديدة‬ ‫واالستفادة منها‪ .‬باإلضافة إىل إنشاء أول‬ ‫مخترب للذكاء االصطناعي يف أبوظبي‪ ،‬عملنا‬ ‫ً‬ ‫أيضا مع ‪ IBM‬لتقديم برنامج تدريبي متكامل‬ ‫يف مجال الذكاء االصطناعي ملوظفي الجهات‬

‫‪56‬‬ ‫الحكومية يف أبوظبي‪ .‬وقد انتهينا للتو من‬ ‫املرحلة األوىل بنجاح‪ ،‬ونتطلع إىل امليض ً‬ ‫قدما‬ ‫يف تنفيذ املرحلة التالية‪ ،‬إذ قمنا بتدريب ‪80%‬‬ ‫من املوظفني املرشحني‪ ،‬وسنقوم بتدريب‬ ‫الـ ‪ 20%‬الباقية بحلول نهاية العام‪.‬‬ ‫من الواضح أن االبتكار هو جوهر عمل‬ ‫واسرتاتيجية هيئة أبوظبي الرقمية‪ .‬وبصفتها‬ ‫الهيئة املعنية بقيادة مسرية التحول الرقمي يف‬ ‫إمارة أبوظبي‪ ،‬تتحدث سعادة الدكتورة روضة‬ ‫السعدي عن املسؤولية امللقاة عىل عاتقهم‬ ‫لتوفري حلول متطورة لصالح حكومة أبوظبي‬ ‫ومجتمع اإلمارة‪.‬‬ ‫وتختم سعادة الدكتورة روضة السعدي‪" :‬يف‬ ‫العام املقبل‪ ،‬سنواصل تطوير برنامج "تم"‬ ‫الخاص بنا من خالل إطالق املزيد من الرحالت‬ ‫والخدمات واملنصات‪ .‬باإلضافة إىل ذلك‪،‬‬ ‫نحن نتعاون بصورة وثيقة مع كافة الهيئات‬ ‫والجهات الحكومية لتحقيق االستفادة الكاملة‬ ‫من برنامج إدارة البيانات‪ ،‬والذي سيتضمن‬ ‫منصة بيانات مفتوحة‪ ،‬باإلضافة إىل االطالع‬ ‫عىل افضل املمارسات يف مجال توظيف تقنيات‬ ‫الذكاء االصطناعي والبلوكتشني"‪.‬‬

‫‪NOVEMBER 2019‬‬

‫جوف تك‬ ‫هيئة أبوظبي الرقمية‬

‫وتتابع سعادة مدير عام هيئة أبوظبي‬ ‫الرقمية‪" :‬يتطور قطاع التكنولوجيا بمعدل‬ ‫غري مسبوق‪ ،‬وتحاول جميع املنظمات التحرك‬ ‫بأسرع ما يمكن للحاق بالركب ومواكبة هذه‬ ‫التطورات‪ .‬لدينا تكنولوجيات جديدة تظهر‬ ‫عىل أساس يومي‪ ،‬ونحن يف هيئة أبوظبي‬ ‫ً‬ ‫تماما الحاجة إىل فهم هذه‬ ‫الرقمية نعي‬ ‫التقنيات من أجل اإلسراع يف تنفيذ جدول‬ ‫األعمال الرقمي للهيئة"‪.‬‬ ‫سرتكز قمة املستقبل الرقمي عىل أربعة أركان‬ ‫رئيسية للتحول الرقمي‪ ،‬وتهدف إىل استشراف‬ ‫االتجاهات والتحديات املستقبلية لالقتصاد‬ ‫الرقمي الحايل‪.‬‬

‫‪57‬‬

‫وتناقش القمة موضوعات عديدة وفقاً ألربعة‬ ‫مسارات رئيسية مخصصة لتسريع التحول‬ ‫الرقمي وتقوم عىل تحفري الفكر‪ ،‬وهذه‬ ‫املسارات هي‪" :‬مستقبل الخدمات الحكومية"‬ ‫"‪ ، "GX Next‬حيث يركز هذا املسار عىل‬ ‫مستقبل الخدمات الحكومية و"تجربة خدمة‬ ‫العمالء"؛ أما املسار الثاين للقمة ويطلق عليه‬ ‫"مستقبل التكنولوجيا"‪ ،‬فهو يسلط الضوء‬ ‫عىل الحلول التكنولوجية املشرتكة التي يمكن‬ ‫للحكومات استخدامها لتعزيز عملياتها‬ ‫وكفاءتها‪ .‬أما املسار الثالث‪ ،‬وهو بعنوان‬ ‫"مستقبل األمن السيرباين" فهو يبحث قضية‬ ‫رئيسية تتعلق بالهجمات اإللكرتونية‪ ،‬واملعايري‬ ‫التي ينبغي وضعها لتطوير منظومة قوية‬ ‫لألمن السيرباين‪ .‬وأخريًا‪ ،‬يناقش املسار الرابع‬ ‫"مستقبل البيانات" والذي يناقش األهمية‬ ‫الكبرية التي تحظى بها البيانات بالنسبة ألي‬ ‫مؤسسة‪ ،‬والبيانات التي تقودها تقنيات‬ ‫جديدة مثل الذكاء االصطناعي والتعلم اآليل‪.‬‬ ‫وأضافت سعادة الدكتورة روضة السعدي‪:‬‬ ‫"يف كل مسار من مسارات القمة سيكون‬ ‫لدينا كلمات رئيسية‪ ،‬وحلقات نقاشية‬ ‫عديدة‪ ،‬يلقيها ويشارك فيها خرباء عامليون‬ ‫وقادة بارزون يف قطاع التكنولوجيا الرقمية‪.‬‬ ‫وستتناول الحلقات النقاشية الجوانب‬ ‫املختلفة واألساسية للتكنولوجيا التي يتعني‬ ‫عىل كل من القطاعني العام والخاص‬ ‫مواكبتها"‪.‬‬

‫‪NOVEMBER 2019‬‬

‫نحن نركز على توفير‬ ‫تجربة متعاملين سلسة‬ ‫لمجتمع إمارة أبوظبي‪،‬‬ ‫ونعتقد أنه من خالل‬ ‫تقديم الخدمات على‬ ‫مستوى عالمي‪،‬‬ ‫سنكون قادرين على‬ ‫تعزيز مستوى‬ ‫الرفاهية ألفراد‬ ‫المجتمع إلمارة‬ ‫أبوظبي ‪".‬‬

‫باإلضافة إىل كوكبة من املتحدثني الرئيسيني‬ ‫من القطاعني العام والخاص املتخصصني‬ ‫والعاملني يف مجال التكنولوجيا‪ ،‬يضم الحدث‬ ‫ً‬ ‫أيضا مجموعة فريدة ً‬ ‫جدا من أعضاء اللجنة‬ ‫االستشارية للقمة الذين كرسوا أوقاتهم‬ ‫وخرباتهم للعمل من أجل ضمان التنظيم‬ ‫الناجح للقمة‪.‬‬ ‫توضح سعادة الدكتورة روضة السعدي‪:‬‬ ‫"سيشارك هؤالء الخرباء معارفهم وخرباتهم‬ ‫يف صياغة جدول األعمال وموضوع الحدث‬ ‫بأكمله‪ .‬ويتضمن املجلس االستشاري للقمة‬ ‫ً‬ ‫أسماء معروفة مثل سعادة "وسام لوتاه"‪،‬‬ ‫الرئيس التنفيذي ملؤسسة دبي الذكية‪ ،‬وخالد‬ ‫امللحي‪ ،‬الرئيس التنفيذي لشركة إنجازات –‬ ‫التابعة لشركة مبادلة؛ وكذلك العديد من‬ ‫األعضاء الرئيسيني يف هيئة أبوظبي الرقمية‬ ‫وقادة قطاع التكنولوجيا‪.‬‬

‫وسيقام الحدث‪ ،‬الذي تنظمه "مييس‬ ‫فرانكفورت الشرق األوسط"‪ ،‬يف الفرتة من ‪8‬‬ ‫إىل ‪ 9‬ديسمرب‪ ،‬لكن تخربنا سعادة الدكتورة‬ ‫روضة السعدي أن األشهر التي سبقت اإلعداد‬ ‫للقمة كانت حافلة بالنسبة لهيئة أبوظبي‬ ‫الرقمية‪ ،‬حيث توصلت الهيئة للعديد من‬ ‫الشراكات مع القطاع الخاص لالستفادة من‬ ‫خرباتهم وتقديم خدمات أفضل‪.‬‬ ‫تقول سعادة الدكتورة روضة السعدي‪:‬‬ ‫"القطاع الخاص يقود االبتكار يف جميع‬ ‫جوانب حياتنا‪ ،‬وليس فقط يف التكنولوجيا‪.‬‬ ‫ويتمثل جزء من مهام هيئة أبوظبي الرقمية‬ ‫يف تسريع األجندة الرقمية‪ .‬وللقيام بذلك‬ ‫فإننا نستخدم الحلول املبتكرة والتقنيات‬ ‫الحديثة لتسهيل حياة املتعاملني‪ ،‬حيث يعمل‬ ‫القطاعان العام والخاص جنبًا إىل جنب للقيام‬ ‫بذلك"‪.‬‬

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FEATURE Huawei

SHAPING THE FUTURE OF COMPUTING Alaa Elshimy, MD & VP, Huawei Enterprise Business Group Middle East, Huawei

58

W

ith an increase of a little over 24 percent year-onyear in revenue, Huawei is one of the most profitable companies in the market, and they have no intention of slowing down, as they made clear during their presence at GITEX Technology Week 2019.

At GITEX 2019, Huawei showcased its newest innovations with a focus on how deeper integration of AI and the 5G ecosystem are driving the industry towards complete digital transformation.

The ICT leader recently announced their new computing strategy and launched the Atlas 900, the fastest AI training cluster in the world, consolidating their entry in the computing market.

Although the US computing market is still leading the race, the Chinese cloud computing industry is expected to exceed 300 billion yuan (about 42 billion U.S. dollars) in 2023, according to a white paper by the Institute of International Technology and Economy.

With such opportunities in the horizon, Huawei is hoping to “change NOVEMBER 2019

HUAWEI IS RESHAPING THE FUTURE OF COMPUTING BY BETTING ON STATISTICAL-BASED COMPUTING, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THEIR GAME CHANGING 5G TECHNOLOGY. ALAA ELSHIMY, MD & VP, HUAWEI ENTERPRISE BUSINESS GROUP MIDDLE EAST AT HUAWEI, DISCUSSED THE FUTURE STRATEGY OF THE ICT LEADER.

the game” by betting on statisticalbased computing instead of the traditional rule-based computing, explained Alaa Elshimy, Managing Director and Vice President at Huawei Enterprise Business Group Middle East.

“Research predict that 80 percent of computing will move from rule-based to statistical-based computing – this will be the future, and Huawei is changing the game. With AI being part of the equation, data processing will happen at the edge rather than in the cloud.”

The way Elshimy sees it, rule-based computing will just not suffice for new technologies such as face recognition, which require a vast amount of data to be analysed. Rule-based computing entails having a machine at the edge collecting data and sending it to the cloud to be analysed, before sending it back to the machine to produce a result – in the case of face recognition this could be a security camera taking a photo to allow access to a building.

Using statistical-based computing, the intelligent camera would be able to recognise a face at the edge without the need to send data to the cloud, making the process much faster.

To guarantee such speed, the Atlas 900 is able to analyse data at the fastest rate in the market – specifically ten seconds faster the fastest record measured by Resnet-50.

“Our strategy is focused on three key pillars – AI, 5G and Cloud. Last year at GITEX we launched our AI chipset and our full-stack AI scenario, as well as discussing 5G. This year is a continuation of that, and we are pushing it further with our new products,” added Elshimy.

“Besides the Atlas 900, we have also recently launched the OceanStor Dorado V6, our new storage system. This storage array performs at 20 million I/O operations per second – twice as much as the next-best player in the market – and it runs at 0.1 milliseconds latency.”

According to Huawei, the all-flash AI-powered storage will “satisfy the data hungry storage requirements of large databases particularly in the carrier, finance, government, and manufacturing industries.”

Huawei also showcased their new CloudEngine 16800, the world’s first AI-native data centre switch, which will support Huawei’s mission to deliver a truly connected world thanks to IoT. www.tahawultech.com

CLOUDENGINE SERIES SWITCHES, REACHING NEW SPEEDS FOR DATA CENTER NETWORKS IN AI ERA Ai chip and iLossless algorithm combined, attaining the first ever 100% lossless performance • 27% betterment in Ai training* • 30% faster in HPC job completion* • 30% improvement in distributed storage latency* e.huawei.com/ae enterpriseME@huawei.com

＊Compared with other products, as verified by Tolly Group.

Building a Fully Connected, Intelligent World