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WWW.CNMEONLINE.COM ISSUE 242 |MARCH 2012

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EDITORIAL

A fragmented entity

Sathya Mithra Ashok Senior Editor Talk to us: E-mail: sathya@cpidubai.com

ǡ ϐ

ǡ Ǥ

Ǣ ϐ Ǥ ǡ ͵ͲͲͲ Ǥ The reasons for that are pretty clear. The company had an eventful ʹͲͳͳǡ ϐ ǡ ǡ Ǯ ͳͺ ǯǤ Ǧ ǡ ǡ ϐ Ǧ ǡ Ǥ Ȃ Ǥ

them the clear time they needed to elaborate on a strategy for their ǡ Ǥ

ǡ Ǥ ȋ ͳͲ ȌǤ ǡ ǡ

ǡ ϐ Ǥ ǡ ǯ ǡ

ǫ ǡ Ǥ

Ȃ ǡ ǡ

Ǥ ǡ ǡ Ǧ Ǧ ǡ Ǥ ϐ Ǥ ǡ Ȃ Ǥ ǡ ǡ

Ǥ

ǫ

ǡ concentrate on playing up its strength in the enterprise infrastructure front ǫ

Ǥ

ʹͲͳͳǤ ǡ ǡ ǡ Ǥ What do you think HP should be doing? Write to sathya@cpidubai. com and let me know.

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EDITORIAL Our events

Welcome to the future

Jeevan Thanpakkan Senior Editor Talk to us: E-mail: jeevan@cpidubai.com

ǯ Ǥ ǡ ǯ dinner. Quite a number of big companies employ futurologists these days,

Ǥ ϐ Ǧ ǯ ǡ ǡ ǡ Ǥ ǡ ͻǦͷ ͳͶǦ ǡ Ǥ ǡ Dz Ǧ Ǧ Ǥdz ǡ ǡ ǯ Ǥ

ϐ ǯ Ǥ

ǡ Ǥ ǡ ǡ ͵ ǡ Ǥ ǡ Ǯ ǡ ǡ Ǧ ǡ ǯ Ǥ ͵ ϐ ϐ ǡ ʹͲͲ Ǩ

ǡ

ǡ ǡ ǡ Ǥ

Our online platforms

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Contents ISSUE 242 | MARCH 2012

ANALYSIS 8

Brand vs product

ǡ ǡ ϐ Ǥ

10

Leaving the past behind

ǡ Ǥ ǡ ϐ seems to be.

14

Cisco makes strides

Ǥ ǡ Ǥ

16

Geared for cyber war

Ǥ Ǥ

18

Fusion world

integrated, cohesive suite of applications.

20

Getting ready for the cloud era

ǡ ǡ ǡ

Ǥ

22

Round-up

Ǧ Ǥ

30

Smart recovery ǡ ǡ ȋ Ȍ ǡ

ȋ ȌǤ

CASE STUDY 34

Tested path

NETWORK WORLD

Ǧ ǡ ǯ ǡ

Ǥ

46

The second coming

ϐ ǡ Ǧ ϐ ǡ

Ǥ

SOLUTIONS WORLD

STORAGE ADVISOR

40

Crucial connections

As organisation continue to become more distributed their employees need much faster and more reliable means to connect to critical ǡ Ǥ Ǥ

6

MARCH 2012

54

Old but worthy

ǡ proactive manner.

Ǥ Ǥ

SECURITY ADVISOR 60

Working to be stronger

ȋ Ȍ Ǧ have in not only protecting your business environment, Ǥ

Ǥ

TELECOMS ADVISOR

CAREERS ADVISOR

68

More on the air

Ͷ ǡ ǡ

70

Four technologies for faster broadband

ϐ ʹͲͳʹ

82

Filling the gaps

ϐ Ǥ

INTERVIEW

INTEGRATION ADVISOR 76

Write it right

ǡ Ǥ ǡ ϐ Ǥ ϐ Ǥ

88

Clouding the midmarket

Ǥ ǡ ǡ

ǡ Ǥ

90

Automate and excel

ǡ ǡ ǯ cloud environments.

94

Capitalising on software

Ǥ ǡ

capitalise on them.

PRODUCTS 96 tools, and brings you the verdict.

LAST WORD 98 ǡ ǯ ǡ Ǥ

Ǥ Ǥ

MARCH 2012

7

ANALYSIS Month in view

Brand vs. product Infor, an ERP solution provider, believes that it is finally getting the competition to sit up and take notice of its success.

I

ǣ ǯ

Ǥ

ǡ Ǧ ǡ

ǡ

Ǥ Dz ǯ ǯ Ǥ

8

MARCH 2012

ǡ ǡ Ǥ ǡ

ǡdz Ǥ Dz Ǥ ǡ Ǥ ǡ Ȃ ǯ ǡdz Ǥ

ǡ ǯ in criticising them in the process. He says

Ǥ Ǥ

Ǧ ǡ Ǥ Dz ǯ ǯ ǯ Ǥ ǡ Ǧ Ǥ ǯ ǡdz Ǥ Dz Ǧ Ǥ ǯ

ǡdz Ǥ ǡ

Ǥ Dz ǯ

Ǥ ǯ ǡ ǯ ǡ ǯ ǡdz Ǥ

ͳͲ Ǥ ǡ product is superior to its competitors. Dz ǯ because of the depth and breadth of the Ǥ ǯ

ǯ Ǥ upon our main competitors, it’s a deep rich ǡdz Ǥ

to place different areas of a company on ǡ ahead of competitors. Dz ǯ

Ǧ Ǥ ǯ opening the same application so you can Ǧ ǡ ǡdz Ǥ Dz ǡ ǡ ǯ ǡ ǯ Ǥ competitors are either in the cloud or Ǧ Ǣ ǯ ǡdz Ǥ ϐ ǯ competitors, Flavin is also not hesitant

ǡ ϐ

ǯ Ǥ Dz ǯ ǡ Ǥ

ǡ Ǥ ǯ foundations for applications to run through Ǥ ǯ

We’re looking for the same experience in commercial software, as the one provided by Apple on the consumer end. By that I mean software that runs the manufacturing, the distribution companies, the logistics companies, as well as the other applications that we run that are in very different facets of the business – healthcare, hospitality, government etc.,” Ǥ ǯ ǡdz Ǥ

solutions, Flavin says. Dz ǯ ǡ Ǥ

ǡ the distribution companies, the logistics ǡ

Ȃ ǡ ǡ Ǥǡdz Ǥ

ǯ relations are the driving force behind its climb and the company is investing in people to reach its goals. Dzȏ Ȑ

ǡ ͶͲͲǤ ϐ of those customers is very, very strong. Ǥ ǯ ͷͲͲ centres around the globe to push out more ǡdz Ǥ Dz ǯ Ȃ ǯ

ǯ

We offer a much better deal than them. They offer you a name plate, we offer a better solution. Our software is not as expensive, but the real difference comes when it comes to installing it – we’re a third or less the price of them.”

Ǥ Ǥ

ǡ ǯ Ǥ ǯ people on the ground to service the ǡ ǡdz Ǥ

region in its development into a major ǡ Ǥ Dz ǯ Ǥ

Ȃ ǡ Ȃ ǯ ǡdz Ǥ

ǯ

presence in the region. Dz ǯ ϐ Ǥ ǯ the territory, so you’ll see more partners

produces and supporting our products in ǡdz Ǥ Dz ǯ Ǥ ǯ

ǡ ǯ ǡdz Ǥ

organisations in this region respond better Ǥ Dz

ǡ having infrastructure in place and just buy a ǡdz Ǥ

MARCH 2012

9

ANALYSIS Month in view

Leaving the past behind HP is trying to shed the bad news of the last few months, and work towards a future where it is back in the forefront of the industry. But the haul is likely to be long, difficult and as fragmented as the company seems to be.

L

ǡ Ǥ ǯ

ȋ Ȍ ͳͷΨ ̈́ͺǤͻ Ǥ

ǡ ͳͷΨǤ ǯ

ȋ

Ȍ Ǥ ͹Ψ ̈́͸Ǥ͵ ǡ ǡ consumers hit hardest.

10

MARCH 2012

ǡ Ǥ ͵ͳǡ ̈́͵Ͳ ǡ ͹Ψ Ǥ ϐ ̈́ͳǤͷ ǡ ͶͶΨǤ

Ǥ

ǡ ǯ

Ǥ ǡ

ϐ

ǡ ͵ͲͲͲ

Ǥ Ǥ

Ǥ Ǧ ǡ discussed its plans for both its enterprise

Ǥ Most of the plans revolved around

ladder in solution and services provision. ǡ ǡ

Ǥ ǡ ʹͲͳʹ

Ǥ Dz ̈́ͷ

Ǥ ͷΨ

Ǥ ͷΨ converged infrastructure partners to invest ǡdz ǡ ϐ Ǥ According to her, these incentives are

ǡ ϐ

ǡ from the delivery of related services. Dz ȋ̈́ͷͲ Ȍǡ ȋ̈́͵ͷ Ȍ ȋ̈́͵Ͳ Ȍǡ Ǥ choose their practices across application development, operations, storage or Ǥ ǡ the ability to tap into higher revenues and ϐ ǡdz ǡ Ǥ

ǡ

partners to share information, leads and even sell and implement on customer projects together. ϐ programme and its partnership for the ǡ ǡ cloud resellers and cloud service providers.

ʹͲͳʹǤ

Ǥ ǡ

Bill Veghte, executive VP for software and services at HP

ǡ ̈́ʹͲͲ for printing that partners can target, and ϐ Ǥ

ǡ around content digitisation. According to ǡ ǯ ̈́ͳͳͺ ʹͲͳ͵ǡ ̈́Ͷͺ ʹͲͳ͵Ǥ He split solutions around content ϐ ȋ ̈́ʹͺ Ȍǡ ȋ̈́ͳͲ Ȍ ȋ̈́ͳͲ ȌǤ Dz ϐ ǡ to eliminate document management ϐ Ǥ to do this in the past 10 years, and most

Vyomesh Joshi, executive VP of the IPG group within HP

I am a strong believer in focus. I believe that we would be better off focusing on a small area, and doing really, really well in that area. And that is what you will see in the next few years. We are in the software business to solve tough customer problems, we are not in it to transform HP into a software company.” of them have failed. This is because the

spectrum from capturing, archiving and ǡ ǡdz Ǥ

ǡ

ʹͲͳʹǡ Ǥ Dz ǡ ǡ Ǧ based documents, have it stored, secured ǡ Ǧ Ǥ

ǡdz Ǥ ǡ ʹͲͳ͵ǡ

ǡ ʹͲͳʹǤ

Ǥ Ǥ

ǡ

ϐ capitalise on the content that they are

and services.

The company used the global partner

ͺ ͳ Ǥ

ǡ Ǧ ǡ that the company aims to return to the standing of industry leader by focusing on certain areas of the industry, and by encouraging innovation.

ǡ and even as efforts continue to increase

MARCH 2012

11

ANALYSIS Month in view

ǡ

Ǥ Dz Ǥ

ǡ ǡ Ǥ Ǥ business to solve tough customer problems,

ǡdz Ǥ

ǡ information optimisation, cloud and Ǥ Ƭ divisions to encourage organic innovation.

ǡ

ǡ ǡ

of the confusion, and to emphasise on the

over the years. Dz ʹͲͳ͵ǡ ͹Ͳ Ǥ

͹Ͳ Ǥ

ǡdz Ǥ

Ǥ

ϐ ǡ ǯ ϐ Ǥ Dz ǡ ǯ

ǡ ǯ ǡdz Ǥ

ǯ

Ǥ

ϐ Ǥ Dz ǡ ǯ our business in silos. Under that model, ǯ in technology, but it’s also made us too ǡdz Ǥ

ǡ ǡ Ǥ ǯ ǡ ǡ ǯ Ǥ ǯ

Meg Whitman, president and CEO, HP

HP is putting in $5 million to accelerate growth with converged infrastructure partners over the next six months. Partnerships will get a 5% rebate on the licence sale of any net new software lead that closes. HP Software will also set aside an additional 5% in an investment fund for converged infrastructure partners to invest in HP software.”

12

MARCH 2012

Ǥ Ǥ

ǡ he achieved that by cutting costs too deeply and failing to invest for the future. ǯ Ǥ Dz ǯ

Ǥ ǡ ϐ ǡdz conference call. ǯ ϐ Dz ǡdz Ǥ ϐ ϐ ǡ Ǥ ϐ ǡ Dz ǡdz developing, selling and supporting products Ǥ ǡ Dz dz ǡ Ǥ That includes investing in technology for the future and streamlining processes and support services.

The last part is to capitalise on

in technology, especially around cloud computing, information management and security, she said.

ǯ ǡ ϐ

ϐ Ǥ Dz ǡdz ǡ

ϐ Ǥ Dz ǡ ϐ ǡ ǡdz Ǥ Dz Ǥdz There is no doubt that the company has ϐ ǡ Ǥ correct the imbalances of the past year by Ǧ Ǥ ǡ problem for the company might be its internal fragmentation and the obvious disconnect ǡ evident even during the partner conference. ϐ ǡ ϐ ǡ ϐ Ǥ

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ANALYSIS Month in view

Cisco makes strides Cisco is back in the game after going through a tumultuous year of transition. At its Cisco Live conference, the company spelled out plans to capitalise on the next wave of growth.

ǡ

Ǥ ǯ ǡ ǡ

Ǥ ǯ ǡ

ǡ Ǥ Dz ǡ ͳ͵ ǡ ͷͲ ʹͲʹͲǤ

ǡ ϐ Ǥ

ǡ

ϐ ʹͲͳͶǤ Ǧ be used by 70% enterprises this year and ͷ͸Ψ ǡdz Ǥ ǡ volatility is putting pressure on technology,

Ǥ Dz going to change, as businesses have to Ǥ discussion is not about outsourcing but ǡ ǡdz Ǥ

foundation to drive business value and Ǥ Dz

Ǥ

Ǧ

14

MARCH 2012

Ǥ Ǥ

services in cloud and virtualised data centre ǡdz Ǥ

ǡ strategy to help customers build private, public and hybrid clouds on its Unified Ǥ Dz tailored solutions for building cloud ǡ

ǡdz Ǥ ǯ Ǧ ǡ

everything approach, dismissing rumours that the company might foray into Ǥ Dz

Ǥ

ǡdz Ǥ Another significant announcement at ǯ Ǥ ǯ Ǧ strategy revolves around bringing together all platform independent coding onto a single platform and cross pollination of

Ǥ

Ȃ ǡ Ǥ the integration of these three types of

Ǥ Dz

of a competitive advantage for us, and

Ǥdz ǯ ǡ

ǡ

ǡ

Padmasree Warrior ,CTO, Cisco

Cisco’s cloud strategy revolves around building an eco-system, and the company acknowledges there is a danger in building everything approach, dismissing rumours that the company might foray into enterprise storage. Ǥ Ǥ

operating system. The company plans to

ǡ and start integrating virtualisation natively into the operating system.

Ƭ ǡ ͹ͲΨ Ǥ ǡ has made major announcement around its ͳͲͲ

ͶͲ ͹ͲͲͲ ǡ ͶͲ Ǥ Ǧ Ǧ ͳͲ Ǥ ǡ

͸ͷͲͲǡ ͶͷͲͲ ȋ Ȍ ͳͲͲͲ

ǡ ͳͲͳͲǦ appliance for the data centre.

Ǧ Ǥ Dz

ǡ ǡdz Ǥ ͵ͲͲǡͲͲͲ ǡ ͶͳͲ ͳͳǤ͹ access points sold in the last decade. ǡ ͵͸ͲͲ Ǥ a fourth antenna, this 802.11n access point is designed to enable people to be seamlessly ǡ Ǥ

driving data centres to a different architecture, focused more on collaboration and business outcomes, ǯ Ǧ ǡ ǡ ǡ video and collaboration seems to be paying handsome dividends, if the recent financial Ǥ ǡ ǡ Ǥ

MARCH 2012

15

ANALYSIS Month in view

Geared for cyber war The crux of the discussions at the Kaspersky Lab cyber conference in Mexico last month focused on the eventuality of cyber war and how best the world could avoid it. Pallavi Sharma writes.

E

ǡ ǡ

ǡ

ǡ

Dz ϐ Ǥdz Dz ǡ

ǡ ǡ

Ǥ the situation is far from being resolved, the country, its people and organisations there

ǡdz Ǥ Dz

16

MARCH 2012

rumoured to have originated from outside Ǥ ǡ

ǡ

ǡ ǫ

ǡ ǯ ǡ Ǣ

ǡ

ǫdz Ǥ The conference brought together a host of international media representatives ǯ

ȋ Ȍǡ ǯ

enforcement and regulatory bodies to Ǥ Dz Ǯ ǯ is pretty harsh, there is no doubt that nation

Ǥ Ǥ

Eugene Kaspersky, CEO, Kaspersky Lab

states are already investing in the latest and the most advanced technologies for ǡdz said Michael Moran, assistant director, cyber

Ǥ Moran added that cyber criminals have been successful in using the medium

ϐ to discredit an international organisations Ǥ Dz ǡ nation states can or are using the same advanced tools and technology that groups of

Ǥ ǡ ǡ

at hand, is cyber crime, leaving civil society at

continue to use the medium of the internet for ϐ ǡdz Ǥ Dz Ǧ development. The repercussions of a

serious and resounding than those of the ϐ Ǥ

ǯ yet, it is a real and evolving threat as nation states begin to amass advanced technologies ǯ ǡdz ǡ ǡ ǡ

ȋ ȌǤ During the ensued panel discussion,

enforcement bodies to collaborate against Ǥ

Dz

ȋ ȌdzǦ Ǧ Ǧ cyber security regulations for critical Ǥ Dz

Ǥdz Dz

Ǧ Ǥ

ǡdz Ǥ

and policies must separate issues into manageable portions and not deluge the Ǥ Moran agreed adding that the establishment

action based on the spread of the criminal operation, either local or international. ǡ ǡ ǡ

ȋ Ȍǡ ǡ

The bloggers associated with the initial reports of the Arab Spring are rumoured to have originated from outside the country in question. If these rumours are untrue, then it’s good news but if they are true, we have a lot to worry about; for if the Internet and its many tools can be used against one country, how far are we from a scenario where these tools may be used again to recreate a cold war scenario” Ǥ Ǥ

agencies and other regulatory bodies aimed at apprehending and prosecuting cyber criminals is fast gaining, there is yet more Ǥ DzʹͲͳʹ ǡ

Ǣ ϐ strategies or legal business operations.

These groups tend to operate in countries

ǡ

Ǥ ǡ

Ǥ ǡ

ǡdz Ǥ

ǯ the responsibility to avoid a scenario of cyber ǡ ϐ Ǥ Dz

provides access to borderless platform for Ǥ people and organisations must be proactive

Ǣ Ǥ ǡ

ǡdz Ǥ

MARCH 2012

17

ANALYSIS Month in view

Fusion world Oracle says the Middle East has got a higher response towards an integrated, cohesive suite of applications.

S

ǡ ǡ

other region. ϐ ǡ ǯ ǡ ʹͲͳͳǡ Ǥ Ǥ Dz response to our Fusion applications and

ǡ Ǯ ǯǡdz Ǥ

that users in emerging regions do not have to ǡ

Ǥ Dz ǯ ϐ Ǥ

ǡ ϐ ǡ ǡ they have been going through enterprise ǡdz Ǥ Dz

higher proportion adopting that suite from

ǯ ϐ ϐ Ȃ ǡ

ǯ ǡdz Ǥ Miranda refers to the notion of Middle Ǯ ǯ ϐ technologies. He compares it to the huge and rapid update of mobile phones in the region. Dz

those applications lend themselves best in

ǡdz Ǥ

18

MARCH 2012

Dz

ǯ ǡ Ǥ

Ǧ ǡdz Ǥ ǯ ǡ

Steve Miranda, senior VP of Fusion application development for Oracle

I would equate it to the cell phone movement in emerging markets where there is a lot of consumers in emerging markets who didn’t go through a landline, skipped a generation and went straight to cell phones.

Similarly, you have newer companies and growing companies who have also skipped a generation of onpremise software and gone straight for the cloud software.” that not much physical development goes Ǥ ǯ Ǥ Ǥǡ development is proportionate to that, he says.

location, and therefore investing more

Ǥ ǡ ǡ that if the trend of popularity continues, it is Ƭ Ǥ Dz

Ǥ development groups but they’re smaller. ǡ ǯ strong talent pool of technical resource

cost basis and if that rose in any part of the ǡ ǯ ǡdz Ǥ

Ǥ Ǥ

ǡ Miranda says he believes they are turning

ǯ Ȃ Ǥ Dz ǯ ϐ ǯ in the cloud. Most cloud vendors have just ǡ ǡ

ǡdz Ǥ ǯ ǡ Miranda says he still believes that companies should be developing some apps inhouse. Dz

can be a competitive differentiation for that Ǥ ǯ

Ǥ

Ǧ Ǧ ǡdz Ǥ

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ANALYSIS Month in view

Geting ready for the cloud era Public cloud will become universally used by all businesses, and the sooner enterprises get on board the better, says Peter Job, CEO at Intergence.

J

ʹͲ ͵ͲΨ

ǡ

ǡ Ǥ Dz ǯ ǡ ǡ Ǥ

that cloud computing is going to bypass

Ǥ ǡ

ϐ ǡdz Ǥ Dz

it’s actually a very good thing from a career Ǥ is coming so it’s better that all companies ǯ there so they can offer these services to their ǡdz Ǥ

companies offering cloud services as the

Ǥ Dz

ǡ been a lot of concerns about security and

Peter Job, CEO, Intergence

Ǥ ǡ

from that and cloud has become very much Ǥ Ȃ ǫdz he said. Dz ǡ hosting if you’re going to provide good Ǧ ǡ

You need to have good hosting if you’re going to provide good quality high-functionality cloud services, and we are a bit lacking on those here.

But there are people building hosting services in the region and as soon as that happens then I think you’ll see a big take up.

20

MARCH 2012

Ǥ Ǥ

Ǥ there are people building hosting services in the region and as soon as that happens then

ǯ ǡdz Ǥ

the development of its product Hyperglance,

Ǥ Dz Ǥ ǡ Ǥ ǡ

ǡdz Ǥ Dz ϐ ͵ͲΨ of our developments costs through building Ǥ of the great things about the cloud is you ϐ Ǥ ǯ Ǣ ǯ ϐ ǡdz Ǥ Ǧ Ǧ Ǧ Ǥ Dz ǯ Ǥ ϐ ǡ you could turn on and turn off particular

Ǧ Ǧ Ǧ Ǥ

Ǧ Ǧ Ǧ ǯ ͳʹ ǡdz Ǥ ǡ

Ǧ ǡ the most popular and relevant in the region. Dz

is construct a private cloud for data that is more sensitive, and for those applications ǯ ǡ ǡ Ǥ

certain data resides from a jurisdiction ǡdz Ǥ

ROUND-UP Month in view

KFUPM selects Global Knowledge to implement infrastructure project

ȋ Ȍ

ǡ

Ǥ ǡ ϐ Ǥ

12,000 users including students, faculty and

ǡ ǡ ϐ leadership role in the development of the ϐ ǡ ǡ environmental design and business. ǡ ǯ ǡ ǡ ǡ ϐ ǡ ǡ Ǧ Ǧ ǡ instant messaging, presence, collaboration, and document management. Dz

dz ǡ

Ǥ Dz are committed to accelerate technology

Arabia through our broad portfolio of

unprecedented range of leading edge Ǥ ǯ great opportunity for us to demonstrate our technical capability in supporting such a ϐ ǡdz Ǥ Dz Ǧ

in applying best practices integration and Ǥ recommended tools and training to be used ǡdz Ǥ Dz

dzǡ Ǥ Ȃ Ǥ Dz

of business challenges during the project by offering a robust range of leading edge professional services that helped in planning, ǡdz Dr Aldajani added. ǡ

ʹͲͳͲǤ

ϐ ǡ ǡ Ǥ Through effective team synergy

ǡ ͳͲ Ψ ǡ ͶͲΨ ϐ ǡ ǡ ǡ Ǥ Dz

and overcame some major project challenges through effective communications dz Dz ϐ

Ǥ ϐ

dzǤ

Qatar banks embrace mobile service offerings

ǡ

Ǥ Dz ͳ͹ ǡ ͳͶ

ǡ ͳ͹ Ǥdz ǡ

22

MARCH 2012

Ǥ ǡ Ǯ services in the state of Qatar’, also ʹͷ

ǡ ͳ͸ ͳͺ Ǥ ͳ͹ Ǥ

Ǥ Ǥ

Ǣ ǡ ǡ ǡ ǡ

ǡ

ǡ

ǡ ǡ ǡ ǡ ǡ ǡ ǡ ǡ ǡ Ǥ

ROUND-UP Month in view

Disaster recovery is high on the agenda: eHDF study

ǡ ϐ Ǯ ǯǤ ǡ ȋ Ȍ Ǧ ȋ Ȍ ǡ ͷ͹Ψ responding organisations aim to implement

ȋ Ȍ Ǥ ʹͷΨ ǡ

senior managers, said they plan to use

ǡ ͵ͻΨ Ǥ ǡ ǡ ͳ͸Ψ ϐ ǡ ǡ ǡ infrastructure failure and site outages cited as the most common. ʹͳΨ

ǡ ͳͶΨ

Ǥ ǡ ͸ͷΨ having either no concrete plans to initiate

lifecycle.

ǡ ǡ

Ǧ Ǥ

Ȃ ǡ Ǧ Ǥ ǡ ͸ͷΨ not sure of the overall reliability of their

procedures. ǡ readiness still needs to improve and the report indicates that companies are inclined

ǡdz Ǥ ǡ ǡ

ǡ Ǥ Dz ǯ ǡ actually don’t have to invest that much in Ǥ ǯ ʹͲΨǤ can save a lot of money by being smart and ǡ than everything. The other thing is, once

ǡ Ǥ ǯ ǡ ǯ ǡdz Ǥ

Growing social media presence in GCC pushes governments online

ϐ ǡ ǡ

ǡ

Ǥ Dz

Ǥ ǡ

ǡdz Ǥ Dz Ǥ ǡ ǡ governments are starting to recognise its ǡdz Ǥ ʹͲͳͳ ϐ

24

MARCH 2012

against governments.

Ǥ ǡ ǡ Ǥ Dz

ǡdz Ǥ

ͻǦͳʹ Dubai. According to representative, Ǯ ǯ can implement social media best practice. Dz moment in the development of social

Ǥ Ǥ

Ǥ

government staff to increase their

ǡdz Ǥ

that are already using social media as a Ǥ Dz ʹͲͳͲ government entities to produce policy

ǡdz

Ǥ Dz ʹͲͳͳ ǡdz Ǥ

ROUND-UP Month in view

UAE shows surge in online finance research and banking: Google study

Search engines are the most used and ϐ ǡ

Ǥ ͳͲͲͲ they used a search engine to search for product information, and almost half of all online

and personal loans start from search engines. ǡ ϐ ǡ

ϐ ǡ ͳǤʹ ϐ ʹͶ Ǥ

ǡ is becoming a popular channel for processing ǡ ͶͲΨ respondents engaging in at least one online Ǥ ǡ and monitoring account balances and

transactions are the most popular online Ǥ vast majority of users access their online

ǡ ͵ͲΨ device. Dz

ʹͷΨ ǡ the fastest countries in search activity. The

ϐ industry to enhance their presence on search engines to provide their customers

ǡdz ǡ

Ǥ Dz ǡ ǯ

Ǥ search today than at any time in the past to achieve our goal to help people convert data ǡdz Ǥ

ǡ ϐ ϐ products.

VMware opens online cloud solutions marketplace

Solution Exchange, an online virtualisation and cloud solutions

ǡ Ǥ

ǡ Ǧ simplify the process of evaluating and selecting business solutions.

ϐ solutions for the private and public cloud Ȃ

26

MARCH 2012

ǯ Ȃ Ǧ and sell their solutions to potential customers.

ǡ

ϐ solutions for their businesses. Dz ǡ

͹ͲͲ

Ǥ Ǥ

promote their solutions and directly

ǡdz ǡ Ǥ Dz ǡ

ϐ purchasing decisions to accelerate their ǡ our technology partners deliver and ǡ Ǧ ǡdz Ǥ

Find us online

www.cnmeonline.com

Analysis:

Insight:

Cloud security is not a ‘real’ concern: analyst

Computers may control intersections for self driving cars

Read more online

Read more online

http://bit.ly/xXDnJD

http://bit.ly/zsryzC

Reviews: PhoneGap: Mobile development made easy

Read more online

http://bit.ly/wBafOb

www.cnmeonline.com

Blogs:

Photo Gallery:

Fulfilling the prophecy Pallavi Sharma, Assistant Editor, CNME

Read more online

http://bit.ly/yh0UWj

Big boys toys Ben Rossi. Sub Editor, CNME

Read more online

http://bit.ly/zcAmCl

Speed thrills Jeevan Thankappan, Senior Editor, CNME

Read more online

http://bit.ly/wfN4lH

28

MARCH 2012

Ǥ Ǥ

AntiCrop for iPhone and iPad

Read more online

http://bit.ly/yXoetX

Entangled in a maze of tools to manage your

IT infrastructure?

CASE STUDY AW Rostamani

When AW Rostamani, the family owned conglomerate, decided to set up a disaster recovery (DR) site, it found its partner of choice in Emitac Enterprise Solutions (EES).

Smart recovery 30

MARCH 2012

Ǥ Ǥ

Sebastian Samuel, group IT manager for AW Rostamani

ȋ Ȍ the most crucial considerations

Ǥ ȋ Ȍǡ

Ǥ Dz Ǥ ϐ Ǥ ϐ Ǥ

Ǥ ǡ ǡ

Ǥ into property, real estate, manufacturing,

Ǥ

Ǥ

ǯ Ǥ ǡ have focal points in various locations. All

ǡdz ǡ

Ǥ

ǡ strategic planning for the functions are Ǧ Ǥ

ǡ is created and this is presented to the Ǥ submitted to the board. Dz

ϐ Ǥ Ǥ ϐ Ǥ ǡ ǡdz Ǥ

Ǥ Dz Ǧ Ǥ

Ǧ Ǥ ǡ Ǥ

Ǧ Ǥ

Ǥ ͳͲͲΨ ǡdz Ǥ

Ǧ Ǧ

Ǥ Dz

more funds from the board to roll out more Ǥ Ǥ

Ǥ ǡ Ǥ

Ǧ Ǥ

ǡdz Ǥ

Ȃ ȋ ȌǤ Dz Ǥ Ǥ

ǡ ǡ

that is not just a simple replication solution.

This management solution also provides reporting and dashboarding for meeting

ȋ Ȍ ǡdz Ǥ

Ǥ ϐ ǡ

We communicate two-kind of expenses.

One is direct cost on their own IT-related procurement. This could be hardware or software, and it is executed through the group procurement department. Operational expenses are allocated based on a formula that i agreed-upon with the various CEOs. Upfront we will communicate the total cost on IT and most of the time we will have some sort of savings that will be credited back to the department. We work on a 100% chargeback model.”

ǡ ϐ Ǥ Dz ǡ ǡ Ǥ ϐ business impact analysis and estimated the

Ǥ Ȃ ϐ Ǥ presented this to the board, and then in late ʹͲͳͲ ǡdz Ǥ ǡ

the company that they had been intimately

Ǥ Ǥ

Ǧ mirroring, monitoring tools, recovery

ʹͲͳͳǤ ǡ ǡ escalation matter to be handled. Much of this

planned for the project. ǡ Dz ǡ on project management and enterprise Ǧ Ǥ ǡ

Ǥ Ǧ Ǧ

MARCH 2012

31

CASE STUDY AW Rostamani

Ǥ Ǥdz ǡ ǡ ǡ Dz

Ǥ ǡ

Ǥ ǡ and technical heads and project managers Ǥ

Ǥ ǡ Ǥdz ǡ Dz

Ǥ Ǥ in time to be implemented, and once that

Ǥ ϐ Ǥ Ǥdz

running success of the implementations. Dz Ǧ Ǧ Ǥ ϐ ǡ ϐ ǡ are managing the project are trained and a Ǥ ǡdz Ǥ

ǡ Dz a traditional project is that both of us had responsibilities. To reduce overall cost of the ǡ ϐ team could contribute early on in the project,

Ǥ therefore responsible and this also helped us Ǥ

Ȃ Ǥdz

the partner.

ǡ a major upgrade on storage and also invested in a corporate performance management and

Ǥ ǡ

Ǥ Ǧ level performance management solution Ǧ methodology. The company chose an Hyperion solution, and integrated tools for ϐ Ǥ The other side comprised choosing

ǡ

these. The solution also provides division ǡ

When we take on any projects there is always a training-cum-knowledge transfer session at the end of the project. So when a project is finished we submit to the customer a complete sign off document, which contains all configuration codes at the site, the users who are managing the project are trained and a proper knowledge transfer is done.

Only then is a project signed off.”

32

MARCH 2012

Ǥ Ǥ

Ǥ Dz ʹͲͳʹǡ

Ȃ ͳʹǤ ǡ Ǥ

ϐ Ǥ

Ǥ

ϐ ǡdz Ǥ ǡ

ǡ ǯ roadmap and product evolution before Ǥ ͵ͺǦ

Ȃ

consideration of the business needs and the Ǥ Ȃ

their future ventures.

CASE STUDY Sikka

Tested path Sikka may not be an easy-adopter when it comes to new technologies, but with its Microsoft Dynamics’ ERP solution, the time had come for the company to move forward with IT.

A

ǡ

ǯ Ǥ ǡ

ʹͲͳͳǡ ǡ

ǡ Ǥ Ǧ ͳ͵ǡͷͲͲ

34

MARCH 2012

ȋ ͳͶǡͷͲͲ Ȍ ͹ͷ Ǥ ͹ͷ ǡ

ȋ ǡ Ȍ ǡ

Ǥ Dz ǡ Ǥ

Ǥ ǡ

Ǥ Ǥ

͹ǡ Ǥ ǡdz Ǥ Dz Ǥ

of the move of technology, our move to ǯ ǡdz Ǥ Using data

ǡ ǯ

relevant information. Dz ǯ ϐ Ǥ Ǧ

and get it into a format that management

Ǥ

ǡdz Ǥ Dz same platform and get active intelligence out Ǥ to be able to give management relevant information to predict and forecast, and that ǯ ǡdz Ǥ ǡ ǡ

ǡ

Ǧ ǯ Ǥ Dz ǡ

ǡ Ǥ Ǣ

Ǧ ϐ Ǥ Ǥ ǡ

Ǧ

ǡdz Ǥ Dz Ǧ Ǥ

Ǥ ǯ Ǧ ǡ ǯ ǡdz Ǥ

The original development and testing of

Suman Mohammed, regional IT manager, Sikka

ǯ ǡ Ǥ ϐ ǡ ǡ Ǥ

ǡ Ǧ Ǯ ǯ Ǥ Ǧ style training.

Mohammed says the implementation didn’t run completely smoothly and some challenges did arise. Dz ϐ Ǥ ϐ Ǧ users they have a number of demands and then

Ǥ Ǥ

We wanted a very robust accounting system something that captured key components of our data. We also wanted something that would enable the users to access something without any performance issues or problems with extracting data for ad hoc reporting. We didn’t want to customise the bank-end to suit us, and with Dynamics we didn’t have to.” Ǥ Ǥ

ǡdz Ǥ Dz Ǥ

Ǧ ϐ Ǥ Ȃ countries and entities had different goals Ǥ

ǡ

ǡ ǡdz Ǥ Mohammed and his team successfully

ǯ Ǥ Dz ǯ ϐ Ǥ ǯ Ǥ Ǧ ǡ ǡ more of the business started to see the value ǡdz Ǥ

ʹͲͳʹǤ

ǡ ǡ Ǥ

ǯ

ǯ Ǥ Dz

Ǥ technology has to complement business ǡ ǯ ǡdz Ǥ Mohammed also says that despite being ǡ

Ǥ Dz ǡ Ǥ ǯ ǡ ǡ Ǥ ǡ

ǡ ǡdz Ǥ

MARCH 2012

35

Unified communications

Convergence of fixed and mobile communications

IP (VoIP)

Independent voice, data and wireless networks

THE CHAIN

53% 51% 49% 46% 48%

7P*1

of companies realised improved employee productivity by deploying VoIP features

said greater flexibility is the motive behind migrating to VoIP

said cost reductions as a motive for migrating to VoIP

said greater feature functionality to be the primary motive behind migrating to VoIP

of companies say migrating more traffic to VoIP is a high priority

Voice calling

Instant messaging

Text / SMS

Collaboration networks / social networks

Conferencing: voice / web / video

UC integrates multiple communication tools with presence behind a single UI that is accessible from almost any device from virtually anywhere.

6/*'*&% $0..6/*$"5*0/4

25%

Email

Presence

Mobility

of firms state converging mobile and fixed communication services as critical

of companies gave high priority ratings to implementing or expanding collaboration solutions

53%

ACCORDING TO A SURVEY OF NORTH AMERICAN COMPANIES CONDUCTED BY FORRESTER CONSULTING ON BEHALF OF AT&T, APRIL 2011:

ALONG THE EVOLUTION CHAIN

UNITED WE STAND

of organisations see collaboration software as somewhat or very important

of knowledge workers say communication and collaboration are important at work

of CIOs report improved productivity from geographically dispersed teams through UC

of companies realised improved employee productivity by deploying VoIP features

95%

91%

89%

70%

75%

ON AVERAGE,FIRMS SWITCHING TO UC SEE TRAVEL COSTS DIP 20%

20%

of CIOs think presence and availability solutions are very important

ACCORDING TO ORANGE BUSINESS SERVICES

The business case is frequently based on a soft ROI or a strategic investment, such as productivity improvements, rather than hard ROI such as cost savings. As a result, in a conservative economy, deployments occur slowly, perhaps as part of broader technology renewals.

Many applications and products are complex to deploy and may require organisational change

Enterprises have large investments in communication infrastructures that must be preserved, this leads to a slower evolutionary approach, rather than a faster revolutionary “rip and replace� approach

5)& "%015*0/ 0' 6$ #: &/5&313*4&4 $0/5*/6&4 50 */$3&"4& )08&7&3 64"(& 3"5&4 "$3044 40.& &/5&313*4&4 3&."*/4 -08 #&$"64&

GARTNER MAGIC QUADRANT FOR UC, AUGUST 2011

INFOGRAPHICS | MARCH 2012

t "7":" t .*$3040'5 t $*4$0 t "-$"5&- -6$&/5 t 4*&.&/4 &/5&313*4& $0..6/*$"5*0/4 t /&$ t *#. t )6"8&* 5&$)/0-0(*&4 t */5&3"$5*7& */5&--*(&/$& t ""453" 5&$)/0-0(*&4 t 4)03&5&t %*(*6. t 5&-&8"3& t 504)*#" t .*5&- /&5803,4

THE PLAYERS

SolutionsWorld

SOLUTIONS WORLD App optimisation

Crucial connections As organisations continue to become more distributed their employees need a much faster and more reliable means to connect to critical applications and data resources without necessarily tripling the costs. Pallavi Sharma reports.

ǡ

ϐ Ǥ The increasing sophistication of these applications and the simultaneous increase

40

MARCH 2012

ϐ ʹǤͲǡ Ǧ Ǧ Ǧ ȋ Ȍ ϐ on the ability to access mission critical applications. As organisations continue to

ϐ Ǥ

Ǥ Ǥ

ǯ Dz Ǧ dz connectivity, poor application performance, unstable application availability, loss of connectivity and employee productivity can ϐ Ǥ

maintain the effective performance of

business applications in the face of heavy ϐ ǡ restrictions. Dz ǡ ϐ Ǥ

ȋ Ȍ

enhanced services. Unfortunately, these Ǥ

ȋ Ȍ ϐ ǡ ϐ ϐ ȋ Ȍ ǡ ϐ ǡdz ǡ ǡ ǡ Ǥ

Florian Malecki, senior product marketing manager, EMEA, SonicWALL

Ǧ

Ǧ applications. ǡ ǡ

Ǥ Dz

ǡ

ϐ ǡdz Ǥ The emergence of virtualisation and cloud technology has made the situation

constraints limit the effectiveness of Ǥ

ǡ cloud environment, application delivery to ϐ Ǥ Addressing the need

ǫ ǡ ǡ

professionals believe it may only be a partial Ǥ

they don’t address the latency issue that is central to an application’s ability to perform Ǥ ǡ

believe offers an effective alternative to

Ǥ

For many organisations, the identity and composition of application traffic is a puzzle.

IT often tries to improve wide area network (WAN) performance by expending budget on more bandwidth or enhanced services. Unfortunately, these efforts frequently fall short of expectations”

Ǥ Ǥ

help accelerate the performance of an application across remote and traveling Ǥ solutions are delivered as appliances

ϐ ǡ mobile users. These solutions combine to Dz Ǧ dz

and protocols being used to improve ϐ Ǥ object and data string or byte caching Ǧ

ϐ organisation.

Many of these solutions even integrate security functionality that helps ensure

Ǧ Ǥ

accelerate server consolidation initiatives,

ǡ Ǥ appliances for application acceleration can also run alongside other applications Ǥ Dz resources based on changes in user load

performance and capabilities to match Ǥ can also be dynamically moved or a separate

Ǥ run alongside other applications using the same resources, they can optimise the use of shared system resources. Most importantly,

ǡ

ǡdz Ǥ

MARCH 2012

41

SOLUTIONS WORLD App optimisation

ǡ storage. Typically, the number of concurrent

ϐ

Ǥ

ǡ Ǧ ϐ path to supporting more users.

say that virtualised application acceleration Ǥ Dz can offer can offer cost savings in everything ǡ ǡ Ǥ

ǡdz Ǥ

ȋ Ȍ ǡ use of application acceleration technologies

Ǥ ǯ

ϐ and resources, to realise their true potential

reinforcements. Dz ǡ ȋ Ȍ ǡ acceleration solutions may have limited effectiveness in controlling and securing ϐ Ǥ ǡ they can even accelerate threats across Ǥ ϐ ǡ

and stay ahead of today’s constantly evolving ǡ Ǧ ǡ ǡdz Ǥ ǡ ǡ an important element of ensuring optimum application performance. He says that

42

MARCH 2012

applications can spend too much time in Ǥ Dz ǡ

on their data management information Ǧ Ǥ Ǧ ǡ ǯ Ǥ ϐ ǡ ǡ ǯ ǡ ǡdz Ǥ

Although the emergence of application ǡ

professionals believe that the emergence

eventually drive more organisations Ǥ

Alexander Rauser, CEO, Prototype Interactive adds another element to this complex mix.

These software based virtual appliances help accelerate the performance of an application across remote and traveling users to LAN speeds. WAN optimisation solutions are delivered as appliances deployed in the remote and headquarters offices, and as software on devices used by mobile users” Dz Ǥ ǯ Ǣ ǯ

ǡ ϐ ǡ Ǯ ǯǡdz Ǥ Dz animation, a lot of continuity. The result: another period of disruption. The entire Ǥ

Ǧ ǡ ǯ some consolidation and another stability ǡdz ǡ ǡ Ǥ Dz

ϐ Ǧ ǡ

Ǥ Ǥ

ǡ Ǧ

ǡdz Ǥ Dz

Ǣ ǡ if the tool visionaries are right. Future Ǯ ǯǡdz ǡ ǯ ǡ Ǥ

hope that organisations begin to pay heed to the demands of immensely strained

ϐ Ǧ Ǧ Ǧ applications of the future.

Is Your Network Keeping Up With Your Business?

Make sure your network can deliver 24/7 reliable application uptime, because your business and employees depend on it. Networks today are too important to neglect and they should be managed with the utmost care.

Get the most from your network—-Quintica partners with enterprises across the Middle East to help them take the work out of network management. Effortless management and exceptional performance is strictly by design using Entuity network management, an all-in-one solution for: x services monitoring ensuring consistent application uptime x operational efficiency—automation to reduce manual tasks x a sharp business focus—business reports for non-IT audiences x scalability to meet your needs today and tomorrow and x support for new technologies—virtualisation, wireless, cloud computing.

Quintica and Entuity can help your IT organisation make sure your network keeps up with your business. To review our white paper on “Covering your IT Assets”, please visit entuity.com/content/quintica-entuity-white-paper.

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NetworkWorld

STRATEGIC IT NETWORKING PARTNER

NETWORK WORLD Unified communications

The second coming Unified communications, efficient, cost-efficient and simple enough to use now, has emerged as a strategic priority for CIOs this year.

46

MARCH 2012

Ǥ Ǥ

F

ǡ ϐ

ǡ ǡ ǡ ϐ ǡ ǡ

ǤǤǤ ǡ ǡ ǡ ǡ Ǥ ǡ

technology has been rather theoretical ǡ ǯ Ǧ ǡ Ǥ Dz is increasing interest from enterprises across the region in understanding the ǡ ǡ applications based on their business and

Nidal Abou-Ltaif, VP of Emerging Markets, Avaya)

ǡdz Ǧ ǡ ǡ Ǥ

ȋ Ȍ ǡ Ǥ

Ǥ ǡ

ǡ

Ǥ Dz ǡ

Ǥ

ǡ ϐ Ǥ ϐ Ǥ ǡ supporting business process acceleration ǡ ǡ ǡ Ǥdz

Most industry analysts predict 2012 is going to change the fortunes and the impact ϐ

Ǥ

mobility and social media shaping the Ǥ Dz

ϐ Ǥ ǡ ǡ

More companies are developing strategies to engage with customers using social networking in recognition of its influence. But they are struggling with compliance issues, security and governance, as well as how to integrate successfully social networking tools with existing communications tools.

Ǥ Ǥ

Hani Nofal, Integrated Networking and Site Services director, Gulf Business Machines

Ǥ

Ǧ ǡdz Ǥ Ǧ Ǥ Dz

ϐ Ǥ ǡ mobility means more than having persistent ǡ Ǧ ǡ Ǣ ǯ ǡ access to the information and applications ǡ ǯ ǡ on the corporate server, or customer ȋ Ȍ Ǥdz ʹͲͳʹ

Ǥ Dz ǡ and a boom in the use of video solutions on mobile devices, and in social media business ǡdz ǡ ǡ Ǥ ǡ ǡ

MARCH 2012

47

NETWORK WORLD Unified communications

—Â?‹Ď?‹‡† …‘Â?Â?—Â?‹…ƒ–‹‘Â?• ‡Â?˜‹”‘Â?Â?‡Â?–Ǥ ‹ƒ —Ž ÂƒÂœÂƒÂˆÂƒÂ”Â›ÇĄ ‘Ž—–‹‘Â?• ƒÂ?ÂƒÂ‰Â‡Â”ÇĄ ĆŹ ‘ŽŽƒ„‘”ƒ–‹‘Â?• ƒ– Â—ÂƒÂ™Â‡Â‹ÇĄ ’‘‹Â?–• ‘—– …—•–‘Â?‡”• ™ƒÂ?– ‰”‡ƒ–‡” Ď?Ž‡š‹„‹Ž‹–› ƒÂ?† †‘ Â?‘– ™ƒÂ?–‡† –‘ „‡ –‹‡† †‘™Â? –‘ ‘Â?‡ ˜‡Â?†‘”Ǥ Dz Â? –Š‡ Â’ÂƒÂ•Â–ÇĄ ˜‡Â?†‘”• Šƒ† ƒ Šƒ„‹– ‘ˆ ’—•Š‹Â?‰ –Š‡‹” •‘Ž—–‹‘Â?• –‘ …”‡ƒ–‡ Â?ƒ”Â?‡– Â?‡‡†Ǥ Š‡ ”‘Ž‡• Šƒ˜‡ ”‡˜‡”•‡† Â?‘™ –ŠƒÂ?Â?• –‘ ‹Â?…”‡ƒ•‹Â?‰Ž› Â–Â‡Â…ÂŠÇŚÂ•ÂƒÂ˜Â˜Â› …—•–‘Â?‡”• ‹Â? –Š‡ ”‡‰‹‘Â? ™Š‘ Šƒ˜‡ ƒ ‰”‡ƒ–‡” —Â?†‡”•–ƒÂ?†‹Â?‰ ‘ˆ ™Šƒ– –Š‡› Â?‡‡† –‘ •—‹– –Š‡‹” „—•‹Â?॥ ”‡“—‹”‡Â?‡Â?–•Ǥ —•–‘Â?‡”• —Â?†‡”•–ƒÂ?† –Šƒ– –Š‡› …ƒÂ? Â?ƒÂ?‡ •ƒ˜‹Â?‰• ˆ”‘Â? …‘Â?„‹Â?‹Â?‰ ’”‘†—…–• ™‹–Š Â?—Ž–‹’Ž‡ ˜‡Â?†‘”•Ǥ ‡Â?†‘”• Â?‡‡† –‘ –ƒ‹Ž‘” ‹–• ‰‘nj–‘njÂ?ƒ”Â?‡– •–”ƒ–‡‰› –‘ Ď?‹– „—•‹Â?॥ ’”‘…‡••‡• Č‚ –ƒ‹Ž‘”

TOP UC PREDICTIONS FOR 2012 Here are some of our top predictions for 2012, looking at expected trends for telepresence, wireless substitution, cloud-based unified communications, BYOD and fixed mobile convergence.

Since telepresence solutions have become less expensive, we expect to see increasing use of HD video communications across all market segments -- including B2B, C2C and B2C. Video traffic will continue to grow on public IP networks, leaving traffic engineers to consider video first, data second and voice third when it comes to managing bandwidth consumption.

Eventually, video will replace voice calls as a preferred real-time communications medium, though we don't expect that to happen in 2012.

More businesses -- and in particular more small businesses -- will "cut the cord" to wireline voice services, eventually mirroring the trend among consumers. While consumers continue to convert to VoIP-based service offers from cable companies and telcos sold as "digital voice," consumers will also continue their cord-cutting.

Server-based architectures have already evolved into cloud-based "communications as a service" (CaaS), along with emerging "unified communications as a service," or UCaaS. Cloud

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„—•‹Â?॥ ’”‘…‡••‡• –‘ Ď?‹– ÇĄÇł Š‡ ƒ††•Ǥ There  are  couple  of  factors  that  enterprise  managers  need  to  bear  in  mind  ™Š‡Â? …‘Â?•‹†‡”‹Â?‰ †‡’Ž‘›Â?‡Â?–•Ǥ Â?‡ Â?‡› “—‡•–‹‘Â? ‹• ™Šƒ– ‡š‹•–‹Â?‰ ‹Â?ˆ”ƒ•–”—…–—”‡ …ƒÂ? •—’’‘”– ƒÂ?† ™Š‡–Š‡” –Š‡› Â?‡‡† ‡š–‡Â?•‹˜‡ ƒÂ?† ‡š’‡Â?•‹˜‡ —’‰”ƒ†‡•Ǥ Dz ‡ understand  in  tough  economic  times  …‘Â?’ƒÂ?‹‡• ƒ”‡ Ž‘‘Â?‹Â?‰ ˆ‘” ‹Â?‡š’‡Â?•‹˜‡ ™ƒ›• –‘ •—’’‘”– –Š‡‹” ‹Â?’Ž‡Â?‡Â?–ƒ–‹‘Â?Ǥ ˜ƒ›ƒ understands  that  in  tough  economic  times  …‘Â?’ƒÂ?‹‡• ƒ”‡ Ž‘‘Â?‹Â?‰ ˆ‘” ‹Â?‡š’‡Â?•‹˜‡ ™ƒ›• –‘ •—’’‘”– –Š‡‹” Ǥ ‡ „‡Ž‹‡˜‡ –Šƒ– „—•‹Â?‡••‡• Â?‡‡† –‘ Ž‡ƒ˜‡ ‡š‹•–‹Â?‰ Â?—Ž–‹nj ˜‡Â?†‘” ‡“—‹’Â?‡Â?– ƒÂ?† ƒ’’Ž‹…ƒ–‹‘Â?• ‹Â? ’Žƒ…‡ ƒÂ?† „”‹Â?‰ ‹Â? –Š‡ „‡Â?‡Ď?‹–• ƒÂ?† •‹Â?’Ž‹…‹–›

Daniel Weisbeck, VP of Marketing, Polycom

based CaaS and UCaaS are both ideally suited for the small business owner who wants or needs the UC&C features but who doesn't have the resources for a premise-based solution, so we predict heightened competition for market share in the SMB segment as carriers evolve these portfolios. We predict continued growth of UC features across all market segments, especially as many of these "come standard" with premisebased VoIP systems and hosted VoIP services.

The "bring your own device" (BYOD) trend will continue as enterprise networks adapt, supporting mobile devices like smartphones and tablet computers that employees initially purchase as consumer electronics.

While mobile voice communications will continue to use the legacy voice networks, we'll hold out hope for the third year running that we'll start to see VoIP supported on 4G LTE data channels, enabling more complete integration of fixed mobile communications (FMC). We believe that FMC may represent the biggest opportunity for change in the UC&C ecosystem because effective FMC integration is increasingly a key to successful UC&C deployment and because applications integration represents the biggest void in FMC, leaving plenty of room for improvement when it comes to integrating critical business applications and content access as part of FMC.

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‘ˆ ’‡Â? –ƒÂ?†ƒ”† ƒ”…Š‹–‡…–—”‡ –‘ †”‹˜‡ •‹‰Â?‹Ď?‹…ƒÂ?– ƒÂ?† ”ƒ’‹† ”‡–—”Â? ‘Â? ‹Â?˜‡•–Â?‡Â?–ǥdz •ƒ›• „‘—nj –ƒ‹ˆǤ ‘…Š —”ƒ‹Â?‡ǥ ‹”‡…–‘”nj –”ƒ–‡‰‹… ‘Ž—–‹‘Â?•ǥ ÂŽÂ…ÂƒÂ–Â‡ÂŽÇŚ —…‡Â?– Â?–‡”’”‹•‡ǥ •ƒ›• ƒŽŽ …‘Â?˜‡”‰‡† ‹Â?ˆ”ƒ•–”—…–—”‡ •Š‘—Ž† ™‘”Â? ƒÂ?† •—’’‘”– ÇĄ ƒÂ?† –Š‡ Ď?‹”•– •–‡’ ‹• –‘ Â?‘˜‡ –‘ ƒ …‘Â?˜‡”‰‡† ‹Â?ˆ”ƒ•–”—…–—”‡Ǥ Dz ‡ …ƒÂ? migrate  any  traditional  infrastructure  at  the  ’ƒ…‡ ‘ˆ –Š‡ …—•–‘Â?‡” Â?‹š‹Â?‰ ÇĄ ƒÂ?† –‡…ŠÂ?‘Ž‘‰‹‡• —’ –‘ ƒ ÂˆÂ—ÂŽÂŽÇŚĎ?Ž‡†‰‡† …‘”‡ Â?—Ž–‹Â?‡†‹ƒ …‘Â?Â?—Â?‹…ƒ–‹‘Â? ‹Â?ÂˆÂ”ÂƒÂ•Â–Â”Â—Â…Â–Â—Â”Â‡ÇĄÇł he  says. ƒ”Šƒ– ŠƒÂ?ÇĄ ”‘†—…– ƒÂ?ÂƒÂ‰Â‡Â”ÇĄ ’–‹Â?—• ‡…ŠÂ?‘Ž‘‰› ĆŹ ‡Ž‡…‘Â?Â?—Â?‹…ƒ–‹‘Â?•ǥ advocates  a  phased  approach.  He  says  it  ‹• ’”‹Â?ƒ”› „‡…ƒ—•‡ ™Š‡Â? ‹• …‘—’Ž‡† ™‹–Š …‘ŽŽƒ„‘”ƒ–‹‘Â? Â?‡‡†• –Š‡Â? †‹ˆˆ‡”‡Â?– independent  platform  offering  the  features  •—…Š ˜‹†‡‘ ƒÂ?† •‘…‹ƒŽ Â?‡†‹ƒ ™‹ŽŽ „‡ ”‡“—‹”‡† as  initial  heavy  investments.  There  are  also  other  alternatives  to  Žƒ”‰‡ …ƒ’‹–ƒŽ ƒÂ?† ‘’‡”ƒ–‹‘Â?ƒŽ ‡š’‡Â?†‹–—”‡• ˆ‘” ÂŠÂƒÂ”Â†Â™ÂƒÂ”Â‡ÇĄ •‘ˆ–™ƒ”‡ ƒÂ?† •—’’‘”–Ǥ Dz ƒÂ?› „—•‹Â?‡••‡• ƒ”‡ ‡š’Ž‘”‹Â?‰ ‘—–•‘—”…‹Â?‰ǥ •‘ˆ–™ƒ”‡ ĥ ƒ •‡”˜‹…‡ Č‹ ƒƒ ČŒ ƒÂ?† Â?ƒÂ?ƒ‰‡† •‡”˜‹…‡• ˆ‘” …”‹–‹…ƒŽ ˆ—Â?…–‹‘Â?•Ǥ Š‡ „‡Â?‡Ď?‹–• ‹Â?…Ž—†‡ Â?Â?‘™Â?ÇĄ Â?ƒÂ?ƒ‰‡ƒ„Ž‡ …‘•–•ǥ Â?‘ Â—Â’ÇŚÂˆÂ”Â‘Â?– …ƒ’‹–ƒŽ ‡š’‡Â?•‡ǥ …—””‡Â?– ˜‡”•‹‘Â?• ƒÂ?† •—’’‘”– ˆ‘” Šƒ”†™ƒ”‡ ƒÂ?†

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NETWORK WORLD Unified communications

Â•Â‘ÂˆÂ–Â™ÂƒÂ”Â‡ÇĄ ƒÂ?† ƒ••—”‡† Ž‡˜‡Ž• ‘ˆ Â“Â—ÂƒÂŽÂ‹Â–Â›ÇĄ ”‡Ž‹ƒ„‹Ž‹–› ƒÂ?† ƒ˜ƒ‹Žƒ„‹Ž‹–›Ǥ Â? —Â?…‡”–ƒ‹Â? times,  outsourcing  is  proving  to  be  a  viable  alternative  to  buying,  installing  and  Â?ƒ‹Â?–ƒ‹Â?‹Â?‰ Â?‡™ ‹Â?ˆ”ƒ•–”—…–—”‡ –‘ •—’’‘”– ÇĄ ‡•’‡…‹ƒŽŽ› ˆ‘” •Â?ƒŽŽ ƒÂ?† Â?‡†‹—Â? „—•‹Â?‡••‡•ǥdz •ƒ›• ‘ˆƒŽǤ Though  options  abound  for  enterprises  Ž‘‘Â?‹Â?‰ –‘ ‰‡– ‘Â? –Š‡ „ƒÂ?†™ƒ‰‘Â?ÇĄ ‘Â?‡ –”‹…Â?› ƒ•’‡…– ƒ••‘…‹ƒ–‡† ™‹–Š †‡’Ž‘›Â?‡Â?– ‹• Â…Â‘Â•Â–ÇŚÂŒÂ—Â•Â–Â‹Ď?‹…ƒ–‹‘Â? ƒÂ?† †‡Â?‘Â?•–”ƒ–‹‘Â? ‘ˆ Ǥ ‘•– ‘ˆ –Š‡ Â?‡› „‡Â?‡Ď?‹–• ‘ˆ •—…Š ĥ ‹Â?’”‘˜‡Â?‡Â?– ‹Â? employee  productivity  are  hard  to  measure  in  cold  dollar  terms.  ƒœƒˆƒ”› ˆ”‘Â? —ƒ™‡‹ ƒ‰”‡‡• –Šƒ– companies  are  delaying  adoption  because Â

‹• Šƒ”† –‘ †‡Â?‘Â?•–”ƒ–‡ „—– •ƒ›• –Š‡”‡ really  is  no  single  magic  formula  for  …ƒŽ…—Žƒ–‹Â?‰ ‘Â? ‹Â?˜‡•–Â?‡Â?–Ǥ Dz Š‡ ƒÂ?•™‡” ™‹ŽŽ ˜ƒ”› ™‹†‡Ž› „ƒ•‡† ‘Â? –Š‡ „—•‹Â?॥ ‰‘ƒŽ• ‘ˆ …‘Â?’ƒÂ?‹‡•ǥ ƒÂ?† Š‘™ ™‹†‡Ž› –Š‡› ™ƒÂ?– –‘ ƒ†‘’– Ǥ – …ƒÂ? ”ƒÂ?‰‡ ˆ”‘Â? ƒ •‹Â?’Ž‡ •›•–‡Â? ‹Â? ‘Â?‡ ‘ˆĎ?‹…‡ Ž‘…ƒ–‹‘Â? –‘ ƒ Â?‘”‡ ˆ—ŽŽ› Ď?Ž‡†‰‡† ’”‘Œ‡…– ‹Â?–‡‰”ƒ–‹Â?‰ ‹Â?–‘ Â˜Â‘Â‹Â…Â‡ÇĄ ˜‹†‡‘ ƒÂ?† †ƒ–ƒ

FIVE REASONS TO SETUP UC Here’s why your company should invest in UC. 1. You’ll reduce costs in the long run.

While implementing a UC strategy requires planning, an investment in new equipment, and considerable setup, the end result reduces costs for management as well as for phone services, fax machines, video conferencing, instant messaging, and so forth. With all of these now running over your Internet connection, you may need a faster or more reliable data pipeline, but that should cost less than multiple phone and fax lines.

2. It’s easier for IT staff to keep one system running.

With unified communications, you typically manage systems through a single interface.

Rather than monitoring multiple systems,

50

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MARCH 2012

Â?‡–™‘”Â?• ƒ…”‘•• Â?—Ž–‹’Ž‡ •‹–‡•ǥ •‘ –Š‡”‡ ‹• ‡Â?‘”Â?‘—• ˜ƒ”‹ƒ–‹‘Â? ‹Â? Ǥdz „‘—nj –ƒ‹ˆ ˆ”‘Â? ˜ƒ›ƒ ‘ˆˆ‡”• ƒ †‹ˆˆ‡”‡Â?– ’‡”•’‡…–‹˜‡ ÇŁ Dz Â?ŠƒÂ?…‡† Â’Â”Â‘Â†Â—Â…Â–Â‹Â˜Â‹Â–Â›ÇĄ employee  retention,  cost  reductions  from  staff  travel,  are  just  some  of  the  factors Â

–Šƒ– Ž‡ƒ†‡”• …ƒÂ? …‘Â?•‹†‡” ™Š‹Ž‡ …‘•– Œ—•–‹ˆ›‹Â?‰ ƒ •›•–‡Â?Ǥ ˜ƒ›ƒ Šƒ• •‡‡Â? –Šƒ– ‘˜‡” –Š‡ Žƒ•– –Š”‡‡ Â›Â‡ÂƒÂ”Â•ÇĄ ™‹–Š …‘Â?–‹Â?—‘—• ‡†—…ƒ–‹‘Â?ÇĄ ‘”‰ƒÂ?‹œƒ–‹‘Â?• ƒ”‡ ”‡ƒŽ‹œ‹Â?‰ –Š‡ „‡Â?‡Ď?‹–• ‘ˆ ĥ ‹• ‡˜‹†‡Â?– ‹Â? •‘Â?‡ •—……‡••ˆ—Ž †‡’Ž‘›Â?‡Â?–• –Šƒ– ™‡ Šƒ˜‡ •‡‡Â? in  the  region.  Also  based  on  Avaya  customer  …ƒ•‡ •–—†‹‡•ǥ ‹Â?njŠ‘—•‡ …‘Â?ˆ‡”‡Â?…‹Â?‰ ƒÂ?† …‘ŽŽƒ„‘”ƒ–‹‘Â? –‘‘Ž• –ƒÂ?‡ ƒ†˜ƒÂ?–ƒ‰‡ ‘ˆ ‹Â?–‡”Â?ƒŽ Â?‡–™‘”Â?• ƒÂ?† Â?ƒ› ’”‘˜‹†‡ —’ –‘ ƒ ͜Ͳnj͸ͲΨ Ǥdz ‡‹•„‡…Â? ˆ”‘Â? ‘›Ž…‘Â? ‘ˆˆ‡”• ƒ –‹’ ˆ‘”

• …‘Â?•‹†‡”‹Â?‰ ÇŁ Dz —”‹Â?‰ –Š‡ …‘Â?–‹Â?—‹Â?‰ ‰Ž‘‘Â?› ‡…‘Â?‘Â?‹… ‘—–Ž‘‘Â?ÇĄ …‘•– …‘Â?–”‘Ž ‹• Â?‡› ĥ „—†‰‡–• ‰‡– –‹‰Š–‡” ƒÂ?† ‡˜‡”›‘Â?‡ •–”‹˜‡• –‘ „‡ Ž‡ƒÂ?‡” ƒÂ?† ‡ˆĎ?‹…‹‡Â?–Ǥ Ž‡ƒ†‡”• Â?‡‡† –‘ ‹ŽŽ—•–”ƒ–‡ –Š‡ Â…Â‘Â•Â–ÇŚÂ•ÂƒÂ˜Â‹Â?‰ ƒÂ?† „—•‹Â?॥ ‰ƒ‹Â?• ˆ”‘Â? ƒÂ?† Â?‡‡† –‘ ‘Â?Ž› Š‹‰ŠŽ‹‰Š– ‹–• ‰”‘™‹Â?‰ ’‘’—Žƒ”‹–› ĥ Â’Â”Â‘Â‘ÂˆÇ¤Çł

ˆ –Š‡ ”‡…‡Â?– ‹Â?†—•–”› •—”˜‡›• ƒ”‡ ƒÂ?›–Š‹Â?‰ –‘ ‰‘ „›ǥ –Š‡”‡ ‹• „‹‰ …Š—Â?Â? ‘ˆ ‡Â?–‡”’”‹•‡• ‹Â? –Š‡ ‹††Ž‡ ƒ•– ’ŽƒÂ?Â?‹Â?‰ –‘ ‹Â?’Ž‡Â?‡Â?– ™‹–Š‹Â? –Š‡ Â?‡š– –™‘ –‘ –Š”‡‡ years,  enticed  by  the  productivity  gains  ƒÂ?† ‹Â?’”‘˜‡† ”‡•’‘Â?•‡ –‹Â?‡•Ǥ ‘— …ƒÂ? ‘Â?Ž› ‹‰Â?‘”‡ ƒ– ›‘—” ‘™Â? ’‡”‹ŽǤ

there’s only one to manage. Likewise, since all communications run through the Internet, you won’t have to diagnose and distinguish between problems with a data or phone network--or worry about esoteric phone equipment.

is essential. Rather than separately backing up email, instant messaging, faxes, voicemails, and documents, a unified communications system will let you set up one solution that backs up and archives everything.

3. Users spend less time dealing with separate programs.

While users need to be trained on the UC system, accessing all correspondence in one inbox will make their lives easier. For example, rather than opening an email, printing the results, and faxing them to send an order to a vendor, they can print the email directly to a fax server. They’ll be able to listen to voicemail messages on any computer and forward them to other team members as easily as forwarding an email.

5. Your users will become more agile, and better able to respond.

Since users can access a UC system via Web browser, they can work from their desk, a smartphone, a wireless device, and nearly any computer. Location-aware services will allow other users to reach team members whether they’re working at home, on the road, or at a customer’s location.

Implementing unified communications takes research, planning, work, and training, but done carefully, the end result is worthwhile. Advances in integration of data and voice systems, as well as management interfaces, make it increasingly attractive.

Rock Murain, Director-Strategic Solutions, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise

4. Backing up and archiving is much easier.

Given the many regulatory requirements for ensuring that emails, instant messages, and faxes are securely stored and archived, a backup and archiving system

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CLOUD MEETS

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StorageAdvisor

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

STORAGE ADVISOR Working with legacy systems

Old but worthy Companies can work to ensure they get productivity from their existing storage investments, but this would have to be done in a proactive manner.

I

t is all great for the average vendor, with the latest products, to rain scorn on anything that was launched six months before the latest invention.

And it is all wonderful that the newest solution on the block could prove to be the panacea for troubles that have been plaguing the CIO. That’s all great – but the truth of the matter is that most organisations have to contend with shrinking budgets, and often have to do with the legacy systems that they have already invested in. In other words, they have to stretch the life expectancy of the infrastructure, and this happens in storage solutions as often as it does anywhere else.

“Enterprises today spend as much as three times managing the storage infrastructure than the actual cost of the

54

Computer News Middle East

MARCH 2012

storage investment. This is mainly because they leverage only 10% -­‐ 15% of features available on their enterprise storage systems.

The productivity of a storage system can be measured by examining its utilisation (capacity and performance), as well as how easy it is to setup and manage,” says Muhammad Salama, technology consultants manager at EMC UAE. “For too many enterprises in the Middle East, storage resources are going to waste.

Sometimes it seems capacity is rarely in the right place when it is needed most. Disks that are captive to some servers may go under-­‐ utilised, while other servers can frequently run of out space. In environments with so ϐ ǡ ϐ forecasting and planning for storage growth.

Problems can be further exacerbated because adding or redeploying disks drives can often

www.cnmeonline.com

be accompanied by down time,” says Basil Ayass, enterprise product manager at Dell Middle East.

Struggling with achieving higher productivity out of existing systems can be complicated by the growing volumes of data that organisations have to contend with.

Says Salama “The biggest challenge that almost every organisation faces today is the exponential growth rate, year over year, of the amount of information they have to manage. Just to put the scale of this problem into perspective, analyst IDC predicts that during the next decade, the amount of information IT organisations will have to deal with will grow 44 times with more than 80% of it being unstructured information while, during the same period, the number of skilled resources to manage this information will increase by no more than 50%.”

For too many enterprises in the Middle East, storage resources are going to waste. Sometimes it seems capacity is rarely in the right place when it is needed most. Disks that are captive to some servers may go under-utilised, while other servers can frequently run of out space.” resources today are wasted on just keeping the lights on, while less than 30% is available for innovation and new initiatives that could bring true value to the business.”

He continues, “So, are the data centres of today ready to cope with this tremendous growth? Absolutely not! When we look at the way those data centres were built, with isolated silos of incompatible infrastructure, components centered around individual projects or business units, we immediately realise that they are ǡ ϐ with this type of growth. As a matter of fact, more than 70% of the budgets and

Changing the pattern Despite what might appear to be a gloomy predicament, organisations can still do a lot internally in order to capitalise on their existing investments.

“We recommend IT departments to have proactive planning sessions with internal IT customers and user groups well ahead in time. This allows enterprise IT managers to plan ahead and map out methods of extracting incremental value from existing investments. Often, new business units, new products and new processes within the organisation put IT departments on a back-­‐ foot. This puts existing infrastructure plans ǡ ϐ Ǧ ϐ ǡ un-­‐scalable infrastructure. Proactive capacity planning, trend analysis and optimisation processes are the key,” says Salama.

Ayass adds, “Traditional storage area networks (SANs), built on mainframe-­‐ ǡ ǯ ϐ or scalable enough to handle changing business needs and rapid data growth.

IT departments have tended either to

Enterprises today spend as much as three times managing the storage infrastructure than the actual cost of the storage investment. This is mainly because they leverage only 10% - 15% of features available on their enterprise storage systems.” www.cnmeonline.com

over-­‐ or under-­‐estimate required capacity, resulting respectively in excessive up-­‐front expenditure, or awkward and time-­‐ consuming upgrades later. Either way, it’s simply not cost-­‐effective.”

“What’s needed is an intelligent ϐ and in real time to users’ needs, within an architecture that can accommodate ϐ changes,” he states.

Salama adds, “To realise the full potential and improve productivity from storage infrastructure investments we recommend using feature such as virtual provisioning, de-­‐duplication and compression, and fully automated storage tiering (FAST). Virtual provisioning reduces storage administration effort while maximising storage resource utilisation without impacting performance of business applications. Intelligent de-­‐ duplication and compression is also best used on data backup and archival systems to further rationalise storage investments.

De-­‐duplication and compression on primary storage also helps delay storage purchases whilst highly utilising existing investments in a company.”

FAST lowers overall cost, while simplifying management of storage infrastructure. EMC’s FAST technology automates the dynamic allocation and relocation of data across storage tiers based on the changing storage performance requirements of applications. FAST helps ϐ Ǧ Ǧ box tiered storage by optimising cost and performance requirements to put the right data, on the right tier, at the right time,” adds Salama.

MARCH 2012

Computer News Middle East

55

STORAGE ADVISOR Working with legacy systems

Alternate options Apart from looking to capitalise on existing storage options, organisations can look into innovative ways of data storage as well, including the likes of cloud storage.

“If we’re talking about information retrieval and not about instant access to information, external storage is also an option. However, given the nature of this type

of storage, advanced encryption mechanisms should be set in place in order to mitigate the damage in case of loss or theft,” points out from BitDefender.

Whether the organisation of today decided to work its existing systems in order to gain more from them, whether it takes the plunge and chooses a partner in a managed service provider, or even if it goes all out for

cloud storage, the truth is that productivity on storage systems has to be continually monitored, and best practices used wisely in order to gain more from the investment on an on-­‐going basis.

The growing data deluge has little time ϐ ǡ ϐ the receiving end of market forces.

centre everything needs to see everything. Changes happen minute by minute, sometimes automatically, and not driven by humans. As a consequence, the storage environment needs to be flexible enough to adapt to those changes without a major upgrade or outage. This is being driven by scale-out application processing, server virtualisation and document collaboration, as well as the overall growth in file systems. The rapid pace of change, compounded by the realities of cost containment, means that maintaining simplicity in the storage system becomes a critical feature.

One of the most efficient means of simplification is to reduce the amount of variables being managed to one. In this case that variable is the storage system. To develop a single system that can still scale to meet the capacity and performance needs of the data centre requires a shift in architectures to one that matches the rest of the data centre.

A scale-out model is well suited to meet this challenge.

Scale-out models are now dominant in the data centre. Application processing has long since mastered the art of leveraging multiple processors and now extends across multiple servers. Data in the high performance computing space will have dozens or more servers processing the same data simultaneously. This data is not always contained in a database, it’s often a series of files that must be processed rapidly to determine a result. Server virtualisation, to be truly effective, requires that VMs sometimes be moved between physical hosts to increase availability or balance resource utilisation. These examples have the inverse storage demands to the demands that legacy storage was designed to address. Instead of creating walls between servers the goal in scaleout application architectures or the virtual server environment is to have all servers in the same open space, each able to access each other’s virtual machines as needed.

A STORAGE HISTORY

The legacy storage system was typically a dual-controller storage array or single NAS head designed to service a databaseheavy environment with some file sharing.

While classified as legacy it can also still be considered the default storage system choice.

When legacy storage was new, processors were expensive and storage software wasn’t scalable.

It was simpler to design software to support a single controller or NAS head with a redundant backup than it was to design a system that used multiple controllers simultaneously.

Legacy storage systems that were used in this fixed, monolithic application and storage environment were complex to configure, monitor and change. However, because of the fixed nature of the environment, once the initial implementation was done there were seldom changes to it. While those changes, when they did occur, required a herculean effort to implement, they were infrequent enough that the tasks could be completed. When legacy environments needed to be upgraded it was relatively simple to just add another separate storage system. Nothing was really shared anyway. The process of managing two separate systems was not much more complex than the complexity of managing a single system.

The legacy storage architecture of monolithic systems is a poor match for the data centre reality of today. Storage systems need to evolve to handle the “distributed everything” world of today.

The modern storage environment In the modern, virtualised and collaborative data

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Nothing speeds the pace of business like collaboration.

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SecurityAdvisor

SECURITY ADVISOR SIEM

Working to be stronger Many companies in the Middle East are missing out by not gaining valuable intelligence from threats. Security information and event management (SIEM) has arisen on the enterprise scene as the latest must-have in not only protecting your business environment, but providing you with tools to analyse each threat. Ben Rossi dissects the ins and outs of SIEM.

W

ϐ how many organisations in the Middle East are engaging in active SIEM, it’s no easy feat. Companies are notoriously, and understandably, reluctant to reveal any information about their security environments. As a result, when industry experts are quizzed on the subject, answers are quite varied.

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“Around 25% and that will double this year,” says Jude Pereira, MD at Nanjgel Solutions.

Bulent Teksoz, chief security strategist at Symantec, reckons more. “I think most of them right now either have a project running now or are thinking about running it,” he says.

Simon Carvalho, principal security architect at Paramount, draws upon the

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ǯ ϐ Ǥ ϐ introduce the concept of SIEM to the market in 2005 and in the last seven years has done around 30-­‐35 implementations.

“I would say there have been about 150 SIEM implementations in organisations from the Middle East. In terms of the number of organisations that have engaged in a true

active SIEM in the right manner, I would say probably only a handful, very low – less than 5%,” he says.

Explosion SIEM’s name derives from the convergence of the formerly disparate products of security information management (SIM) and security event management (SEM).

“It’s a centralised security monitoring technology where you can have all threats ϐ Ǥ SIEM you can rely on the single platform to understand your threat risks and security levels at any given time,” Pereira says Nicolai Solling, director of technology services at helpAG ME, refers to the “explosion” of security devices and solutions in the last few years leading to the necessity of SIEM to control the increase in “events”.

Jude Pereira, MD at Nanjgel Solutions

Dz ϐ care of network security and maybe an antivirus for the clients. But on top of that, today, we have things like IPS, quality of service devices and network access control devices,” Solling says.

“As we saw an explosion in all of these devices, we also had an explosion in the number of events. Each of these devices would feed in information and say, we have a problem. The security team needs to react to these. A SIEM solution is very important because it takes those events and analyses them based on the risks they present to the enterprise,” he adds.

Carvalho says SIEM provides insight into threats before, during and after an attack takes place.

“A lot of organisations in the Middle East invest a lot in security infrastructure, but unfortunately nobody is looking at the Ǥ ϐ generate 10 to 20 thousand lines of logs. It is manually not possible for a human being to sit and look at these,” he says.

“So if your organisation is going to be under attack, SIEM can give you a heads up on that. It gives you the ability to understand when an attack is going to happen. An effective SIEM solution also has the capability to give you real-­‐time information when an attack is happening. It tells you in real time how you were attacked, what is being attacked and what the impact is. A SIEM solution also makes it possible to investigate and understand what exactly happened during an attack. SIEM makes it possible to investigate exactly what happen after an attack occurs.

A lot of organisations in the Middle East invest a lot in security infrastructure, but unfortunately nobody is looking at the logs. On a typical day a typical firewall will generate 10 to 20 thousand lines of logs. It is manually not possible for a human being to sit and look at these.”

www.cnmeonline.com

Justin Doo, security practice director at Symantec MENA

Basic requirements Before starting out on a SIEM implementation, a company’s current security environment does not require much more than a basic existing infrastructure.

“Most enterprises have already invested ϐ a security perspective. The idea of a good SIEM is that it should be able to utilise the right technology that’s already within the business,” says Justin Doo, security practice director at Symantec MENA. Dz ϐ ǡ ǡ ǡ

ǡ ϐ basic things that need to be there before embarking on SIEM,” Carvalho says. Solling refers to these as “bread and butter” security requirements. “There’s no need to look at a SIEM solution if you haven’t matured as a security organisation already,” he adds.

Once all the security requirements are in place, it is time to choose a vendor. Pereira provides some insight into who the major vendors of SIEM are and what he believes they offer. Dz ϐ vendors, and then three more that are kind of jack-­‐of-­‐all, master-­‐of-­‐none. The vendors are very close, but each one is unique based on the concept, the architecture or where it started from. The top vendors in the SIEM

MARCH 2012

Computer News Middle East

61

SECURITY ADVISOR SIEM

space are RSA, Arcsight, NitroSecurity, Log Logic and Q1 Labs,” Pereira says.

“When you look at Log Logic, the name itself is an indicator of what they are, which is pioneers in log management. But in order to enter the SIEM space they needed some events management – so I would say they give customers 80% in log management and 20% in SIM. Nitro, on the other hand, are trying to become 50% SIM and 50% log, but they’re still not quite there. I would say Arcsight, Q1 Labs and RSA are the guys that have nearly got it right,” he adds.

Solling expands on the varying offerings of SIEM solutions from vendors.

“There are different levels of SIEM. There are companies that are just focused on log management who are now rebranding themselves as a SIEM solution providers, which is correct that they correlate logs and understand logs from different kinds of devices.However, they’re not necessarily a SIEM solution in the sense that they can add intelligence to how to react and report on a ϐ ǡdz Ǥ

Selection With different vendors offering different ǡ ϐ choose the right solution for their business.

Pereira says the lack of understanding

Simon Carvalho, principal security architect at Paramount

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organisations have on the subject of SIEM can lead to them making the wrong decision.

“Since the customer is not educated enough to understand and to qualify the vendor, he ends up going into, say, Axel Ops or EIQ Networks, which at the end of the day are not really correlation management tools. Since they can do a bit of security they convince a customer on that, and it’s only later that the customer realises that they’ve lost the value of SIEM,” he says.

All of the industry experts questioned on

ϐ do when choosing a SIEM vendor is to set down the objectives of what they want to achieve and expect from the solution.

“If your initiatives are purely compliance based then there are several SIEM solutions

Bulent Teksoz, chief security strategist at Symantec

A lot of organisations in the Middle East invest a lot in security infrastructures, but unfortunately nobody is looking at the logs. On a typical day a typical firewall will generate 10 to 20 thousand lines of logs. It is manually not possible for a human being to sit and look at these.” that can do that. If your objectives are to enhance existing security operations then there are fewer solutions that can do that,” Carvalho says. Dz ϐ time and money you can devote to the SIEM. There are some SIEM solutions that require you to have a lot of people dedicated, and some that can be managed with just one of two people. Also, a lot of time it makes sense to go for a solution from a vendor that you already have products from. Finally, all organisations should do a proof of concept before they buy a SIEM solution. They have to do trial, pilot and test what the best solution is,” he adds.

Doo says it is important to examine the track record and also training offerings of vendors. “You should look at how each vendor has evidenced success in similar implementations in the region or vertical

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markets similar to the one you are in. Then, since building a team internally is integral to getting the most out of the solution, for me the vendor should be able to help train those teams in terms of identifying possible organisational structures, and how to respond to and help rate critical incidents,” he says.

It is this “team” that is constantly emphasised in discussions with our SIEM experts as the most important aspect of making the solution successful, and the most common pitfall in failed implementations.

“It’s one thing to have a SIEM deployed, but it’s another to actually derive all of the information out of it. You need trained people that understand what it is they’re seeing and to benchmark that against the risk within the business. That is something that has traditionally been harder to achieve in the local market,” Doo says.

SECURITY ADVISOR SIEM

“People play a very important role. In order for companies to derive maximum ϐ

people, because at the end of the day these are the people that are managing the solution and taking action from what the solution tells you.

Human action is a necessity,” Teksoz adds.

Pereira believes that a lack of training will create further issues for organisations ϐ from SIEM. “The challenge is to be able to educate the customer. Often they are not trained enough to understand the technology and the engineers just say, that’s not the right way or let’s not do this thing, which can lead to problems,” he says.

Phased approach In terms of best practices, Carvalho says

Waseem Hattar, operations security manager at eHDF

implementing in stages is essential to get the most out of SIEM. “Start small and grow as you see success.

Start off with basic use cases that address your pinpoints and then try to integrate all the devices. Some organisations try to start off with everything and they end up getting lost. Get the main 20 to 50 pinpoints down and then address the next pinpoints in further stages,” he says.

“Any organisation looking to deploy SIEM has to integrate all devices under SIEM, but typically it is not possible for logistical reasons. Typically a medium sized organisation in the Middle East would have between 300 and 500 devices, so you should ϐ ǡ servers, databases and operating systems.

Then do things like business applications – it is very important to integrate these because that’s where you get the real value out of SIEM,” he adds.

Whilst undoubtedly requiring a lot of invested work and time for an organisation, if all devices are not integrated and all logs not collected, it will be a “wasted” solution, Carvalho says.

“Many organisations try to be stingy in SIEM and only want to collect certain important logs, but the problem with that is once you start collecting and analysing you won’t know what’s important. When the time of an investigation comes after an attack and you realise you weren’t collecting the right logs, then it will be a wasted process,” he says.

“You can’t make a SIEM solution better than the data it receives -­‐ you have to have support from the different departments

within the IT infrastructure -­‐ your server side, security side and client side. You need to make sure that you correlate information from everything,” Solling says.

Waseem Hattar, operations security manager at eHDF (eHosting DataFort), adds that companies must be prepared to completely commit to SIEM, as the costs and efforts to make it work will be high.

“The main challenge is the cost that can be very high even without management and engineering costs. Enterprises also need to remain updated with the current attacks and need to have a deep insight on creating alert rules on the system. If alerts are not generated, the SIEM system will only log data and archive the logs without any assessment,” Hattar concludes.

Source: Source: Gartner (2011)

BY THE NUMBERS

64

Nicolai Solling, director of technology service at help AG ME

$858m

$987m

15%

80%

Cost of SIEM market at the beginning of 2010

Cost of SIEM market at the end of 2010

Growth rate of SIEM market during 2010

Amount of initial deployments in North America funded to close a compliance gap

Computer News Middle East

MARCH 2012

www.cnmeonline.com

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+971 4 880 9022

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TelecomsWorld

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

TELECOMS WORLD Backhaul

More on the air With the advent of 4G, operators are being forced to revamp their backhaul strategies, or risk being left behind.

M

obile operators in the region are faced with key challenges that are driving the need for more bandwidth to the end-­‐user devices. This includes enhancing coverage spanning dense urban, suburban and rural areas, and in markets like the Middle East where pre-­‐paid services are dominant, value-­‐ added data services need to be geared to lower-­‐speed bandwidth. Another challenge is that potential exponential ϐ are enabled will not necessarily translate into higher data average revenue per user, and network OPEX will need to be carefully contained so that it does not ϐ demand growth.

The combination of these challenges means that operators need to offer scalable bandwidth but at tariff schedules that ϐ Ǧ

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Graham Owen, regional sales director, MEA & Turkey, Cambium Networks

ϐ Ǥ bandwidth in backhaul, operators will not be able to balance OPEX and CAPEX, and could

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ϐ Ǧ of being able to offer new multimedia-­‐rich wireless services because of incremental bandwidth constraints.

"Without such a transformation of the wireless backhaul, the promise of 3.5G and 4G systems such as LTE will not be feasible.

The emergence of bandwidth-­‐hungry devices such as Apple's 3G iPhone and Google's Android-­‐operating system-­‐based devices means that mobile operators need to begin the transformation to NGN in the backhaul urgently in order to avoid being branded as obsolete," says Bill Rojas, research director for IDC. .

IDC believes that in order to support high-­‐speed wireless services, operators will need to build scalable all-­‐IP backhaul which ϐ in the urban centres, as well as microwave backhaul and long-­‐haul dense wavelength division multiplexing (LH DWDM).

The implication of the exponential ϐ backhaul is daunting. “Mobile networks need to be prepared for large surges in data Ǥ ϐ increase and drive network investments, mobile operators are faced with the challenge of optimising their investment in mobile

technologies  including  backhaul,�  says  Hilal  Halaoui,  partner  with  Booz  &  Company.

Johan  Martensson,  chief  network  solutions  lead,  Ericsson,  offers  a  similar  perspective:  “As  the  offered  peak  capacities  increase  in  WCDMA/HSPA  and  with  the  introduction  of  LTE  –  the  backhaul  must  be  upgraded  accordingly.   Microwave  technology  handles  the  increased  capacity  in  the  Last  ‹Ž‡Ǥ Š‡”‡ ™‹ŽŽ „‡ ƒÂ? ‹Â?…”‡ƒ•‡† Â?‡‡† ‘ˆ Ď?‹„”‡ in  the  backhaul  networks  but  not  necessarily  all  the  way  to  the  base  stations.â€?

Today,  much  of  the  backhaul  discussions  centre  around  microwave,  which  has  played  a  prominent  role  in  mobile  backhaul  representing  nearly  50%  of  global  backhaul  deployments  historically.  Now,  the  question  is  what  will  be  the  impact  of  4G  technologies  on  microwave  backhaul.    “If  LTE  and  4G  were  to  evolve  using  mainly  macro  cell  network Â

Hilal Halaoui, partner, Booz & Company

access  architectures,  as  was  the  norm  in  the  past  decade  for  2G  and  3G  rollouts,  then  we  would  probably  see  a  slow  and  steady  decline  in  the  use  of  microwave  radio  technology  for  „ƒ…Â?ÂŠÂƒÂ—ÂŽÇĄ •‹Â?…‡ –Š‡ „—•‹Â?॥ …ƒ•‡ ˆ‘” Ď?‹„‡” build-­â€?outs  to  the  macro-­â€?cell  become  stronger  ƒ• –Š‡ –”ƒˆĎ?‹… ‹Â?Â…Â”Â‡ÂƒÂ•Â‡Â•ÇĄÇł •ƒ›• ƒƒ† ŠƒÂ?ÇĄ regional  marketing  director  for  Ciena.   Graham  Owen,  regional  sales  director  of  Cambium  Networks,  says  LTE  and  4G  will  have  no  negative  impact  on  microwave  radio  backhaul.  “In  the  future  backhaul  systems  designed  to  support  LTE  will  have  to  focus  more  on  higher  capacities  and  lower  latencies.  It  is  important  that  each  operator  look  at  backhauling  as  an  individual  merit.  Excessive  interference  can  take  down  a  backhaul  link.  It  is  imperative  that  the  backhaul  solution  be  engineered  to  mitigate  interference  as  much  as  possible.â€? – ƒ –‹Â?‡ ™Š‡Â? †ƒ–ƒ –”ƒˆĎ?‹… ‹• ‡š’Ž‘†‹Â?‰ǥ having  a  right  backhaul  strategy  is  a  matter  of  survival  for  mobile  operators.  An  operator  could  deploy  a  state-­â€?of-­â€?the-­â€?art  access  Â?‡–™‘”Â?ÇĄ ›‡– Â?‘– „‡Â?‡Ď?‹– ˆ”‘Â? ‹–• ˆ—ŽŽ ’‘–‡Â?–‹ƒŽ if  it  compromises  on  the  backhaul  technology.  “The  selection  of  backhaul  technologies  needs  to  be  an  integral  part  of  what  the  operator  plans  to  deliver  through  the  network.  Š‹Ž‡ Ď?‹„”‡ …‘—Ž† „‡ –Š‡ ‘’–‹Â?ƒŽ „ƒ…Â?Šƒ—Ž technology  from  a  performance  perspective,  several  factors  need  to  be  considered  when  developing  a  backhaul  strategy  including  existing  technologies,  cost  (capital  and  ‘’‡”ƒ–‹Â?‰ ‡š’‡Â?Â†Â‹Â–Â—Â”Â‡Â•ČŒÇĄ –”ƒˆĎ?‹… ‰”‘™–Šǥ —•‡” ’”‘Ď?‹Ž‡•ǥ ƒÂ?‘Â?‰ ‘–Š‡”•ǥdz •ƒ›• ƒŽƒ‘—‹Ǥ Meanwhile,  the  concept  of  operators  to  share  backhaul  facilities  is  also  gaining Â

In the future backhaul systems designed to support LTE will have to focus more on higher capacities and lower latencies. It is important that each operator look at backhauling as an individual merit. Excessive interference can take down a backhaul link. It is imperative that the backhaul solution be engineered to mitigate interference as much as possible.� www.cnmeonline.com

Johan Martensson, Chief Network Solutions Lead, Ericsson

traction.  “It  is  getting  more  and  more  popular  to  look  at  different  sharing  possibilities  to  reduce  Capex  and  Opex.   Different  parts  of  the  network  can  be  shared  and  several  business  models  can  be  used  for  sharing.    The  most  straight  forward  type  of  network  sharing  is  probably  site  and  cackhaul  sharing.    Since  site  and  backhaul  is  less  business  sensitive  than  radio  or  core  but  still  constitutes  a  fair  amount  of  the  network  cost  site  and  backhaul  sharing  is  a  natural  interest  area  of  mobile  operators,â€?  says  Martensson  from  Ericsson. Š‹Ž‡ …ƒ’ƒ…‹–› •Šƒ”‹Â?‰ ‘Â? Ď?‹„”‡ ‹• ˜‡”› common,  and  most  countries  looking  at  Ď?‹„”‡ Â?‡–™‘”Â?• ƒ– ƒ Â?ƒ–‹‘Â?ƒŽ ÂŽÂ‡Â˜Â‡ÂŽÇĄ ™Š‡”‡ one  network  is  shared  by  multiple  service  providers,  sharing  is  less  common  for  microwave.  “What  we  actually  observe  is  full  RAN  (Radio  Access  Network)  sharing  -­â€?  Microwave  backhaul  would  be  part  of  the  sharing  agreement.  Network  sharing  is  increasing  in  popularity,  especially  in  countries  with  large  geographies  and  low  average  revenue  per  user,â€?  says  Halaoui.

With  LTE  just  around  the  corner,  which  could  see  peak  capacity  of  more  than  100-­â€?150  Mbps  per  cell  site,  operators  who  choose  to  deploy  LTE  could  be  facing  huge  bandwidth  requirements  that  will  invariably  put  enormous  stress  on  the  existing  backhaul  and  transport  infrastructure.  Being  prepared  now  would  be  a  smart  choice  for  the  players  involved.     Â

MARCH 2012

Computer  News  Middle  East

69

TELECOMS WORLD Broadband networks

Four technologies for faster broadband Speeds in both mobile and fixed networks are set to increase in 2012

A

number of different technologies are being developed or improved ϐ mobile broadband networks, as operators are preparing to compete with each other ϐ ͵ resolutions, which is expected to happen this year.

Broadband speeds have arrived at the point where increasing them is a challenge ϐ as providers move toward offering 3D and other more advanced services. However, there are things that network providers can do, such as merging several links into

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one connection in both copper and mobile broadband networks.

But broadband speed isn't just about the connections in the "last mile." Equipment that connects users to a network, for example, mobile base stations, also needs to be able to keep up and not become a bottle neck. And raw capacity isn't the only way to increase speed -­‐-­‐ content delivery networks, which push content closer to the user so it can be obtained more quickly, will become more widely used, according to Ericsson.

In addition to those advances, these are four network technologies that are likely to become more important in 2011:

www.cnmeonline.com

10G GPON The use of PON (passive optical network) ϐ has grown in popularity in the last couple of years, thanks to lower costs compared to ϐ Ǥ technology calls for several households to share the same capacity, which is sent over a ϐ Ǥ Today's systems have an aggregate download capacity of 2.5G bps (bits per second). The move to 10G GPON increases that by a factor of four, hence the name. The technology is also capable of an upstream capacity of 10G bps, which is eight times

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DISCOVER?

QlikView’s Business Discovery approach delivers on the promise of BI by putting the business user in control. Unlike traditional BI, where just a few people are involved in insight creation, Business Discovery enables everyone to generate insight. It’s about workgroups, departments, and entire business units having access to the data they need to make better decisions.

With QlikView, businesses can take insight to the edges of their organization, enabling every business user to do their jobs smarter and faster than ever.

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TELECOMS WORLD Broadband networks

faster  than  current  networks.  The  increased  capacity  can  either  be  used  to  handle  more  users  or  increase  the  bandwidth.

Besides  broadband,  the  technology  is  also  being  pitched  for  mobile  backhaul  use. Í´ The  DSL  family  of  technologies  still  †‘Â?‹Â?ƒ–‡• –Š‡ Ď?‹š‡† „”‘ƒ†„ƒÂ?† ™‘”Ž†Ǥ ‘ ensure  that  operators  can  continue  to  use  their  copper  networks,  network  equipment  vendors  are  adding  some  new  technologies  to  VDSL2  to  increase  download  speeds  to  several  hundred  megabits  per  second To  boost  DSL  to  those  kinds  of  speeds,  the  vendors  are  using  a  number  ‘ˆ –‡…ŠÂ?‘Ž‘‰‹‡•Ǥ Â?‡ ™ƒ› ‹• –‘ •‡Â?† –”ƒˆĎ?‹… over  several  copper  pairs  at  the  same  time,  compared  to  traditional  DSL,  which  only  uses  one  copper  pair.  This  method  then  uses  a  technology  -­â€?-­â€?  called  DSL  Phantom  Mode  by  Alcatel-­â€?Lucent  and  Phantom  DSL  by  Nokia  Siemens  -­â€?-­â€?  that  can  create  a  third  virtual  copper  pair  that  sends  data  over  a  combination  of  two  physical  pairs.

However,  the  use  of  these  technologies  also  creates  crosstalk,  a  form  of  noise  that  degrades  signal  quality  and  decreases  bandwidth.  To  counteract  that,  vendors  are  using  a  noise-­�cancelling  technology  called  vectoring.  It  works  the  same  way  as  noise-­�cancelling  headphones,  continuously  analysing  the  noise  conditions  on  the  copper  cables,  and  then  creates  a  new  signal  to  cancel  it  out,  according  to  Alcatel-­�Lucent.

Just  like  10G  GPON,  it  is  also  being  pitched  as  an  alternative  for  mobile  backhaul.

The  rollout  of  LTE  (Long  Term  Evolution)  is  now  under  way  globally  and  at  the  last  count,  there  are  about   50  LTE  commercial  networks  in  operation  now.  The  bandwidth Â

and  coverage  operators  can  offer  depends  on  their  spectrum  holdings.

LTE  isn't  just  about  offering  higher  speeds  to  metropolitan  areas.  Take  Germany  for  instance,  the  government  has  mandated  –Šƒ– –Š‡ Â?‘„‹Ž‡ ‘’‡”ƒ–‘”• Ď?‹”•– —•‡ –Š‡ technology  to  offer  broadband  to  rural  areas.

Besides  higher  speed  networks  LTE  also  offers  lower  latencies,  which  will  help  accelerate  the  performance  of  real-­�time  applications  that  are  sensitive  to  delays,  including  VoIP  (Voice  over  Internet  Protocol)  video  streaming,  video  and  web  conferencing  and  gaming.

HSPA+ LTE  may  be  getting  most  of  the  attention, Â

Most cloud applications’ integration architecture is quite loosely coupled and based on a request or response model. Frequent polling is rarely a good idea, and tight integration loops (like two-phase commit) are tough.

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but  2011  has  been  a  banner  year  for  HSPA+  (High-­â€?Speed  Packet  Access).  Migration  to  HSPA+  has  been  a  major  trend  this  year  and  Â?‘”‡ –ŠƒÂ? ‘Â?‡ ‹Â? Ď?‹˜‡ ‘’‡”ƒ–‘”• Šƒ˜‡ commercially  launched  HSPA+  networks,  according  to  the  GSA. However,  today's  download  speeds  of  up  to  21M  bps  is  far  from  the  end  of  the  line  for  HSPA+.  Nine  operators  -­â€?-­â€?  including  Bell  Mobility  in  Canada  and  Telstra  in  Australia  -­â€?-­â€?  have  already  launched  services  at  42M  bps.  The  average  real-­â€?world  download  speed  is  7M  bps  to  14M  bps,  according  to  Bell.

To  get  to  that  speed,  operators  use  a  technology  called  DC-­�HSPA+,  also  known  as  Dual-­�Cell  HSPA+,  which  sends  or  receives  wireless  data  using  two  channels  simultaneously  at  speeds  of  up  to  42M  bps,  double  the  speed  possible  with  HSPA+.

More  than  30  DC-­â€?HSPA+  (42M  bps)  network  deployments  are  on-­â€?going  or  committed  to,  including  T-­â€?Mobile  in  the  U.S.  Ž•‘ǥ Ď?‹˜‡ ‘’‡”ƒ–‘”• Šƒ˜‡ ƒŽ”‡ƒ†› …‘Â?Â?‹––‡† to  84M  bps,  which  is  the  next  evolution  step  ˆ‘” –Š‡‹” ÎŞ Â?‡–™‘”Â?•ǥ –Š‡ Ď?‹”•– ‘ˆ ™Š‹…Š is  also  expected  to  arrive  this  year. Â

IntegrationAdvisor

INTEGRATION ADVISOR Contracts

Write it right Whether you like it or not, contracts are a necessary and unavoidable part of doing business. When mistakes are made, it can significantly impact the business you do. Ben Rossi speaks to industry experts to find out how you can get the right contract for you.

B

efore  going  into  the  process  of  forming  a  solid  contract,  it  is  important  to  understand  the  difference  between  a  contract  and  a  •‡”˜‹…‡ Ž‡˜‡Ž ƒ‰”‡‡Â?‡Â?– Č‹ ČŒÇ¤ Dz …‘Â?–”ƒ…– ‹• †‡Ď?‹Â?‡† ĥ ƒÂ? ƒ‰”‡‡Â?‡Â?– between  two  or  more  parties,  especially  one  that  is  written  and  enforceable  by  law. Â

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This  legal  document  outlines  the  services  provided,  duration,  cost,  resources,  approach,  assumptions,  etc,â€?  says  Dani  Mallouhi,  service  account  management  lead  at  eHDF  (eHosting  DataFort). “An  SLA  would  focus  on  the  quality  of  services  agreed  on  in  the  contract  by  setting  service  targets  and  measuring  performance Â

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of  the  different  service  levels.  SLAs  clarify  the  responsibilities  of  both  parties  during  service  period  and  may  include  different  elements  of  service  deliveries,  like  service  hours,  incident  handling,  change  requests,  problem  management,  penalties,  reports  and  escalations,â€?  he  adds.  ”ƒ˜‡‡Â? ‘‘˜ƒÂ?ÇĄ †‹”‡…–‘” ‘ˆ •‡”˜‹…‡ delivery  at  Emitac  Enterprise  Solutions,  „”‡ƒÂ?• –Š‡ †‡Ď?‹Â?‹–‹‘Â? ‘ˆ ƒ …‘Â?–”ƒ…– †‘™Â? –‘ “basically  a  sub  set  of  an  SLA.â€? “It  is  formed  on  a  particular  service  and  does  not  emphasise  the  overall  business  objective.  It  does  not  look  into  the  various  metrics  and  performance  objectives.  An  SLA  is  Â?‘– Œ—•– ‹Â?–‡Â?†‡† –‘ Ď?‹š ’”‘„Ž‡Â?• „‡–™‡‡Â? –™‘ parties,  it  is  a  mode  to  improve  communications  ƒÂ?† †‡Ď?‹Â?‡ ƒÂ? ƒ’’”‘ƒ…Š –‘ ƒ…Š‹‡˜‡ „—•‹Â?॥ ‘„Œ‡…–‹˜‡• ƒÂ?† ‰‘ƒŽ• –‘‰‡–Š‡”ǥdz ‘‘˜ƒÂ? •ƒ›•Ǥ “An  SLA  is  normally  used  as  a  measurement  tool  as  part  of  the  contract.  Another  reason  for  signing  an  SLA  is  that  it Â

could  be  revised  or  reviewed  based  on  the  requirement  of  the  customer,  eliminating  the  need  and  administrative  burden  of  reviewing  the  contract  frequently,�  he  adds.

Process ƒŽŽ‘—Š‹ ‹• •’‡…‹Ď?‹…ƒŽŽ› ‹Â?˜‘Ž˜‡† ™‹–Š • ƒ– eHDF.  He  provides  insight  into  the  process  of  forming  an  SLA,  which  he  says  can  come  in  two  forms.  “The  formation  of  an  SLA  starts  from  gaining  an  understanding  of  the  customer’s  IT  solution  requirement.  This  is  done  through  gathering  relevant  information  related  to  service  level  requirements  (SLRs).  The  SLA  is  built  and  customised  based  on  solution  requirements  and  the  kind  of  service  levels  required  by  the  client,â€?  he  says. “Typically  IT  managers  look  at  two  types  of  SLAs;  in  an  SLA  based  solution  the  customer  requires  high  service  levels  and  the  solution  is  built  based  on  the  level  of  services  required  by  the  customer.  Then  in  a  solution  based  SLA  the  customer  has  particular  requirements  and  probably  a  certain  budget  to  build  the  solution.  This  SLA  is  created  based  on  the  solution  desired  by  the  customer,â€?  he  adds.

Praveen Koovan, director of service delivery at Emitac Enterprise Solutions

‘‘˜ƒÂ? •ƒ›• ƒ– Â?‹–ƒ… –Š‡› ‹Â?‹–‹ƒŽŽ› present  a  draft  of  the  SLA  which  is  then  Ď?‹Â?‡nj–—Â?‡† „ƒ•‡† ‘Â? –Š‡ „—•‹Â?॥ ‘„Œ‡…–‹˜‡• the  customer  must  meet.  “After  the  scope  ‘ˆ •‡”˜‹…‡ ‹• †‡Ď?‹Â?‡†ǥ –Š‡ • ƒÂ?† Â?‡–”‹…• ™‹ŽŽ „‡ †‡Ď?‹Â?‡†Ǥ – ™‘—Ž† –Š‡Â? „‡ „‘—Â?† „› a  legal  contract  with  the  standard  terms  and  conditions,  description  of  the  services,  costs,  penalty  clauses  and  so  on.  Finally  after  multiple  reviews,  the  SLA  is  agreed  upon  by  both  the  parties,â€?  he  adds.  When  it  comes  to  forming  a  contract,  Amir  Sohrabi,  regional  alliance  manager  MEA  at  SAS,  says  it  is  mostly  about  ensuring  standard  aspects  of  a  contract  are  included,  but  he  also  gives  advice  in  forming  more  complex  contracts. “All  contracts  should  include  basic  elements  -­â€?  including  the  clear  offer,  the  acceptance  of  the  offer  on  account  of  the  terms  presented  and  the  ‘considerations’  for  the  agreement.  More  often  than  not,  the  latter  part  is  the  exchange  of  money  in  return  for  some  sort  of  value  or  product,  „—– …ƒÂ? ƒŽ•‘ „‡ ƒÂ? ‡š…ŠƒÂ?‰‡ ‘ˆ „‡Â?‡Ď?‹–• ƒÂ?† obligations,â€?  Sohrabi  says. “For  more  complex  contracts  that  involve  software  and  services,  it  is  recommended  to  always  sign  written  contracts  stipulating  the  extent  of  each  party’s  rights  and  obligations,  with  a  clear  underlining  of  what  will  happen  if  obligations  are  not  met,â€?  he  adds.  Team Vikram  Suri,  MD  at  Sage  Software  MEA,  says  it  is  important  to  consider  the  deliverance  of  the  contract  when  forming  it.  “We  look  at  the  technical  and  sales  related  business  volumes  and  the  potential  for  growth,  and  then  measure  the  partner’s  ability  to  perform  under  these  areas.  With  business  volume  we  look  at  new  business  and  what  the  business  partners  can  get  for  —•Ǥ Šƒ– ‹• ”‡ƒŽŽ› –Š‡ Ď?‹”•– •–‡’ǥdz Š‡ •ƒ›•Ǥ “We  then  write  the  contract  internally  ™‹–Š ‘—” Ď?‹Â?ƒÂ?…‡ ‰”‘—’ǥ ƒÂ?† †‡’‡Â?†‹Â?‰ ‘Â? how  big  the  contract  is  we  might  take  it  to  our  group  legal  level  and  then  make  a  commercial  call  on  signing  the  contract,â€?  Suri  adds.

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Dani Mallouhi, service account management lead at eHosting DataFort

These  different  departments  make  up  some  of  the  team  that  contribute  to  a  contract.  Suri  expands  on  this  to  give  the  full  scope  of  who  should  be  involved  in  forming  a  contract. “There  needs  to  be  someone  who  understands  the  legal  balance  of  what  is  mentioned  in  contracts  –  this  is  very  essential.  The  person  required  to  make  a  commercial  call  on  the  elements  of  the  contract  could  be  a  manager  of  the  business  or  manager  of  a  department  who  understands  the  commercial  obligations  under  that  contract.  The  other  people  who  should  be  part  of  this  team  would  be  the  stakeholders  from  the  different  departments  ™Š‘ †‹”‡…–Ž› ‘” ‹Â?†‹”‡…–Ž› ‹Â?Ď?Ž—‡Â?…‡ –Š‹• contract,â€?  he  says.

Â? –‡”Â?• ‘ˆ •ǥ ‘‘˜ƒÂ? •ƒ›• –Š‡•‡ agreements  cannot  be  formed  with  just  the  customer  IT  team. “There  should  be  people  from  the  business,  because  the  service  department  is  delivering  services  to  the  business  team.   Since  it  encompasses  technical  documents,  ’‡‘’Ž‡ ˆ”‘Â? –‡…ŠÂ?Â‹Â…ÂƒÂŽÇĄ Ž‡‰ƒŽ ƒÂ?† Ď?‹Â?ƒÂ?…‡ department  should  also  be  involved,â€?  he  says.  Adhering  to  the  contract Once  the  contract  or  SLA  is  completed,  the Â

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INTEGRATION ADVISOR Contracts

task  is  to  then  ensure  they  are  adhered  to.  For  contracts,  Suri  recommends  comprehensive  project  reviews. “For  us  contracts  are  actually  used  when  we  are  discussing  the  project  progress  and  therefore  the  review  and  discussion  at  the  time  of  meeting  milestones  in  the  contract  is  very  important  in  allowing  us  to  do  project  reviews  at  later  dates,â€?  he  says. ‘‘˜ƒÂ? •ƒ›• –Š‡ Â?ƒÂ?› • ÇŚ „ƒ•‡† on  the  business  objectives  -­â€?  that  comprise  an  SLA,  link  to  performance  metrics  which  allows  a  company  to  measure  how  well  objectives  are  being  achieved. “Working  on  these,  measuring  them  based  on  the  incident  and  collecting  relevant  ‹Â?ˆ‘”Â?ƒ–‹‘Â? ƒŽŽ‘™• —• –‘ Ď?‹Â?‡ –—Â?‡ –Š‡ performance  of  the  SLA,â€?  he  adds.

Making  a  mistake  when  forming  a  contract  can  prove  extremely  detrimental  and  pose  serious  implications  for  the  business,  so  avoid  overcomplicating  it.  “It  is  always  best  to  remember  that  a  contract’s  role  is  to  help  reduce  commercial  uncertainties.  In  doing  so,  we  should  take  note  of  three  linked  components  to  a  contract;  the  commercial  aspect,  which  includes  payments,  service  standards  and  support;  the  operational  aspect,  which  includes  deliverables,  timescales  and  methods;  and  the  legal  aspect,  which Â

Computer  News  Middle  East

MARCH 2012

Amir Sohrabi, regional alliance manager MEA at SAS

There needs to be someone who understands the legal balance of what is mentioned in contracts – this is very essential. The person required to make a commercial call on the elements of the contract could be a manager of the business or manager of a department who understands the commercial obligations under that contract. The other people who should be part of this team would be the stakeholders from the different departments who directly or indirectly influence this contract.â€? business  team  and  the  IT  team  of  the  customer,â€?  he  adds.  Challenges  can  also  arise  from  the  relevant  laws  that  affect  where  or  how  business  can  be  done  in  the  region. Â

‡‘‰”ƒ’Š‹…ƒŽ ƒÂ?† ‹Â?†—•–”›nj•’‡…‹Ď?‹… regulations  can  often  create  restrictions  in  –Š‡ †‡Ž‹˜‡”› ‘ˆ …‘Â?Â–Â”ÂƒÂ…Â–Â•ÇĄ ƒÂ?† ‹Â?Ď?Ž—‡Â?…‡ –Š‡ way  they  are  formed.  “A  key  challenge  is  to  be  aware  of  what  we  can  and  cannot  do  in  terms  of  business  for  each  country.  Understanding  this  gives  —• –Š‡ Ď?Ž‡š‹„‹Ž‹–› –‘ …”‡ƒ–‡ ”‡ƒ•‘Â?ƒ„Ž‡ objectives  to  be  stipulated  in  the  contract,  as  regulations  and  political  landscapes  can  change  overnight.  There  are  also  industry-­â€? •’‡…‹Ď?‹… ”‡‰—Žƒ–‹‘Â?• ™‡ •‘Â?‡–‹Â?‡• Šƒ˜‡

Vikram Suri, MD at Sage Software MEA

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‹Â?…Ž—†‡• ÇĄ …‘Â?Ď?‹†‡Â?Â–Â‹ÂƒÂŽÂ‹Â–Â›ÇĄ ™ƒ””ƒÂ?–‹‡•ǥ remedies  and  law,â€?  Sohrabi  says.  Challenges ‘‘˜ƒÂ? •ƒ›• ’‹–ˆƒŽŽ• ‹Â? ˆ‘”Â?‹Â?‰ • ‘ˆ–‡Â? originate  from  enterprises  failing  to  focus  on  the  business  objectives  and  to  incorporate  a  proper  scope  and  purpose. “The  challenge  is  to  get  proper  information  from  the  enterprises  before  an  SLA  is  drafted.  Internal  communication  between  the  customer  and  their  business  units  should  be  clear  and  in  sync.   They  should  work  together  to  identify  the  existing  problems  and  come  out  with  an  improvement  plan  to  achieve  –Š‡ „—•‹Â?॥ Â‘Â„ÂŒÂ‡Â…Â–Â‹Â˜Â‡ÇĄÇł ‘‘˜ƒÂ? •ƒ›•Ǥ “That  will  solve  most  of  the  problems.   The  initial  discussions  to  scope  the  SLA  should  be  jointly  done  with  the  system  integrators, Â

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to  bear  in  mind  –  for  example,  Lebanese  „ƒÂ?Â?• Â?—•– ‘„•‡”˜‡ •–”‹…– …‘Â?Ď?‹†‡Â?–‹ƒŽ‹–› obligations,â€?  Sohrabi  says.  Sohrabi  adds  that  the  governments  should  make  more  of  an  effort  in  shaping  the  legal  landscape  to  allow  businesses  to  draw  up  better  contracts  that  are  more  valuable  for  customers.  “The  government  can  do  more  to Â Â’Â”Â‘ÇŚÂƒÂ…Â–Â‹Â˜Â‡ÂŽÂ› Ď?‹Â?† ‘—– ™Šƒ– „—•‹Â?‡••‡• ƒ”‡ working  on,  share  relevant  information  with  them  and  help  encourage  an  environment  of  continual  training  and  improvement.  This  would  include  the  sharing  of  practices  from  other  parts  of  the  world,  helping  set  up  template  contracts  and  helping  train  new  recruits,â€?  he  says. Â

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CareersAdvisor

CAREERS ADVISOR Vendor training

Filling the gaps The noticeable gap between the IT skills needed and those that are currently available in the market got Pallavi Sharma talking to two prominent IT companies in the region to find out how they are working towards addressing this worrying issue.

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T

he world of technology is best described by two mutually inclusive words ‘change’ and ‘obsolescence’. While enterprise needs from IT and the necessary investments to address those very needs continue to evolve to enable innovation and business enablement, the skills that were needed ϐ

infrastructure are no longer enough.

Many a times, end users point to the lacking IT skills sector in the region as being ϐ ability to justify the ROI of these technology investments. While there are times when organisations lack the human expertise to deploy the most promising solutions; other times the human resources these companies do have don’t possess the adequate skills needed to maintain the infrastructure or deployment so as to realise its maximum potential. ϐ

investments, this situation is obviously one to be concerned about. What we discovered was the vendors in the region have already begun partnering with Universities and other educational institutions to help even out the situation.

Huawei Technologies initially established a partnership with the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) in the UAE approximately four years ago. HCT is a community of more than 19000 students and 2000 faculty members spread across 17 different campuses throughout the UAE offering courses ranging from business and applied communications to engineering technology and computer and information science.

“Over the years we have built a mutually rewarding partnership with the HCT network by initiating new programs and sharing expertise on technology application. We have found the quality of education offered at HCT to be of an extraordinary high level, and the students to be extremely motivated in their educational pursuits. Whether it is the enhancement of teaching, research, or resources, the HCT network has been a fantastic place for us to contribute in supporting the next generation of ICT professionals in the UAE,” says Lv Jun, GM, Huawei, UAE.

Jun added that with its partnership with HCT, Huawei Technologies aims to contribute to the growth and sustainability of the region’s burgeoning IT industry.

“According to consultancy and ϐ ǡ of the ICT market in the Middle East, Africa and South East Asia alone is expected to grow by $60 billion in the next two years— reaching a value of $228 billion in 2013. This is one reason why we actively participate in initiatives such as the HCT Foundation’s ‘HCT-­‐100’ that looks to support excellence in student learning through the continued enhancement of teaching, research, and development resources, as well as direct ϐ ǡdz Ǥ

to the UAE students and accelerate their understanding of the latest IT trends. At present, EMC also offers a permanent hiring opportunity to the top performing candidate across the programme in the UAE,” says Worf.

Through this partnership with TECOM, EMC began working with eight prominent universities representing 11 countries. EMC provided all the materials required and even focused on training faculty on the right curriculum at no cost to the schools and universities. The alliance also offers internships at various EMC facilities across the globe and recruitment opportunities for graduates of the program, according to Mohammed Amin, EMC senior VP and regional manager for Turkey, Middle East and Emerging Africa.

The value of the ICT market in the Middle East, Africa and South East Asia alone is expected to grow by $60 billion in the next two years—reaching a value of $228 billion in 2013. This is one reason why we actively participate in initiatives such as the HCT Foundation’s ‘HCT-100’ that looks to support excellence in student learning” Like Huawei, EMC began discussion’s with universities to bring the EMC Academic Alliance to the Middle East in 2009. The EMC Academic Alliance has aready educated more than 80,000 students since its inception in 2007 and is active within 750 colleges and universities across 50 participating countries, according to EMC representatives.

According to Joachim Worf, training manager, EMC education services, EMEA although EMC began initial talks of bringing the alliance to the region more than two years ago, the programme implementation across educational institutions began only in ʹͲͳͳ ϐ Ǥ “We recently signed an MOU with TECOM and DIAC to extend the program to the universities under DIAC that offer one-­‐of-­‐a-­‐kind IT courses. Both TECOM and DIAC showed a great interest in the program to extend the specialised IT knowledge

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The crux of the matter Every year Huawei selects a few eligible Emirati students from various HCT campuses in the UAE and takes them for a week long training session to the company’s global headquarters in Shenzhen, China.

This year 10 students from HCT Fujairah were selected for the training session conducted under the broad theme of ‘data and telecommunications’ and consists of three classroom modules as well as topical courses, practical labs and “onsite” visits— each supported by a combination of readings, hands-­‐on workshops and team challenges (see box out) “The programme aims to ensure that aspiring students have access to the right technical knowledge and real-­‐life experience to complete their degrees and ϐ ϐ Ǥ year the program’s coursework is designed

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CAREERS ADVISOR Vendor training

by  Huawei  and  HCT  after  careful  evaluation  of  the  participants’  skills  and  requirements,  ensuring  added  value  relevant  to  their  individual  career  goals.   In  this  way  we  offer  the  highest  quality  programme  that  is  tailored  to  each  and  every  student,�  he  says. “The  combination  of  classroom  and  on-­�the-­�job  training  modules  cover  a  range  of  technology  subjects  from  cloud  computing  to  global  antenna  programming  and  LTE  research.  New  adaptations  are  made  as  per  the  interests  of  the  students,  their  coursework,  and  the  resources  available  during  that  time.   Most  of  the  activities  are  actually  run  through  our  Huawei  University  campus,  which  at  any  given  time  has  a  full-­� time  staff  of  experts  in  addition  to  visiting  professors  and  developers.   We  try  our  best  to  leverage  such  opportunities  as  part  of  this  annual  program,�  adds  Jun.

HUAWEI COURSE DETAILS

Classroom Modules t .PEVMF ( 'VOEBNFOUBMT t .PEVMF #SPBECBOE 'VOEBNFOUBMT t .PEVMF %FUBJMFE UFDIOPMPHJFT GPDVT PO - Evolution of PON & GPON strategy - Fibre network deployment - 4G LTE case studies Cloud computing architecture - Microwave communications and application Topical Courses Topic 1: Building corporate culture – introduction to internal and external CSR Topic 2: Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in today’s ICT industry Topic 3: The device experience – innovations in data cards, smartphones, Wi-Fi, etc.

Onsite visits and practical labs Visit to the Huawei data centre, production and assembly lines, logistics centre, call centre and various practical labs. This year’s program included an off-site visit to a city suburb to review an actual outdoor base station installation done by Huawei.

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the  students  of  the  alliance  together  make  this  opportunity  different  from  those  offered  by  others.

Lv Jun, GM, Huawei, UAE

Similarly,  the  EMC  Academic  Alliance  offers  unique  ‘open’  curriculum-­�based  education  on  technology  topics  such  as  virtualisation,  cloud  computing,  big  data  analytics,  and  information  storage  and  management.   “The  ‘open’  curriculum  focuses  on  technology  concepts  and  principles  applicable  to  any  vendor  environment,  enabling  students  to  develop  highly  marketable  knowledge  and  skills  required  in  an  evolving  IT  industry.  The  alliance  offers  four  courses,  each  about  40  hours  in  duration  including  information  and  storage  management,  cloud  infrastructure  and  services,  data  science  and  big  data  analytics  and  backup  recovery  systems  and  architecture,�  Worf  says.

He  adds,  “These  courses  offer  the  students  knowledge  that  will  prepare  them  to  plan,  deploy,  and  manage  today’s  complex  IT  infrastructures  and  unleash  the  power  of  Big  Data.  In  addition  to  taking  the  course,  the  students  have  the  option  to  pass  the  industry-­â€?wide  acknowledged  EMC  Industry  –ƒÂ?†ƒ”† ”‘ˆ‡••‹‘Â?ƒŽ …‡”–‹Ď?‹…ƒ–‹‘Â? ™Š‹…Š ‹• also  open  to  EMC  employees,  partners  and  customers.â€?

Worf  believes  that  the  fact  that  EMC  follows  the  ‘open’  curricula  or  vendor  neutral  approach  to  its  education  services  combined  with  the  faculty  readiness  seminar  that  is  aimed  at  training  staff  who  ultimately  teach Â

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Getting  it  right Jun  says  that  the  students  involved  with  the  Huawei  programme  need  several  years  of  further  study  before  they  can  apply  for  jobs  within  the  industry  but  the  company  chooses  to  reach  out  to  students’  midway  through  their  educational  development  to  sharpen  their  focus  and  help  them  decide  on  their  area  of  specialisation  for  post-­�graduate  degrees.  “We  have  a  broader  role  beyond  providing  a  formal  education.  We  at  HCT  aim  to  build  the  students  emotional  and  intellectual  maturity  to  learn.  This  partnership  gives  students  an  opportunity  to  experience  and  understand  Chinese  culture  while  helping  them  absorb  the  operations  and  pressure  associated  with  working  in  a  technologically-­�advanced  multinational  company.  When  travelling  away  from  their  home  country,  students  are  encouraged  to  learn  to  manage  time  and  travel  within  budget  allowances.  By  creating  group-­� oriented  modules  and  classes,  students  also  learn  to  function  within  a  team  environment  and  acquire  the  necessary  soft  skills  needed  to  lead  and  manage  a  team,�  says  Dr.  Dave  Pelham,  director  of  HCT  Fujairah.

EMC  follows  a  similar  approach.  “The  enrolment  and  selection  process  for  the  students  is  handled  locally  by  the  university.   The  universities  decide  in  which  year  of  study  they  wish  to  introduce  the  classes  and  how  many  while  also  deciding  on  whether  to  make  these  classes  elective  or  mandatory.  We  always  recommend  that  this  course  is  taught  to  the  third  year  to  ensure  that  have  accumulated  enough  knowledge  on  the  basics  of  IT,�  says  Worf.

While  Huawei  Technologies  is  focused  on  its  partnership  with  HCT,  EMC  is  working  towards  extending  the  EMC  Acadmic  Alliance  to  encompass  other  eligible  universities  in  the  region. “Most  of  our  regional  training  programmes  place  a  great  emphasis  on  collaboration  with  the  individual  educational  institution.   As  such,  the  programmes  that  we  develop  are  usually  distinctive  to  those Â

CAREERS ADVISOR Vendor training

HCT STUDENTS SPEAK

Joachim Worf, training manager, EMC education services, EMEA

student’s needs and are not widely replicable.

This kind of work-­‐study experience is what we tend to value as a company when we look at the CV’s of fresh graduates. It’s testament not only to their industry knowledge but personal ambition,” says Jun. EMC’s Worf says, “Our aim is to reach out to as many universities as possible to develop a much bigger pool of talent that will then be available to EMC and all the companies in the local ICT market. The EMC Academic Alliance is allowing us to reach out to the youth to prepare the future IT professionals for successful careers in the new and constantly changing information and communications technology (ICT) industry.” says Worf.

Worf adds that an IDC Whitepaper from June 2011 evidences the need for more partnerships focused on technology education both in the region and across the globe.

“While the study highlighted that data will continue to grow by approximately 44 times by the end of the decade, IT staff will grow by less than 50%. This fact in itself, will heighten the need for courses like the ones EMC has to offer at no cost to the students or faculty,” he concludes.

With more vendors offering opportunities for IT education and training and more educational institutions focused on delivering ICT courses in and around the region, in due time, end-­‐users will have a little less to worry about.

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Shaikha Al-Zaabi has been fascinated with technology and automated gizmos since childhood and is currently enrolled as a third year Bachelor of Engineering student at the HCT, Fujairah.

Not ones to waste a good opportunity, AlZaabi was glad to have been one of the few candidates selected to travel to the Huawei headquarters. “Not only did I get to visit one of the most heavily industrialised nations in the world but also introduced me to the latest technologies and programs at the prestigious Huawei University,” she says.

Al-Zaabi adds that while the programme did significantly hone her existing communication skills where she learned to collaborate and work with people from different backgrounds, it also helped her zero in on her specialisation of choice- telecoms.

“What surprised me most was the relevance of the curriculum of this programme to current industry specifics in the Middle East and UAE in particular. For instance, the courses focused on introducing us to GPON, 4G and LTE technologies that are currently being implemented by companies across the region.

As a result, I am even thinking about specialising in the field of telecommunications technology beginning with some work-placement training with Etisalat and eventually hope to work with a large ICT company such as Huawei,” she says.

Kalthoum Al Kaabi is currently pursuing her last year in Bsc. Electronic Engineering at HCT Fujairah. Having pursued a course on telecommunications the previous year, she was yet not particularly

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interested in the field. “The trip has definitely changed my opinion. The different modules gave us an idea of how real-world networking and telecommunication systems are constructed. I was particularly impressed with the presentations on cutting-edge network technologies and the future of ICT industry. Our sessions focused all the relevant subjects like 4G, LTE, cloud computing, GPON, and telecommunications architecture among others.

We also had a chance to do some practical work by installing a mobile base station in the suburbs,” she says.

Al Kaabi is now ready to pursue a career in telecommunications and is already pursuing work placement training at Etisalat.

Aishah Yammahi is a third-year Bsc. Electronic Engineering student at the HCT, Fujairah and has been fascinated telecommunications systems and technology for as long as she can remember.

“The disciplines that fascinate me the most are mobile communication technologies, Internet services and global satellite networks. We attended four training modules at Huawei University—of which my personal favourite was probably the cloud computing module, because it focused on a technology that has the potential to transform the industry,” she says.

Yammahi says that the programme gave her an opportunity to discover the internal operations of a prominent ICT company like Huawei. Yammahi adds, “Learning how to incorporate the ‘Fen Do Zhe’ orientation that basically involves ‘working hard’ and being ‘committed’ to one’s personal and professional goals into the workspace was interesting.

I could really see how the team at Huawei worked together to integrate efficiency in their operations and processes,” she says.

Yammahi plans to pursue a masters degree in satellite technology and contribute to the thriving telecommunications sector in the UAE.

INTERVIEW Andrew Monshaw

Andrew Monshaw, GM of IBM Global Midmarket sales and distribution

CLOUDING THE MIDMARKET IBM is pushing deep into the midmarket with a rich portfolio of solutions and cloud services.

In a chat with CNME, Andrew Monshaw, GM of IBM Global Midmarket sales and distribution, discusses how Big Blue is planning to increase its market share in this lucrative market.

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H

ϐ client? ϐ as clients who have less than 1000 employees and the reason we segment it that way is because they tend not to be self-­‐integrators, and rely on local trusted business partners.

Is this region any different from more mature markets in terms of technology trends and purchasing patterns?

The trends that we see here are pretty much the same we see globally but where we are on the adoption curve of that trend is a little early here. Let me explain, if you look at the midmarket segment globally the adoption of public cloud services is quite high. For ǡ Ǧ ϐ ǡ Ǥǡ where they are on the adoption curve is now on up ramp. Everywhere I go, companies such as Salesforce.com and Sugar CRM are delivering applications to these clients as a public cloud service. Here in this region I think this change will happen and especially in countries where infrastructure and connectivity is not strong enough yet, it is poised to pop when these issues are solved.

What are some of the top technology priorities of midmarket CIOs? We do quite a few surveys and from an ǡ ϐ priorities are CRM, security, business analytics, mobility and collaboration. What is really interesting is that we are starting to learn about marketing executives and what their challenges are, in particular those who deal with consumers. They aren’t prepared for social media and challenges in its wake.

From a business standpoint, the employees of these companies want to use a device of their choice and CIOs have no choice but to deliver all the application experience on a tablet, smartphone or some other mobile device. You also get to hear a lot about consumerisation of IT and in my

personal opinion it is nonsense. There is a desire to have the attributes that you have in consumer IT experience, which is ease of application deployment, etc., but in a consumer world you don’t think about the ϐ Ǥ You said the midmarket has taken to cloud services in a big way. Is there any reason why?

The adoption of cloud services in the midmarket is real quick and here is why.

Our data tell us that an average client in this pace has between 5-­‐15 IT staff and they cannot keep up with the amount of value being placed in the technology capabilities and they have to consume IT resources differently. They don’t have the skill. For example, everyone wants business analytics but the midmarket users can’t hire IT people to integrate sophisticated analytics packages or buy new servers to run these packages on. Besides, in these uncertain times when access to capital is really tight, they don’t have to spend upfront and can consume as they grow. If you remember 5-­‐6 years back, everyone was talking about utility computing. What is different this time is that all applications that are being developed today are developed in a service-­‐ only model, which means you can’t buy them as packaged software. You must consume them in a cloud service. That’s the big difference.

There has been a big shift in the way you service the midmarket. Is the focus more on empowering your partners to service this segment?

We have appointed a lot more people to enable partners and we have also done a lot around territory optimisation. With our cloud service, partners can brand it as their own but powered by IBM. We have a whole new group of partners that deliver these hosted services and we are enabling our partners with these new partners. There is a

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whole eco-­‐system around ISVs, our business partner channel and what we call MSPs. So you are in a way admitting that your ϐ market than IBM does?

Those are your words. My words would be there is a practical issue here – 80 percent of our business in this territory comes from 300 partners. We have more than 4000 partners but most of the business comes from 300 partners, so part of our job is to enable the next group to do more. The midmarket has a high-­‐degree of relationship to it so we want these local partners to keep that relationship with their users.

You said business analytics is one of the priorities for midmarket CIOs. But the real question is, can they afford it?

Our primary business analytics offering is branded as Cognos, which comes in many ϐ Ǥ growing piece of software that I sell to our midmarket clients globally,in order of magnitude. Our value proposition is that we embed Cognos into applications that a client cares about. So we work with application vendors and they create a high value service they can sell to their client through embedding IBM business analytics. Now you can also download Cognos Insight for free on your desktop as a user to get started.

tailored for the midmarket? Is the Express portfolio one of them?

Yes and Express portfolio entails 190 offerings. We have 530000 midmarket clients globally and we are growing about four times as fast as the market. We see addressable market opportunity at around 250 billion dollars globally. Some of the companies in the space don’t even have IT budgets and they buy very opportunistically based on their ability to see how the solution will help their business grow.

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INTERVIEW Thomas Senger

AUTOMATE AND EXCEL Thomas S Senger, senior VP of EMEA software and solutions at Kofax talks about the evolving nature of business process automation, and the relevance of the company’s solutions in the world of big data and cloud environments.

Q

: What are the major trends affecting IT spend?

A: There are some major trends that will affect the area of IT that we are in. ϐ ǡ by ideally cutting costs out of running operations. One of the mega trends we are seeing is increasing mobility and to have data available anytime, anywhere – or, on our part ,to be able to capture and process data at the earliest point in the process chain, meaning at the point of origin.

Today, there is usually little money left for innovation in a typical CIO’s budget.

It means a CIO of today’s world is always forced to look into running costs, and taking costs out of the running costs in order to make more available for innovation within IT. What we have seen in recent years is that a lot of innovation is coming out of the business side, and a lot of IT projects

are decisions driven by the business and eventually executed by IT. Such decision making usually starts in large organisations and larger government ϐ Ǥ ϐ but also at the same time increasing security and compliance, are organisations which are trading internationally, which are publicly listed companies or organisations that are dealing with large-­‐volume national companies that require some compliancy rules from vendors and from their business partners.

So that would usually start in banking and insurance industries where we have a large footprint. To give you an idea some 40% of our business, which we do across EMEA is done with large banks and large insurance companies. We have a strong foothold in the telco sector, where we are

Our strategy in this part of the world is to work with business partners. A very solid proportion of our business globally is done together with business partners – like value-added resellers (VARs) and systems integrators (SIs), in order to combine our technology know-how with local know-how on markets and verticals. In this region, a much higher proportion of our business is done with and through partners.

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seeing a lot of trends being mirrored across the MEA. We are working with Etisalat at the monent. We are looking at Mobily in Riyadh, we have business going on at the moment with MTN. We have a good business base in the logistics and transportation sector, ϐ Ǥ key clients in the region includes Emirates, Qatar Airways, Gasco, Emirates Aluminium, National Commercial Bank, Iraqi Ministry of Education, Islamic Development Bank, Ministry of Works and Housing in Bahrain – and we have a good foothold in government as well.

Q: What are the critical challenges facing enterprises today?

A: One of the major challenges is dealing more and more with information that is needed as accurately as possible, as compliant as possible at a very early stage. I would like to stress this with an example in what we do in banking. We have a communications platform supporting trading and transaction of funds. Lets take the opening of a bank account. In today’s world people are often moving their savings around every six to twelve months. The bank has probably 180 days for the money to stay with them – so it has to be operational and ϐ Ǥ But also opening of the account needs to be as cost effective as possible, and the process we support for new account openings brings

Thomas S Senger, senior VP of EMEA software and solutions at Kofax

the cost down from the average of $65 to $70 to as low as below $30.

We also provide solutions that transform data into a process-­‐readable format and from there it will be launched straight into business processes in combination with our communication platform.

Let's take the insurance industry -­‐ one of the processes that we support there is claims management. We are also able to add some ϐ capability to handle exceptions, whether it is claims management, banking processes or citizen services when you talk about government organisations.

We are one of the very few who are as focused on capture-­‐enabled process management and are able to offer end-­‐to-­‐end solutions.

I think big data can only fuel our business because our solutions are scaleable to large quantities, or large data volumes, so we have been prepared for it, and we look forward to the big data volumes to arrive. It just means additional business to us.

Q: What are the strongest growth markets for Kofax?

A: Geographically, we are seeing growth in both mature and emerging markets, with the arrival of big data, or turning this big data around with adoption of our technology and automation. We also see growth volumes with the adoption of mobile technology, and

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Computer News Middle East

91

INTERVIEW Thomas Senger

we  also  see  growth  with  adoption  of  process  management.  With  the  arrival  of  big  data,  we  become  much  more  business  relevant  for  our  customers.  In  a  typical  customer  IT  layout,  you  would  have  infrastructure,  databases,  ERP,  HR,  CRM  and  then  you  will  have  business  processes  –  eventually  you  will  have  a  physical  data  centre  or  a  cloud  environment.  What  we  have  built  over  the  last  few  years  is  really  to  cover  that  part  from  the  moment  data  is  being  generated,  be  it  electronically  or  on  paper  or  any  other  format  –  and  then  to  offer  an  end-­â€?to-­â€?end  process  management  to  have  all  this  data  launched  into  business  processes  at  different  systems.  That  is  the  discipline  we  have  built.  In  terms  of  verticals,  it  is  still  the  same  ones  that  have  always  kept  us  busy.  There  ‹• Ď?‹Â?ƒÂ?…‹ƒŽ Â•Â‡Â”Â˜Â‹Â…Â‡Â•ÇĄ –‡Ž‡…‘Â?ÇĄ Ž‘‰‹•–‹…• ƒÂ?† transportation  companies  (like  aviation  and  railways),  and  we  have  a  number  of  freight  forwarders.  We  are  also  seeing  a  growing  demand  from  government  organisations.   Q:  What  is  the  strategy  to  expand  your  presence  in  the  Middle  East?

A:  Our  strategy  in  this  part  of  the  world  is  to  work  with  business  partners.  A  very  solid  proportion  of  our  business  globally  is  done  together  with  business  partners  –  like  value-­â€?added  resellers  (VARs)  and  systems  integrators  (SIs),  in  order  to  combine  our  technology  know-­â€?how  with  local  know-­â€?how  on  markets  and  verticals.  In  this  region,  a  much  higher  proportion  of  our  business  is  done  with  and  through  partners.  A  lot  of  the  execution  is  done  with  regional  partners,  and  we  want  to  support  their  growth  with  our  own  presence.  We  have  between  70  and  90  partners  for  the  whole  of  Africa,  the  Middle  East,  Turkey  and  Russia.  For  us,  it’s  about  commitment,  focus  and  a  culture  that  revolves  around  solving  our  customers’  problems  with  capture  solutions.   If  our  customers  and  our  business  partners  need  focus  and  real  attention  to  detail  on  …ƒ’–—”‡ ’”‘„Ž‡Â?•ǥ –Š‡›ǯŽŽ ‰‡– –Šƒ– ˆ”‘Â? ‘ˆƒš as  a  focused  vendor.

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Q:  Please  describe  your  partner  strategy.

A:  We  had  decided  a  few  months  ago  to  increase  our  investment  into  our  partner  strategy.  That  has  already  started.  It  does  not  necessarily  mean  we  are  going  to  recruit  new  partners.  We  may  have  some  new  partners  to  cover  new  territories,  or  maybe  one  or  the  other  vertical.  In  the  territories,  what  we  have  started  to  do  is  to  increase  the  knowledge  of  our  partners  –  that  means  we  have  invested  a  lot  in  training  and  …‡”–‹Ď?‹…ƒ–‹‘Â?Ǥ We  have  a  training  schedule  that  is  available  for  partners.  We  have  classroom  training.  We  have  added  CBT  to  that,  where  customers  can  prepare  for  special  projects  and  also  download  info.  We  also  do  a  lot  of  teaching  through  webex  sessions,  which  is  more  convenient,  cost-­â€?effective  and  green.  We  record  these  sessions  so  they  can  revisit  them  when  they  are  preparing  for  new  projects.  Q:  Can  you  name  some  of  the  new  solutions  that  you  will  be  launching  in  the  next  year?  A:  We  have  a  strategy  that  goes  beyond  12  months.  We  usually  review  twice  a  year Â

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and  we  usually  go  through  our  strategy  for  the  next  three  to  five  years.  If  I  have  to  put  it  in  one  sentence,  it  is  continuing  to  add  value  to  our  customer’s  applications  by  adopting  a  mix  of  business  processes,  and  adopting  new  technologies,  to  help  our  customers  cut  costs  out  of  operations,  and  to  address  compliance  and  security  at  the  same  time.  We  are  about  to  launch  a  mobile  client  for  smartphones  and  tablets,  where  you  could  push  the  capturing  of  business  processes  out  to  the  mobile  world.  Lets  take  one  business  process.  We  all  have  travel  expenses.  With  our  mobile  app,  you  can  just  take  a  photo  of  the  receipts  and  from  then  on  it  will  be  automatically  fully  processed.  The  solution  can  validate  and  extract  data,  process  into  HR  and  start  the  reimbursement  process.  All  this  is  fully  automated.  Â?† Ď?‹Â?ÂƒÂŽÂŽÂ›ÇĄ –Š‡”‡ ƒ”‡ „—•‹Â?॥ ƒ’’• ƒ”‘—Â?† …ƒ’–—”‹Â?‰ ƒÂ?† ™‘”Â?Ď?Ž‘™ …‘Â?’‘Â?‡Â?–•ǥ meaning  things  like  case  management,  and  this  can  be  expanded  to  government  solutions  and  citizen  services  automation.  There  are  multiple  applications  and  we  are  working  on  enabling  all  of  them.  Â

INTERVIEW Dr Wolfram Jost

They  have  to  add  technologies  which  help  them  to  follow  the  speed  of  the  market,  the  speed  of  the  business  and  that  is  much  more  Ď?Ž‡š‹„Ž‡ ƒÂ?† ƒ‰‹Ž‡ –ŠƒÂ? ’”‘†—…–• –Šƒ– ™‡”‡ previously  integrated.

Dr Wolfram Jost, CTO at Sotware AG

CAPITALISING ON SOFTWARE Dr Wolfram Jost, CTO at Software AG speaks about everything from research and new technologies, and how enterprises can adopt and capitalise on them.

W

hat  are  the  major  trends  affecting  research  and  development  for  CTOs  and  organisations?

There  are  four  key  technologies  changing  the  way  we  do  business.  First  of  all,  and  it  will  be  important  for  the  next  few  years,  is  the  cloud  topic.  After  that  is  mobile,  meaning  mobile  devices  are  more  tightly  integrated  so  information  can  be  distributed  to  mobile  devices  and  vice  versa.  Then  there  is  social  –  we  all  know  that  social  is  part  of  our  daily  lives  with  Facebook  and  all  that  stuff,  but  we  also  see  social  capabilities  joining  our  middleware  products.  The  last  one  is  eMemory  computing.  This  is  when  the  data  is  not  stored  on  disk,  but  is  managed  and  stored  as  eMemory,  which  enables  us  to  really  speed  up  the  performance  of  applications.  How  have  these  new  technologies  affected  what  Software  AG  offers?

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I  think  if  you  combine  everything  together  we  are  offering  a  process  platform  that  gives  customers  the  ability  to  develop,  implement,  execute,  monitor  and  to  end-­�process.  We  believe  that  platforms  are  better  than  products,  so  we  offer  an  end-­�to-­�end  process  platform  for  customers  to  really  improve  their  business  processes.  This  is  our  core  focus.  In  your  experiences,  where  are  companies  falling  short  in  taking  advantage  of  new  technologies?

10,  15  years  ago  companies  started  to  invest  in  IT.  They  mainly  implemented  what  we  call  package  applications  for  CRM,  ERP,  Ď?‹Â?ƒÂ?…‡ǥ …‘Â?–”‘ŽŽ‹Â?‰ ‡–…Ǥ Š‡ ‹†‡ƒ ™ƒ• –‘ standardise  business  processes,  to  become  Â?‘”‡ ‡ˆĎ?‹…‹‡Â?–Ǥ –Š‹Â?Â? …‘Â?’ƒÂ?‹‡• †‹† ™‡ŽŽ ‹Â? this  standardisation,  but  badly  on  innovation,  Ď?Ž‡š‹„‹Ž‹–› ƒÂ?† •’‡‡† ‘ˆ …ŠƒÂ?‰‡Ǥ Šƒ– ‹• something  that  companies  have  to  do  now. Â

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Šƒ– •’‡…‹Ď?‹…ƒŽŽ› ‹• ‘ˆ–™ƒ”‡

researching  right  now  to  stay  ahead  in  its  offerings  to  customers?

Our  research  is  now  not  focused  on  what  we  should  do  –  it’s  clear  what  –  but  how  to  do  it  in  the  most  innovative  way.  We  are  looking  now  at  working  together  with  universities  to  Ď?‹Â?† –Š‡ „‡•– ™ƒ›• –‘ ‹Â?’Ž‡Â?‡Â?– ‡ ‡Â?‘”› mobile  collaboration  and  cloud  architectures.  That’s  what’s  driving  us.

How  much  of  Software  AG’s  revenue  is  spent  on  research  and  development,  and  how  has  that  change  in  last  two  years?

Our  R&D  budget  is  in  excess  of  100  million  RSAeSecurity Chairman Art Coviello euro,  and  if  you  total  verything  with  acquisitions  we  are  at  130  million  euro.  It  has  increased  over  the  last  three  to  four  years.  We  increase  it  according  to  the  revenue  increase,  so  we  have  to  invest  in  the  future  and  the  trends  I  mentioned.  If  you  are  not  able  to  follow  the  trends,  you  will  be  out  of  the  market  in  IT.  We  are  committed  to  this  and  have  never  had  a  reduction  in  R&D  investment.

What  new  products  will  Software  AG  offer  this  year?

We  will  have  a  new  release  of  our  recorded  eMemory  data  store  from  our  Terracotta  eMemory  technology.  Then  we  are  working  ‘Â? –Š‡ ÇŚÂ”Â‡ÂŽÂ‡ÂƒÂ•Â‡ ˆ‘” ‘—” Â?ƒŒ‘” ’Žƒ–ˆ‘”Â?ÇĄ which  is  planned  for  the  end  of  the  year.  This  is  also  called  our  cloud  release  because  we’re  going  to  have  better  possibilities  for  cloud.  We’re  also  going  to  announce  a  new  product  in  the  area  of  social  collaboration.

What  can  we  expect  from  Software  AG  over  the  next  couple  of  years?

Software  AG  is  the  biggest  independent  vendor  of  middleware  application  infrastructure.  You  have  three  markets;  infrastructure-­â€?as-­â€?a-­â€?service,  platform-­â€?as-­â€?a-­â€? service  and  software-­â€?as-­â€?a-­â€?service.  We  want  to  be  a  leader  in  platform-­â€?as-­â€?a-­â€?service  in  the  whole  middleware  market. Â

Nominations close 15th February 2012

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Rajashree R Kumar, Commercial Director Tel: +971 55 1053782 Email: raj@cpidubai.com

Jeevan Thankappan, Senior Editor Tel: +971 55 1053774 Email: jeevan@cpidubai.com

Karl Hougaard, Commercial Director Tel: +971 50 8818577 Email: karl@cpidubai.com

Sathya Mithra Ashok, Senior Editor Tel: +971 55 1053783 Email: sathya@cpidubai.com

PRODUCTS Mobility

Toshiba Portege Ultrabook

Y

ou  can  tell  we’re  quite  excited  about  the  Ultrabook  concept  introduced  by  Intel  since  we  ”‡˜‹‡™‡† –Š‡ ‡Â?‘˜‘ ;ͲͲ• ƒ ˆ‡™ Â?‘Â?–Š• ago.  Today  we’re  looking  at  Toshiba’s  new  Ultrabook,  the  Portege.

The  Portege  strikes  you  as  a  really  thin  and  light  weight  laptop;  it  is  in  fact  lighter  than  all  other  Ultrabooks  we’ve  tried,  weighing  a  little  over  1kg,  even  lighter  than  the  Macbook  Air. Although  it  comes  in  different  versions  that  vary  in  specs  and  processing  power,  they  all  share  almost  the  same  shape;  a  13  inch  screen  in  a  brushed  aluminum  silver  body,  really  sleek  lines  and  hints  of  chrome  around  the  hinges  and  touchpad  buttons.  It  looks  a  little  less  sturdy  than  the  Lenovo  but  it  is  still  well  built  and  far  from  being  a  delicate  device.

The  Portege  has  a  nice  size  keyboard  that’s  quite  comfortable  to  use,  as  well  as  a  decent  multitouch  touchpad  that  supports  a  few  multitouch  gestures.  Higher  end  business  models  also  come  with  a  biometric  Ď?‹Â?‰‡”’”‹Â?– •…ƒÂ?Â?‡”Ǥ ’‡…‹Ď?‹…ƒ–‹‘Â?• ĆŹ ’‡”ˆ‘”Â?ƒÂ?…‡ There  are  several  versions  of  the  Portege  available  in  the  market,  fulfilling  the  needs  of  everyone  from  the  average  light-­â€?weight  user  to  the  more  demanding  business  user.  With  processors  that  vary  between  the  Inter  Core  i3  to  the  Core  i7,  and  a  RAM  of  4  or  6  GBs,  performance  is  completely  different  from  one  version  to  another.  However,  we  recommend  going  for  the  Inter  Core  i5  version,  where  you  will  have  a  much  better  performance  than  the  i3,  as  opposed  to  the  increase  you’ll  notice  between  the  i5  and  i7  versions,  simply  because  you  won’t  be  able  to  get  the  full Â

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power  of  a  Core  i7  processor  on  such  a  computer.

As  is  the  case  with  all  other  Ultrabooks,  and  with  its  built-­�in  Intel  graphics  chipset,  it’s  not  designed  for  3D  gaming,  CAD  software,  or  any  other  heavy-­�weight  software,  it  will  run  them,  but  one  at  a  time.

The  cooling  fan  on  the  Portege  can  get  a  little  irritating  especially  if  you’re  bothered  by  high  pitched  noises.  It  isn’t  extremely  noisy  but  it  is  a  noticeable  noise.

The  battery  well  with  an  average  life  of  about  8  hours  of  moderate  to  light  usage,  quite  as  expected  from  an  Ultrabook.  —Ž–‹Â?‡†‹ƒ ĆŹ ‘Â?Â?‡…–‹˜‹–› The  speakers  aren’t  that  great  but  they  aren’t  that  bad  either,  you’ll  notice  some  hissing  noise  when  the  volume  is  pumped  up  all  the  way.  You  can  however,  connect  a  standard  headset  thanks  to  the  separate  microphone  and  headphone  jacks,  as  well  as  a  stereo  Bluetooth  headset  through  the  built-­â€?in  Bluetooth  connectivity.

The  Portege  comes  with  3  USB  ports  one  of  which  is  a  USB3  and  another  is  a  sleep  charge  USB2,  HDMI  and  LAN  connectivity,  as  well  as  standard  Intel  WiFi  and  Intel  WiDi  (Wireless  Display)  so  you  can  connect  it  to  a  bigger  HDMI  screen. Â

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VERDICT:  Aye.  The  Toshiba  Portege  is  a  small  yet  powerful  Ultrabook  that  is  well  ϔ‹––‡† ™‹–Š –Š‡ …‘””‡…– ˆ‡ƒ–—”‡• ˆ‘” ’‡‘’Ž‡ …‘Â?•–ƒÂ?–Ž› ‘Â? –Š‡ Â?Â‘Â˜Â‡ÇĄ ‹– Â?‹‰Š– Â?‘– „‡ †‡•‹‰Â?‡† ˆ‘” †‡•‹‰Â?‡” ‘” ‰ƒÂ?‡”•ǥ „—– ‹– …ƒÂ? ’‡”ˆ‘”Â? ƒŽŽ ‘ˆ ›‘—” Â†ÂƒÂ›ÇŚÂ–Â‘ÇŚÂ†ÂƒÂ› –ƒ•Â?•Ǥ

–ǯ• ƒ Š‡ƒ˜› ™‡‹‰Š– Â’ÂŽÂƒÂ›Â‡Â”ÇĄ ‹Â? ƒ ˜‡”› Ž‹‰Š– weight  shell.

This review was done by Fahed Sabbagh – proud geek and passionate blogger. You can catch him wax poetic on all things geeky at www.nerdyface.com.

Camera Motorola  ships  the  RAZR  with  a  less-­â€?than-­â€? impressive  8mp  camera.  It  took  decent  quality  photos  in  daylight  but  less  satisfying  ones  indoors  with  or  without  using  its  single  point  Ď?Žƒ•ŠǤ Š‡ …ƒÂ?‡”ƒ †‘‡• Š‘™‡˜‡” Šƒ˜‡ a  quick  response  and  auto-­â€?focus  rate.  Video  quality  was  a  little  similar  in  different  light  conditions  with  support  for  1080p  full  HD  video  recording.  With  a  phone  of  this  thickness,  we  weren’t  really  expecting  much  from  the  camera  anyway. Â

Motorola Droid RAZR

I

Â? ʹͲͲ͜ǥ ‘–‘”‘Žƒ ”‡Ž‡ƒ•‡† –Š‡ ÇĄ the  world’s  thinnest  phone  that  sold  more  than  50  million  units  within  two  years.  Today,  Motorola  revives  this  legendary  †‡˜‹…‡ ™‹–Š –Š‡ ”‘‹† ÇĄ „—– ™‹ŽŽ ‹– measure  up  to  the  glory  of  the  original?  The  RAZR  is  a  lot  more  than  just  a  slim  phone.  At  a  little  over  7mm,  it  is  by  far  the  thinnest  we’ve  seen  on  the  market,  and  it  becomes  a  little  thicker  on  the  top  to  accommodate  a  camera  (11mm  at  its  thickest).

Gorilla  Glass  protects  the  4.3  inch  Super  AMOLED  display  with  540  x  960  pixels  and  you  can  experience  vibrant  colours,  even  in  daylight.  We’ve  heard  lots  of  criticism  about  the  RAZR  screen  but  after  testing  the  device  out,  we  think  it  is  pretty  good.  Motorola  didn’t  ship  the  phone  with  a  Super  AMOLED  Plus  screen  as  we  might  have  hoped  but  they  sure  packed  the  best  they  could  from  a  regular  Super  AMOLED  screen  –since  when  have  we  started  calling  these  “regularâ€?  anyway?  –  The  screen  passes  with  Ď?Ž›‹Â?‰ …‘Ž‘—”•Ǥ ‡˜Žƒ” ‘Â? –Š‡ „ƒ…Â? Â?ƒÂ?‡• –Š‡ ’Š‘Â?‡ durable,  scratch  resistant,  and  helps  make  it  a  really  light  phone  at  127g.  Apart  from  this,  ‡˜Žƒ” †‡Ď?‹Â?‹–‡Ž› ƒ††• –‘ ‹–• ƒ‡•–Š‡–‹… ƒ’’‡ƒŽ

with  sleek  lines.  For  those  of  you  who  don’t  Â?Â?‘™ǥ ‡˜Žƒ” ‹• ƒ Â?ƒ–‡”‹ƒŽ —•‡† –‘ Â?ƒÂ?‡ ’‘Ž‹…‡ armor  vests,  so  this  phone  could  take  a  bullet  for  you!  (Not  really,  don’t  try  that!)

The  phone  has  micro  USB  and  HDMI  plugs  on  the  top,  power  and  volume  buttons  on  one  side,  and  a  small  door  that  holds  the  16  GB  SD  card  and  an  LTE  SIM  card  slot  on  the  other.  You  will  notice  that  you  can’t  remove  the  back  cover  to  release  the  battery  because  Motorola  “shavedâ€?  a  few  millimeters  of  the  RAZR  by  removing  this  feature.  ’‡…‹Ď?‹…ƒ–‹‘Â?• The  RAZR  comes  with  a  Dual-­â€?core  1.2  GHz  Cortex-­â€?A9  processor,  1  GB  of  RAM,  and  8  GBs  of  internal  storage.  Motorola  claims  that  the  Li-­â€?Ion  battery  gives  you  more  than  200  hours  of  standby  time  and  12  hours  of  talk  time;  however  the  phone  only  survived  about  60-­â€?70  hours  of  standby  and  a  little  over  4  hours  of  talk  time.  Battery  life  does  vary  according  to  the  signal  strength  but  we  weren’t  even  testing  it  over  a  4G  LTE  network  that  it’s  supposed  to  run  on.  The  phone  comes  with  your  standard  connectivity  options,  A-­â€?GPS,  and  of  course,  support  for  4G  LTE  networks. Â

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Software The  Motorola  Droid  RAZR  comes  with  Android  2.3.5  (Gingerbread)  with  all  its  brilliant  features,  and  is  upgradable  to  Android  4.0  (Ice  Cream  Sandwich)  as  soon  as  it’s  available.  The  phone  also  comes  with  two  software  features  that  are  enough  to  make  it  stand  out  of  the  crowd  between  hundreds  of  Android  devices  available  on  the  market.

Using  a  simple  docking  station  for  your  Motorola  phone,  or  a  laptop  shaped  dock  complete  with  a  keyboard  and  a  touchpad,  or  – our  favourite,  a  tiny  little  device  called  the  Travel  Adapter,  you  can  connect  your  USB  and  HDMI  plugs  on  your  phone  to  any  HDMI  screen  and  USB  devices,  and  have  a  full  desktop  experience  with  your  phone.  This  feature  is  actually  paving  the  way  now  to  more  advanced  desktop  applications  that  can  be  used  from  your  phone,  in  fact,  Ubuntu  announced  that  their  operating  system  will  be  coming  to  multi-­�cored  Android  devices  soon;  this  is  something  we  can’t  wait  to  see!

ÇŁ ›‡Ǥ Š‡ ‘–‘”‘Žƒ ”‘‹† †‡ϔ‹Â?‹–‡Ž› ”‹•‡• —’ –‘ –Š‡ ‡š’‡…–ƒ–‹‘Â?• ƒÂ?† ƒ ™Š‘Ž‡ Ž‘– Â?‘”‡ǥ Â?‘– ‘Â?Ž› ‹–ǯ• –Š‡ –Š‹Â?Â?‡•– ’Š‘Â?‡ ‘Â? –Š‡ Â?ƒ”Â?‡–ǥ ‹–ǯ• ’ƒ…Â?‡† ™‹–Š –Š‡ •Â?ƒ”–‡•– ÂˆÂ‡ÂƒÂ–Â—Â”Â‡Â•ÇĄ ƒÂ?† ‹– –ƒÂ?‡• ƒ ‰ŽƒÂ?…‡ –‘ Â?Â?‘™ –Šƒ– ‹–ǯ• Ȃ‘Â?…‡ ƒ‰ƒ‹Â?Č‚ ‘Â?‡ ‘ˆ –Š‡ •‡š‹‡•– ’Š‘Â?‡• ‘—– –Š‡”‡Ǥ

This review was done by Fahed Sabbagh – proud geek and passionate blogger. You can catch him wax poetic on all things geeky at www.nerdyface.com.

MARCH 2012

Computer  News  Middle  East

97

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Network World

April 2012

IPv6

2012 is expected to be the year when the next-­‐gen Internet protocol gets widely deployed by carriers and enterprises. We take a look at what IT execs need to know and prepare for IPv6

Solutions World

Virtualisation – where are the success stories?

Yes – it was the technology of 2011, and nobody can seem to stop talking about its ϐ Ǥ ǡ where exactly are these success stories?

CNME explores if there are particular enterprises and verticals that are likely to ϐ ǡ some success stories.

Storage Advisor

Deployment challenges and overcoming them Old technology or new, integrating storage and data lifecycle management into existing systems and processes is not a task for the faint-­‐hearted. Is there a magic formula for getting it right? How can enterprises go about such integration with minimal ǫ ϐ Ǥ

Security Advisor

Telecoms World

Vulnerability assessment

MVNOs

You are only as strong as the weakest link in your security chain, and assessing which bit of your chain is the most vulnerable, and doing that constantly, is essential to keep your defence mechanisms in good shape. CNME examines the steps, processes and vendors who can help you achieve consistent strength.

The MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) is a natural progression toward enhancing free market principles and ϐ telecommunications infrastructure. We evaluate the MVNO opportunity in Middle Eastern markets.

Integration Advisor Picking your partner

Training programmes: what are partners doing

We bring you a breakdown of the points, tips and tricks that enterprises need to keep in mind in order to choose the right system integrator and the ways in which they can get the best out of each partnership.

In the careers section, we look at the various training programmes that partners have launched in the region and explore whether these meet the needs of end-­‐users in the region.

Events

What we’re reading

Network World ME Awards

By Andrea Kates

The start-up of you

Book Netflix and iTunes are regularly held up as innovative business ideas within industries in flux.

Kates, known as “the brand whisperer,” examines how the services were developed to keep up with the ever-changing digital landscape. Her framework, called the business genome, lays out six steps to staying competitive, including finding that one intangible thing, “the secret sauce,” that differentiates you from your competitors. You don’t want to copy what others are doing; real innovation comes from starting your own trends.

Find your next: Using the Business Genome Approach to Find Your Company’s Next Competitive Edge (McGraw-Hill)

Book Co-written by LinkedIn founder Hoffman, this book advises professionals to manage their careers the way they would manage a startup. Adopt an entrepreneurial mind-set, they say, by quickly adapting to change and building strong connections. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is cited as an example because he explored other ventures alongside his career priorities. The book also shares specifics, such as the best time to make strategic moves.

The start-up of you: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career (Crown Business)

Find your next

98

Computer News Middle East

Careers

MARCH 2012

By Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha

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