Computer News Middle East February 2017

ISSUE 301 | FEBRUARY 2017 WWW.CNMEONLINE.COM

CIO 100 Awards 2017 alfanar CIO Marco van de Sandt Hyperloop Transportation Technologies chairman Bibop Gresta

Deloitte Middle East CIO Akshay Lamba Musafir.com CEO Rajesh Pareek ‘Death by digital’

BEATING HEART Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi enhances patient safety with slick workflows

PUBLICATION LICENSED BY DUBAI PRODUCTION CITY, DCCA

EDITORIAL Our events

Route one In recent months, there seem to have been neverending streams of major transport announcements in this part of the world.

As such, we thought it would only be fitting to take a look at a few exciting developments in the industry, and how it is being swiftly disrupted by a series of technologies and initiatives that will leave citizens spoiled for choice in how they get from A to B in the GCC. One such option with immense long-term promise is Hyperloop, whose pods have the potential to carry passengers at speeds of 760 miles per hour. I had the pleasure of Citizens will talking face-to-face with Bibop Gresta, chairman and co-founder of Hyperloop be spoiled for choice in Transportation Technologies, who plan how they get to build a route from Abu Dhabi to Al Ain. This development will revolutionise from A to B cross-country transport, as well as in the GCC. presenting huge opportunities from an IT infrastructure perspective.

Meanwhile, Glesni Holland reports from the announcement of a partnership between Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority and ekar, which will see on-demand car rentals introduced to the emirate. While the RTA provides very competitively priced transport services, it clearly realises that it will need to join forces with transport apps that are continuing to gather pace.

In this issue, we explore how these applications, along with self-driving cars, are making citizens’ lives easier.

On an unrelated note, I’d like to congratulate all the winners of our third annual CIO 100 awards, who are all featured in this issue. The team at CNME is delighted to have given you the green light.

Talk to us: E-mail: james.dartnell@ cpimediagroup.com

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James Dartnell Editor

Contents

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ISSUE 301 | FEBRUARY 2017

20

24

CASE STUDY: CLEVELAND CLINIC

DELOITTE MIDDLE EAST'S AKSHAY LAMBA

40 14

The digital marathon

16

The customer's always right

18

Own the road

CNME - in collaboration with Equinix - discussed the challenges that CIOs are facing in their digital transformation journeys.

In partnership with Avaya and AGC Networks, CNME hosted a roundtable discussion on putting customer usability at the heart of digital transformation initiatives.

Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority has partnered with ekar to introduce a pay-by-the-hour car rental service.

28 Bright spark

32

BIBOP GRESTA, HYPERLOOP TT CHAIRMAN

Marco van de Sandt, CIO, alfanar, discusses the vast sales increase that resulted after putting cloud at the fingertips of service technicians.

36 Come fly with me

Rajesh Pareek, group CEO, Musafir.com, discusses his new role and outlines plans to optimise the firm's online booking business.

54 Survival of the smartest

James Dartnell explores how the power of digital technology has pushed a range of industries towards profound disruption - or even extinction.

58 In the fast lane

CNME investigates how ondemand travel applications have impacted the day-to-day lives of commuters in the region.

62 Free-wheelin'

What factors are inhibiting the uptake of driverless cars in the region, and how could they affect the enterprise?

Published by FOUNDER, CPIMEDIA GROUP Dominic De Sousa (1959-2015)

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DIGITAL SERVICES Web Developer Jefferson de Joya Abbas Madh Photographer Charls Thomas Maksym Poriechkin webmaster@cpimediagroup.com +971 4 440 9100 Publication licensed by Dubai Production City, DCCA PO Box 13700 Dubai, UAE Tel: +971 4 440 9100 Fax: +971 4 447 2409

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While the publishers have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of all information in this magazine, they will not be held responsible for any errors therein.

Get ready for How industrial robots will brighten our future 2014

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CHEMISTRY 2015

Robots

Trend in USA: +55% 2009 - 2015 -42% Unemployment

By 2099

70 %

HOWEVER

4th

USA is the biggest market for robots. Yet unemployment is decreasing.

Just as the Industrial Revolution did 200 years ago: 99% of farm jobs were automated.

COBOTS COLLABORATIVE “A BIG

DEAL”

CoBots will be part of all aspects in out lives

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r with humans

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of our jobs will be automated

A robot orchestra recently performed in Manchester.

58.000 32.000

2016 2017

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2018

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$ 22,000

From now on, all Tesla motor cars will have a device for selfdriving.

• can perceive humans

2019 2020

• can learn new movement within secods

Source: trademachines.com

SHORT TAKES

Month in view

ORACLE ANNOUNCES DUBAI DIGITAL HUB

Oracle has announced the opening of its 400-salesperson ‘Digital Hub’, as well as the expected mid-2017 go-live of its first Middle East data centre in Abu Dhabi.

The firm is looking to hire 400 cloud sales staff for the Hub, which is located in Dubai’s Knowledge Village.

Features include virtual meeting labs, interactive customer meeting rooms, collaboration spaces, and Oracle’s first social media hub in the region.

“The opening of the Oracle Digital Hub underscores our commitment to continuously enhance our local capabilities and service offerings in the UAE,” said Giovanna Sangiorgi, vice president, Oracle Digital EMEA. “Cloud adoption is on the rise, and with an unmatched portfolio of solutions and support infrastructure, Oracle is poised to lead the region's digital transformation movement,” said Abdul Rahman Al Thehaiban, senior vice president, Middle East and Africa, Oracle.

In our January issue, we said that Medcare’s women and children’s hospital was due to be opened in July 2017. It is in fact already open. We would like to apologise for this mistake.

8

FEBRUARY 2017

AVAYA FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY Avaya has announced that it has filed for Chapter 11 protection in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

According to the company, the move will enable them to restructure their balance sheet to better position the business for the future. “We believe pursuing a restructuring through Chapter 11 is the best path forward at this time," CEO Kevin Kennedy said.

"Reducing the company’s current debt through the Chapter 11 process will best position all of Avaya’s businesses for future success."

The company said it obtained a $725 million loan, which was underwritten by Citibank, to fund its operations during the filing. Subject to court approval, the financing, combined with the Avaya’s cash from operations, is expected to provide sufficient liquidity during the Chapter 11 case to support its continuing business operations and minimise the disruption to its customers, partners and employees.

Avaya’s foreign affiliates are not included in the filing and will continue normal operations.

Nidal Abou-ltaif, President, Avaya International, said, “For Avaya’s Middle East and Africa operations,

we expect to continue business as usual – and to build on the success we achieved in 2016. As the FY2016 results announcement underlines, operational performance continues to remain strong, reflecting the strength of our technology portfolio. Avaya had many highlights across the region in 2016, reporting double-digit growth for our networking business and adding major new customers in the real estate and oil and gas sectors.”

THE SAUDI ICT MARKET WILL REBOUND IN 2017 TO REACH A VALUE OF

$33.8 BILLION FOR THE YEAR. Source: IDC www.cnmeonline.com

ALIBABA SIGNS LONG-TERM DEAL WITH OLYMPICS Alibaba has signed a 12-year partnership with the organisers of the Olympics to provide cloud and e-commerce services to the games.

Through the sponsorship deal, the Chinese technology giant will provide cloud services to the International Olympic Committee, as well as supporting Big Data analytics.

As part of the deal, the two organisations will create an e-commerce platform to sell Olympicbranded goods. Alibaba will also optimise the Olympics Channel – an Internet video streaming service – for a Chinese audience.

The partnership will run until

2028 and is inclusive of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018. Alibaba is the first Chinese company since 2008 to become a top-level Olympic sponsor – a group that is usually headlined by American companies like Coca-Cola, Visa and McDonald’s.

“Alibaba’s partnership with the IOC is built on a foundation of shared values and a common vision for connecting the world and enriching people’s lives,” said Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba, in a press release.

Neither the IOC nor Alibaba disclosed the size of the agreement.

SAMSUNG ANNOUNCES GALAXY NOTE7 FIRE CAUSES

Samsung’s DJ Koh explains the cause of the fault

Following several months of investigations, Samsung Electronics has announced the cause of the Note7 incidents as two separate lithium-ion battery faults, as well as explaining measures to prevent a recurrence, during a press conference held in Seoul, Korea.

Over 2.5 million devices were recalled in September after thousands of them around the world inexplicably caught fire. A whole host of airlines and public transportation systems have gone on to ban their usage.

It has now been revealed that the casing of the original battery was too small, causing it to shortcircuit and ignite. It was replaced www.cnmeonline.com

with a battery that had a different manufacturing defect but led to the same result.

Based on what the company learned from the investigation, Samsung says it has implemented a range of internal quality and safety processes to enhance product safety including additional protocols such as the multilayer safety measures and 8-Point Battery Safety Check.

The company has also formed a battery advisory group of external advisers, academic and research experts, including professors from the world’s top universities.

DJ Koh, president of Samsung Electronics’ mobile communications business, apologised and expressed gratitude to customers, mobile operators, retail and distribution partners and business partners for their patience and continued support.

Koh said, “Today, more than ever, we are committed to earning the trust of our customers through innovation that redefines what is possible in safety, and as a gateway to unlimited possibilities and incredible new experiences.”

ACCORDING TO A RECENT BLOOMBERG REPORT, ABU DHABI’S MUBADALA DEVELOPMENT COMPANY IS PLANNING TO COMMIT UP TO $15 BILLION TO JAPAN’S SOFTBANK GROUP AND SAUDI ARABIA’S PUBLIC INVESTMENTS TECHNOLOGY FUND.

AMAZON WALKS AWAY FROM SOUQ.COM DEAL Amazon.com Inc. and India’s Flipkart Online Services Pvt have walked away from talks to acquire Dubai-based Souq.com following disagreements over price, according to Bloomberg.

It was reported that the e-commerce business is now seeking other potential investors, and is apparently negotiating with malloperator Majid Al Futtaim.

Talks between the U.S. online retail giant Amazon began with Souq.com in November 2016, in a deal that was expected to have been worth about $1 billion, after Souq.com appointed Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to find buyers for a stake last year. The Middle Eastern company’s existing investors include Tiger Global Management and South Africa’s Naspers Ltd. Souq.com became the highest valued Internet company in the Middle East after a $275 million funding round in February 2016. The company sells more than 1.5 million products online to customers in countries including the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

FEBRUARY 2017

9

Motorola Tango

I

t may be hard to remember at times, but we were once bereft of a dependence on our mobile phones for access to messages, emails, reminders. However, before smartphones came to the fore not just in the technology world, but also in our daily lives, we relied on simpler means of communication.

During this time, we were instead enamoured with a slightly smaller and simpler device, the Motorola Tango; the world’s first two-way pager, released in 1995.

Despite measuring just 3.5 inches in width, this device was packed with innovative features for its time. Firstly, it allowed users to not only receive text messages and emails, but also respond to them (don't forget, it took two to Tango) But what really made it such a ground-breaking device was its ability to connect to a computer and download longer messages; something the wireless messaging industry had never seen before.

Using the Motorola ReFLEX protocol, the Tango had a four-line display and several buttons for responding to received messages with a selection of 16 canned answers. An RS-232C connection let users compose and send messages of their own from a computer, using Tango as a wireless modem.

But one stand-out feature in comparison to today’s communication devices is that the Tango had a battery life of 14 days, when averaging 5 pages per day. Then again, Apples and BlackBerries are always at their freshest before the day's up.

10

FEBRUARY 2017

www.cnmeonline.com

ANALYSIS

TransSys Roundtable

Seamless service In partnership with TransSys Solutions, CNME hosted a roundtable discussion centred around how organisations can maximise business value by incorporating customer experience into their digital initiatives.

Photo: IBM World of Watson 2016

I

n this competitive digital age, new technologies are diminishing traditional marketing methods as customer expectations and behaviours continue to evolve.

Businesses now need to ensure that they have a complete holistic view of their customer’s experience (CX) if they are to keep up with changing demands and stand a chance of competing in the digital space. “It’s now about tracking a customer’s digital body language,” said Stephen Fernandes, executive vice president, TransSys Solutions, who was representing the sponsor during the discussion alongside Prabu Balasubramanian, the company’s executive director.

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FEBRUARY 2017

The discussion began by analysing how best to capture customer experience through the use of beacon technology. Most commonly found in the retail industry, beacons can detect where a customer is at any given moment. From this, the retailer can push timely messages to promote products and increase sales volumes.

Ahmed Ebrahim AlAhmed, CIO, Nakheel discussed how precise location services could mutually benefit the merchant as well as the customer in a retail scenario.

“Whenever a customer logs onto the public Wi-Fi within a mall, they’re automatically giving the merchant the permission to access their

social media applications,” he said.

“This data can be used to analyse the customer preferences, and the merchants can then use this information to promote discounts and push them to buy products.”

The question was then raised as to whether or not customers are made fully aware of the terms and conditions they are accepting when logging into these public Wi-Fi hotspots, with regards to how much of their information can be used for other purposes, including beacon technology.

“Privacy is not there anymore in IT,” said Anshul Srivastav, CIO, Union Insurance. “The real question is whether a customer is prepared to www.cnmeonline.com

reveal their shirt size to benefit from 10 percent off his next purchase, and the chances are that they will.

Technology pushes you to expose yourself to get the benefits.”

Madhusuthan, IT manager, Bahri and Mazrouei, agreed with Srivastav, and maintained that privacy is a matter of choice. “It all rests on the individual’s decision,” he said.

“If they see themselves benefiting from accepting these pop-ups and terms that come hand-in-hand with accessing a public Wi-Fi, then they are likely to be willing to give access to their information.”

Nitin Bhargava, CTO, Business Technology, Mashreq Bank, does not see a privacy issue when the marketing is targeted at the customer on a one-to-one basis.

He did, however, see a problem when data is being shared with external marketing outlets that the customer did not sign up to.

“Take Amazon for example; they’re fantastic at social marketing,” he said. “The second you search for a product through their site, they’re constantly exposing you to promotions or deals via your social media. This isn’t a problem, as its individually targeted.”

The main indication of customer satisfaction is through volumes of repeat behaviour.

Nitin Bhargava, chief technology officer, business technology, Mashreq Bank www.cnmeonline.com

The general consensus in the room was that collating data in order to improve customer experience is the easy part, and that the challenge arises when it comes to interpreting this data to establish the satisfaction of customers.

“We have started looking at the unstructured material data – which is coming through social media and various other data points - in order to put that into much more measurable and meaningful outputs,” Srivastav said. “This should enable us to actually access a 360-degree view of a customer’s experience.”

“The main indication of customer satisfaction is through volumes of repeat behaviour,” said Bhargava. “If a customer is looking at composing 1000 plus transactions with Mashreq Bank, but suddenly that drops to 500 transactions, then there’s a problem. I would then want to analyse this pattern by tracking customer behaviour and satisfaction to work out where we had gone wrong for them to take their business to another bank.”

The conversation then moved on to taking stock of where companies in the room were at with their current initiatives surrounding customer experience.

Ali Ghunaim, director of IT, Canadian Specialist Hospital, highlighted the importance of enhancing patient experience while also ensuring that doctor’s do not waste time on monotonous tasks. “One initiative to enhance experience for both doctors and patients alike, is one that allows doctors to connect to the hospital’s VPN via their device and use the hospital’s app in order to have access to patient information as and when it arrives,” he said. “Because of

Privacy is not there anymore in IT. Technology pushes you to expose yourself to get the benefits.

Anshul Srivastav, CIO, Union Insurance

this, rather than requiring the doctor to physically make the trip to see the patient, they can – where necessary – simply advise on what needs to happen remotely from wherever they are in the hospital, which saves making unnecessary journeys and wasting time.”

Ensuring morale was kept high among internal staff was also a high priority for those present at the discussion.

“Employee satisfaction is a big thing for us and our CEO,” said Bhargava. “We are now looking at creating a social enterprise for employees, and want to encourage teamwork and good behaviour on a day-to-day basis to maximise business benefits.”

Kumar Prasoon, CIO, Safeer Group, said, “There is huge value in employee experience. If every employee becomes a part of the business game, it’s more of an incentive for them to meet targets and corporate objectives.”

However, Prasoon maintained that the focus should primarily be on finding a balance between customer centricity and employee satisfaction if a business is to succeed.

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ANALYSIS

CIO roundtable

The digital marathon CNME – in collaboration with Equinix – recently hosted an in-depth roundtable discussion on the challenges that CIOs are facing around their digitalisation efforts, and took stock of the progress they have made so far.

Photo: IBM World of Watson 2016

I

n order to successfully integrate digital processes into all facets of Middle Eastern life, businesses must develop the necessary technologies and associated human capital if they are to keep up with evolving market demands. While McKinsey places the UAE at the top of the digital-savvy class in the Middle East, there are still many opportunities to be had, with tech-savvy countries including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon and Oman taking further steps in their journey.

Ronald D’sa, IT director, OSN, explained how external demands from customers were evolving at such a rapid pace that it was 14

FEBRUARY 2017

imperative for companies to make internal changes towards digital transformation if they were to keep up. “Being a broadcaster means that the majority of our content is consumed via mobile devices, so we don’t have the option to stay within a data centre anymore," he said. "Our content now has to spread across the whole of the MENA region, and therefore has to be on the cloud, otherwise we will not be efficient."

V Suresh, CIO, Jumbo Electronics, and Madhav Rao, CIO, EMKE Group, both discussed how logistical reasons were hindering businesses from progressing further with digital transformation in the retail industry.

“From a legal perspective, we still need to maintain hard-copies of documents for a number of reasons.

In my opinion, we still have a long way to go in terms of digitisation in this region,” said Suresh.

Christoph Lemser, CIO, Siemens Middle East, agreed, and outlined that while companies in the region were undoubtedly pushing for transformation, there were still fundamental processes that needed to be completed manually. “It’s still very common for us to need to have documents formally approved by a stamp or a signature,” he said.

Dr John Cherian, head of IT, Middle East, Turkey and Africa, www.cnmeonline.com

Philips, alongside the other healthcare representatives in the room, spoke of the consensus that a lack of clarity around privacy and security of data were primary factors in holding back the industry from digitalising further. “We still don’t have clear-cut privacy laws surrounding healthcare data in the region, and this makes it difficult for us to progress as we’re unsure as to which data we can and cannot upload to the cloud,” he said.

Deepika Batra DiGiovine, CIO, global growth and operations, and oil and gas, MENAT, GE, pinpointed cybersecurity and data sovereignty as primary concerns in hindering progression. “Data leaving the country can make customers hesitant to go into cloud solutions, despite the fact that doing so would really give them the speed and edge application that they need to get to full-scale digitalisation,” she said.

Aliasgar Bohari, director of IT at Zulekha Hospital, was open about his own personal concerns around putting patient data into the cloud, conforming with the views of the other healthcare professionals in the room.

“I am prepared to put data into my own private cloud, but I’m not ready to put data onto cloud sites that are hosted outside of the UAE,” he said.

Sridhar Kasisomayajula, CIO, Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait, shared similar concerns. “We are primarily concerned with data protection in our path to digital transformation. Digital to everyone means different things, but in my mind, it’s about automating processes so that it has an impact on the revenue side of business.”

Abdalla Ahmed Mohamed Al Ali, director of IT, DMCC, discussed how it was down to senior management teams to conduct a balance between www.cnmeonline.com

cloud-based and on-premise data, subject to classifications and security. “Senior management want to maintain efficiency at all costs, but they also operate under the illusion that IT is a black box,” he said. “Every year, they direct us to utilise a certain budget, but then immediately question the use of the cloud when we point it out as a way to create business value. These pressures keep on coming on top of the issues we already face ourselves as IT managers. But it’s down to

Digital means different things to everyone, but in my mind, it’s about automating processes so that they have an impact on the revenue side of business.

Sridhar Kasisomayajula, CIO, Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait

us; if we take this balance with a proper business use case to the senior management and make it look attractive, then they will most likely be more than happy to support.”

Lemser disagreed, and explained how adopting cloud wherever possible was Siemen’s primary goal.

“I’m more of the opinion that we [the

IT team] form the IT procedures, which we then have to align with our global HQ. But for us, it’s a cloud-first priority, so any form of initiative that we come up with, we have to work out how that could be incorporated into the cloud before we take it further,” he said.

The conversation then moved on to how companies in the room had progressed in their digital transformation journey so far to enhance business value and customer experience.

Mukta Arora, Group CIO, Aster DM Healthcare, discussed how the company had implemented a new initiative to monitor the behaviour of patients with chronic diseases. “There is no cure for these conditions, but from a treatment perspective, the focus is on improving quality of life,” she said. “We’ve utilised mobility, analytics, interoperability, cloud and operational modernisation to create an environment with a reminder service and a constant stream of advice to continuously keep patients on the go, give them personalised care and track what they’re doing to monitor their condition.”

Yousef Al-Sulaiti, IT department Manager, Qatar Fuel, discussed the company’s latest digital initiative involving customers making payments via an electronic chip, which will limit the possibility of any fraud being perpetrated by the personnel at fuel stations. “We looked at how best to speed up the process of filling your car and decided to make it as digital as possible,” he said.

Representing the sponsors during the discussion were Jeroen Schlosser, Equinix’s managing director for the MENA region, and Klaas Merten, the company’s global solution architect.

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15

ANALYSIS

Customer experience roundtable

The customer’s always right In partnership with Avaya and AGC Networks, CNME hosted a roundtable discussion on how Photo: IBM World of Watson 2016 organisations can put the customer experience at the heart of their digital transformation initiatives.

A

s consumers increasingly interact with machines instead of human beings, delivering ease of use with online platforms will be critical for digital businesses. A selection of executives who sit at the heart of this change gathered at the RitzCarlton Jumeirah Beach Residence to share their thoughts on how CIOs can satisfy internal stakeholders as well as end customers.

The discussion began with the subject of where customer experience enhancement ranked on the CIO's list of priorities for the near future.

Dr Jassim Haji, director of IT, Gulf 16

FEBRUARY 2017

Air, said that the airline industry constantly demands ease of use for its consumers. “For us, customer experience through digitalisation is everything that we do, and all of our work is driven to support it, whether that’s in our infrastructure or innovations,” he said. “We focus a lot on mobile apps and direct communication with clients through social media. Customers are getting smarter. We need to think about how we can provide things like social media for them while they are in the skies.”

UAE Exchange CIO Surendra Shetty echoed Dr Haji’s sentiments in terms of company strategy.

“Customer centricity is a big part of our vision statement and has been one of our strongest pillars for years,” he said. “A key shift from us is moving from retail to digital services. With changes around Fintech, our competitors are not really the leading players, but the newer ones. We’ve made the way that customers do transactions through web and mobile apps a priority, but the challenge remains how to use our historic customer data - from the last 36 years.”

Shetty added that frequently monitoring customer sentiment was a broad challenge. “There may have www.cnmeonline.com

been hundreds of times where a good or bad experience has been had, and we have not been able to measure it,” he said. “In the digital world, you should always be able to give feedback, and it should be measured.”

Data digest Sreedhar Reddy, director of IT, Aldar Properties, explained how the company wanted to improve the selection of offers available to consumers in its retail outlets, as its real estate clients. “Our customers are diversified and have different needs, for example those who buy and rent our properties,” he said. “Satisfying their needs is done in different ways, and also through partners, which is a challenge. As we move to understand customer behaviour, we are looking at people who visit our malls and see what they buy to run new campaigns or services. One interesting challenge is how we can use data to enrich their experience and improve the offers they receive.”

Reddy also highlighted how unstructured data presented unprecedented challenges. “We have a lot of datasets on customer activity, but challenges surround newer ones in sets such as footfall,” he said. “It is harder to get a unified view with unstructured sets so we can analyse data and target customers better.”

Zuhair Lardhi, director of IT, Khalifa Fund, said that he was keen to align the organisation with the strategy of the UAE’s leadership. “We are now focused on differentiating ourselves through innovation, which is a government-driven initiative right now,” he said. “It’s now a question of how much you want to stretch yourselves with IT, and how much you have to invest.” www.cnmeonline.com

Customer centricity is a big part of our vision statement and has been one of our strongest pillars for years.

Surendra Shetty, CIO, UAE Exchange

Lardhi added that the way governments use data could hold the key to delivering customer satisfaction. “The data is there from a range of government agencies, and the same goes for all private sector companies. There needs to be a way that this information can be used to create better services for citizens.”

Internal customers The definition of ‘customer’ was not restricted to external clients for some of the discussion’s participants. Ahmed Mohammed Kajoor, chief technology officer, Dubai Municipality, said that it was important to view a selection of stakeholders as customers in order to deliver services in the right areas. “Our internal employees are also our customers, and we have a duty to keep them happy in the way they work,” he said. “One of our biggest challenges is integrating all the platforms in our environment in order to do that.”

Angus McIntyre, vice president of IT, RAK Ceramics, said that the company was striving to meet users’ high standards, but that was not

always an easy task. “Users hold IT accountable for everything from the screen backwards,” he said. “They don’t care if it’s network, servers or whatever that’s causing the fault. They don’t appreciate the huge amount of peripheral work that goes in. Part of our challenge is communicating so that people understand what we’re trying to achieve.”

Salah Ghaith, head of IT infrastructure, Bahrain Petroleum Company, also highlighted how the delivery of a more cost-effective and efficient IT backbone had delivered an enhanced customer experience to the firm’s internal users.

Ahmed Alkindi, IT manager, National Ambulance, said that although the organisation was making progress in its digitalisation efforts, the main issue it faced was one of navigation. “The key thing for us is providing directions and locations as quickly as possible,” he said. “The main issue we have is standard addresses, which is a problem in this country. A hospital could be behind a certain building and may not have a given street name.”

Marco van de Sandt, CIO of Saudi power generation and water treatment plant contractor Alfanar, described how the firm has used mobility and satellite maps to enhance the quality of services delivered to its clients across the country, including Saudi Electricity Company.

Representing the sponsors at the roundtable were Savio Dias, Avaya’s director for sales engineering for the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific regions, Avaya’s Yaser Alzubaidi, engagement solutions sales leader for the Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa region and Sanjay Ahuja, vice president, Middle East and Africa, AGC Networks.

FEBRUARY 2017

17

ANALYSIS

RTA-ekar partnership

Own the road In a bid to ease traffic congestion, reduce the hassle of vehicle ownership and encourage commuters to opt for a cost-efficient route to work, Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority has partnered with ekar to introduce a pay-by-the-hour car rental service.

W

hile the Dubai Metro is a cost-efficient and snappy means of commuting from A to B, it’s straight-line approach means that there are a number of areas within the city that are still currently unreachable.

Despite over 329,000 riders still utilising the service on a daily basis, this "last mile" issue of having to take a bus or taxi at either end of the journey can often act as a deterrent to using the service altogether.

In an attempt to tackle this issue, the RTA has

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partnered with ekar and UDrive to implement a fleet of 200 cars - with 100 being provided by each company - across the emirate under the new ‘Smart Rental Service’ initiative. Launched in January in the presence of HE Mattar Al Tayer, director general and chairman of the RTA board of executive directors, this concept of car-sharing is one that has already been tried and tested outside of the UAE, with Germany’s success story ‘Flinkster’ now involving a total of 4,000 active vehicles across the country.

With the RTA and ekar partnership, vehicles can be booked via an app or through the mobile site,

and then collected from easily accessible locations: either from one of the stations on the Dubai Metro, or from various popular locations throughout the city. ‘ekars’ can be rented for a maximum of six hours, and cost AED24 per hour for a round-trip back to its pick-up location, or AED30 for a one-way trip to an alternative drop-off station.

The car-sharing concept is one not to be confused with car-pooling.

The initiative allows users to rent cars for a short period of

www.cnmeonline.com

Vilhelm Hedberg, CEO, ekar

time in a self-service environment.

In contrast to a traditional car rental service, 'ekars' are not inspected or cleaned after every use, and instead, drivers are handed the responsibility of maintaining high standards of cleanliness.

“The average ratio to be an effective car-sharing operator is one car for every 50 users, and our research shows that for every one car shared, we could take 17 off the road,” said Vilhelm Hedberg, CEO, ekar, at the launch. “Through this visionary car-share scheme, we will provide the freedom of driving a car without the hassle that ownership gives.” ekar has been operating the rental service for the past nine months in collaboration with Etihad Airlines in Abu Dhabi, and recently extended its presence to Dubai to work with Emirates.

“Cabin crew are only in residence for approximately 10 days per month, so it may not be practical or cost-effective for them to own a car or even rent a car for the entire duration of their stay,” Hedberg said. “The beauty of us working with Etihad and Emirates is that cabin crew accommodation parking lots are often empty, which has allowed us to negotiate implementing our stations in their otherwise empty car parks.

When the airlines are now looking to recruit new staff, our rental service is included as a benefit in the brochures alongside the standard accommodation expectations such as a gym or pool.”

In order to see the full economic impact of the solution, Hedberg’s focus has www.cnmeonline.com

now shifted to taking the service to the general public through the RTA collaboration. Users can register online by uploading double-sided images of their licence and Emirates ID, along with a selfie of themselves with their ID for security purposes.

Once registered and assigned an ekar, users are able to unlock the car via the app when within a 50 metre radius of the vehicle, and can retrieve the key from inside the glovebox using a personalised PIN in order to begin their journey.

Abdulla Yousef Al Ali, CEO of Public Transport Agency, RTA, explained that the target audience for this project was those with a licence but who only need a car for minimum usage.

“Many people are currently avoiding public transport because of this ‘last mile’ issue, so we’re working towards a new direction to re-engage people with this option,” he said. “In three months, we will evaluate the service before we look at developing it further, but we believe it will be a huge success because

Studies show that for every one car shared, we could take 17 off the road.

it’s something that the market is really in need of right now.”

Hedberg revealed that phase two of this project would involve introducing electric cars into the fleet, which could be charged at the docking stations throughout Dubai.

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CASE STUDY

Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi

O

Vital organ Determined to replicate best practices from its parent hospital, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi realised it could add a few enhancements of its own to reduce risks to patients.

CIO Gareth Sherlock introduced a series of smart workflows that have improved the quality of care and all but eliminated risks in certain vital procedures.

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pening its doors in March 2015, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi (CCAD) had a tough act to follow. Aiming to emulate its parent hospital in Ohio, CIO Gareth Sherlock – the “20th employee at CCAD” – knew that delivering standardised workflows would be the best way to deliver consistency in technology and patient care.

“Ten years ago, doctors in any hospital would give a patient a box of pills, with minimal additional context,” he says. “Patients now demand to be part of their care journey. They want to know all kinds of things, and they now question doctors far more than they used to.

Technology is increasingly important in this shift.” Almost two years down the line, and serving 1,600 patients per day, CCAD has made huge strides in putting power in the hands of patients and physicians.

CCAD aims to offer a highend service to its patients, and, in some cases, is able to fast-track the introduction of procedures that are yet to be approved in the US. It currently offers small incision lenticule extraction treatment, a type of laser vision correction that is yet to be permitted by America’s Food and Drug Administration, but has been given the seal of approval in Europe.

“That’s a great selling point for us,” Sherlock says. “The FDA can be a bit cumbersome in their approval www.cnmeonline.com

process, but regulations here allow us to offer it as a service.”

On the technology front, CCAD is also striving to have an edge. A selection of IT staff visited Cleveland Clinic in Ohio to study how CCAD how replicate workflows in order to standardise processes, with the trip and resulting work proving to be a success. “We set out to accurately replicate the model they’ve used in the US,” Sherlock says. “There are dozens of scenarios where we’ve implemented sophisticated workflows to the benefit of our patients.

They allow us to deliver care more efficiently and reduce risk.”

One key element which has helped to ensure CCAD follows best practices is to use its Epic electronic medical records system (EMR) to share records seamlessly with other entities. “Electronic medical records are at the centre of a clinician’s job,” Sherlock says. “We used EMRs to replicate best practices from Ohio, as well as localising them for this region and making a few enhancements. This has allowed us to introduce a whole host of best practice alerts to CCAD, which has made patient care safer.”

These alerts include those given when drugs are administered, or when drugs could negatively react inside a patient’s system. Prior to medicine being given, the workflows now allow the system to check if a patient will experience a negative reaction based www.cnmeonline.com

Ten years ago, doctors in any hospital would give a patient a box of pills, with minimal additional context.

on drugs they have already been given, an existing allergy, or the food they have eaten. “When the physician places the order for medicine, they will be notified if there is a risk to the patient,” Sherlock says. “This reduces the possibility of errors.”

Impressively, the same principle applies for dosage checks. “If a patient is already on a course of treatment, and the physician makes a request to administer a similar drug, the system will again notify them there is a risk of exceeding the recommended dosage,” Sherlock says.

Enhanced workflows have also been extended to another vital process in the medical industry: blood transfusions. In a recent review, the rate of (potentially life-threatening) acute hemolytic transfusion reactions – the immune system’s attempt to destroy a donor’s incompatible blood – was reported as an average of 1.14 per 100,000 units in 17 developed European and North American countries. “Delivering the wrong type of blood to a patient could cause fatalities for a number of reasons,” Sherlock says. “Patients with rarer blood groups, for instance, are at a higher risk of receiving the wrong type of blood.”

Sherlock sought to reduce the risk of errors in the process at CCAD. Four IT systems now play a major role in the process, the EMR, CCAD’s laboratory information systems (LIS), its collection manager module and blood track, the blood bank system.

The systems combine to deliver a smooth five-step process that ensures the correct type of blood is safely administered to patients. Throughout the process, the system issues alerts to caregivers if they are on course to make an error.

“Our emergency department staff work in a high pressure environment, and any way that technology can reduce FEBRUARY 2017

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CASE STUDY

Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi

Gareth Sherlock, CIO, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi

the potential for errors adds value. The changes we have introduced eliminate a huge amount of manual work, and that is akin to eliminating risk."

From a communications standpoint, Sherlock and CCAD have introduced “Star Trek-like” Vocera devices for physicians’ usage. The hands-free devices allow for twoway communications, and provide potentially life-saving notifications.

“Workflows within Vocera are very important for the code words that staff use,” Sherlock says. “For example, if someone says "Code blue" – which means a patient is arresting or in a serious condition – then this triggers a notification that is sent to all physicians and tells them where the message was sent from. For a facility of this size, time is of the essence.”

In the near future, Sherlock is aiming to build a comprehensive patient portal, which will enable patients to remain connected to CCAD beyond its walls. “As an 22

FEBRUARY 2017

Our emergency department staff work in a high pressure environment, and any way that technology can reduce the potential for errors adds value.

organisation, we have big aspirations and want to aggressively move forward,” he says. “CCAD wants to increase connectivity, which will allow us to strengthen our relationship with patients. We need to make it easy for them to book, reschedule and cancel appointments. It will also include features like notifications, which

inform them if appointments become available. It’s important that we provide results, records and discharge summaries as well.”

Within the facility, Sherlock also wants to introduce a kiosk feature for registrations, which will be “akin to those that airlines use.” They will include biometric options, and be integrated with Emirates ID services.

Sherlock is also adamant that CCAD’s success in technology has been largely due to the open and forward-thinking attitude that stems from the company’s leadership team.

“In a lot of companies, IT is often seen as a service provider,” he says.

“People think you’re there to fix a PC, printer or BlackBerry, but we’re seen as more than that here. I have a seat on the executive team, and sit with clinicians to devise strategy, which I am not told to enable. My job is to help them understand how technology can benefit the organisation.

“If IT is perceived as a back office, supportive function, then it will never be innovative,” he says. “However, if it is an innovation partner to the organisation, then it can.” www.cnmeonline.com

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CIO

Spotlight

Take my advice Determined to combine business and technology acumen in his role, Akshay Lamba took on the position of CIO at Deloitte Middle East in May last year, and now oversees the firm's IT operations across 16 countries in the region. kshay Lamba first honed his curiosity for technology during his four years at the Birla Institute of Technology, where he studied his Bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering. “These were very fundamental years that gave me insight into operations and processes,” he says. “I focused a lot of my time on robotics and the communication protocols between machines, which stemmed my interest in networks and IP.” Having completed his Bachelor’s degree, he pursued his passion for technology and applied for a Master's in computer science at The University of Michigan. “Fortunately for me, I was lucky enough to be offered a research assistantship for the duration of my Master's,” he says. “It was like Christmas had come early. I had a lab of my own, and was able to experiment with nearly every operating system under the sun. As a result, my desire to work with interconnected systems just grew and grew.”

Lamba left Michigan in 2002, and returned to home country India as a business analyst for telecommunication firm, Bharti Airtel.

“I was part of the CIO’s office at Airtel, which allowed me to be involved

A

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with IT management at a senior leadership level,” he says. During his time at Airtel, Lamba completed his MBA in finance at the Management Development Institute, Delhi. “Airtel gave me a deep appreciation for the wide range of skills required by a leader," he says. "I realised that a leadership profile extends far beyond expertise in their function, and instead encapsulates broad knowledge across finance, technology, marketing, and people skills."

Taking this on-board, Lamba opted for a more business-centric role and moved to KPMG Dubai in the telecommunications and technology

“

Create value in every transaction – be it a meeting with a stranger or a multimillion-dollar transformational deal with a business partner.”

practice for the region. “This role granted me the opportunity to work with a range of industries, including banking, retail chains, the FMCG industry, investment firms, whilst allowing me to gain a holistic view of each industry’s strengths and challenges,” he says.

Leaving KPMG in 2008 prompted Lamba’s decision to get back into IT, and back to his roots in Delhi.

“Being in the consultancy world is exciting, but you cannot give good advice based on just theories and models; it has to be interlaced with industry experience so that you appreciate practical challenges that may

www.cnmeonline.com

disrupt the implementation of those models in the real world,” he says.

Maintaining his interest in telecoms, he joined MTS as chief architect to lead their ‘Enterprise Architecture and Business Enablement’ department. “MTS was just starting out in India and was a greenfield operation at the time, but having the opportunity to create the entire telecommunications IT stack from scratch was a great experience for me,” he says.

Lamba took a short break from his position at MTS to further his education in 2013, and moved to Boston to attend Harvard Business School (HBS) and complete his general management program (GMP).

www.cnmeonline.com

“Harvard opens up a whole new world for you,” he says. “What blew my mind was that when you take these courses anywhere else in the world, you use HBS case studies as references – many of which I’d read during my MBA. But when the professor that has actually written the paper talks you through it, it’s a whole new experience. You just cannot get those insights elsewhere.”

Lamba joined Deloitte India in 2015 as a director - shifting his focus back onto taking new lines of advisory business to the market. “This role instilled in me an appreciation for creating value in every transaction – be it a meeting with a client or a multi-million-dollar transformational deal with a business partner," he says. "The opportunity to create value exists in every transaction and being able to identify the opportunity and leverage it appropriately was ingrained in most of the leaders I looked up to in that environment."

He took up the position of CIO at Deloitte Middle East in May last year. This role involves overseeing technology management of 16 countries in the region, which Lamba pinpoints as being one of the main attractions of the job. “We have IT teams in most of the 21 offices in the region, and we are now developing a strong centralised team here in Dubai,” he says.

“When I came into the role, Deloitte Middle East had been in the region for 90 years, and the board was keen to analyse what IT had done for the firm during that time, and how it needed FEBRUARY 2017

25

CIO

Spotlight to develop over the next 90 years.

Over the last year, we’ve defined our IT transformation roadmap, and have started that journey to rapidly re-architect the way IT supports the business priorities of the company going forward.”

During the course of his professional journey, Lamba has overseen various strategic projects – some of which carried crippling consequences, should they have gone wrong. “One of the key lessons I’ve learned in my professional life is that if you want to grow at a non-standard pace, you can’t be playing an overly cautious game.

This is why I have always looked out for large impact, business-critical projects. You’ve got to take those calculated risks if you want to create a sizeable impact, and as long as the ones that pay off outweigh those that don’t, you’re moving in the right direction,” he says.

Throughout his career progression, Lamba points to his father as playing a key role in influencing his success. “He has always nudged me along in being better than I was the previous day," Lamba says.

"I think the best advice I ever got from him was to strive to instruct skills of honest leadership." From a professional perspective, being able to comprehend the intersection between financial, technology and business models is something that

“

still inspires Lamba in his work today.

“The fact that my background has enabled me to understand this drives me to get the different parts of any transaction just right. It’s fundamental to remember that when you talk to businesses, it’s all about translating that ‘geek world’ into ‘business world,” he says.

In the coming year, Lamba hopes to emulate a key message from Professor Robert S. Kaplan, whom he spent time with during Harvard stint.

“He always said that when taking on a leadership role, you need to be clear on three things: your vision, your priorities to ensure you fulfil that vision, and how will you align your ecosystem to achieve those priorities.

I’m hoping to implement this construct at Deloitte Middle East in order to ensure we’re well on the way with our transformative journey,” he says.

As disruptions in technology and professional services continue to impact the industry today, Lamba has his own message for CIOs in the industry. “Leading the technology function has historically been about getting the technology right for the business as it is today. Going forward, it is time to consider opportunities for de-coupling businesses from technology, so that business can scale independent of the cost of doing business.”

You’ve got to take calculated risks if you want to create a sizeable impact.

As long as the ones that pay off outweigh those that don’t, you’re moving in the right direction.”

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TIMELINE 2003

Achieves finance MBA from Management Development Institute, Delhi

2013

Joins Deloitte India as Director

2016

Joins Bharti Airtel Ltd as business analyst

2005

Earns GMP from Harvard Business School

2015

Joins Deloitte Middle East as CIO

www.cnmeonline.com

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CASE STUDY

Marco van de Sandt, CIO, alfanar

Bright spark With over 20,000 employees on its books and an increasingly international sales team to support, Saudi Arabia’s alfanar knew it had to think outside the box to drive best practices – and sales volume. CIO Marco van de Sandt has built the foundations of technological change at the engineering and manufacturing firm, which is now reaping the benefits.

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ith annual revenue approaching the $3 billion mark, alfanar is a household name in the electricity business in Saudi Arabia. The firm’s IT operations are centralised, but has engineering back offices in Pakistan, India, Egypt and Portugal, with manufacturing subsidiaries in Ankara, Dubai, Frankfurt, London and Bilbao.

The company has three main lines of business: its construction and engineering arm, its manufacturing works and its building systems division. The former comprises the construction of power generation and water treatment plants, with power giant Saudi Electricity Company one of its major clients. alfanar Electric, meanwhile, is the industrial arm of the company, manufacturing a variety of low, medium and high voltage electrical construction products, including panels and sockets.

Although alfanar had built a formidable reputation across its portfolio, the firm’s scale gradually brought complexity into the IT department. The company began to expand across a range of geographies, and business demands became roundthe-clock as alfanar had to account 28

FEBRUARY 2017

for operations across time zones.

“This included the Saudi weekend,” van de Sandt says. “Orders could be placed at 4am so we needed the business continuity and IT services to ensure things ran smoothly. From an operations point of view, IT became critical for the company.”

He believes the sales process took on the greatest importance in this shift.

“It’s absolutely critical that salespeople can process orders as efficiently as possible,” he says. van de Sandt adds that basic administration errors caused wider problems for the company. “There was a time where what was happening in terms of our operations was not logged on the system,” he says. “Goods could have been distributed but the system said they were still in the factory.

Actions were not being logged by staff, and, as you can imagine, this caused us problems.”

In 2010, van de Sandt sought to enhance alfanar’s processes by introducing SAP to its environment, rolling it out to all divisions and affiliates with the exception of certain foreign acquisitions. The changes have ultimately been successful for the company, but brought a selection of growing pains.

“In terms of IT, there are three major challenges that tend to arise in any large organisation,” van de Sandt says. “Firstly, change management is an issue because you have to change the way that people think and adopt new systems at work.

You have to convince them that best practices are also in their interest.

Secondly, master data drives everything behind the scenes. If you start with bad data, then it’s difficult to clean. Thirdly, end users need to be constantly trained.”

www.cnmeonline.com

Automating what was an otherwise challenging process has made a huge difference to us.

www.cnmeonline.com

FEBRUARY 2017

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CASE STUDY

Marco van de Sandt, CIO, Alfanar

As if these hurdles weren’t enough to overcome, van de Sandt also had to contend with staff members who were resilient to changing their working habits. “The general attitude among certain staff was that things had always been done a certain way, so it made sense to continue in the same fashion.”

He also had the responsibility of managing input from a number of other senior figures within alfanar. “In order for the project to be successful, we needed to ensure that stakeholders were aligned, and that the business was committed to making this a success,” he says. “Business projects need input from a CPO, CHRO and CFO amongst others, and these figures all shape processes and determine whether or not things are successful.”

Several years down the line, and the implementation has proved to be a success for alfanar, the company scooping the 2014 SAP bronze quality award for the Middle East North Africa region, and the technology vendor's 2016 gold quality award for the Middle East and EMEA regions.

In 2012, Arab News reported that alfanar had become the first company in the Middle East to receive three ISO certifications for IT Service Management (ISO 20000), Business Continuity (ISO 22301) and Information Security (ISO 27001) collectively known as the Integrated Management System.

The company is also “progressively” moving a series of its applications to the cloud, including its HR, sales and operations, procurement and its CRM “in phases”.

“Business needs to focus on process enhancements and automation, not running data centres,” van de Sandt says of his motivation to move to cloud. “It’s not sustainable for us in the long-term to have all this technology – and its security issues – in our own four walls.”

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Staff are now more in favour of following best practices and have become accustomed to new processes.

Throughout this transition, IT security has always been a top priority for alfanar, van de Sandt adding that the company’s cautious approach to streamline processes was hampered by authorisation issues. “Segregating duties was not straightforward,” he says.

“There’s a tendency to ensure that employees stay within their functional responsibilities, and this in turn blocked a lot of processes. We went out of our way to minimise risk.”

One of the most successful implementations alfanar deployed was SAP’s Cloud for Customer (C4C) SaaS platform for sales and service.

“We paired this solution with a mobility strategy which has been gamechanging for us,” van de Sandt says.

Service technicians have since been equipped with iPads, which gives them on-the-go access to service orders on C4C, as well as other information from the system which can enhance service.

Although the changes have not come easily, van de Sandt now believes that staff have bought into the new ways of working that have emerged from technology enhancements. “The mentality is now generally much better,” he says.

“They are more in favour of following best practices and have become accustomed to new processes.”

The standout benefit, however, has been the marked increase in the company’s volume of targeted sales. This is the result of providing unique insights to the sales team that have given them a cutting edge.

“Automating what was otherwise a challenging process has made a huge difference to us,” van de Sandt says.

The use of tablets has also improved the technicians’ ability to input data, making processes more “seamless and efficient.” van de Sandt is unrelenting in his desire to push forward with technological innovation. “We’re a risk-taking organisation in terms of technology,” he says. “We’ve proven ourselves to be early adopters in a number of respects.”

However, he is conscious of the market’s shortcomings in terms of his next big plans. “We’d like to introduce AI solutions, but the fact is that the region is full of salespeople with not enough expertise who are on the ground for these types of solutions. It makes it difficult when you’re trying to build these types of capabilities.”

Furthermore, the company is also keen to introduce additional safety measures for on-site workers. “Certain zones naturally carry a higher risk,” van de Sandt says. “We want to introduce auto-alarming if workers enter particular areas.” Automated factories may also be on the cards. “If we can develop our back end, this would carry huge potential.” www.cnmeonline.com

INTERVIEW

Bibop Gresta, chairman and co-founder, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies

In the loop Hyperloop technology has the potential to revolutionise transportation networks. Following the announcement to build a route from UAE capital Abu Dhabi to Al Ain using the vast vacuum tubes, James Dartnell spoke with the chairman and co-founder of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Bibop Gresta, and heard what HTT’s arrival will mean for enterprise technology.

E

ven for a region where city life is fast-paced – and driving speeds are even faster – maximum speeds of 760 miles per hour on public transport are sure to transform life in the UAE. That is the plan of Bibop Gresta, chairman and co-founder of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), whose company has entered into an agreement with the Abu Dhabi government to build a connection from the UAE capital to neighbouring city Al Ain. Hyperloop propels a pod-like vehicle through a near-vacuum tube at speeds faster than an aircraft.

Pods accelerate gradually using a linear electric motor, and glide above the track using passive magnetic levitation or air bearings. Aside from unprecedented speeds for public transport, Hyperloop is also expected to be autonomous and energy-efficient.

Since its formation in 2013, HTT has grown its operations to 800 employees across 38 countries. The firm is currently locked in a battle 32

FEBRUARY 2017

with rival firms for who can launch the first fully-fledged system, and is in the process of developing a route from Vienna to Bratislava.

The office of HH Sheikh Falah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan signed the strategic partnership with HTT in support of the project. The partnership aims to allow the company to accelerate the pace of development, following a feasibility study agreement signed between HTT and the Abu Dhabi Department of Municipal Affairs and Transportation (DMAT) in November.

The sponsorship is the latest in a string of contributions that have allowed HTT to surpass $100 million in total investments.

For Gresta, this is a huge step in making the route a reality. “We have had the great pleasure of working alongside His Highness to bring this project to fruition, and we are immensely grateful for his ongoing trust in us,” he says. “His involvement with HTT is both crucial and highly valued by every team member, as it will allow us to align

Nothing is 100 percent bulletproof, but what I can guarantee is that this is the safest system ever invented by humanity.

www.cnmeonline.com

ourselves with Abu Dhabi’s vision and accelerate the pace of our exciting project to connect Abu Dhabi with Al Ain via Hyperloop.”

Following the agreement signed

by HTT and DMAT, the coming months will see the organisations undertaking important work including route analysis, feasibility studies, cost estimates and a development schedule.

The project is also sure to spark an opportunity for the ICT industry in the UAE. A project of this scale and complexity will need IT infrastructure to match.

Gresta is clear that the megaproject will mean big business for the Middle East’s enterprise technology industry. “There are several layers of our IT,” he says.

“The logic in and outside the capsule, the logic of the station. It’s a huge opportunity from an IT perspective.

We are developing several systems that need to be improved. The communications system between the station and the capsule, the sensorial system that operates inside and outside the capsule. We need to partner with local companies that have expertise in production in this field.”

He goes on to add that technology firms in the region who are looking to work with HTT will also have a window to join a global network.

“The field is open for a lot of local partners,” he says. “We have a standard partnership agreement that we propose to companies, which is usually based on stock options, and depending on their skillsets, we also enter into strategic partnerships that apply worldwide.”

In a region that already finds itself short of IT skills, Gresta is aware that HTT will need to get skilled IT staff on www.cnmeonline.com

FEBRUARY 2017

33

INTERVIEW

Bibop Gresta, chairman and co-founder, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies

board for things to take off. “Of course we’ll be looking to hire IT resources in the Middle East,” he says. “The majority of our IT resources are based in the US, India, China, Slovakia and Russia. Our work isn’t just a question of IT as we know it, but the system operating the system needs IT as one of its crucial pillars.”

He also believes that a development like Hyperloop will cross-pollinate with a number of other technologies that could transform the transport industry. “We can be a pioneer for the Internet of Things, analytics, artificial intelligence and mesh networks,” he says. “This is also the case for all the technology related to optimising the grid by using a combination of renewable energy and battery storage.”

While excitement will inevitably brew around how Hyperloop technology will transform our world, any new form of transportation will inevitably carry some concerns around safety. Hyperloop supporter and world-famous technology entrepreneur Elon Musk has said, “In 34

FEBRUARY 2017

many cases, Hyperloop is intrinsically safer than airplanes, trains, or automobiles,” while adding that it is immune to wind, ice, fog, and rain, as well as the risk of human error.

Oxygen supplies would be provided on board, while, in the event of a large scale capsule depressurisation, other capsules within the tube would deploy emergency brake systems to prevent a crash. Nevertheless,

while Musk may be confident in the engineering systems, IT security is not so easy guaranteed.

“Certain IT security threats are a bit of an unknown, but we are using the latest approaches in safety,” Gresta says. “We have the best minds in the planet designing our safety systems. Of course, nothing is 100 percent bulletproof, but what I can guarantee is that this is the safest system ever invented by humanity.” www.cnmeonline.com

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INTERVIEW

Rajesh Pareek, group CEO, Musafir.com

Come fly with me Formerly CFO of Dubai International Financial Centre, Rajesh Pareek has recently been named Group CEO of UAE-based travel booking agent Musafir.com. He tells CNME about his plans to progress the firm’s online booking business, and how technology is disrupting the industry.

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W

hat are your thoughts on transitioning from working for DIFC to an e-commerce platform?

I’ve spent a lot of time getting an understanding of how this industry works, as well as talking extensively with our CTO. It’s different in many aspects, but beyond having the right technology and platform, everything else in terms of governance, policies and procedures remains the same from one industry to another. However, the business model does change. We have corporate accounts, our online platform and the B2C element where we expect significant growth. We need to look at how we can make a user who visits Musafir.com a long-term customer; how we can engage them. It’s not just service efficiency or how competitive we are; we also have to look at how we can optimise the technology. Our technology platform has to be superior.

you book a ticket and things like that are also important. We’re looking at other ancillary services that matter to the customer. They might have a one-time engagement, but if the aftersales service is not effective, then that impacts the engagement.

The other element is the features that we provide in our online engagement and on the app. We’ve got a clear roadmap for the next 12 months in terms of which projects we need to complete to ensure we’re not inferior to our competitors, as well as identifying our niche so that we can improvise. If the technology platform is strong enough with smooth features, it makes it extremely effective for that customer to come back.

How can you convert one-time customers into long-term ones?

It’s an important element, and needs two or three things. Firstly, you have to be very competitive, and by that I mean how people will jump from one company to another if they find a cheaper product. However, our delivery in the post-sales stage is important. For example, if you book a ticket and then want to cancel it, how quickly that can be processed.

Providing online visa services when

We have to look at how we can optimise the technology. Our platform has to be superior.

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What is your niche?

We’re a local, homegrown business and a regional player. The company has received investment so that it has grown from being a small travel shop. We provide end-to-end services, including online visa services and holiday bookings. There is a continued intent to invest, and we want to be one of the largest OTA’s in the region. We’re now expanding in Qatar and Saudi, because we believe we can expand quicker than others.

We believe we’ll be one of the largest players in the regional marketplace in the coming years.

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INTERVIEW

Rajesh Pareek, group CEO, Musafir.com

Is the Middle East finally waking up top e-commerce?

Absolutely. E-commerce is the future.

Noon is a great example, and you have solid homegrown companies like Souq.com. It has been flavour of the year over the last two years, and there’s been a lot more activity.

Our conventional model is strong, and that generates profit which can be invested in our e-commerce platform.

Our B2C component will be a main focus in the coming years.

Surely that raises the prospect of your physical travel agents being closed in the coming years?

There’s always a risk of that cannibalisation taking place. People move from one to the other, but I don’t see that happening in the near future. When you look at corporate or walk-in customers, there is still a large proportion that won’t log into multiple sites or use search engines. They prefer to go to a desk and make bookings.

There’s still time for the conventional business to be taken up online.

What sort of investment will you be making in your technology infrastructure over the coming years?

I can give you a heads up and say we’re setting up an office in Pune in India. We’re in the process of hiring 30 technology staff, which will be increased to 50. We’re doing that to create a technology hub, for people who are purely focused on the platform. We currently have 17 IT staff who sit in our office. Our clear focus is on technology, and we have a roadmap for the next 12 months.

This includes our B2C platform, visa services and ticket booking.

Based on your conversations with your CTO, what are the most important aspects of your IT environment?

Projects around payment systems

are important. We’re also looking at how the user interface can be made very easy. If a competitor is providing better services than us, we need to look at how we can enhance ours. The idea is to be relevant and competitive across mobile and web usage. IT security is paramount for us. We’re ISO 27001-certified and that’s detailed in terms of our network and security system. We’re doing everything that is required to combat IT security threats.

Will the negative effects of the region’s travel market affect you?

What’s more important for us is the volume of our transactions, not value. Our numbers have increased, while transaction value depends more on what the airline is charging. The average transaction value has reduced, but our volume has increased. If our volumes start dipping, that’s where the concern is.

300+ Professional Team | 175+ Enterprise Clients | 20+ Nationalities | 20+ International Awards | 10+ Global Locations 38

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TOP OF THEIR GAME In a glamorous ceremony at The Ritz-Carlton hotel in Jumeirah Beach Residence, CNME honoured the top 100 chief information officer-level figures in the Middle East at its third annual CIO 100 Awards. Those who claimed the accolade have shown how IT can become an integral and powerful force for executing business growth strategies, with winners remaining at the heart of evolving organisational strategies – blurring the lines between IT and business.

Abdalla Ahmed Mohamed Al Ali DMCC

Ahmad Almulaifi KNPC (on behalf of Abdulaziz Ahmed Al-Duaij)

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Abdul Nasser Al Kaabi Abu Dhabi Media

Abdulrahman Alonaizan Arab National Bank

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AbdulRazack Dileep Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council

Adly Khairy Alshareef Technical and Vocational Training Corporation (TVTC), KSA

Ahmed Al Marzooqi ADNEC

Ahmed Alrefaei Al Masraf

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Abdulsalam Al Yafei Qatar Aluminium

Lt. Colonel Ahmad al Mutlaq MOI, Qatar

Ahmed Alkindi National Ambulance

Ahmed Askar Al Sahraa Group

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Ahmed Ebrahim AlAhmad Nakheel

Ahmed Mohammad Kajoor Dubai Municipality

Ahmed Moustafa El-Sayed El-Fouly Ooredoo, Kuwait

Ali Ghunaim Canadian Specialist Hospital (CSH)

Ajay Rathi Meraas

Ali Mohamed Al Ali HAAD

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Ahmed K. Alabduljalil Civil Services Commission, Kuwait

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Ali Saleh Al Ali Thuraya Telecommunications Company

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Aliasgar Bohari Zulekha Hospital

Amit Kanchan Landmark Hospitality

Anshul Srivastav Union Insurance

Ashith Piriyattiah Al Masah Capital

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Amani Mahmood Mohd AlJassmi Dubai Health Authority (DHA)

Angus McIntyre RAK Ceramics

Arnab Debroy Metito

Christoph Lemser Siemens

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Deepika Batra DiGiovine GE Digital

Fady Sleiman Waha Capital

Fahim Halawa Gulf Capital

Fahem Al Nuaimi Ankabut

Firoj Kumar Rauta Skyline University College, Sharjah

Gareth Sherlock Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi

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Dileep Somani OTE Group

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Ghassan Jumblat Al Mawarid Bank

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Girish Varote Al Zahra Hospital

Hamad Rashid Suwaid Nakilat

Dr. Jassim Haji Gulf Air

Dr. Joseph George National Bank of Fujairah

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Gopi Krishnan Al Hilal Bank, UAE

Hamdy ElSherif Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry

Dr. John Cherian Philips

Younis Othman Dubai Customs (on behalf of Juma Al Ghaith)

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Khalid Al Kuwari Ministry of Finance, Qatar

Kumar Prasoon Al Safeer

Madhusuthan Bahri & Mazroei

Mansoor Ali Khan Al Tamouh Investments

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Khamis Awadh Abulani Rabdan Academy

Madhav Rao Lulu Group International

Manoj Vijayan Aswaaq

Marco van de Sandt alfanar

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Mario Foster Al Naboodah Enterprises

Dr. Mohammad Alathel King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology

Mohammed Ali Abdulla Mohammed AlAbdooli Dubai DED

Mohammed Jameeluddin General Civil Aviation Authority

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Michael LeRoy Sidra Medical and Research Centre

Mohammad Raffi Jotun Powder Coatings UAE

Mohammed Bilal Hasan Dulsco

Mohammed Muthanna Dubai South

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Mubarik Hussain Petroserv

Riadh Boukhris King Fahd Military Hospital (on behalf of Dr. Mustafa Hassan Qurban)

Nitin Bhargava Mashreq Bank

Rabih Merhy Amwaj Rotana

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Mukta Arora Aster DM Healthcare

Nasir Al Ali Sharjah Asset Management

Prakash Rao McDonald’s

Rahul Mangalanandan Santhamma Trojan Holding

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Rahul Mistry Marsa Malaz Kempinski, The Pearl

Ronald D’sa OSN

Saji Oommen Jaidah Group

Salem Saeed Al Ameri Emirates Red Crescent

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Riyad Salah Souq Al Jubail

LT. Col/ Saeed Helal ALKuwaiti Abu Dhabi Police

Salah Ghaith Bahrain Petroleum Company

Sanjay Khanna RAK Bank

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Sanjeev Mulay First Gulf Bank

Shabeer Mangattuparambil Abu Dhabi University

Shumon A Zaman Lamprell

Sourav Sinha Oman Air

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Sebastian Samuel AW Rostamani

Shailesh Mani Life Pharma

Sivakumar Venkatraman Dubai First

Sreedhar Reddy Aldar Properties

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Sridhar Kasisomayajula Al Ahli Bank, Kuwait

Zohaib Abrar Masdar (on behalf of Sultan A. Al Ali]

Suresh Kumar K Byrne, UAE

Terence Sathyanarayan Drake and Scull

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Suhayeb Jaabo Magnolia Investment

Surendra Shetty UAE Exchange

Suresh Muthuvadath Apparel Group

V Suresh Jumbo

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Venkatesh Mahadevan Dubai Investments

Vinay Sharma Gulftainer

Wissam Chahine Mubadala Development Company

Yousuf Abdulla Marhoon Department of Municipal Affairs and Transport, Abu Dhabi

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Vikaas Bhatnagar Avivo Group

Vishal Sood Perma-Pipe

Youssef Al Sulaiti Qatar Fuel (WOQOD)

Zuhair Lardhi Khalifa Fund

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FEATURE

Survival of the smartest

Survival of the smartest A range of household names have succumbed to the power of digital technology in recent years. James Dartnell explores where the likes of Kodak went wrong, as well as the industries that are on the verge of the most profound disruption - or even extinction.

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I

’d like to dispel – or at least attempt to – one myth that is incessantly propagated in the technology industry. If your company is not fully ‘digitalised’ in the coming years, it does not mean you will be out of business. There’s no guarantee of that. Moving a business to being fully digital is a gradual process that takes years. In reality, there’s only so much that certain industries can do to accelerate this process. However, those who are not wary of the threat posed by minnow companies waiting in the wings are sorely mistaken.

Research by the MIT Centre for Information Systems Research revealed that board members believed that 32 percent of their company’s revenue would be under threat from digital disruption in the run up to 2020. Among the disrupting companies, board members

In order to keep pace with these changes, companies are trying to be disruptors rather than be disrupted.

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were most concerned about Uber (disrupting taxis), Airbnb (disrupting hotels), Apple Pay, Kabbage, Venmo and others (disrupting banks) and Amazon (disrupting booksellers and retailers of many other products).

“The digital revolution has given impetus to an unprecedented wave of changes across all industries worldwide,” says Wael El Kabbany, vice president, Middle East and North Africa, BT. “In order to keep pace with these changes, companies are trying to be disruptors rather than be disrupted.”

Kodak’s moment One of the most frequently cited examples of an industry being consumed by digital technology – and indeed the spectacular collapse of its leader – is that of photographic film. Kodak’s demise sums up just what can happen to a company who continuously digs its heels in and refuses to adapt to change, even before the term ‘digital transformation’ was flavour of the month.

‘A Kodak moment’ was global shorthand for any sentimental or photo-worthy opportunity. But while the company was enjoying its marketleading position, with revenues peaking at nearly $16 billion in 1996, a series of poor decisions over a number of years cost it dear. Aside from dominating the market for its core business, Kodak also had a number of new innovations that it failed to capitalise on. The firm’s engineer Steve Sasson invented the first camera that used filmless photography in 1975, but Kodak’s senior management were largely uninterested.

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Survival of the smartest

Just over a decade later, the company developed the world’s first megapixel camera, and used that to launch the Advantix Preview digital camera, a device that could preview images but still relied on developing physical photographs, and cost $500 million to develop. It flopped, and the rest, as they say is history. Kodak missed a series of opportunities and saw its market value plummet as it lost out to digital photography.

The writing’s on the wall Print media is another industry to have followed a similar path. While the irony of that is not lost on the producers of this magazine, the emergence of real-time, online news and content – much of it consisting of watered down ‘clickbait’ and lacking in research and substance – has put a huge dent in advertising and circulation revenues for large swathes of the global media industry.

While journalism has never been considered a lucrative industry except for those in control of media companies, reputable outlets including Guardian Media Group, publisher of the world’s 10th mostread news website The Guardian, has been forced to take the measure of asking for reader contributions on the back of falling sales figures. The recent, sad closure of beloved UAE newspaper 7DAYS is another mark of how the industry has transformed, with online platforms such as The Huffington Post having thrived.

Branching out Other industries would cause widespread collapse if they were to suffer, and have consequently been forced to evolve. Banking plays an integral role in our economies, and is being forced to reinvent itself in order to meet the needs of a new generation of customers. That’s not to say that 56

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Millennials are not in the same bracket as those who are now learning to type before they write .

physical aspects of its business have not already been wiped out.

HSBC has closed more than 25 percent of its physical branches in the last two years in the United Kingdom, while a selection of digitalonly banks are popping up around the country. Meanwhile, with Capgemini and BNP Paribas’s World Payments Report 2016 revealing that non-cash transactions are growing at 10.1 percent annually, it is truly becoming a case of cashing out.

Banks in the Middle East are fast recognising the need to ensure their services remain competitive. In recent weeks, Emirates NBD launched Liv., it’s digital-only bank targeted at millennials, and the bank has also announced that it will invest AED 500 million over the next three years in digital and multichannel transformation. Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, meanwhile, launched its digital branch uBank, which features biometric authentication and digital assistance from a virtual relationship officer. These are encouraging signs that the region’s banking industry is one that has been quick to react to digital change.

El Kabbany believes that if banks are unable to simplify a series of complicated services that customers frequently use, then their reputations

will suffer. “If there is an industry or company that continues to let its customers struggle to piece things together, where complexity is the norm, where there is friction, or even a cognitive burden – then it’s quite likely this is a sector or firm which may disappear,” he says. “The entire go-to-market strategy of many entrepreneurial start-ups is to target these types of industries. In effect they aim to slice through complexity by providing an easy, elegant solution, which the incumbent is unable or unwilling to do.”

A learning curve Another industry set for digital disruption – but by no means extinction, touch wood – is education.

While millennials may be digitally savvy and open-minded to the possibilities of what can be achieved with new technology, they are not in the same bracket of those who are now learning to type before they write.

Although undeniably partisan, Apple CEO Tim Cook was right in saying that an otherwise conservative industry has responded incredibly well to the use of tablets. The benefits of a more hands-on approach to learning through technology have already been made clear. University of California Irvine Medical School reported that iPadequipped medical students scored 23 percent higher on national exams than previously unequipped classes.

This new use of devices within a classroom environment is just the tip of the iceberg. The whole host of new learning applications – not to mention the prospects introduced by remote learning – are putting unprecedented pressure on education establishments in the Middle East. With 75 percent of school age residents attending private schools in the UAE, the standard of digital education has already been well and truly set. www.cnmeonline.com

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FEATURE

Transport-as-a-Service

In the fast lane

With on-demand transport services giving users a ride at the click of a button, gone are the days of spending half an hour flagging a cab in 50-degree heat. CNME investigates how travel apps have impacted the day-to-day lives of commuters in the region.

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T

he transport service and urban mobility landscape in the UAE has been radically reshaped since the launch of Middle East based limousine service Careem in 2012, and its U.S. competitor Uber following closely behind in August 2013. The healthy competition between the two outlets has constantly encouraged both companies to enhance their services to facilitate the day-to-day lives of residents in the region.

Last year, having made waves in the transport industry, Uber announced the launch of its food delivery companion UberEats, naming Dubai alongside 32 other cities worldwide as a new home for the service. Careem has also recently launched it’s ‘Wallet’ feature after the company inked alliances with Emirates and Etisalat, whereby customers can both earn and spend ‘Skywards Miles’ with Careem credit, as well as having

the option to pay for their ride with Etisalat’s Reward Points.

However, as attractive as these features may be, the issue of urban congestion still stands, and commuters want answers. Adding more transport infrastructure can only solve this problem to a certain extent, and is a notoriously slow and costly method of tackling the issue.

The United Nations has predicted that two-thirds of the world’s population is expected to live in cities by 2050, meaning these problems will almost certainly worsen without the adoption of a unified transportation solution.

It is therefore no surprise to learn that Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority is developing an integrated mobility platform whereby users will have access to all mass transit systems via one smart app. And the best bit? The technology that makes this solution work – smartphones, 4G networks, deep learning and

New methods of getting around the city are primarily facilitated by app- and webbased services, which leverage existing mobile technology.

Bassel Al Nahlaoui, vice president, Government Relations and Business Development, Careem.

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artificial intelligence - is already here. According to research firm McKinsey, almost 80 percent of the UAE population carry around a smartphone in their pocket – putting the country among the top ranks for smartphone penetration, and making this type of solution very well suited to the RTA’s target audience.

“New methods of getting around the city are primarily facilitated by app- and web-based services, which leverage existing mobile technology,” confirms Bassel Al Nahlaoui, vice president, Government Relations and Business Development, Careem.

The gradual shift in urban transportation services superseding the need for car ownership is one we see increasing with every new transport initiative in the region.

While on-demand services encourage this concept, there are some new kids on the block to watch out for. Gaps in public transportation services have fuelled a growing army of smallscale private providers to develop solutions to solve this ‘last mile’ issue of reaching the final destination. ekar and UDrive have recently launched the region’s first car-sharing outlet in partnership with the RTA, following the success of Helsinki’s ‘Whim’ programme in Finland, which aims to make it unnecessary for any city resident to own a private car by 2025. The Dubai based ‘Smart Rental Service’ - as the name suggests uses a smart-app to allow customers on the go to enjoy short-term car rental via a seamless booking process at the touch of a button.

So what is it that makes the users of such services tick? User experience is the bread and butter of FEBRUARY 2017

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smart transport providers, and must be maintained to an exceptionally high standard throughout their applications if they are to compete with each other in this ‘sharing economy’ space. “A logical, highspeed user interface is a key component of any successful smart app,” says Vilhelm Hedberg, CEO, ekar. “Google estimates that 26 percent of installed applications are abandoned after the first use, which is an incredibly high number for TSPs to keep in mind when building new apps.”

The personalisation aspect of how an app operates in this industry can make it a clear-cut winner above the rest if it is done well.

Returning customers expect offers, loyalty rewards and personalised correspondence if they are to remain satisfied and valued by the service.

Outside of the application, a strong relationship between the customer and driver – or ‘captain’ in Careem’s case – is a valuable business incentive for both parties, thanks to the app’s option to rate the driver once the journey is completed.

In order to enable transport-asa-service to succeed, it is important to encourage both public and private players to work together, which Dubai seems to be well on the way to achieving, in light of recent RTA partnerships with various private sector companies.

However, there are still boundaries in place that mean traditional taxis may still hold the upper hand over ride-hailing apps in the city.

To date, both Uber and Careem have been prevented from offering cheaper journeys in Dubai due to government regulation requiring their services to charge 30 percent more than standard street taxis.

Despite this, both Uber and Careem have attracted funding from 60

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A logical, high-speed user interface is a key component of any successful smart app.

Vilhelm Hedberg, CEO, ekar

the region in the last year, with the former drawing $3.5bn from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and the latter closing $350m from STC and Rakuten in the first part of a $500m funding round, believed to value the company at $1bn.

However, operating in this ‘sharing economy’ poses its own set of challenges. The basic necessities behind the operation of these services include having a steady supply of suitable cars and drivers.

“Financing can be a challenge when independent fleet owners are tasked with raising a large sum of money to purchase high-value, luxury sedan cars that our customers have come to enjoy over the years,” says Al Nahlaoui. “Furthermore, hiring, training and then retaining ‘captains’ that meet our standards and regulatory requirements is both operationally challenging and costintensive.”

While both companies have a dense population of cars in urban areas, Al Nahlaoui insists that the primary concern in expanding further into rural areas is still the issue of maintaining a steady stream of cars and drivers. “Smartphone and internet connectivity have become ubiquitous – that’s not the key challenge here,” he says. “In

rural areas, it’s around ensuring a reliable supply of cars, trained drivers and the basic transport infrastructure.”

If the rise in populations align with the UN’s prediction and create further congestion within cities, then this may nudge workers to reside even further away from city centres in the future, which would lead to new, denselypopulated communities appearing.

This bracket of commuters would then be looking to TSPs such as Uber and Careem to get them from A to B. “Commuters have often complained in the UAE that not many taxis service new communities situated at a distance from the city centre, such as Arabian Ranches,” says Al Nahlaoui. “In addition to leaving residents disgruntled, this situation also increased the need to own a car, which put further pressure on neighbouring traffic, parking spaces and of course, entailed economic costs of owning and maintaining a car. In this regard, the future of enabling these commuters with a quick and reliable means to get around the city will soon depend on the scalability and efficiency of technology to manage this situation on a large scale.” www.cnmeonline.com

INSIGHT

Self-driving cars

Free-wheelin'

As Dubai continually unleashes a series of ambitious transport initiatives, how long will it be before self-driving cars are making their way up and down Sheikh Zayed Road?

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D

ecades ago, a society where driverless cars are a part of everyday life was the stuff confined to TV shows like Futurama. It seemed almost impossible to envisage a world where vehicles guide themselves – and their human cargo – to their destination.

Then again, maybe those who have been here to witness Dubai boom over the last 25 years probably aren't at all surprised at their impending arrival.

Self-starting moneymakers?

Boston Consulting Group has predicted that the self-driving car market will be worth $77 billion by 2035, and Infor’s general manager www.cnmeonline.com

for the India, Middle East and Africa region, Tarik Taman, believes that could be a realistic target based on shorter-term predictions. “The market for driverless – i.e. level 5, fully autonomous vehicles – will remain a very small percentage (1-2 percent) of total vehicle sales until 2025, with the overwhelming majority of these vehicles used for commercial use in controlled environments,” he says.

It’s been rumoured that worldrenowned electric and self-driving car manufacturer Tesla is close to announcing its Middle East launch.

The firm’s CEO Elon Musk has said he wants the company to have a fully autonomous vehicle on the road by next year, with autonomous hardware first being introduced to its cars a few months ago.

The novelty of Tesla’s products would surely be a hit in the region, with high-net-worth individuals queuing up to get their taste of the futuristic technology. The Middle East’s top cities are increasingly becoming vehicles for international business, and in a world where time is money, driverless cars are sure to be worth considering for the region’s top businesspeople.

"Automakers – including new entrants like Google and Apple – are largely divided into two camps when it comes to their vision for deploying fully autonomous vehicles," Taman says. "On one side, you have companies that see a gradual adoption of fully autonomous vehicles. These companies are more focused on developing vehicles with increasingly more automated capabilities (levels 3 and 4) but believe a driver will need to be behind the wheel and fully engaged – at least for the short term. Other companies are taking a more “big bang” approach; proceeding directly to level 5 as quickly as possible."

However, if when it comes to the latter

$77 billion

Value of self-driving car market by 2035 Source: Boston Consulting Group

approach, if adoption takes longer than expected, these products could well fall flat before they have even really hit the road.

Are they safe?

Questions will inevitably be asked regarding the safety of driverless cars.

The first fatality of a Tesla driver in autopilot mode came in May 2016, but its autopilot system has also prevented crashes in several cases.

“The current limitations of today’s cameras, radar and sensors means that a vehicle can fail to detect objects under certain conditions, and if a driver is not prepared to take over control of the vehicle immediately, bad things can happen," Taman says.

"This presents a public perception problem because the primary selling point of an autonomous vehicle is that the driver shouldn’t have to be fully engaged. If the driver must have both hands on the wheel and be prepared to take over control of the vehicle in a split second, they might as well be driving a non-or semiautonomous vehicle.”

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INSIGHT

Lori MacVittie, principal technical evangelist, F5 Networks

The great cloud diaspora I

t has been 10 years since Amazon set the digital world on fire with the introduction of Amazon Web Services, or as most of us today call it, public cloud. Since then, the landscape has grown increasingly cloudy, with a variety of new models merging with old models merging with data centres to give us plenty of choices today, all falling under the incredibly broad umbrella of cloud.

As soon as cloud became the go-to buzzword, application service providers rebranded themselves as cloud under the banner of Softwareas-a-Service (SaaS). Businesses have long struggled with the decision to build or buy, and SaaS gave them a third option, rent.

While pundits declared cloud in general an undeniable success, the reality was that SaaS was propping up the entire market for years as organisations shifted from buying

“

software to renting it from the same vendors who shifted their own business models to accommodate this change.

As the drivers for adoption shifted from a focus on cost savings to gains in agility and speed, organisations increasingly looked to private cloud (on premise) as a means to enjoy speed and agility without compromising on their specific requirements that precluded a move to public cloud.

The emergence of another hybrid technology, often referred to as 'colo cloud' experienced phenomenal growth due its innate ability to sate organisations’ need for security and control (on the colocation side) along with the flexibility and cost-savings of public cloud (the interconnect side). Addressing needs for security, control, and it turns out, performance, colo cloud will no doubt continue to see gains

Businesses have long struggled with the decision to build or buy, and SaaS gave them a third option, rent.”

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in adoption over the next couple of years.

That pretty much brings us to today, with multiple cloud formations on the enterprise buffet from which organisations can pick and choose, and mix and match.

Cloud is no longer a single operating model whose archetype is Amazon’s EC2. It has morphed and expanded into a variety of models that all share the same core concepts of abstraction, automation, orchestration, and utility computing.

Each one has arisen out of specific needs that were not met by the other models, and each one is a legitimate form of cloud that is strategic in its own right.

As will be whatever comes next, because if the last 10 years have proven anything, it’s that a good idea cannot be contained by a single model, and that as challenges arise, new forms will evolve to address them. Diaspora happens, and in the case of cloud, that’s been a good thing because choices mean freedom for organisations to embrace digital transformation in ways that don’t require them to compromise on core requirements, whether those be security or performance, control or costs. www.cnmeonline.com

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INSIGHT

Ram Vaidyanathan, ManageEngine

The data home run

ManageEngine’s Ram Vaidyanathan discusses the four key steps in executing an effective Big Data strategy.

I

n 2002, Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta famously used the principles of sabermetrics – in-depth analysis of in-game statistics – to assemble a competitive Oakland Athletics Major League Baseball team. They opted against signing big-name stars. Instead, they recruited cheaper, but statistically proven players. The A’s famously completed a 20-game winning streak, and finished first in the American League West.

If data analytics can have such a big impact in sport, it can undoubtedly do so in business where decisions are arguably less subjective.

However, in today’s businesses, data is much more complex and vast than what DePodesta and Beane had to contend with.

The first step towards maximising business value with Big Data is

“

obtaining it. For this, businesses need to extract both structured and unstructured data, and lots of it, from a range of sources. Sales reports, customer on-boarding dates, SLA breach rates, and web logs are examples of structured data. Social media posts, email messages, PDF files, and multimedia are examples of unstructured data.

Unstructured and structured data each have their own strengths and weaknesses, so it is important to include both types in order to see the whole picture.

One example of pulling data from a range of sources is Duetto, a company that helps hotels personalise their prices by extracting and analysing historical data such as how much a guest typically spends at the bar or casino. Hotels can then incentivise guests with better room prices

If analytics can have such a big impact in sport, it can do so in business, where decisions are less subjective.”

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knowing that those guests will spend more on other services.

Once the data is extracted, it should be contextualised. Each facet of business should decide what metrics they will track and benchmark themselves on. For example, a sales leader will be most interested in tracking sales volume over time, sales volume by region, and purchase values of top customers. A marketing leader, on the other hand, may be most interested in metrics such as ROI, advertising reach, and profit margins over time.

After data has been extracted and contextualised, the analysis part comes in. First, analytics tools should alert users of any outliers and offer to exclude these outliers from the analysis. And, these tools should consider entire datasets, rather than sample subsets. Users should also be able to set up advanced techniques such as correlation analysis, regression analysis, conjoint analysis, and factor analysis, if required.

In the end, even contextually analysed data can’t do any good if it’s not being properly utilised. And when it comes to getting the most out of your data, it’s all about how you see it. Whatever big data analytics tool companies deploy should use data visualisation technology to help decision makers identify patterns.

While the challenge of monitoring so much data will remain, the new challenge will be to make Big Data analytics available to every employee.

This will empower them to make smart decisions within their realm and create even more business value. www.cnmeonline.com

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PRODUCTS

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

Launches and releases

Brand: HTC Product: HTC U Ultra

Brand: HP Product:

EliteBook x360 The EliteBook x360 is dubbed by HP as “the world’s thinnest business convertible.”

The EliteBook x360 1030 G2 comes in a variety of hardware configurations – the base model comes with a Core i5 7200U processor and the midrange offering comes with a Core i57300U. It has a 13.3-inch touchscreen display and is available in FHD (1080p) or UHD (4K) resolutions.

The device comes with 16GB of RAM and an SSD that ranges in capacity from 128GB to 512GB depending on the model.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: As part of the Elite family, HP highlighted that the business convertible includes latest innovations such as Sure Start Gen3, the “world’s only selfhealing BIOS,” which can automatically tell when the device has been compromised and remove the threat before booting into Windows. It’s supported

by WorkWise, an app for PC Management.

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FAEBRUARY 2017

HTC has unveiled its newest smartphone series, U, with two new models, the U Ultra and Play.

The U Ultra is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, a 5.7 inch, Quad HD Super LCD 5 display with a secondary 2.05-inch display with Gorilla Glass on the 64GB model and Sapphire Glass on the 128GB model.

The smartphone, according to HTC, is “3D contoured” with a symmetrical curved glass design and polished surface that blends on the side of the phone.

HTC has introduced its Sense Companion, an AI feature which has voice recognition and machine learning capabilities.

The device also features USonic, which uses a sonar technology headset to analyse a person’s unique inner ear

Brand: Asus Product: ProArt PA32U monitor The Asus ProArt PA32U is a 32-inch direct-lit LED 4K UHD HDR monitor.

The new monitor has a full-array LED backlight featuring 384 LED zones and is capable of a peak brightness of 1,000cd/m2, which offers a wide range of dynamic luminance for a “richer and more nuanced image.”

ProArt PA32U has two Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports that speed up to 40Gbps, supporting USB3.1 Gen 2 and DisplayPort 1.2. ASUS said that this unique port also turns ProArt PA32U into a docking display, enabling daisychaining up to multiple Thunderbolt 3 device. It also allows users to connect two 4K UHD displays for increased productivity and more versatile viewing.

to adapt to users and the noise levels around them.

The U series features cameras with optical image stabilisation, phase detection autofocus (PDAF), a dual-tone LED flash and pro mode among others.

It comes with a 12MP UltraPixel rear camera and a 16MP selfie camera.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: The U series also has a Play version, which is a compact 5.2-inch smartphone with Gorilla Glass which features the MediaTek Helio P10 processor. Both devices will be available in four colours including “Brilliant Black, Cosmetic Pink, Ice White, and Sapphire Blue.”

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: Asus highlighted that the use of quantum dot technology provides a wide colour gamut, enabling ProArt PA32U to deliver 99.5 percent Adobe RGB, 85 percent Rec. 2020, 100 percent sRGB and 95 percent DCI-P3 colour-space performance for high-end vid-eo-editing and production.

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COLUMN

Glesni Holland, Deputy Editor, CNME

Not on my watch D

espite the pre-warning that such a ruling was imminent if he was elected, that didn’t stop shockwaves rippling across the globe when President Donald Trump signed an executive order against the entry of immigrants and refugees into the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority nations, just days after his inauguration.

Since the announcement, technology companies have not been shy in voicing their outrage regarding the impact that this will have on their businesses. It was reported that Google tried to recall all employees outside of the U.S. to get them back into the country before the order took effect, as the ban is said to affect a minimum of 187 ‘Googlers’ alone.

And it appears that some companies are prepared to take things one step further than just speaking out. Reports in the Wall Street Journal claim that Apple and Amazon are both seeking legal action against Trump in light of the order, after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed, “Our legal team has 70

FEBRUARY 2017

prepared a declaration of support for the Washington State Attorney General who will be filing suit against the order.”

Over half of the top 20 major U.S. tech companies were founded by immigrants. If this blanket ban had applied in previous years, some of the big names we know so well today may have never made headlines. Steve Jobs’ biological father, Abdulfattah “John” Jandali, was the youngest of nine children born into a Syrian Muslim family and emigrated to the U.S. in the 1950s, whilst eBay founder Pierre Omidyar is of Iranian-American nationality.

Citizens of Middle Eastern and African nations applying for a U.S. visa already face some of the most stringent documentation requirements, but recent rumours suggest that those looking to pursue employment in the States will have even more to worry about in the near future. According to Bloomberg, Trump’s administration has drafted an executive order aimed at overhauling the work-visa programmes that

technology companies in particular are so dependent on to hire tens of thousands of employees each year.

The top recipients of these H-1B visas are outsourcers, primarily from India, who run the technology departments of large corporations. If implemented, the order would require companies to hire Americans first, and pay foreign workers higher salaries – subject to them being granted a visa.

Nevertheless, it is encouraging to see influential players in the industry stepping up to show their compassion to those affected by such irrational decisions. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky announced that the company was offering free housing to immigrants and refugees, particularly those travelling to the U.S. that had since found themselves stranded in airports.

Similarly, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick stated that the company will identify and compensate drivers affected by the ban, “to help mitigate some of the financial stress and complications with supporting their families and putting food on the table.” www.cnmeonline.com

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