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Success stories in technology leadership and transformation from the Middle East Published by
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Contents
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Ajman Municipality: Totally connected
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National Bank of Kuwait: Up in the air
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RSA Logistics: Bigger, faster, better
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golf in DUBAi: Top of their game
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Inspiring stories of transformation Cloud computing, mobility, software-defined networking – these technology trends are transforming the enterprise network and enabling companies to lower costs, increase flexibility, and improve reliability. The benefits of these combined technology advances are clear. As a result, most companies are taking advantage of them to improve their business operations. However, these shifts require IT organizations to rethink traditional network strategies.
Jeevan Thankappan Group Editor CPI Media Group Technology Division
The research firm IDC says the mega-trends of cloud and mobile workloads will disrupt one-third of leading businesses across all sectors, fueling a digital transformation across enterprise IT. A major part of this transformation will be adapting the network to accommodate new use cases and applications, and legacy infrastructure isn’t going to cut it.
Recent surveys suggest that most companies in the Middle East are using or considering using cloud, whether public or private. Another emerging trend, software-defined networking, which decouples network hardware from OS, allows for increased automation when building networks. The first step to address these tectonic shifts in technology is to develop a strategy for digital transformation. Without a doubt, the CIO and IT organization will play a key role in transforming their companies into digital enterprises. But this requires a rethinking of the old model of IT development and delivery, which is not capable of meeting the demands for innovation and flexibility that digital businesses require to stay competitive. Digital transformation is a huge opportunity for CIOs to transform IT organisations to not just support innovation, but also to be a source of it. IT needs to evaluate these game-changing technologies and exploit it to support business growth and transform user experience. On the other hand, the mandate for vendors is to wrap and integrate all these emerging technologies into a holistic solution and make it look complete to the end user. A case in point is Huawei, which offers a comprehensive set of products and solutions to address these challenges. In this booklet, we have showcased some of the regional enterprises that have leveraged Huawei’s expertise to embrace new networking technologies, and in the process gained the speed, agility and cost benefits that their businesses demand.
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Ajman Municipality
Totally connected
In line with its vision of creating a better connected world, Huawei worked with Ajman Municipality to extend its network accessibility with the deployment of a campus Wi-Fi solution, which delivers widespread coverage across all of Ajman’s municipal buildings.
Ajman Municipality
The deployment is part of the Municipality’s 2021 vision, announced by Sheikh Ammar Bin Humaid Al Nuaimi, Crown Prince of Ajman and Chairman of the Executive Council, who outlined a focus on developing initiatives that would improve the lives of its citizens. The smarter Ajman Vision centers upon having a happy society that will help build a green and sustainable economy that is in line with the spirit of the union. Challenge Rapid developments of new services such as mobile applications, cloud computing, Big Data, social networking and the Internet of Things (IoT) are driving many government entities to develop their ICT systems that can cater for realtime performance, mobility, scalability and higher-quality experiences for their users. With this in mind and in line with the wider vision for smarter, more connected cities, the UAE government issued a mandate for the country’s municipal entities to adopt state-of-the-art ICT infrastructures that improve levels of internal efficiency and develop services that comply with industry standards of excellence. Ajman Municipality views its role as a crucial intermediary between its citizens to the city itself. In order for the Municipality to
be able to quickly adapt to the challenges created by the consumerization of technology, it realized that it needed to significantly transform its network architectures and required a more flexible wireless infrastructure for its workforce. After assessing its systems, the Municipality ICT team understood that it needed to provision its automated services so that it could enhance its productivity. One of the main issues was with the productivity of its workforce - employees did not have the freedom to work remotely, and could only connect at their work stations. This limitation hindered the development of a collaborative work environment showing that they needed a mobileenabled infrastructure capable of allowing multi-device connections across the municipal buildings. Until this point the Municipality’s outdated, wired IT infrastructure had proved to be a problem for its IT team. Its legacy systems meant that if new implementation was required, laborious physical changes had to be carried out on the building in order to relay cables for its wired infrastructure. It was clear that seamless, wireless connectivity was a crucial in order for the Municipality to evolve into a smart government entity.
Yousuf Mohammed Al Shaiba, Director of Smart Services Development Department, Ajman Municipality
Solution After undertaking a rigorous screening process for potential technology partners to carry out the project deployment, Ajman Municipality chose Huawei Middle East’s secure Wi-Fi solution, to replace its wired infrastructure. Huawei’s secure wireless environment would enable a more connected and more productive mobile workforce at the Municipality, allowing for multiple devices to be connected to the network at any time and a widespread mesh providing ubiquitous and secure broadband access across the entirety of Ajman Municipality’s office buildings. In addition, the WiFi solution provides the Municipality with a flexible and comprehensive infrastructure that is capable of supporting sustainable development and future growth of the network.
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Ajman Municipality Results Huawei’s successful deployment of the Wi-Fi network marked the first step in delivering the promises that Ajman Municipality set out in its Vision 2021 for the city. In order to take its vision from concept to reality, municipal leaders had to first help the entity to become a smart organization. Huawei’s Wi-Fi offered a future-proof solution, providing easy and secure widespread connectivity access for its staff, encouraging flexible working while also allowing for citizens that were visiting the Municipality’s facilities to also be connected at any location or site. The municipality is now able to offer extended Wi-Fi capabilities across its main office and six remote sites of the municipal buildings. Up to 700 users are able to be connected on a fast, flexible
and secure wireless network at the same time. The deployment has also provided the Municipality with a flexible infrastructure that will allow it be able to support mobile connectivity. The entities’ next phase will see its system support inside-out mobility within the next two years. Yousuf Mohammed Al Shaiba, Director of Smart Services Development Department, said, “I am happy with the Municipalities progress in moving from a wired to wireless environment and the impact that it has had on our operations. It has not only had a positive impact in enabling our employees to do things on-the-go between our buildings, but its proven to be a significant value add as a time saver. Huawei has proven that it is a trusted technology partner that can ensure the highest quality in a
“I am happy with the Municipality’s progress in moving from a wired to wireless environment and the impact that it has had on our operations. It has not only had a positive impact in enabling our employees to do things on-thego between our buildings, but it’s proven to be a significant value-add as a time saver. Huawei has proven that it is a trusted technology partner that can ensure the highest quality in a costeffective way. They have provided us with the flexible bandwidth connectivity service we needed with the option of adding additional access points with little additional effort.” Yousuf Mohammed Al Shaiba, Director of Smart Services Development Department, Ajman Municipality
Executive summary Customer name: Ajman Municipality Industry: Government Location: UAE Challenges • Developing an ICT system that caters for real-time performance, mobility and scalability • Improving internal efficiency levels and developing services that comply with industry standards • Creating a collaborative work environment to enhance employee productivity Solution • Replacing wired infrastructure with Huawei’s secure Wi-Fi solution • A mesh network that provides secure broadband access Benefits • Widespread connectivity access for staff, encouraging flexible working • A flexible infrastructure that supports mobile connectivity
cost-effective way. They have provided us with the flexible bandwidth connectivity service we needed with the option of adding access points with little additional effort.”
National Bank of Kuwait
Up in the air
To transport its applications faster and more securely, National Bank of Kuwait upgraded its microwave network by teaming up with Huawei.
National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) is the largest financial services institution (FSI) in Kuwait, the first local bank and shareholding company to have been set up in the entire Gulf region – known widely as ‘The Bank You Know and Trust’. It has consistently ranked among the top 50 safest banks in the world for the last nine years and has taken the tenth spot on
the Forbes Top 500 companies in the Arab World. Challenge As NBK continues to grow at an exponential rate, so too does its reliance on secure ICT finance systems and bandwidthintensive applications, both of which were struggling with the limited capacity of its
legacy network. This increased demand for more bandwidth in order to run multiple applications simultaneously without compromising network functionality, led NBK’s ICT team to investigate upgrading its existing microwave network infrastructure linking all of its 65 locations to its HQ and disaster recovery site.
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National Bank of Kuwait
NBK was utilizing an existing microwave network link from SIAE Microeletronica, which used serial connections that needed to be upgraded to an Ethernet-based network, with an over-air encryption capability. Without an Ethernet connection, it was difficult for NBK to process its automatic switchovers between its primary connections to HQ and more importantly, to its back-up connection disaster recovery site. Due to the network’s limited bandwidth capacity, it was only able to provide NBK up to 2Mbps connectivity at most of its branches across Kuwait, which was not nearly enough to run the increasing financial applications to run efficiently. Moreover, maintenance of the serial network was becoming arduous and expensive, making it harder for the team to monitor as well as increasing OPEX costs. In addition to this, new PCI DSS industry compliance had called for higher security protocols and services that could support over-the-air encryption of sensitive financial information, which not possible with its existing system. The network’s lack of flexibility and functionality was posing a threat to efficiency, customer satisfaction and ultimately, its profitability.
Robert Lee, Head of IT, National Bank of Kuwait
also ensuring they provided a minimum of 16Mbps bandwidth capacity per branch and was capable of scaling hardware requirements for future expansion. In order to address this challenge, NKB chose to work with Huawei Technologies, deploying its RTN900 IP Radio Microwave Network Solution, which provided eight times higher Ethernet based capacity and over-the-air AES0-256
“This project was the first time NBK IT has worked with Huawei. I am very pleased with their professionalism and capability. The project was delivered both on time and within budget. On the back of this success I will be happy to consider Huawei in future NBK Projects” Robert Lee, Head of IT, National Bank of Kuwait
Solution In order to provide the right solution, ICT vendors had to understand that NBK had a fibre network ring between eight of its branch sites, where the old microwave network main hubs were located, in addition to the HQ and DR sites. NBK required a solution that would not only provide full Ethernet-based microwave network connectivity to all of its 65 locations - including the main hubs, HQ and DR Site, but
encryption capabilities that met the Bank’s PCI DSS security compliance requirements. In addition, Huawei also deployed its U2000-based end-to-end network management solution that allowed NBK’s ICT team to easily monitor the network with minimal maintenance. To help with NBK’s OPEX worries around maintaining its hardware, Huawei’s global and local service support teams offered five-year maintenance solution, providing the
National Bank of Kuwait
necessary support network for the Bank and its new system. For the terminal sites, layer 2 and layer 3 frame header compression technologies were provided, which have high bandwidth utilization. They compress IP/MAC frame headers at the transmitting side of the radio link and restore them at the receiving end. Through this, the Ethernet service throughput could be significantly improved, especially when there are many short packets. To provide the required high capacity hops for the main hub to the KLT aggregation site and from there to NBK’s HQ and DR sites, Huawei proposed rearranging all frequencies and optimizing the frequency planning to solve the issue. Huawei’s technology solution not only solved these high capacity hop requirements, but also increased the available frequency resources per hop to a minimum of 7MHz compared with the old 3.5MHz. This allowed NBK to be able to provide the requested per branch capacity with lower modulations and have the scalability of up to three times more upgradability by only adding a software license. Huawei’s network solution addressed NBK’s ICT challenges
and was even were able to utilizing a passive repeater microwave for the first time in Kuwait, with back-to-back antenna interconnection using wave guides in a midway building. In some Hub sites, larger antennas were needed to achieve the requirements, so Huawei provided tower strengthening after careful checking of the utilized guide mast structures to ensure stability of the tower during strong winds. It took Huawei’s team eight months to implement the full solution, which went live within NBK in March 2015. This was a fast turnaround for the bank, who were expecting a much longer deployment timeline. Results As a result of the network deployment, the communication capacity between branches increased by up to eight times, jumping from 2Mbps to 16Mbps overnight, with three times more expandability if it was needed. The bank’s operations & maintenance was eased due to the addition of NMS for remote monitoring, which decreased the fault detection from several hours to only few minutes. Now NBK’s network is more secure and PCI DSS compliant, from unencrypted to AES-256
Executive summary Customer name: National Bank of Kuwait Industry: Banking and finance Location: Kuwait Challenges • Increased demand for bandwidth • Limited capacity of the legacy network • Lack of network flexibility and funcationality, posing a threat to efficiency and customer satisfaction Solution • Huawei’s RTN900 IP radio microwave network • U2000-based end-to-end network management solution Benefits • Eight-fold increase in network capacity • Ease of operations and maintenance with remote monitoring • Compliance with PCI DSS and AES-256 encryption
encrypted traffic - one link encryption is done and will be rolled out until mid Q4).
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RSA Logistics
Bigger, faster, better RSA Logistics enlisted the help of Huawei to overhaul its networking infrastructure to deal with shifting business demands.
RSA Logistics
RSA, a fast-expanding integrated third-party logistics company in the region, required an upgrade of its network infrastructure ahead of planned 60 percent growth in 2014, as the firm looked to expand across the region. Challenge The exponential growth RSA has experienced over the past year-and-a-half had brought with it a fair share of challenges. The main question for RSA became how to keep their commitment to customers in providing the personalized and prompt service that they were accustomed to. The previous network architecture being used by the company could not provide sufficient visibility of network issues, making it a challenge for RSA to overcome increasing customer service demands. By working closely with Huawei, RSA Logistics identified the need for a centralized data center, which could manage the company’s entire network applications from one location, giving greater visibility on how service operations were running. It was clear that in order to address these challenges, a new network was needed to alleviate the
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RSA Logistics
enormous pressure on the network that would allow for greater flexibility to help accommodate growth. Solution RSA previously had a few warehouses, therefore the network was a flat architecture with a single IP range and a basic network. This put pressure on network bandwidth, making it difficult for the tasks to be executed without delays. A centralized data center was needed to manage everything from one location which created a need to update the IP infrastructure. RSA decided to go ahead with Huawei as the team
“It was evident that a network infrastructure upgrade was a top priority in this scenario. Our new network has given us the flexibility we needed to ensure we provide faster and much more improved levels of customer service.” Abhishek Ajay Shah, Director of Operations & Business Development, RSA Logistics
was proactive, with a very fast response time. Huawei was able to provide RSA with a quality and cost-effective product that met their exact business needs. To do that, Huawei, in partnership with Enterprise Systems, successfully upgraded RSA’s network infrastructure and deployed a set of its latest IP telephones for UAE-based RSA Logistics, providing the flexibility RSA needed to grow its business in 2014. Results With the new upgrade, RSA’s IT team is now able to finetune their logistics processes. The team can also cut down on costs by better identifying where they need to invest more resources in and analyze their business performance for greater direction moving forward. Since the completion of its recent upgrade in 2014, the logistics company has already recorded faster response times from its fleet of vehicles and greater customer satisfaction thanks to being able to provide customers faster status updates on their freight. With an application that provides a useful and comprehensive report, RSA has a greater level of transparency over how much
Executive summary Customer name: RSA Logistics Industry: Logistics Location: UAE Challenges • A flat network architecture • Poor network visibility, making it difficult to meet customer server demands • Managing entire network applications from one location • Lack of flexibility to allow for future growth Solution • A centralized data centre • Upgraded network infrastructure with latest IP phones from Huawei Benefits • Reduced capital and operating expenses • Faster response time from fleet of vehicles and greater customer satisfaction • Visibility into bandwidth usage
network bandwidth is being used and at what times the network is busiest, enabling the company to quickly assess how it can improve its processes and cut costs.
golf in Dubai
Top of their game
golf in Dubai, in conjunction with Huawei, installed a broadband wireless network on the course, offering always-on connectivity to its clients.
Last year, golf in DUBAi hosted the 2014 Omega Dubai Desert Classic Golf Tournament at the Emirates
Golf Club. For the first time, the international golf tournament organizer had a vision to offer seamless,
uninterrupted Wi-Fi broadband across the entire course for visitors and players.
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golf in DUBAi
Challenge For years, golf in DUBAi had been trying to deploy a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) at the course during the Desert Classic so that they could offer their guests Wi-Fi connectivity in all public areas of the venue. The main issues it faced was that Emirates Golf Club current Wi-Fi capabilities were limited to specific areas as a result of basic routers, which could only accommodate up to 12 users (with 10-40MBPS) connected to the network at any one time. Adding to this, the network would continuously drop, requiring it to be
reset manually. With the Desert Classic tournament approaching, ‘gof in DUBAi’ had limited time to find a solution that would extend this limited network to all areas and allow thousands of users to access it. Solution To help identify a solution, Huawei and Visiontech International were commissioned to assess the site and provide recommendations for widening the Wi-Fi capabilities. Huawei identified that the venue had been using home internet router
The main issues it faced was that Emirates Golf Club’s current Wi-Fi capabilities were limited to specific areas as a result of basic routers, which could only accommodate up to 12 users with 10-40MBPS connected to the network at any one time.
technology previously, which never would be able to sustain the levels of connectivity required for the tournament. The ICT companies worked together to provide a WLAN Network deployment that would cover the three main areas of the course; the Village (a public area) for spectators as well as across the driving and putting ranges – a centralized network solution for golf in DUBAi. After conducting a successful proof of concept in December 2013, both Huawei and Visiontech International started working on providing the backbone infrastructure needed to deploy this WLAN. A wireless solution that expanded the wireless connectivity zones across the entire golf course was identified, allowing up to 2,000 users at any one time and offering a service to the players, sponsors and guests that had never been available before. Huawei supplied an extensive range of wireless products in order to develop this WLAN network, including multiple access
golf in DUBAi
We are in a day and age where we want to be connected at all times whether we are in our home country or abroad. We wanted to provide a reliable Wi-Fi service to our local and international guests attending the 2014 Omega Dubai Desert Classic. Sanjay Narula, Head of IT, golf in DUBAi, UAE.
points, controller and access switches and router switches. To take the Wi-Fi deployment a step further, an additional solution called ’24 Online’ was implemented to serve as an access gateway for traffic management. This determined which route needed to be taken to ensure that the user received the optimal internet connectivity at each location. Additionally, the access gateway, which is a mandatory requirement for projects in the hospitality and recreational industry, provides controlled access as every user is granted access to Wi-Fi providing a set of credentials are given - hotel room number, user name, or password, for instance. Any user without these set of credentials would not be able to access the Wi-Fi, ensuring that authorized users (guests, VIPs etc.) enjoy a seamless and fast Wi-Fi connection. As a result of the quick assessment and effective deployment, the solution was able to be implemented and deployed within 48
Executive summary Customer name: golf in DUBAi Industry: Leisure Location: UAE Challenges • Offering seamless, uninterrupted wireless broadband access to clients • Limited Wi-Fi capabilities that could accommodate up to 12 users Solution • A WLAN that supports up to 2,000 users • Access gateway for traffic management Benefits • Full connectivity services to guests and optimal Internet connectivity at each location • Seamless and faster Wi-Fi connection only for authorized users
hours prior to the golf event, offering full connectivity services to the thousands of guests of the 2014 Omega Dubai Desert Classic.
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Growing Together
For A Better Connected World GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK 2015 OCT 18-22, Dubai, UAE Visit Us at Z-E20, Za’ abeel Hall, Dubai World Trade Center Website: e.huawei.com/ae Email: enterpriseME@huawei.com
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