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Contents ISSUE 238 | NOVEMBER 2011

ANALYSIS 6 SAS launches D1

SAS ME, the regional arm of the global leaders in business analytics, picked CNME’s CIO Council roundtable to launch their latest solution for SMEs -­‐ the D1 appliance.

8

Clearing the clouds Misperceptions of the cloud and an unclear understanding of what it can do are the biggest challenges holding back adoption, according to Citrix

10

11

12

At the recent, GITEX Technology Week, Pallavi Sharma caught up with the president of ITWorx to discuss the company’s outlook on current technologies and it’s stand on the future.

Planning for 2012

Game on

52

A continuing story

Business continuity (BC) is not yet fully understood by most large Middle East enterprises, and is often confused with its cousin disaster recovery (DR). With the current state of affairs the region might have to wait for a couple of years for large scale adoption of BC processes.

Growth scope

56

Architecting growth

At Agilent Technologies’ recently held global event in Prague, senior executives discussed the company’s growth so far and its future ambitions. Mike Byrne writes.

18

Not known for making bold investments in ICT, the construction sector is showing signs of rapid change. Pallavi Sharma speaks to ϐ ϐ and how they’re likely to change.

Round up

HOW TO 60 Calibrate your monitor

We bring you a quick round-­‐up of IT industry news.

Get your monitor to display colours accurately and to improve the look of photos, videos, and games.

FEATURE 48

CNME’s ICT Achievement Awards 2011 honoured the best in IT projects, end-­‐user and vendors from the region in 21 categories. We bring you the winners.

The Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) of Egypt was in Dubai for GITEX Technology Week 2011 and took the time to discuss its role in the development of the nation’s ICT industry with a particular focus on BPO. Pallavi Sharma reports.

At the MENA leg of the SAP World Tour 2011, the German IT giant introduced co-­‐CEO Bill McDermott to its customers and channel partners in the region.

16

The Achievers

Egypt on

At the second annual Infrastructure Strategies 2011 event, vendors and end-­‐users spoke about the tough economic conditions that are likely next year, and discussed the best ways to achieve ROI on every infrastructure investment.

14

25

Changing integration

Changing the game Users say true collaboration encompasses technology, people and processes. Pallavi Sharma speaks to professionals from the region’s ϐ Middle East enterprises.

LAST WORD 62 A look at what major events await you, what we’re reading, and a

www.cnmeonline.com

sneak peek at the contents of the next issue of CNME.

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3

EDITORIAL

Weather’s a-changing

Sathya Mithra Ashok Senior Editor Talk to us: E-mail: sathya@cpidubai.com Twitter: @computernewsme Facebook: www.facebook.com/ computernewsme

Publisher Dominic De Sousa

I have always enjoyed the last few months of the year. And this year, the good times started rather early in October.

CNME conducted the annual ICT Achievement Awards on the 9th of the month, in a gala evening in Dubai. The Awards, which received a total of 352 nominations (the highest number of nominations ever received for a technology awards function in the region), honoured the best projects, people and products from across the region in 21 categories.

The ceremony played host to a 400-­‐strong audience, comprising the who’s-­‐who of the ICT industry in the region. Winners included organisations from the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, along with a few surprises from Bahrain (For the full list of winners and to understand how they beat the others to win the trophy, please read the Awards story starting on page 25).

Post GITEX is usually a quiet time for the industry. But not for CNME. Right after the mega-­‐event, we brought together key stakeholders to discuss data management and analytics with SAS. The global business analytics leader picked the CIO Council roundtable to launch the D1 appliance – a device meant for SMEs in the Middle East. Ǧ ϐ ǡ Ǥ brief on both events and the discussion topics during the same, please refer to the story starting page 6.

Then, to wrap up the month, there was Infrastructure Strategies 2011. More than 60 end-­‐users got together with key vendors to discuss the state of infrastructure investments in the region and to put their heads together to come up with ideas for tackling the tough year that lies ahead. (To read that story, go to page 12).

Yes – we have packed CNME this time. However, I would like to point out that the magazine is no longer the single biggest source of the information we can bring you.

Our website holds a lot more interviews and analysis articles that we could not ϐ Ǥ www.cnmeonline.com, where you will get a lot more articles and more indepth information on trends we are seeing and events we are working on till the end of the year.

You will also get a chance to see the events take shape in our photo gallery and also get to catch the CNME team in action.

Our social media presence has also grown in the last few months. For live updates on every event that we conduct or participate in, follow us on www.twitter.com/computernewsme and if you like reading our magazine or our website, do leave your ‘like’ mark on our Facebook page – www.facebook.com/ computernewsme.

The end of the year is always fun – and we have some dramatic changes for you very soon. But that is fodder for another editorial.

Till December then.

COO Nadeem Hood Managing Director Richard Judd richard@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409126 EDITORIAL Senior Editor Sathya Mithra Ashok sathya@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409111 Sub-Editor Pallavi Sharma pallavi@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409103 ADVERTISING Commercial Director Rajashree R Kumar raj@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409131 CIRCULATION Database and Circulation Manager Rajeesh M rajeesh@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409147

PRODUCTION AND DESIGN Production Manager James P Tharian james@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409146 Art Director Kamil Roxas kamil@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409112 Designer Analou Balbero analou@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409104 Photographer Cris Mejorada cris@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409108

DIGITAL SERVICES Digital Services Manager Tristan Troy P Maagma Web Developers Jerus King Bation Erik Briones Jefferson de Joya Louie Alma online@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9100 Published by

1013 Centre Road, New Castle County, Wilmington, Delaware, USA STRATEGIC ICT PARTNER

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ANALYSIS month in view

SAS addresses SME data needs with D1 appliance SAS ME, the regional arm of the global leader in business analytics, picked CNME’s CIO Council roundtable to launch their latest solution for SMEs – the D1 appliance.

A

t a crowded CIO Council roundtable earlier this month, the Middle East arm of SAS, an international leader in business ǡ ϐ of the D1 appliance – an all-­‐in-­‐one data warehousing and data analytics solution that is set to change the way SMEs in the region use and interact with their data.

The CIO Council roundtable brought together more than 50 senior decision makers from the UAE to discuss the changing nature of data analytics and the best ways of deriving intelligence from steadily increasing amounts of date exploding.

At the CIO Council roundtable, conducted by CNME, SAS, the company’s data warehousing partners Greenplum and local integration partner Altis, presented on the ϐ Ǥ “SMEs and the problems that they need to solve are as complex as that of any major enterprise anywhere. This complexity is not related to size, but is a product of the world that we all operate in. The amount of data that these companies have to deal with increase every day, and there is the element of unstructured data as well (which includes social media and blogs) which are key to understanding the sentiments and thoughts of a company among its existing and potential client base,” said Carel Badenhorst, head of the technology practice at SAS MEA. “Data capture alone cannot help companies make sense of the world; it is about understanding the data, and this can be done only with analytics. Analytics is the only capability that provides companies with a beautiful view of data and allows

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NOVEMBER 2011

More than 50 senior decision makers came together at CNME’s CIO Council roundtable

SMEs and the problems that they need to solve are as complex as that of any major enterprise anywhere. This complexity is not related to size, but is a product of the world that we all operate in. The amount of data that these companies have to deal with increase every day, and there is the element of unstructured data as well (which includes social media and blogs) which are becoming key to understanding sentiments and thoughts of a company among its existing and potential client base.” them to do something about it. The cost and complexity of analytics solutions have put off SMEs from investing in them in the past. The SAS D1 appliance addresses all these issues and helps these companies get more from their data,” added Badenhorst.

SAS’s D1 appliance brings together capabilities of Greenplum, the data warehouse pioneer and Dell, along with SAS’s capabilities to form a complete solution that possesses the latest technologies for data

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warehousing, data integration, data mining and forecasting, in addition to acquiring business intelligence.

Speaking at the CIO Council roundtable, Phillip Roy, director of Greenplum in the ME elaborated on the merits of the partnership, and the new capabilities that the D1 appliance would provide SMEs in the UAE and the larger region.

“With D1, the region suddenly has the opportunity to leapfrog over more

developed countries. This is our initiative, our partnership, that is applicable only in the region right now. The appliance has been launched only for the region, for regional SMEs and cannot yet be accessed in the US or the UK. This gives SMEs here a real opportunity to take and use the latest, ϐ ǡdz stated Roy. Roy also spoke at length about Greenplum’s integration in the D1 appliance and how organisations can use the same for accessing and understanding big data, and ϐ Ǥ More than 50 senior IT decision makers gathered at the CIO Council roundtable today He was followed by Ali Gooyabadi, chief ϐ ǡ explained how SMEs can achieve return on investment (ROI) with the D1 appliance, or even a larger data analytics solution.

He pointed out that when done the right

Carel Badenhorst, head of the technology practice at SAS MEA

Phillip Roy, director of Greenplum in the ME

ǡ ϐ processes, these organisations can hope to retrieve the value of their investment within a few months.

Questions at the CIO Council roundtable centred around the competitive landscape for data analysis in the region, along with the language and integration capabilities of the SAS D1 appliance itself.

Ali Gooyabadi, chief strategy officer at Altis Distribution

Retail firms discuss data analytics SAS, a leader in business analytics, and Satvik, a consulting and analytics solutions provider got together to give retail end-­‐users an idea of what analytics can do for them and how they can use it ϐ ǯ

roundtable conducted today.

“Retail businesses in the UAE most often have a lot of data and information, but are they using it intelligently to make business ǫ ǡ ϐ ǡ can make the decision-­‐making process a ǡ ϐ Ǧ initiative,” said Raj MK, CEO of Satvik at the retail roundtable.

He also explained, with global case studies, the different functions that analytics can help simplify for retail organisations.

These range from planning campaigns, to understanding campaign ROI and identifying areas of improvement across products and retail branches,” he said.

The event, which brought together more than 25 senior IT decision makers from the retail sector in the UAE, saw them participate

in a discussion regarding the challenges involved in understanding customers in the country, and the areas that require data collection and cleansing.

“Data collection and cleansing is an integral element of the process and needs to be done prior to implementing any analytics solution. We can help customers understand and bring together different data elements residing within their organisation, and help them to structure the same, while deploying

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the analytics elements,” said Shameem Backer, channel partner account manager at SAS ME. “Our scope of work includes data cleansing, and there are modules that allow us to help you identify and work with customers using structured as well as unstructured data. When you start with data, it can seem like an uncontrollable whole.

However, we start with chunks – either in your static or your transactional information – and this helps us build up to the whole in a progressive manner,” said Raj. The companies said that, if an organisation has its customer data cleaned and ready, implementation of analytics can take as little as three weeks time, and organisations can start applying statistical models to gain more from their information.

The organisations stated that pricing of the solution include a base SAS solution along with other module-­‐oriented elements, and has to be structured on a case-­‐by-­‐case basis considering the requirements of the organisation and the state of its data usage.

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ANALYSIS month in view

Peder Ulander, VP of product marketing, cloud platforms group at Citrix

Clearing the T clouds Misperceptions of the cloud and an unclear understanding of what it can do are the biggest challenges holding back adoption, according to Citrix.

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he classic uncertainty and doubt that surrounds the entire idea of cloud computing and technologies is the biggest challenge facing it. This according to Peder Ulander, VP of product marketing, cloud platforms group at Citrix.

“We a ctually d id a s urvey where we researched 5 00 p eople i n b usiness positions what t heir i ssue was m oving to the c loud. T he n umber o ne t hing a head o f everything e lse was l ack o f u nderstanding and t raining. A nd i n fact a nalysts today will even tell you t hat m ost c ompanies will t ry a nd b uild a p rivate c loud today and m ost c ompanies w ill fail. T hat i s because t here i s n ot e nough i nformation about h ow to d o i t. U ncertainty m akes

things h ard, c hange m akes t hings h ard; so u ntil we c an b uild s ome s olid c ase references, c ompanies h ave to h elp people b ecome s uccessful w ith t he cloud a nd a ctually t reat i t m ore a s a n academic exercise versus j ust a m oney making exercise – t hat i s g oing to d rive u s forward,” s aid U lander.

The former CMO of Cloud.com, Ulander, who was in Dubai for GITEX Technology Week 2011, spoke at length about how Citrix was using its portfolio and experience to empower users, while still enabling businesses to conform to policies and security concerns.

“Cloud computing is about changing the fundamental IT services model to create more empowerment of users to enable them to do their work better, while making sure that controls and policies are set in place so that businesses can leverage this new technology. It is not just a capex versus opex discussion. It is an enabler, a strategic weapon that helps you really kind of drive your business better,” he said.

Speaking about cloud in the Middle East, Ulander said, “Enterprises should use IT as a strategic weapon to empower users to become more creative, agile and focused. Cloud computing has also enabled a truly distributed business model that enables you to have business continuity in times of extreme complexity, volatility and ambiguity. I know that connectivity is an issue in the region. But when you lose the cloud you can actually have a distributed computing model, with failover sites and all those other factors that actually give you a better presence online so that while your headquarters might not be attached to the cloud your entire customer base probably still can use it.”

Talking about the common misperceptions that surround the cloud, Ulander stated that the biggest one is the assumption that the cloud is a single entity.

We are transitioning into a world where stablility is not the norm. 2012 is another year where all things are going to happen.”

“The cloud represents three different layers of technology. There is cloud infra which are tools and components ϐ

to better operate their data centre. Better ϐ ǡ ǡ administrative resources etc., The next layer is PaaS – that is the whole platform environment. That is still fairly new.

The last one which is actually the most mature of all of these pieces is SaaS. That is the consumerised element. When I look through that stack and say where the region is with regards to adoption, they have done a pretty good job adopting SaaS layer for things that are important to consumers and to some businesses. And as you start going down that stack it becomes more and more kind of limited,” said Ulander.

However, “the same model exists around the globe,” he said. Consumerised user platforms tend to be the first to be adopted, followed by the other layers that make up the cloud. Even when it comes to service providers, the ones in the Middle East are almost always at the same level as their peers in Asia or the UA, according to Ulander.

“The only difference might be how public they are with it. There is maybe not much for them to go public with that type of detail, whereas people in the US start talking about cloud strategies 17 or 18 months before they launch it. I tend to disagree by saying that the maturity has not necessarily been here. The interest is ϐ ǡ have been as much pomp and circumstance I actually do think in the mindset of many

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they already recognise what they are using – the Middle East might be slightly behind with regards to where IaaS is but I came from a show in New York where we are still ϐ ǡdz Ǥ Touching upon the Cisco partnership, Ulander pointed out that the biggest risk and opportunity in the cloud lies with networking providers and appreciated the fact that as a company Cisco remains willing to work with various providers in the market.

“From a cloud perspective – this is more about cooperation than competition.

Especially in the brand new market because we are going to be growing, understanding and nurturing markets with the new technologies. Ultimately we are all working together under the same roof. We are all trying to do the same thing and the more time we spend bickering about my hypervisor is better than yours, the only person who loses is the customer,” opined Ulander.

According to him, as markets move from unstability to unstability, initiatives like cloud computing can give large enterprises more of an ability to control their data and destiny.

“We are transitioning into a world where stablility is not the norm. 2012 is another year where all things are going to happen. The more you abstract the physical to the virtual and focus on the delivery of services and apps to your users – be they local, remote or in a situation where they have to move from local to remote – that is what you want to focus on,” he concluded.

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ANALYSIS month in view

Changing integration At the recent GITEX Technology Week 2011, Pallavi Sharma caught up with the president of ITWorx to discuss the company’s outlook on current technologies, and the firm’s stand for the future.

I

TWorx, a developer of software solutions and products for governmental institutions, public service organisations and telecommunications operators throughout Europe, Middle East and Africa was at GITEX Technology Week 2011 to announce the launch of a free social mobile app for Windows Phone 7.

According to representatives of the company, CityScout combines the power of crowd-­‐sourcing, social media, Bing interactive maps and Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies, to allow citizens ϐ report incidents, via Facebook, directly from their mobile phone.

Ahmed Badr, vice-­‐president, professional services at ITWorx said, “CityScout is central to ITWorx social collaboration and mobility in government theme at GITEX 2011. The new app is part of ITWorx Citizen1st portfolio of pioneering and ready-­‐made public-­‐sector software solutions, which enable governments and other organisations to deliver next-­‐generation citizen engagement and Gov 2.0 processes, whilst using crowd-­‐sourcing to keep their citizens on the move. For telecommunication operators, CityScout is a powerful new addition to their value-­‐added portfolio of must-­‐have apps.”

Headquartered in Egypt, ITWorx helps government agencies address the need to help them adopt smart government initiatives and articulate strategies to provision effective government performance management. The company also works with different stakeholders across educational institutions to help them embrace the culture of e-­‐learning.

Wael Amin, president at ITWorx believes that technology trends like cloud computing

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Wael Amin, president, ITWorx

and the increasing use of independent mobile devices across both the public and private sector are changing the way the world interacts and does business, but they are also adding complexity to the IT management front.

Amin pointed out that the adoption of Web 2.0 tools and cloud computing varies largely between governments and other private sectors because of the nature of the information they deal with and the sheer size of these organisations.

“Governments deal with a much wider audience. E-­‐services must also be provisioned to enhance interaction with the citizens of a nation who may reside within its boundaries or abroad. Add to this, the fact that governments deal with particularly ϐ ourselves dealing with an organisation

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that needs to establish an infrastructure that offers maximum security with ready availability,” he explained.

Amin said that the adoption of cloud computing, particularly the public cloud infrastructure is steadily maturing in the Middle East.

“Regional governments are not far behind developed economies like those of Europe or America in their technology adoption. We are helping local governments deploy both private and public cloud service models depending on their requirements and infrastructure readiness. These investments are associated with the need for scalable infrastructure services to reduce costs associated with IT management and energy consumption,” he added.

Amin predicts that the Middle East is yet to witness an accelerated growth in ICT spending and investments. “Radical changes in the external environment will drive the need for organisations to adopt next generation intelligence software and solutions. As information continues to accelerate and we find ourselves dealing with both unstructured as well as structured sources of information, the need to invest in business intelligence and analytics solutions that extract relevant data from these disparate sources of information will prove most important,” he said.

“The need to invest in advanced technologies to beat the competition at engaging the customer in turn will strain the need to work with partners who are capable of understanding the organisation’s culture and unique business needs. Eventually, these partners will ensure that technology investments simplify business processes and enhance existing architecture. That is exactly what ITWorx does,” Amin concluded.

Egypt On The Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) of Egypt was in Dubai for GITEX Technology Week 2011 and took the time to discuss its role in the development of the nation’s ICT industry with a particular focus on BPO. Pallavi Sharma reports.

A

t GITEX Technology Week 2011, ITIDA or the Information Technology Industry Development Agency announced the launch of the e-­‐Signature competence centre to simplify processes surrounding the adoption

ϐ e-­‐citizen services.

In recent years, Egypt has made commendable efforts in developing an SMB-­‐comprised local ICT industry, and ITIDA has played no small part in the mushrooming growth of this remarkable business sector.

Eng. Yasser ElKady, CEO, ITIDA said, “The new centre is a milestone for Egypt as it represents the knowledge we are keen to share with our partners in the Gulf region. ϐ and North Africa region, the centre aims to ϐ public sector enterprises across the region.

The centre will focus on the implementation of e-­‐government initiatives and digital identity projects in a secure and safe way. ITIDA will work towards generating awareness about public key infrastructure (PKI) for the robust functioning of e-­‐government services. IT will do so through tailored programs in English and Arabic to enable knowledge transfer and training as a means of empowering prospect clients in the public or the private sectors.”

ITIDA is the executive IT arm of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Egypt. Led by Eng. Elkady, ITIDA extends a helping hand to businesses and provides the Egyptian IT industry with the right tools to increase exports in the IT and ITES sectors.

Eng. Yasser ElKady, CEO, ITIDA

that include automated software development companies, mobile application development businesses, data warehousing providers among many others to showcase their products and services at GITEX 2011,” he said.

In addition to this, the agency works towards encouraging foreign direct investment in the Egyptian ICT market and aids in the development of local ICT talent pool in the country.

When asked about how ITIDA contributes to the growth of the local ICT talent pool, Reda said, “We have a global programme called Edu Egypt that allows us to go into schools and universities, and initiate an active study of IT as part of the annual curriculum to ensure that students have the key skills they need when they graduate.”

Reda added that Edu Egypt is running in its third year and has already generated 13000 graduates as part of this programme.

We have a global programme called Edu Egypt, which allows us to go into schools and universities, and encourage the active study of IT as part of the annual curriculum to ensure that students have the key communication skills they need when they graduate.”

Initially launched by the Egyptain government in 2004, ITIDA was to solely focus on the standardisation of processes surrounding the development and adoption of e-­‐signature technology, Today, ITIDA is also responsible for the development of the local ICT industry in Egypt, by incubating and setting up small and medium sized local IT companies that provide a range of services from automated software to outsource providers.

According to Ahmed Reda, media and international relations manager at ITIDA, the agency’s primary role is in helping local IT companies showcase their applications and services in the larger international market.

“We have subsidised about 85% of the costs to for over 70 Egyptian IT organisations

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ITIDA is now looking to focus on the local development of ICT in the larger African and Middle East region. The agency recently announced that it would train 3000 citizens of Uganda in the concept of outsourcing to kick start the industry in the country.

ITIDA also contributes to the growth of Egypt’s position as a leading business process outsourcing (BPO) destination.

“Egypt currently ranks fourth in the global BPO industry, earning annual revenues of $1.1 billion. ITIDA is backed by the Egyptian government in their efforts to build an infrastructure friendly to outsourcing and equip local companies to meet international standards. We expect that this combined effort will help the local BPO industry revenue reach the $10 billion mark by 2010,” he concluded.

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ANALYSIS Infrastructure Strategies 2011

PHOTO (clockwise from top left): More than 65 end-user decision makers gathered at Infrastructure Strategies 2011; David Augustine, VP and global delivery head of infrastructure management services at Mahindra Satyam; Ossama El Samadani, director of storage services for Dell MEA; Bassam Al Masri, senior systems engineer at Citrix MEA; Alistair Mashford, head of sales and business development at BT MENA

Planning for 2012 T At the second annual Infrastructure Strategies 2011 event, vendors and endusers spoke about the tough economic conditions that await us next year, and discussed the best ways to achieve ROI on every infrastructure investment.

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urning investments from capex to opex, and the challenges of implementing a chargeback model were the key points discussed among end-­‐users and vendors gathered together today at the second annual Infrastructure Strategies.

The CNME-­‐CPI initiative brought together IT managers, infrastructure managers, CIOs and other senior decision makers for the second year in a row to discuss the latest in technologies and trends related to enterprise infrastructure and link it to the ongoing struggle to ensure business ϐ Ǥ “IT is increasingly becoming important for enterprises to turn capex into opex. Every investment – infrastructure or otherwise – has to be connected to an over-­‐arching business plan. I also believe that more IT organisations

The panel discussion expands on what the next year holds in store for Middle East enterprises.

Sameh Amin, technical account manager at Enterasys Networks

within enterprises have to turn themselves into service providers, ensure a service catalogue and start charging the business units for utisiling IT services,” said Ossama El Samadani, director of storage services for Dell MEA during the panel discussion.

He also spoke about CIOs for particular organisations in the region who manage to work on a zero budget, due to the successful nature of a chargeback model, where they are paid by the business units based on the ϐ Ǥ In answer, some of the IT managers who had implemented chargeback models in their organisation spoke at length about the challenges associated with getting such a ϐ Ǥ Dz ϐ Ǥ management elements that needed to be ensured, and all the people who would be using the new model of delivery and payment had to be trained and made comfortable with the shift. We did the move ϐ and when you become a service provider to your own business there are multiple ϐ Ǥ ϐ ǡdz

Walid Elsahar, ICT infrastructure manager at Transguard Group

Elsahar, ICT infrastructure manager at Transguard Group.

All the speakers reiterated that 2012 would probably be a more challenging year as economies shrink around the world and ϐ mega projects.

“In many ways 2012 is going to be a continuation of what we have been seeing in the past few years. We have gone through a recession already, and the next year is going to see a cinching of budgets again. This is why it is critical to consider IT service provision critically and consider how it can add to the bottomline of businesses, without adding to its costs. As they attempt to turn capex into opex, more organisations should ϐ can offer them,” said David Augustine, VP and global delivery head of infrastructure management services at Mahindra Satyam.

Alistair Mashford, head of sales and business development at BT MENA emphasised that even as enterprises looked to service providers they needed to ensure that they were the right ones for them by checking on past references and public acknowledgements of service provision.

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IT is increasingly becoming important for enterprises to turn capex into opex. Every investment – infrastructure or otherwise – has to be connected to an over-arching business plan. I also believe that more IT organisations within enterprises have to turn themselves into service providers, ensure a service catalogue and start charging the business units for utisiling IT services.”

“Customers must stay on the latest platforms and enabled the best in technology in order to keep their customers happy and to avoid losing business among increasing competition. Security and availability are key to ensuring a stable, global network.

And customers can rely on companies like BT to ensure that they get the best service provision backed by reliable, standards-­‐ oriented contracts,” said Mashford.

“Organisations should consider splitting mega-­‐projects into smaller chunks, and focusing on gaining ROI out of each of these smaller investments. When they do this, they can strengthen their strategy with smaller investments, and ensuring that they each project’s return for the next project and so on, until they achieve the goals of the mega-­‐ project – probably within the same time frame, but with much less spend involved in it,” said El Samadoni.

Other speakers at the conference, Bassam Al Masri, senior systems engineer at Citrix ϐ of desktop virtualisation and how it can be applied across vertical sectors, while Sameh Amin, technical account manager at Enterasys Networks explained the workings of security within a network (especially a virtualised Ȍ ϐ Ǥ Presentations from Infrastructure Strategies 2011 are available for download from www.infrastructurestrategiesme.com.

NOVEMBER 2011

Computer News Middle East

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ANALYSIS month in view

Game on At the MENA leg of SAP’s World Tour 2011, the German IT giant introduced co-CEO Bill McDermott to its customers and channel partners in the region.

“

Having seen the immense optimism surrounding IT deployments in the region, I can truly say that the demand for IT outstrips the capacity for us to deliver and therefore I am convinced now more than ever that SAP needs to double its resources in the region to cater ϐ breed software and solutions to enhance ϐ ǡdz said Bill McDermott, Co-­‐CEO, SAP as he delivered the executive keynote at the MENA leg of the SAP World Tour 2011.

McDermott pointed out that one of the key elements in expanding its resources in the region is the expansion of the SAP University Alliance Programme to encompass 22 regional universities.

“Through this alliance, SAP is working towards harnessing local ICT talent pools.

We are looking at grabbing fresh IT skill right out of universities and enrol these students at training camps to equip them with the expertise and knowledge they require to succeed as competent IT consultants and engineers,” he explained.

Most importantly, McDermott said, “To level out this gap between the demand for IT and the ability to support and service that demand, SAP will create hundreds if not thousands of jobs in the near future.”

Sam Alkharrat, MD, SAP MENA pointed out that over the last 12 months SAP has already hired 100 new employees since August 2010 bringing their total to a 300 strong, in addition to which, the company has ϐ ǡ Qatar, Egypt and KSA. The company also recently announced the appointment of Qais Gharaibeh as country manager for the UAE. ϐ customers in the region, Alkharrat added, “We have at least two to three new customers a week in addition to which I personally

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of new developments and revolutionary IT strategies it is absolutely essential that decision makers understand that IT is no longer just the business enabler, IT is the business.”

To cope with this change, McDermott recommended that decision makers begin working out a mobile business strategy then go on to rethink IT operations, shift IT investments to change the game-­‐ reduce ǡ ϐ the results of IT initiatives. “Just on budget ϐ ǡ Ǧ essential. An IT project should be able to deliver a unique value add to what you already have to offer,” he explained.

McDermott explained that although big data, mobility and the cloud are the three mega trends of the moment, the increasing volumes of data is what will trigger more changes and the creation of new software and solutions to

Just on budget and on time will not suffice, on-value is essential. An IT project should be able to deliver a unique value add to what you already have to offer.” sign off and approve at least one technology go-­‐live every week. Clearly, our ability to execute our strategies with a vision for our customer’s and our own growth is working as it should.”

According to McDermott, SAP’s ability to focus on the customer’s unique requirements ϐ while ensuring that these investments can sustain growth is their core strength. “Where SAP focuses on innovation, our competitors focus on consolidating the past. That is what makes us different,” he added.

McDermott encouraged businesses to work towards understanding their customer’s requirements and investing in technology that enables them to anticipate their concerns and be ready to answer their every query to create “dynamite” user experience like Apple did.

He said, “The entire IT industry is going through a structural change and in the face

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analyse and generate business relevant reports from mountains of information.

“The commodity-­‐like use of the Internet combined with the popular use of social networks is introducing organisations to new sources of both structured and unstructured data. Today, we deal with volumes of data that were beyond imagination in the past.

So we need to create systems that have the capability to analyse different sources of data quickly and in real time,” he said.

McDermott announced bigger plans for SAP, “We want to improve everybody’s life and we’re focused on having 1 billion users run our software everyday and we’re not very far away from that goal,” he said.

Over the past month, McDermott has visited Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar and the UAE as part of the SAP World Tour 2011 to meet regional customers and honour EMEA wide software implementations.

ANALYSIS month in view

Growth scope At Agilent Technologies’ recently held global event in Prague, senior executives discussed the company’s growth so far and its future ambitions. Mike Byrne writes.

A

s conference agendas go, this was impressive. Agilent gathered 33 members of the press from 15 different countries to inform and discuss issues ranging from next generation wireless technologies, to powerful modular and application product offerings.

Key employees and high level management from across Agilent’s portfolio offered presentations and discussions within the areas of microwave applications and how to address EMC solutions and test challenges never before possible, using a new range of Agilent SMUs. Announcements of new products from Agilent included the 2.4GHz Dual Core PXIe embedded controller for functional test systems as well as the introduction of the industry’s highest-­‐bandwidth PXI data-­‐ streaming packages. In addition, there are a number of products scheduled for release in early 2012 which promise faster and more compact scalable transmitters and digitisers.

As it stands, Agilent Technologies enjoys quite a balanced revenue stream with regard to regional input: North America represents up to 45% of the revenue stream, with Asia contributing 30% and EMEA accounting for the remaining 25%.

When asked about emerging markets and particular Agilent’s market strategy for the Middle East, Benoit Neel, Field Operations for the Agilent EMEA, said that the region offered great opportunities for growth. “In particular, we have witnessed huge investment is wireless, broadband infrastructure and installation, and radar defence technology by certain countries in the region. Amidst this, demand is dictated by the need for quality, easily accessible and well priced products.” he said.

To provide affordable wireless mobility with good bandwidth is a problem many ϐ ϐ to deliver. “Agilent’s electronic measurement division is heavily invested with upgrading

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Benoit Neel, Field Operations for the Agilent EMEA

technology for higher bandwidth satellites so we work with local partners in the Middle East to ensure that products and services are constantly being improved,” said Neel.

So how exactly is Agilent gearing towards increasing its market share in the Middle East?

Frank Berthaux, RFuW Market segment manager, Agilent Technologies, ϐ private companies in the region, Agilent’s strategy extended to working closely with governmental groups and their entities.

“We have just recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with a number of universities in KSA. Through investigation, we have determined that research is being led by public educational institutions and so we feel Agilent can best serve the market by sharing our technology and research with these institutions and with ongoing student exchange programmes and knowledge sharing platforms,” he said.

Agilent’s global trend of obtaining very localised partners in each region has indeed continued when one looks at their strategy in the Middle East. “Working

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with educational institutions and local private companies and with training them to operate within our guidelines, helps us greatly in that customers there can calibrate, repair and upgrade all our test equipment without the need to send it back out of the region,” said Berthaux.

So how does Agilent make sure that the products they are offering are cutting -­‐edge and how to identify the need for technologies that don’t yet exist?

Agilent Research Laboratories, a side arm of Agilent Technologies, regularly conducts research to anticipate customer needs and develop solutions that power growth. “We schedule constant sit downs with clients and customers for feedback.

These companies have road maps for future development and with this we align and synchronise our route forward with theirs.

We carefully indentify areas where there is no need for the technology, but depending on the region and the market, there will be a request in the near future” said Neel.

Berthaux conceded that the lifecycle of any product is gradually lessening with time. “A product that may have had a guaranteed shelf life of 20 years might only be able to guarantee 10 years now. The key to countering this trend ϐ Ǥ in a sense it is recognising future trends and demands,” he said.

“For Agilent smart energies is an area where there is huge growth potential. Future projects regarding wind, solar, hydroelectric and so on are fast becoming big talking points. Each of these areas requires constant measurement and testing and we are working in these areas in anticipation of demand,” said Neel.

After two days of presentations and interviews with senior management, it became evident that what drives Agilent Technologies and sets it apart from its competitors is its ability to function and innovate across so many measurement platforms.

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ROUND-UP month in view

ADAC selects Juniper for aggressive expansion Abu Dhabi Airports Company (ADAC), ϐ Abu Dhabi with subsidiaries supplying ground handling, duty free, cargo, catering and aviation training services, has awarded Juniper Networks with a 10-­‐year infrastructure frame contract to support an aggressive expansion program designed to transform Abu Dhabi Airports into world-­‐class facilities.

In support of its expansion plans, ADAC, wholly owned by the Abu Dhabi Government, has embarked on a large-­‐scale transformation program, including upgrading its existing network infrastructure to build an MPLS network and “cloud-­‐ready” data centres, while lowering capital and operating expenditure, the company said.

After a two year evaluation process, ADAC selected Juniper Networks EX Series Ethernet Switches and MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers from Juniper Networks’ Universal Edge portfolio, creating the infrastructure to underpin its innovative new services and facilities.

“Our overall goal was to enable the provisioning of world-­‐class facilities by

implementing a service provider-­‐grade network while reducing cost of ownership and capital and operational expenditure,” said Michael Ibbitson, VP, information & communications systems, Abu Dhabi Airports Company. “Juniper Networks won the 10-­‐ year contract after successfully showing ϐ the Juniper Networks infrastructure and due to its availability, scalability, resilience and services-­‐rich technical capabilities.”

The Juniper Networks wired infrastructure will provide a number of services to ADAC’s multitenant environment. ǡ ϐ ǡ multicast video streams and virtual private

data will be converged on the Juniper Networks MLPS infrastructure, delivering Layer 2 and Layer 3 services to meet the need of any application running within the airport, representatives said.

“ADAC’s demanding multitenant ϐ and reliability to support advanced services and applications,” said Mike Marcellin, VP, product marketing and business strategy, Platform Systems Division, Juniper Networks.

“By choosing Juniper Networks, ADAC can deploy a carrier-­‐class network with the optimum combination of performance and low-­‐footprint, low power-­‐consumption and low heat-­‐dissipation.”

Web sales to grow exponentially: Gartner By 2015, companies will generate 50% of Web sales via their social presence and mobile applications, according to Gartner.

Vendors in the e-­‐commerce market will begin to offer new context-­‐aware, mobile-­‐ based application capabilities that can be accessed via a browser or installed as an application on a phone, Gartner analysts said.

Gartner analysts discussed the future of e-­‐commerce at Gartner IT Symposium, saying that as the number of mobile phones overtakes PCs, customers will use mobile browsers and applications as the main points of interaction.

“E-­‐commerce organisations will need to scale up their operations to handle the increased visitation loads resulting from customers not having to wait until they

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are in front of a PC to obtain answers to questions or place orders,” said Gene Alvarez, research VP at Gartner. “In time, e-­‐commerce vendors will begin to offer context-­‐aware mobile-­‐shopping solutions as part of their overall Web sales offerings.”

“Customers are clamoring for new and easy ways to interact with the organisations they deal with, and no company should think itself immune to this new business dynamic,” Alvarez said.

“As more people use smartphones, they will expect an extension of their customer experience to be supported by this kind of device while demanding that social aspects of the Web be intertwined with this experience. At the same time, organisations are looking toward new countries and regions for growth. As a result, it is time to take a fresh look at your organisation’s

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Web sales capabilities to ensure that social software, mobile technology and globalisation are part of your organisation’s online future.”

Industries such as entertainment, software development, publishing and media are being driven by fast-­‐moving changes in their businesses, such as mobility, and the increasing number of mobile devices available to their buyers, analysts pointed out. Others are ϐ and products can be added to their customer-­‐service-­‐focused websites. Due to consumerisation, sites in all industries are being impacted by customer experience delivered in the retail space, as customers continue to use their online experiences as the benchmark by which to evaluate all others, they added.

ANALYTICS Find the delicate balance.

Sharp skepticism and increased regulatory pressures call for a firmwide approach to managing risk. SAS helps you integrate strategies throughout your business cycle and focus on long-term growth. Decide with confidence. ®

sas.com/balance

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19

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. © 2011 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved. S71591US.0411

ROUND-UP month in view

Healthcare ICT task force launched in Jordan His Majesty King Abdullah II of Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and John Chambers, ǯ ǡ ǯ ϐ

Task Force, at a session, held alongside the World Economic Forum 2011 at the Dead Sea, Jordan.

A joint effort by Cisco, King Abdullah II Fund for Development (KAFD), and Jordan’s Information and Communications Technology Association (int@j), the Jordan Healthcare ICT Task Force is an open forum of Jordanian Health Information Communications Technology (ICT) companies under the umbrella of int@j. The Task Force’s main objective is to advance Jordan’s healthcare ICT cluster capacity and promote Jordanian healthcare ICT technologies and companies on a local, regional, and international level.

Cisco’s role will be to help in provisioning guidance, mentorship, and support to the Task Force’s programs.

“As a worldwide leader in networking, Cisco is well positioned to improve the future of healthcare through networked technologies that transform how people connect, access information, and collaborate.

We strongly believe that through our collaboration with int@j the Jordan Healthcare ICT Task Force will enable accelerated growth of healthcare technology ϐ ǡdz ǡ chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems.

The Task Force was launched at a special roundtable session on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum Jordan 2011 at the Dead Sea, with the participation of Cisco healthcare solution executives and Jordanian healthcare ICT technology companies executives.

“The taskforce will be focused on achieving multiple objectives, including rapidly replicating the Hakeem programme

nationwide and positioning Jordan as a regional hub for ICT solutions in the healthcare sector. The Task Force’s main objective is to advance Jordan’s healthcare ICT cluster capacity and promote Jordanian healthcare ICT technologies and companies on a local, regional, and international level,” said Mohammad Tahboub, chairman of the IT Association of Jordan, Inj@j The Task Force aims to to promote knowledge-­‐sharing and marketing for companies under the umbrella of the Jordan Healthcare ICT Task Force Cluster, as well as help to accelerate the growth of Jordan’s healthcare ICT companies by providing a forum for joint collaboration and cooperation.

It also aims to create a point of reference for global and regional leaders wishing to partner with Jordan’s Healthcare ICT cluster.

The inauguration roundtable session also witnessed the presentation of “Al Hussein Decoration for Distinguished Contribution of the First Degree” to Cisco’s Chairman and CEO, John Chambers by His Majesty King Abdullah II, in recognition of his continuous efforts and commitment to strengthen Jordan’s education and ICT sectors.

Management software to reach $37b revenue: Ovum The global information management software market will reach revenues of $37.4 billion in 2015, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10% from the $25.5 billion it will reach at the end of 2011, predicted Ovum.

In a new forecast, the independent technology analyst found that the strong growth will be driven by enterprises realising information management software’s vital role in their corporate performance.

Ovum lead analyst Nishant Singh said, “The information management market has ϐ years, with enterprises continuing to make investments despite the global recession. ǡ ϐ really starting to take off, with strong growth across the globe.”

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“There are several reasons why information management has become increasingly important to enterprises. Chief among them are shrinking business cycles, increasing process and quality control issues brought about by globalisation, and the fact that most organisations have by ϐ implementations,” he said.

Singh continued, “Most of the data generated by IT investments has now overgrown the existing systems that were supposed to capture and accurately portray it, driving a strong need for information management tools such as content management and business intelligence systems. These systems enable enterprises to extract content and information hidden in their diverse data sources, manage that

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data effectively, and apply sophisticated predictive analytics to improve their processes and decision-­‐making.”

According to Ovum, the top three global information management vendors by market share are EMC, SAS and IBM. Singh said, “While SAS’ revenues are driven to a large extent by its premium pricing, EMC and IBM have drawn on their market presence in storage and infrastructure software to cross-­‐sell their offerings.

“The common trend among all these market leaders, however, is that they have a strong reputation in the market, and are continuously working on enhancing that reputation – either through a very strong research and development programme, or through aggressive acquisitions,” he concluded.

Find us online

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Reviews: HP Envy 110MFP If a good-looking product is paramount to you, then the elegant Envy 110 MFP may be just what you seek–but this model is expensive.

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GITEX Technology Week – does the show remain relevant to the regional ICT industry?

22%

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Yes – but it could do with some modifications to make it more relevant

28%

No – the show has definitely lost its flavour

12%

Not sure

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Computer News Middle East

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Strategic ICT Partner

GREEN CHAMPION AWARDS AWARDS CATEGORIES Vendor awards Green Champion – E-waste handling Green Champion – Hardware Green Champion – Management software Green Champion – Product innovation Green Champion – Market education End-user awards Green Champion – Data Centre Green Champion – E-waste Green Champion – Desktop / printing Green Champion – Operational Green Champion – Innovation

Green principles in IT is not just about technology, it is about an organisational mindset.

With Sustainable ICT 2011, CNME – the region's premier technology magazine – and CPI, one of the leading publishing houses of the Middle East is bringing together producers and consumers of green technology solutions to discuss and debate the relevance of these solutions to the region, and ways in which adoption can be increased across enterprises in every corner of the Middle East.

Sustainable ICT 2011 will play host to more than 100 stakeholders from the ICT industry as they voice concerns and learn from each other on adding value to the bottomline, while being ecologically relevant, with green IT and technology.

To register, visit www.sustainableictme.com

Contacts: Sathya Mithra Ashok Senior Editor, CNME +971 4 440 9111 sathya@cpidubai.com

Strategic ICT Partner

Organised by

Winners of CNME’s ICT Achievement Awards 2011.

The Achievers CNME’s ICT Achievement Awards 2011, the region’s premier Awards event that honours the best in people, projects and products from the Middle East, took place on the 9th of October at a gala evening’s function.

The evening, which brought together more than 400 delegates forming the who’s-who of the ICT sector in the region, took place at The Monarch Hotel in Dubai.

The ICT Achievement Awards, brought to you by Computer News ME (CNME), the premier ‘technology in business’ magazine of the Middle East, recognised the achievers and trend-setters of the IT industry in the region, spanning both users www.cnmeonline.com

and providers who have made good on every enterprise investment.

These accomplishments covered everything from projects focused on speed to market, maintenance backlog challenges faced and overcome, businessfacing prioritisation of increased budgets, smart analysis of new technological opportunities, adoption of global best practices and standards, investment in skills and end-user support, as well as other intelligent use of resources by end-users, as well as solution and service providers in the changing financial landscape of the last 12 months.

The Awards were presented across 21 categories and here are the grand winners.

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Computer News Middle East

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CIO of the year Abdulla Al Bastaki, RTA

Abdulla Al Bastaki, Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), Dubai receives his award from Abdulla Al Ahmed, Senior VP of Business at Etisalat.

Shortlisted candidates: r (IB[J /BCFFI 2BSPVU Al Hilal Bank r "INBE "M.VMMB Dubal r *NBE 5BIB Belhasa International Group r 4SFFEIBS , 3FEEZ Sorouh Real Estate r "CEVMTBMBN #BTUBLJ Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority r &TBN )BEJ Aluminium Bahrain r "CEVMMB "M #BTUBLJ Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) r "NBM "M ,VXBSJ Supreme Education Council, Qatar r %BWJE )PSUPO Mashreq Bank r 4BKJ 0PNNFO Al Batha Group r "MJ 4BKXBOJ Emirates NBD r .FEIBU "NFS Mobily

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NOVEMBER 2011

The winner of this Award is a man that his team refers to as a leader, motivator and innovator. The key to a winning department, apart from people skills, is the “will to win.” The “will to win” comes from high motivation and a strong bond between team members. This particular CIO has been able to demonstrate and impart such characteristics within the various teams in his department.

Al Bastaki has implemented various strategies and visionary projects, built unique IT governance models, implemented industry standard frameworks, several cost saving initiatives and various societal contributions.

Not only has he led his team to glory after glory, winning awards and accolades over the last few years, but he has also worked to involve them in community initiatives where they are giving back to the society that they all work within.

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Future CIO of the year Khalid AbdulRahman Al Awadhi, head of the infrastructure section within IT at Dubai Municipality

Khalid AbdulRahman Al Awadhi, head of the infrastructure section within IT at Dubai Municipality receives his trophy from Abdullah Hashim, senior VP of information and communications technology at Etisalat.

Shortlisted candidates: r ,IBMJE "CEVM3BINBO "M "XBEIJ head of the infrastructure section within IT at Dubai Municipality r "MPL 4SJWBTUBW acting head of ICT and manager of IT applications at Masdar

In the current economic climate with limited budgets and very limited resources, maintaining a highly motivated team and helping them to deliver as per expectation is a challenging task. The winner proved his mettle by using very efficient management, interpersonal skills and far sighted vision to achieve the creation of an environment where each individual is self-motivated and strives to exceed expectation.

Al Awadhi also managed to create a culture where each team or unit is expected to implement new processes and technologies to increase customer satisfaction and reduce cost after detail technical and commercial evaluation.

And his strategy has worked for his organisation, where over the past 18 months the IT team has managed to reduce operational budget by 28% and achieved an availability KPI of 99.9% till July 2011.

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IT team of the year American Express Middle East, Bahrain

Can one team’s effort with projects be really compared to another in an unbiased fashion? And if so, would it be possible to rate one co-ordinated effort above another? These were some of the questions that the judges struggled with and tried to answer as they went through the nominations.

The final winner of this prestigious category was chosen not only because they demonstrated team effort and the spirit of working together, but they did so in a crisis demanding extraordinary measures.

This particular situation tested the capabilities of the network and resources of the organisation across its multiple offices, within the company and outside. In a time of political duress, when even vendors fled the country leaving a huge service lack,

the combined strength, commitment, teamwork and technical skills of the IT team came to the fore. While always operating under the company policy that prioritises the personal safety of staff and families, the team was able to maintain critical systems and availability of all call centre activities, while keeping the firm’s disaster recovery site on hot standby.

Besides all of the above, they have also completed the largest ever technology-based project for their organisation, by replacing the core management system with another single platform option.

PHOTO: Henry George, CIO of American Express ME receives his trophy from Abdullah Hashim, senior VP of information and communications technology at Etisalat.

Shortlisted candidates: r Al Batha Group r Dubal r Economic Zones World r General Organisation for Youth and Sports, Bahrain r American Express Middle East, Bahrain

r DHL Express r Orbit Satellite Network r Aluminium Bahrain r Mobily r Supreme Education Council, Qatar

Editor's choice of the year Mobily Mobily has been working on a major infrastructure project that has resulted in superior delivery of services, while also providing for outstanding company growth of more than 40% over the last few years.

As part of this project, the organisation has worked to upgrade its infrastructure, invest in new solutions, and mobilise its IT team constantly to achieve higher goals over the last couple of years. It has also expanded on its service line for its customer base, and has used IT consistently to help establish itself as a number one player in its country.

Shortlisted candidates: r Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), UAE r Mobily r Masdar r Kuwait Oil Company r Saudi Ministry of Labour r eHDF

The team from Mobily receives the Editor’s Choice Award.

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NOVEMBER 2011

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Industry achievement VAD of the Year – FVC

Richard Judd, MD of Technology and Business publications at CPI hands the trophy to the FVC team. From left to right, the FVC team includes K S Parag, MD; Yakob Kafina, GM for KSA; Dharmendra Parmar, GM Marketing; Ahmed Youssef, GM for Egypt; Ronald Hajj, GM for Levant and Bruce Withington, Executive Director.

At the beginning of this Awards effort, the editors of CPI’s Technology publications got together to create a special Industry Achievement category, which would give them the opportunity to honour the outstanding achievement of a vendor or a partner in the Middle East ICT industry.

For this year’s Industry Achievement award the editors came together to pick one company that had stood out among the rest in terms of customer partnerships, channel engagement, technology expertise and investments in the region. Their final choice was a firm that had shown consistent growth across the Middle East, without hampering the quality of its service, or its initiative to continue to be a single point of contact for its customers and channel partners - FVC. FVC has also worked to improve awareness of technologies like unified communications and video conferencing, and continues to highlight the benefits that enterprises can derive from these technologies when they are used in the right way.

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BFSI deployment of the year Qatar First Investment Bank (QFIB)

Though there were a few close contenders for this trophy, the judges felt that the Award could be given only to the bank that had taken a major risk in embracing cloud technologies, not just for email but also ERP and other core banking applications. It has also been actively pursuing certifications in COBIT, ITIL, ISO etc, and it is very clear that in this bank, IT has been leading transformation within the business.

QFIB took home the trophy for their groundbreaking private cloud deployment.

Shortlisted candidates: r Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) r Abu Dhabi Finance r Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB) r Dubai Bank r Qatar First Investment Bank (QFIB) r National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) r Kuwait Finance House

(LtoR) Mahmood Shaker, CIO of QFIB and Slim Bouker, COO of QFIB receive the Award from Masahiko Murata, Deputy GM, Kyocera ME

r Arab National Bank (ANB), KSA r Medmark r JRG r Riyadh Bank r Societe Generale r KPMG

Telecommunications deployment of the year Saudi Telecom Company (STC) STC is already a force in its country. It has recently implemented cloud technologies to improve customer service and responsiveness. It has achieved several advantages by way of this implementation including lower costs, higher flexibility, and quicker time to market for new products and services.

The judges felt that this has to be especially encouraged and appreciated, since as a telecom provider, all companies should embrace the cloud in order to provide better service to their customers.

Shortlisted candidates: (RtoL) Masahiko Murata, Deputy GM from Kyocera presents the trophy to Nawaf Al Shemmari, ICT Director – Enterprise Business Unit Marketing at STC and Suhail Hassanain, Account Manager at Cisco.

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r TRA, UAE r Du r Saudi Telecom Company (STC) r Mobily r Lebanon Online

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r Communications and Information Technology Commission, KSA r Etisalat Misr

Government deployment of the year General Organisation for Youth and Sports, Bahrain This was not an easy choice for the judges. The Dubai Courts, had implemented numerous e-portals to facilitate and simplify the process of law, and the Abu Dhabi Ports Company, had embraced green IT to drive down cost and decided to go 100% virtua. Both projects caught the judges attention and deserve a special mention.

The winner, GOYS, beat the other contenders by displaying exemplary work

and insight in working on a collaboration project that involved multiple parties, and providing e-services to a wide section of the public and businesses.

The judges were especially impressed by the detail that the organisation invested in the planning phase, using elements like mind mapping, along with standardised best practices, to achieve their objectives and to get the most from their e-services implementation.

Shortlisted candidates: r "CV %IBCJ 'PPE $POUSPM "VUIPSJUZ r %FQBSUNFOU GPS &DPOPNJD %FWFMPQNFOU r %VCBJ .VOJDJQBMJUZ r (FOFSBM 0SHBOJTBUJPO GPS :PVUI BOE Sports, Bahrain r 4BVEJ .JOJTUSZ PG -BCPVS r #BISBJO F(PWFSONFOU "VUIPSJUZ

r %VCBJ &MFDUSJDJUZ BOE 8BUFS "VUIPSJUZ r %V r %VCBJ $PVSUT r )FBMUI "VUIPSJUZ "CV %IBCJ r %VCBJ 8PSME 5SBEF $FOUSF r %VCBJ $JWJM %FGFODF r .JOJTUSZ PG 'PSFJHO "GGBJST 6"&

r .JOJTUSZ PG )JHIFS &EVDBUJPO &HZQU r 4IFJLI ,IBMJGB .FEJDBM $JUZ r .BTEBS r %VCBJ 4JMJDPO 0BTJT "VUIPSJUZ r 3PBET BOE 5SBOTQPSU "VUIPSJUZ 6"& r %FQBSUNFOU PG 'JOBODF "CV %IBCJ

PHOTO: Abdulredha Abbas Almosawi, director of planning and sport media at General Organisation for Youth and Sports (Bahrain) receives the Award from Asli Aktas, Regional Director for ME at Enterasys.

Healthcare deployment of the year King Fahd Military Medical Complex (KFMMC) Out of the finalists, three particular deployments caught the interest of the judges. There was the high-tech video conferencing system implemented by the Jordan Health Initiative, which allows doctors and nurses from all over the country to be in contact with one another, and allows remote diagnosis of patients.

There was also the fully integrated asset and resource management system deployed

by Al Mashfa Hospital in Jeddah, with active and passive RFID, CCTV, wireless locking and touch-screen technologies.

But the winner was set apart by the revolutionary nature of the change it brought about for the organisation by way of its deployment. By implementing organisation wide Picture Archives and

Communications Sytems (PACS), that touched not only one hospital but multiple healthcare institutions within its fold, this particular organisation has enabled faster and more efficient diagnosis. By enabling better and timely delivery of information to doctors, it has improved quality of the treatment given to patients.

Apart from this major deployment, the organisation continues to use IT to improve other aspects of healthcare provision while driving cost down continuously.

PHOTO: Dr Mustafa H Qurban, ICT Director and consultant for Eastern Region at King Fahd Military Medical Complex (KFMMC) receives the trophy from Asli Aktas, Regional Director for ME at Enterasys.

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Shortlisted candidates: r Abu Dhabi Health Services r Hospital of Bahrain r Al Mashfa Hospital, Jeddah r Sheikh Khalifa Medical City r King Fahd Military Medical Complex r Health Authority, Abu Dhabi r Jordan Health Initiative, Jordanian government

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Energy deployment of the year Masdar (Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company)

Masdar (Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company) came to the fore of the judging process having put in place numerous projects over the last year to move towards greener technology investments, while also generally improving other elements of IT in the organisation. All of this has been achieved without any remarkable capital investment as well.

Shortlisted candidates:

(LtoR) Madhu Pejeer, service management head and Alok Srivastava, acting head of Masdar ICT receive the trophy from Mohammed Areff, MD for Gulf & Pakistan at Avaya. The other team members include Samer Tahhan, EDMS team lead and Rahman Baki, network and data centre lead at Masdar.

r ADNOC r Al Maha Petroleum r Gulf Drilling International r Masdar (Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company) r Kuwait Oil Company r National Trigeneration CHP Company, KSA

Education deployment of the year Supreme Education Council, Qatar Abu Dhabi Education Council had two projects of note – a logistics one and the other of having a unified network. The groundbreaking network project is an ambitious attempt to connect all the schools together and manage them in a more centralised fashion.

By doing this ADEC will help the UAE's goal to be a research led economy and improve the education level of students.

They were beaten to the trophy though by Supreme Education Council in Qatar that is transforming the nature of the education system in its country. It has been involved in major projects to improve the quality and ease of access to educational resources to all in its country. It has implemented cloud technologies and embraced mobile computing to transform education for an entire country, using technology at the core to gain goals that are difficult to achieve.

(LtoR) Amal Al Kuwari, SEC IT director, Wadih Deaibes, SEC IT advisor, Othman Al Qudah, IT operations section manager and Nar Ahmed, IT applications section manager at SEC receive the trophy from Mohammed Areff, MD for Gulf & Pakistan at Avaya (centre).

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Shortlisted candidates: r Abu Dhabi Education Council

r Sultan Qaboos University

r Kuwait Ministry of Education r Ministry of Higher Education, Egypt r Supreme Education Council, Qatar r King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals

r American University of Sharjah r UAE University r University of Sharjah r UAE University in Al Ain

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(October 2011 -­ November 2011)

*Terms & Conditons apply.

Construction and Real Estate deployment of the year Sorouh Real Estate Sorouh Real Estate had implemented a new portal for the company, choosing an open source and .Net architecture. The main advantage of this was that the cost of implementation was dramatically lowered, when compared to the proprietary solution from a major vendor that the company was considering initially.

It also completed the entire implementation in record time.

Shortlisted candidates:

Dayan Hemanth De Alwis, business analyst IT solutions, Sreedhar Reddy, IT director and Mohamad Maaz Khan, manager, IT business solutions at Sorouh Real Estate receive the Award from Amir Sohrabi, Regional Alliance Manager at SAS MEA.

r Dubai Cables r Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority r Tamdeen r Sorouh Real Estate r Depa r Consolidated Contractors Group

Retail deployment of the year DHL Express UAE The Landmark Group became a prominent contestant by way of having implemented numerous IT projects in the last year or so to improve efficiency of back office tasks. It has also opened a new data centre and connected remote offices on its network.

But by way of implementing a virtualisation project that improved its operations exponentially, getting an ISO certification and saving costs, all in one go, the deserving winner of this trophy was....DHL Express UAE.

Shortlisted candidates: The DHL Express / UAE Team including Frank Ungerer, CEO, and Praveen Sashi, head of IT, collects the Award from Amir Sohrabi, Regional Alliance Manager at SAS MEA.

r Al Batha Group r Landmark Group r Malia Group r Oasis Investment Company r DHL Express, UAE r The One r Tamdeen Shopping Centres r Bahman Enterprises Group

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Hospitality and Tourism deployment of the year Jumeirah Group There were several projects that caught the interest of the judges, key among them being a couple by the Emirates Group, especially ones linked to providing and maintaining service levels for customers.

However, the Jumeirah Group staked its claim by having embraced private cloud technologies to deliver services to internal and external customers. By doing this it has become one of the leading hospitality groups to take on this technology, and use it in a skilled manner for its benefit, thereby proving itself a pioneer and leader in its field.

Shortlisted candidates: r Westin r Emirates Group r Emirates Flight Catering r Meydan r Jumeirah Group

r Qatar Navigation r InterContinental Hotels Group r National Corporation for Tourism and Hotels r Gulf Air, Bahrain

David Teklit, VP of IT, infrastructure and operations at Jumeirah Group receives the trophy from Sathya Mithra Ashok, senior editor of CNME.

Consultancy of the year Deloitte Consulting

The winner in this category was chosen for their focus on ICT consulting within enterprises. While other companies might have divisions related to ICT, this particular one has developed this division to make a name for itself. This firm has also helped its customers transform enterprise customers' ICT functioning across departments, ensuring best practices are implemented and maintained.

Shortlisted candidates: r PA Consultancy r Ernst and Young r Booz and Co. r Deloitte Consulting r HelpAG

Santino Saguto, partner for the TMT service line at Deloitte and Touche receives the Award from Pallavi Sharma, subeditor of CNME.

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Security solutions provider of the year Blue Coat Systems The judges noted that among these contenders McAfee remains one of the more impressive ones, as a leading global security provider that is constantly improving its services and offerings for the region as anywhere else.

However, the winner in this category, Blue Coat Systems, won its accolade by aggressively surpassing its competitors in consistently offering great security solutions for businesses, including having security hosted in the cloud, thereby helping customers bring down costs while protecting their data.

Shortlisted candidates: Firas Ghanem, MD, carrier division for ME, EE and Africa at Blue Coat Systems receives the Award from Pallavi Sharma, sub-editor of CNME.

r SonicWall r Juniper r Symantec r Kaspersky

r Blue Coat Systems r Fortinet r McAfee r RSA

Storage solutions provider of the year Dell This proved to be a tough choice for the judges. The final decision came down to two players. EMC, an international player with well-established Middle East roots, with storage offerings covering every need from the entry level to high end, and increasing focus on cloud and virtualisation technologies, gained a lot of points.

However, they were beaten to the trophy by a vendor that impressed the judges with their increased support for storage hardware and other infrastructure by creating centres in the UAE and other countries. They have also designed storage for cloud and virtualisation out of the box, which are simple to configure and administer on a day-to-day basis.

Shortlisted candidates: Ahmed Rizk, business development manager, Dell storage solutions is presented the trophy by K S Parag, MD of FVC.

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r Dell r HP r EMC

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r Oracle r ISIT

Managed services provider of the year Injazat Data Systems One of the strongly contested categories among the vendor awards, the choice again came down to two very strong contenders. eHDF had displayed great technical know-how and had invested consistently to improve the offerings that they have. They also play host to a lot of major companies that have chosen them as their provider.

Injazat Data Systems though, beat eHDF to the trophy by the implementation of a data centre that helps them provide not only great services, but serves as an example to imitate for service providers and enterprises across the region. The vendor has also expanded on its line of services to its customers and provides services to a large number of business and government entities.

Ali Al Neaimi, client care director at Injazat Data Systems accepts the Award from K S Parag, MD of FVC.

Shortlisted candidates: r eHDF r BT

r Injazat r ISIT

Systems integrator of the year Mahindra Satyam The judges would like to offer a special mention to HelpAG, who have worked on numerous projects over the last year striving not only to get new customers but to keep old ones happy.

The company that took the trophy home, Mahindra Satyam, though remained the dominant one among its competition by demonstrating that they can support customers expectations consistently, while growing as a company in the region. By working steadily they have won some remarkable contracts over the last year, and continue to meet customer expectations more often than not.

Shortlisted candidates: Bobby Gupta,VP and head of MENA and Turkey at Mahindra Satyam receives the trophy from Nadeem Hood, COO of CPI.

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r EMW r HelpAG r ITQAN r Mahindra Satyam

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r Infor r Telematics r Intertec Systems

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Vendor of the year - Hardware Cisco Systems

Hani Nofal, regional manager at Cisco UAE accepts the Award from Nadeem Hood, COO at CPI.

Shortlisted candidates: r Oracle r Dell r HP r Brocade r Toshiba r Cisco Systems r Avaya r Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise r EMC r Kyocera MITA Middle East

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The judges leaned toward this vendor because of the sheer breadth of its achievements in the recent past - the significant growth in its operations in the region, the introduction of several new products all the way from enterprise to the consumer level, and the service of existing customers. Cisco System has also actively embraced the trend of virtualisation and cloud technologies in designing and the running of hardware they have on offer.

Along with displaying a defined growth strategy, this vendor has also been actively involved in helping customers achieve more from their investments, and in some cases even helping them turn capex into opex with hardware investments.

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Vendor of the year - Software VMWare

Fadi Helou, senior partner business manager at VMWare in the region receives the trophy from Richard Judd, MD of Technology and Business publications at CPI.

The winner of this category, VMWare, remains the undisputed market leader in the area of software solutions for the virtualisation arena.

It has been the leading, revolutionary light in virtualisation and cloud computing, and continues to be the global leader of choice for server virtualisation.

It is indisputably the pioneer in its field and continues to be the unquestioned leader in the region.

Beating multiple contestants to become the deserving leader, the judges were left with no doubt that this Award could only belong to global heavy-weight VMWare.

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Shortlisted candidates: r Commvault r HP r SonicWall r VMWare r Oracle r SAP r Alcatel Lucent Enterprise (Genesys) r EMC

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Judges CNME’s ICT Achievement Awards 2011 was judged by a panel comprising industry experts and enterprise enduser from across the region. This year’s judges included:

Trevor Moore IT director, Abu Dhabi University

Trevor Moore is the IT director for Abu Dhabi University. He is responsible for delivering IT end to end at Abu Dhabi University's two campuses, supporting over 4500 students and 400 staff and faculty. Moore is a member of the CIO forum for education in the UAE. Since graduating in material science, Moore has held 18 years of progressively responsible positions in business and technology management in numerous industries from military, banking, telecom, and education to running his own IT consultancy company. He is currently working on his dissertation for MSc in IT management from Liverpool University.

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Dr Aisha Butti Bin Bishr Assistant Undersecretary of Institutional Services and Support Sector Ministry of Labour, UAE

Sa’di Awienat Director, IT, Qatar Foundation

Dr Aisha Butti Bin Bishr is known to be a highly versatile and dynamic professional with over 16 years of experience in ICT development in both public and government sectors.

She has demonstrated skills and strengths that include strong analytical, coordination, communication and advocacy skills especially relating to ICT, public reform trends and strategies, and the ability to manage people and to deliver on projects.

As the IT Director, Sa’di Awienat is responsible for developing and managing short-term and long-term IT plans in support of QF’s mission and core objectives, overseeing activities of the IT Directorate, and maintaining relationship with customers and partners. Through leadership, strategic planning and team motivation, he has lead Qatar Foundation's IT Directorate from one success to another and effectively implemented a rich portfolio of business applications aligned with QF's vision for now and the future.

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13% of information workers currently use smartphones for work at least weekly, that number is expected to reach 34% by 2012

ZENDESK REPORTS

Smartphones didn’t gain traction in the enterprise space until employees bought them to work.

Today, the use of independent devices at work is fuelling the next wave in IT adoption and management across organisations.

The North American market for mobile office applications is expected to surge to $6.85 billion in 2015, up from $1.76 billion in 2010.

Total number of tablets shipped worldwide in Q2 2011, almost five times the amount of units sold in the same quarter last year.

million units

15.1

60% of mobile employees in the U.S said data services are more important than voice plans when deploying mobile phones for business use.

A ZenDesk survey revealed that one in every five phones sold is a smartphone. Both employees and customers are using them and businesses are tapping into devices to connect with them.

iPhone is being deployed or tested by 80% of Fortune500 companies; iPad is being deployed or used at 65%of Fortune500 companies

Intel survey revealed 60% of respondents use a smartphone at work and 31% would like to use their smartphones

MOBILE EXPLOSION

Sales of Web app enabled mobile devices have surpassed sales of web enabled laptops, notebooks and desktop computers

According to Litmus, a company that tracks and test email campaigns the use of mobile devices to read email is cutting into Webmail severely. The use of mobile devices to check email has jumped from 7% to 15% from July 2010 to July, 2011.

Taking notes

Creating content

Tracking to-do lists

Giving presentations

62% Time saving 50% Increased productivity 48% Cost saving

72% of small businesses use mobile apps in their operations for:

62% concerned about potential network security breaches 50% loss of customer enterprise data 48% potential theft of intellectual property 43% difficulty in meeting compliance requirements

According to Dell KACE and Dimensional Research, 82% of 750 respondents reported they are concerned about the use of personal devices for work purposes.

THE CONCERNS

Surfing the web

Checking email

Primary business use for tablets:

increased revenue

37%

reduced paperwork

39%

increased productivity

42%

Three metrics to determine if mobile apps are successful in the workplace

BUSINESS SPEAK

cumulative app downloads will reach 44 billion

2016

By

According to Unisys, 61% of Gen Y and 50% of 30+ aged workers feel that the technology tools they use in their personal life are more efficient and productive than those used at work

Mobile workers get more work done. Mobile business computers continue to incorporate more and more consumer based features while adding 51 minutes back to a mobile worker’s day, according to Forrester Research.

Many mobile workers will work after hours and across locations if employers offer flexible work options

Knowledge Workers use their smartphones and social networks to build relationships with clients and partners.

DID YOU KNOW:

Yearly sales of tablet devices is expected to hit 82.1 million by 2015

The worldwide online app market is expected to grow from $6.8 billion in 2010 to $25 billion in 2015

Morgan Stanley predicts global smartphone shipments will exceed personal computer shipments by 2012

Half of the devices on corporate networks will be mobile devices by 2015

FUTURE SCAPE

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS Collaboration

Changing the game Users say true collaboration encompasses technology, people and process, Pallavi Sharma speaks to professionals in the regional unified collaboration systems space to discover if this holds true for Middle East enterprises.

I

ncreasingly more orgnaisations are choosing to work in a fragmented manner, with smaller and more ϐ ǡ workforce that is primarily mobile to reduce time to market, and enhance decision making processes. It is no wonder then that the topic foremost on the mind of senior executives today is collaboration and the ability to integrate disparate business functions, and enable ǯ to coordinate their efforts, regardless of location to increase collective ϐ Ǥ Frits Neyndorff, MD, NEC Middle East and Africa says, “True collaboration across a distributed enterprise enables geographically dispersed teams to ϐ all at the same location. In the competitive times, collaboration tools offer an effective means to organisations to address business challenges, like reducing the costs associated with travel, adopting agile decision making, as well as staying green and sustainable.”

“Businesses today need to adopt the idea of the social enterprise driven by the mass use of the internet and social networking tools for business. The integration of social networking and computing into the enterprise design represents another enormous shift in landscape, and only organisations that embrace collaboration tools to deepen

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Bashar Kilani, territory manager, Gulf Countries and Levant at IBM.

with employees working from myriad locations and across geographies, it’s now harder to schedule face-­‐to-­‐face meetings, and it’s impossible to rely on appropriate interactions to get things done.”

According to him, technology must ϐ Ǧ experience of sharing information and expertise — but in a world without boundaries. Smart companies are embracing this shift by giving their employees access to tools that support and encourage not just communication, but true collaboration, and thereby provide them a clear competitive advantage.

Know-­‐how ϐ ǡ kind of tools that are used for collaboration, and the extent to which they are used in any organisation, can be directly linked to the

Collaboration in the Middle East has so far been dictated by more personal meetings and communications. The advent of the internet, social networking tools and now unified communication platforms challenges this regional paradigm.” customer relationships, drive operational ϐ ϐ ǡdz Kilani, territory manager, Gulf Countries and Levant at IBM. Youb Salim, sales director for video application, Middle East and Maghreb at Alcatel-­‐Lucent explains, “A few years ago, it was relatively easy for employees to collaborate — they could simply walk down the hall or across the corporate campus to work with a colleague, or schedule a team meeting in a conference room. But

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internal culture of the company. In other words, the more open the culture, the more technology tools for collaboration will be welcomed and deployed.

A culture of customer dedication, quality and business excellence drives the need and adoption of collaborative working, says Neyndorff. “Communication across hierarchy and divisions can be ϐ Ǥ more than others are used to and accept the practice of communications between staff spanning several or all management

levels, and with the notion that interaction nowadays can, or more often, needs to take place unscheduled, whereas previously interaction was more announced and formally organised.”

Rudolf Sarah, regional cloud director, MEA, Orange Business Services agrees, “Management can at times be afraid of collaboration as a time wasting tool and thus limit or control its availability. This proves more than often counterproductive as the value of a collaboration tool to a company and its productive impact grows exponentially with the number of users.

Imagine being a user of an instant message system but only 20% of your colleagues have access to it. Would that be a tool you would use daily? Probably not.”

Neyndorff points out that the most important elements for the successful inclusion of collaboration into an organisation’s design include investing in a reliable network infrastructure with stable broadband connectivity (wired or wireless), and servers driving the applications that deliver the required functionality across the organisation. “Finally, organisations also need endpoint clients that present the functions to users in an ergonomic, inviting way, and on the device of the user’s choice, whether this is a PC, smartphone, or a tablet,” he says.

Professionals agree that other than the infrastructure elements, a robust and ϐ broadly accessible across every worker,

“Businesses should consider communications-­‐based process automation (CBPA) that acts like an umbrella over all the related collaboration and works within a given process, directing work to the best place to ensure the entire process ϐ ǡ responding to communications as needed or desired,” advices Shaheen Haque, territory manager, Middle East and Turkey at Interactive Intelligence.

Frits Neyndorff, MD, NEC Middle East and Africa

across the meeting rooms, across every operations desk. ϐ ϐ ȋ Ȍ should offer four basic feature. “A single interface that provides access to all ǡ ϐ ǡ speech, images and video, offers IT and telephone convergence. This means the solution should offer rich telephony ϐ ǡ advanced telephony features through the single interface, sorting of voice mails, concentration of all kind of messages, and integration in ERP and CRM among other systems. Most importantly, the interface must be mounted on a UC architecture built on components or bricks that can be assembled and combined based on the ϐ Ǥdz

Playing it smart Neyndorff points out, “Every department, business unit, or workgroup has different ways of collaborating. For example, some groups value face-­‐to-­‐face meetings, while others depend on public IM. Additionally, some groups work mostly internally; others engage mostly with people outside the organisation, such as partners, suppliers, or Ǥ ǡ Ǧ Ǧϐ Ǧ all UC solution poses a risk of not meeting the needs of any department.”

Both users and developers of collaboration technology recommend a few keys steps that can be taken to cultivate and enhance a culture of collaboration across the whole enterprise.

Haque says, “Based on CBPA, an organisation must first and foremost decide on the information it wants to track, process and collaborate with.

Based on this decision, it must then design a user collaborative interface that is accessible by all participants. Senior

Source: Orange CIO Survey 2011 Decision makers at 600 multinationals across 12 European countries surveyed

BY THE NUMBERS

78.9%

42.1%

47.4%

of respondents said that they manage UC internally

said they intend to continue to keep the operations in-house

respondents said that they use a private cloud environment to manage UC

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5.3%

said they are considering sourcing a public cloud provider for their UC infrastructure

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TECHNOLOGY FOCUS Collaboration

executives must then decide and lay out the collaboration flow. During this phase, they must pay careful attention to the different states through which work flows during the process and what actions are to be performed along the way. Once this is done, the organisation can go right ahead and deploy.”

He recommends investing in interaction process automation to help enterprises automate a wide range of internal and external processes, including – applications, lead management, order management, approvals, time-­‐off requests, performance reviews, new employee on-­‐boarding, etc.

“Processes can be represented by easily ϐ ϐ locked into static documents or CRM systems.

As business conditions change, processes can ϐ ǡdz Ǥ Neyndorff says that in order to avoid adding just another communication silo in ǡ ϐ understand the unique collaboration needs of each business unit or department. They must then work out a roadmap to meet these requirements and make investments in platforms that service each of these needs, delivering the ability to modify the provisions while adding value to the existing set up.

Rudolf Sarah, regional cloud director in MEA, Orange Business Services

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Youb Salim, sales director for video application, Middle East and Maghreb at Alcatel-Lucent

Middle East. It is still early days but the interest we are seeing from healthcare, government and telecommunications ϐ ǡdz Ǥ “Firms like Majid Al Futtaim and their hypermarket chains like Carrefour are investing in top-­‐of-­‐the-­‐line UC tools for ϐ Ǥ ϐ ǡ way up to the senior management level, to drive procedures and decision making capabilities,” says K.S Parag, MD at FVC. “The Middle East has so far been dictated by more personal meetings and communications, and the advent of the internet, social networking tools and ϐ

Management can at times be afraid of collaboration as a time wasting tool, and thus limit or control its availability. This proves, more than often, counterproductive as the value of a collaboration tool to a company and its productive impact grows exponentially with the number of users.”

Most importantly, both users and developers recommend that organisations develop an aggressive user adoption plan to drive the move towards a more open and unscheduled style of communication.

This can be done through regular training sessions and helping business users understand how they stand to personally ϐ systems internally.

Adoption and adaption Experts believe that regional enterprises understand the necessity for collaboration and are making the necessary investments to develop and enhance the existing communications architecture to provision for real time, instant and affordable communication.

“I think we are on the verge of seeing a major uptake of such solutions in the

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challenges this paradigm. So change is happening but it is happening gradually as enterprises realise that these technologies don’t take away the personalised element rather they add the time management factor,” he explains.

Experts b elieve t hat w ith t he popular u se o f t ablets a nd o ther m obile devices, t he expectations o f t he m obile workforce a re b ound to i ncrease a nd the d rive towards U C a nd c ollaboration functionality a cross a n o rganisation w ill put f urther p ressure o n m anagement to include t hese capabilities.

Customer centricity and beating the competition are on the top of the agenda for every business entity and in an environment that changes in the blink of an eye, where budgets are the centre of successful operations, collaboration tools ϐ Ǥ

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS Business continuity

A continuing T story Business continuity (BC) is not yet fully understood by most large Middle East enterprises, and is often confused with its cousin disaster recovery (DR). With the current state of affairs, the region might have to wait for a couple of years for large-scale adoption of BC processes.

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he achievement of perfect business continuity (or something as close to it) remains one of the elusive elements that most large enterprises look for. In an effort to ensure that the business continues – regardless of any natural or man-­‐made disaster – most organisations in developed markets have constantly invested in technologies and redundant centres, along with processes, for some time now.

In the Middle East (qualify as it does as an emerging region) the concept is well understood, but adoption levels remain low.

“It is the amount of dollars you are prepared to spend in the event that your business is put at risk due to, for example, a disaster or an interruption in service.

However, do many Middle East enterprises understand and implement BC as much as they should? The answer is no. BC as a “business continuity strategy”, not as an “IT continuity strategy”. This is where many organisations fail when implementing BC

strategies. they tend to focus on the latter and often fail to consider the complete business impact of a disaster or outage,” says Steve Bailey, regional operations director at Commvault.

“In terms of understanding BC, there is a basic to medium level of awareness in this region, and when it comes to implementing BC, almost all enterprises are faced with the challenges that I have mentioned earlier and eventually some of them end up using traditional or manual methods for BC that usually expose them to higher risks,” adds Hussein Mognieh, CA Technologies channel manager in the region.

Little understood as it might be in the region, the concept of BC comes with its own set of challenges and some of these can be peculiar to the Middle East.

“Businesses and organisations that are implementing key business continuity solutions are faced with both external and internal challenges. These external factors ǡ ϐ breaches and virus attacks along with natural disasters like earthquakes. Meanwhile, internal challenges include machines or ǡ ϐ availability or the lack of it. These challenges are the ones that are most likely to happen, resulting in small but frequent downtime if not attended to properly,” says Vipin Sharma, VP at MEACIS sales at TrippLite.

He continues, “The main challenge though, is to identify all possible threats, regardless of size, as they may cause major repercussions in operations. Power is one factor wherein the need to be constantly monitored is essential. The quality of power

Feras Al Jabi, GM at ITQAN

Hussein Mognieh, CA Technologies channel manager in the region

should be monitored constantly, which means if the power is not good then it might cause the breakdown of key equipment and drive in unwanted downtime costs.”

Feras Al Jabi, GM at ITQAN says, “I believe the main challenge is to be able to allocate the budget to invest in implementing BC plans, especially with the current economic climate. Organisations are investing in core business related requirements, rather than investing in BC and preventive actions. In certain organisations, the internal capacity and resources, data connectivity speed / bandwidth is another challenge. And the maturity of the data centre concept in certain countries in not at the same level we have in the UAE.” “A key challenge that the region faces is its size. IT DR sites are usually recommended in a separate seismic zone far from the primary site, but in the Middle East, with many smaller independent territories, identifying a suitable DR site is a key issue that enterprises have to address,” adds Girish Dani, business head for security services at Tech Mahindra.

“Through our experience in establishing business continuity management systems for enterprises in the UAE, we have noticed different common challenges as follows obtaining management buy-­‐in and approval for business continuity arrangements, assigning roles and responsibilities to suitable employees, maintaining the business continuity management system, documenting and executing the management system processes and enforcing policies and

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integrating business continuity with other existing management systems,” says Ali Alamadi, principal consultant at helpAG. “The biggest challenges for an organisation during BC implementation is stakeholder commitment, agreeing on strategies and coordinating with different teams. These issues are typically seen because the responsibility towards BC initiatives is a part-­‐time activity as compared to primary responsibilities. So top priority may not be proportionately assigned to the BC initiatives though it is critical to an organisation. One way to combat such issues is to include these responsibilities as part of the performance appraisal system as an individual’s goals. Another way is for it to be managed well by the BCM head by providing tools, templates, relationship and knowledge to users. Regular meetings between top management and department heads on BC initiative also help in the progress on the journey. These are some of the challenges faced by the BCM head on an organisational level,” says Mohamed Rizvi, manager of information security and advisory services at eHDF (eHosting DataFort).

Commvault’s Bailey states, “The typical challenges when addressing the question of BC would be a lack of resources and ϐ support and input. However, in the majority of the organisations which have developed business continuity plans (BCP), it is typically an activity led by the IT department, with the result that the business continuity plan is mainly seen as an IT activity.”

He continues, “many process owners fail to realise the fact that not all processes are mission critical or critical for an organisation to survive and it is often a daunting challenge for CIOs and IT heads, who have been forced to don the mantle of BCP leader, to assure the business and process owners that prioritising of processes does not make those with longer recovery time objectives (RTO) redundant or of less importance than those with quicker RTOs.” “Another problem that I perceive is that when IT people don the business continuity hat, the program tends to go off on a tangent towards being ‘information continuity. There

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53

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS Business continuity

is no doubt that information in today’s age is a key to success, however information availability alone is of little help if people are not available to access and use it during an incident or crisis,” Bailey adds.

Along with other experts he agrees that the nature of the workforce in the region can create its own set of issues related to pure human factors and restricted communication.

Steve Bailey, regional operations director at Commvault

A step at a time Challenges there might be, and the Middle East as a whole might still be a newbie to the area of BC, but experts also point out that the ϐ years back. Dz ǯ ϐ we try to compare the current situation ϐ Ǥ nowadays generally understand the risks of not having a proper BC solution in place and hence they have invested more in providing their technical teams with as much resources as possible to have the proper exposure ϐ awareness to keep up with the daily challenges,” says Moghnieh. Dz ϐ in the overall awareness for the need for business continuity and IT disaster recovery. Some of the recent events such as the political unrests and adverse weather incidents including the cyclone in Oman have accentuated the need for enterprises to have ϐ BC,” says Dani.

However, enterprises that are investing in BC should make efforts to follow international best practices and processes in ϐ Ǥ

“Before implementing a BC solution, an organisation needs to plan for one. At the most basic level, Business Continuity ȋ Ȍ ϐ process that is designed to identify mission critical business functions and enact policies, processes, plans and procedures to ensure the continuation of these functions in the event of an unforeseen event. All activity surrounding the creation, testing, deployment, and maintenance of a BCP can be viewed in terms ϐ ǡdz Ǥ CA’s Moghnieh states, “Every organisation uses a different topology and structure in their IT environment, but the ǣ ϐ ǡ an organisation’s pain points and the organisation’s expectations regarding ROI, RPOs and RTOs. Secondly, allocate the budget to be invested in the project. After that comes the stage of involving the vendors with proven success stories that are similar to their requirements to conduct Demos and/ or POCs to prove that their solutions do what they say on the box. After that it becomes clear to the organisation which vendors to select and how to move forward.”

“The British Standards Institution (BSI) has released a new independent standard

for business continuity processes. The BS 25999-­‐1 extends to organisations of all types, sizes and missions, whether they are Ǧ ǡ ϐ Ǧ ϐ ǡ industry segment. Based on these standards, business continuity should start with analysis, followed by solution design and then the implementation of the solutions.

The implementation phase will also cover the running of tests to make sure that the desired outcome is achieved, which is followed by the acceptance of the organisation,” says Sharma.

He adds, “After all these initial stages are followed, the most important part is next, which is maintenance. Maintenance of a business continuity manual is broken down into three periodic activities. ϐ ϐ information in the manual, roll out to all ϐ ϐ critical in response and recovery. The second ϐ technical solutions established for recovery operations. The third activity is the testing ϐ recovery procedures. A biannual or annual maintenance cycle is typical.”

Knowing the processes is very different from implementing them and getting them to work for you within your organisation.

Awareness campaigns around the Middle East will help enterprises understand and implement BC in a more effective manner.

However, with the pangs of the recession still being felt, vendors are not rushing to create awareness campaigns, and the entire concept of BC in its full awareness and understanding might have to wait to be adopted on a larger scale in the region.

Source: The 2011 AT&T Business Continuity Study

BY THE NUMBERS

80%

of executives indicated that their companies will be investing in new technologies in 2011, up from 72% in 2010.

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Computer News Middle East

54%

of organisations currently use or are considering using cloud services to augment their business continuity and disaster recovery strategies.

NOVEMBER 2011

78%

of BC plans include a role for the use of mobile devices

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80%

have systems in place that enable employees to work from home or remote locations, representing an increase of 14% points in the past four years

VERTICAL FOCUS Construction

Architecting growth Not known for making bold investments in ICT, the construction sector is showing signs of rapid change.

Pallavi Sharma discovers what defines the industry’s investments and how they’re likely to change.

I

n recent years, the construction sector has battled a whole host of challenges that have not only constrained their investments and ability to execute on aggressive growth strategies, but have even threatened their very ability to survive.

According to a report published in May 2011 by accountancy firm Wilkins Kennedy, the insolvencies in the construction sector globally increased 19% in the first quarter of this year. With the simultaneous cuts in government spending on infrastructure to plug the deficit caused by years of drawn out recession, the sector found itself in deep water.

“The construction sector, on one hand, lies at the very heart of the urbanisation trend and, on the other hand, has to deal with significant budget cuts and tighter margins to combat drawn out economic turmoil. According to McKinsey and company, in the year 2030, five billion people will live in urban areas and therefore the pressure on this sector to create properties to meet the heavy demand for accommodation is unbelievable. On the other hand, the sector has to deal with budget cuts, to survive amidst economic turmoil,” says Manish Bhardwaj, marketing manager, Autodesk Middle East and Africa.

“The sector is also hugely challenged by rapidly depleting cheap natural

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NOVEMBER 2011

Deepak Mehta, GM, Omnix International

resources; energy, water, materials, and land – are diminishing. This is where sustainability and economics intersect and are driving transformation in our industry.

The increasing costs associated with the acquisition of these resources not only adds to the cost of operations but is also driving ϐ constructing and managing buildings and infrastructure,” Bhardwaj adds.

He adds, “Both global recession and the need to make investments in sustainable operations have in turn affected the level of new construction and changed expectations for the bottom line. Today, this sector needs to achieve more with less, deliver projects faster and with less environmental impact in order to

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compete and win. While the number of requirements from clients is growing, there are increasingly more stakeholders involved in business operations, which now include governments and various compliance and regulatory bodies. Poor performance is now on the list of potential liability risks associated with a project.”

According to him, this sequence of events is made even more lethal with the addition of increasing competition as a result of the consumerisation of the internet and the resulting creation of borderless organisations.

“The construction sector is fast realising the benefits of investing in technology to track and control inventory and costs, integrate different business functions and enhance operational efficiency. Today, decision makers can implement proactive intelligent strategies based on real time predictive analysis provisioned by capabilities,” says Deepak Mehta, GM, Omnix International.

According to experts, the recent spur in IT investments across the globe is also warranted by the unique needs of this sector to bring together disparate projects and business functions.

“This sector requires solutions that bring together the different sub contracted projects such as architecture and design, electrical, fire-­‐fighting, construction, finance, among others. Construction firms require solutions that enable the visualisation of different projects and helps enhance co-­‐ordination between different contractors and their independent areas of responsibility. This significantly reduces complexity in managing the progress of a project through proactive planning and scheduling,” adds Mehta.

Success stories The secret to a successful and smooth technology deployment, according to experts, is the sincere commitment of the organisation’s senior executives to the project. “IT budgets and projects are reviewed by the senior executives of the organisation and without their keen understanding for the need of that technology and their commitment to aggressive implementation, the projects will most definitely fail,” explains Paul Madeira, COO, Causeway.

Sreedhar K Reddy, IT director, Sorouh Real Estate gives testimony to this fact, “Our IT budgets and projects are regularly reviewed by the IT steering committee which includes representatives from all business units. Although, IT budgets are more critically reviewed because management wants to ensure that the money is spent wisely towards operational efficiencies and differentiation, Sorouh’s management has always supported and actively encouraged deserving technology projects and innovations as a result of which we have won a number of awards for our technology deployments such as CNME’s ICT Achievement Award 2011 for best IT implementation in the construction vertical.”

What this vertical has in common with any other is its criteria for vendor selection, says Reddy, “Like any other industry, decision makers in the construction sector look for vendors who have a credible and known local presence and can support technology deployments in the long run. We want to work with vendors who have previous experience with industry focused implementations as this assures us of their ability to understand the challenges our industry faces and the underlying need for the implementation.”

Professionals also say that like any other technology deployment, the construction sector also faces its fair share of obstacles when implementing an IT

(Extreme right) Sreedhar K Reddy, IT director, Sorouh Real Estate

Traditionally companies would invest in application software to support operations such as commercial and finance functions. Today these companies are investing in technology and software that allows for information sharing and decision making on-the-go” project and this normally come in the form of resistance to change from the business users.

Mehta says, “Resistance to change is nothing but a result of the inability of business users to understand the need to spend hours engaged in changing their operating style. This is because users are averse to the steep learning curve associated with complex new technology platforms. Either that or they are just used to doing things the way they have been done all along and don’t see the larger business benefits of investing in the latest technology.”

Experts add that the easiest way

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to address this challenge is to align IT strategies with larger business strategies and have the need for these technologies communicated by business users instead of the IT departments.

“Users are bound to show more interest in using a new platform when they believe that the solution will not only make their jobs easier but will also enhance revenues and save them time and money. Communication can then be supplanted by regular training sessions and implementing the platform in simultaneous phases to make users feel more involved instead of alienated by change,” says Madeira.

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VERTICAL FOCUS Construction

Evolving investments As technology has evolved, so has the construction sector. Decision makers say that the kind of investments that are being made today reflect a thought revolution in the minds of decision makers across the construction industry.

“Traditionally companies would invest in application software to support operations such as estimating, commercial and finance. Today, these companies are investing in technology and software that allow for information sharing and decision making on-­‐the-­‐go,” says Madeira.

“In today’s building environment, IT needs to become involved right from the beginning of the building process. Design technology, for example, has a key role to play from the outset. As the cornerstone of a building information modelling approach, technologies focused on providing design and architectural capabilities allow designers to capture their first concepts and ideas about a new building design, and then develop and maintain their vision through documentation as the project progresses,” adds Bhardwaj.

At Sorouh Real Estate, Reddy and his team have invested in a cloud-­‐based Web project collaboration system to for document management. “This system provides a common platform to submit, manage, and archive all project documents by contractor, consultant, PMC and the Client,” he says.

He and his team have also been responsible for putting in place a number of different Web portals, such as a customer portal and a property portal,

The coming together of government, regulatory bodies and vendors will create an ecosystem friendly to technology deployment across the construction sector. This will help them sustain growth in a recovering economy, and once again become the centre of booming markets across the globe.” to provision information sharing across multiple stakeholders.

Decision makers add that the sector is also heavily investing in ERP and other business applications for operational areas in a construction business covering design, estimation, commercial management, procurement and finance. These platforms enable the automation of business operations to save time and reduce room for human errors.

Experts also highlight the distinct interest this sector is showing in mobile technologies and applications.

“Today we have applications like AutoCAD available on a number of mobile platforms such as smart phones and tablets. Once ISPs begin providing reliable high bandwidth connectivity at reasonable costs across construction locations we will no doubt see significant investment in this arena,” says Mehta.

Reddy says, “In the medium term, government regulations and advancements in the areas of sustainability, new building codes, green buildings, and smart communities are likely to drive new technology investments.”

Mehta agrees that ultimately it will be governments and compliance requirements that will drive IT investments in the construction sector.

“Both regional and international government bodies are driving the need to invest in platforms that are focused on the delivery and maintenance of the properties or what we call facilities management. This will only encourage more vendors to venture into the market, increasing competition which will drive vendors to provide more comprehensive and competent services to this sector. The coming together of government, regulatory bodies and vendors will create an ecosystem friendly to technology deployment across the construction sector to help them sustain growth in a recovering economy and once again become the centre of booming markets across the globe,” he says.

The construction sector is clearly making remarkable strides in its IT deployments and with technology rapidly advancing; there is no doubt that the future will witness many more interesting investments and usage from the vertical, especially in the Middle East.

Source: buildingSMART ME Percentage of industry using BIM, 2011

BY THE NUMBERS

58

25%

36%

49%

9%

46%

GCC and Jordan

West Europe

North America

of BIM users are institute trained

of BIM users in the region are self trained

Computer News Middle East

NOVEMBER 2011

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Keynote speaker: General (Retired) Michael Hayden, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Deputy Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) presents “cyber security and cyber threats in a changing world”.

EMIRATES PALACE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

[training, 12 – 13 Dec]

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Cyber Network Defense Bootcamp SensePost: Hacking by Numbers: Unplugged Edition Infrastructure Attacktecs & Defentecs: Hacking Cisco Networks HotWAN: Mobile Hacking

Software Security Goes Mobile by Russell Spitler Taming Worms, RATs, Dragons and More! By Christiaan Beek Financial Armageddon? Inside the Zeus and SpyEye Wave by Ken Baylor

Android : from Reversing to De-compilation by Anthony Desnos

Assessing and Exploiting Web Applications with Samurai-WTF The Exploit Laboratory Incident Response: Black Hat Edition by MANDIANT Foundstone: Malware Forensics & Incident Response TaoSecurity: TCP/IP Weapons School 3.0

[dates] TRAINING: DECEMBER 12 – 13

Yet Another Android Rootkit – Protecting System is Not Enough

by Tsukasa Oi Check your Zombie Devices! : Analysis of the DDoS Cyber Terrorism Against the Country and Future Attacks on Various Devices By DongJoo Ha

From Redmond With Love by Katie Moussouris

Legal Aspects of Cyber-Security - (AKA) CYBERLAW: A Year in Review, Cases, Issues, Your Questions My (Alleged) Answers

by Robert Clark

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HOW TO Calibration

Calibrate your monitor Get your monitor to display colours accurately and improve the look of photos, videos, and games. We give you the tips

I

ˆ ›‘—ǯ”‡ ƒÂ? ƒ˜‹† Â’ÂŠÂ‘Â–Â‘Â‰Â”ÂƒÂ’ÂŠÂ‡Â”ÇĄ Â›Â‘Â—ÇŻÂ˜Â‡ ’”‘„ƒ„Ž› •Š‘– –‘Â?• ‘ˆ photos,  investing  a  large  chunk  of  your  time  and  disposable  income  in  a  †‹‰‹–ƒŽ …ƒÂ?‡”ƒǤ Â?† Â›Â‘Â—ÇŻÂ˜Â‡ •’‡Â?– even  more  time  learning  the  ins  and  outs  of  photography,  including  lighting,  composition,  and  image  editing.  So  why  †‘Â?ǯ– ›‘—” ’Š‘–‘• Ž‘‘Â? „‡––‡” –ŠƒÂ? –Š‡› do?  Maybe  it’s  your  monitor.

Why  should  you  calibrate?

Calibrating  your  P C  d isplay  i s  a n  important  s tep,  for  o ne  s imple  reason:  You  want  t he  c olours  a nd  b lack  levels  to  l ook  a s  a ccurate  a s  p ossible.  The  m ost  o bvious  b enefit  o f  p roper  calibration  i s  t hat  i t  e nsures  t he  b est  results  when  you’re  e diting  o r  v iewing  photographs.  B ut  a ccurate  c olours  a nd  black  l evels  a lso  m ake  v ideos  a nd  games  look  b etter  o n  your  m onitor-­�-­�you’ll  b e  viewing  c ontent  i n  t he  way  t he  c ontent’s  creators  i ntended.

In  this  article,  I’ll  talk  about  how  you  can  use  Windows  7’s  built-­â€?in  tools  to  perform  a  quick  calibration.  Then  I’ll  mention  a  website  or  two  that  can  aid  in  calibrating  your  display.  Finally  I’ll  discuss  a  low-­â€?cost  hardware  tool,  to  give  you  a  feel  for  how  you  might  use  something  similar  to  calibrate  your  monitor. ‘Â?•‹†‡” –Š‡ Â?‘Â?‹–‘”ǯ• capabilities Before  diving  into  the  minutiae  of  monitor  calibration,  I’ll  talk  a  bit  about  displays  themselves.  At  first  blush,  it’s  a  great  time  to  be  a  computer  user:  Big, Â

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colour  resolution  of  8  bits  per  pixel,  since  such  a  display  is  capable  of  showing  over  16  million  simultaneous  colours.  A  few  monitors  capable  of  10  bits  per  pixel  are  shipping  now,  too.

Most  of  the  higher-­â€?end  displays  that  support  8  bits  per  pixel  use  either  a  version  of  IPS  (in-­â€?plane  switching)  or  some  flavour  of  PVA  (patterned  vertical  alignment).  Both  technologies  are  more  costly  to  manufacture,  but  you  can  find  relatively  good,  24-­â€?inch  IPS-­â€?based  displays  for  around  $400.  The  point  isn’t  to  focus  on  the  LCD  tech  as  much  as  it  is  to  pay  attention  to  better  colour  depth. Â

bright  displays  with  very  fast  response  times  cost  a  couple  hundred  dollars.  What’s  not  to  like?

Well,  they  may  not  be  very  good.  Most  low-­�cost  LCD  screens  use  TN  (twisted  nematic)  technology.  The  response  time  of  TN  displays  can  be  fast,  but  most  of  these  monitors  are  limited  to  a  colour  depth  of  6  bits  per  pixel.  With  three  pixels  representing  the  red,  green,  and  blue  primary  colours,  this  means  the  number  of  simultaneous  colours  on  screen  is  limited  to  262,144.  Such  displays  simulate  higher  colour  depths  via  dithering-­�-­�a  process  that  digitally  simulates  greater  colour  depths  than  are  really  available.  That’s  why,  if  you’re  looking  at  an  image  with  finely  shaded  colour  gradations,  you  may  see  colour  banding.

You  really  want  a  monitor  with  a Â

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Set  the  colour  gamut You  often  see  higher-­�end  monitors  touted  as  having  wide  colour  gamuts.  Although  many  models  let  you  set  your  colour  gamut  of  choice  in  their  on-­�screen  menus  (aka  on-­� screen  displays),  some  high-­�end  30-­�inch  monitors  have  no  built-­�in  video-­�processing  chip.  If  that’s  the  case  with  your  monitor,  you  need  to  use  Windows’  display  controls  to  adjust  the  colour  gamut.  I’ll  give  you  a  closer  look  at  the  advanced  Windows  display  control  panels  shortly.

A  good  rule  of  thumb  is  to  set  your  monitor’s  colour  gamut  to  match  your  target  output  device.  If  you’re  mostly  editing  photos  that  go  up  on  websites,  good  old  sRGB  works  just  fine,  even  though  it’s  “onlyâ€?  78%  of  the  NTSC  colour  gamut.  If  your  printer  is  the  target  device,  you  may  want  to  set  a  higher  colour  gamut,  depending  on  the  printer  model.  But  then  you  have  to  worry  about  the  colour  settings  on  the  printer. Â

Understand the monitor settings Before diving into the act of calibration, it’s worth discussing monitor settings. The display I’ll be using as an example is the HP ZR30w. This monitor lacks a built-­‐in video processor, so the only physical adjustment you can make on such a model is the brightness of the backlight.

You handle any other adjustment through the graphics card’s software controls. AMD, Nvidia, and Intel all offer software controls to tweak colour balance, contrast, and so on.

Most monitors do have built-­‐in video processors, and give you a host of physical controls for the display. This can lead to adjustment confusion: Do you use the monitor controls for brightness, contrast, gamma, colour, and so on? Or do you use the graphics card control panel?

My personal preference is to avoid relying on the monitor controls. I prefer to put the monitor at some standard setting; if, for instance, it has a default setting for D6500 (which means a colour temperature of 6500 kelvins), I use that. I turn the brightness and contrast down fairly low, as well; if I have the option, I’ll set the brightness level to roughly 200 cd/m2 ( you may see this setting reported on some sites as 200 nits, though the units aren’t exactly the same).

If you’re working with an automated calibration tool, such as the Spyder 3 Express I’ll use as an example later, typically it will load all the calibration data into the graphics card instead of the monitor. Some professional calibration tools coupled with certain professional-­‐ grade displays can actually adjust the LCD panel itself, but those combinations are often very pricey-­‐-­‐though they do ensure very accurate calibration.

If a monitor doesn’t offer a specific colour temperature number, I usually use the ‘warm’ setting. I also alter the preset to something like ‘photographs’ or ‘video’ if those presets exist. Beyond that, I rely on

the graphics card control panel.

The calibration process adjusts your monitor to settings that the tool determines are accurate. This basic tool doesn’t allow any manual tweaks, so you’ll need to choose a more expensive model if you want to be more involved.

Web tools to try Web-­‐based calibration tools are also available, though most of them require even more manual adjustment than the Windows method does. Websites such as Display Calibration let you work with test patterns and examples of what a correct image should look like; to calibrate from them, however, you’ll need to become intimately familiar with either your monitor controls or your graphics card control panel.

Whether you use the Windows method or Web-­‐based tools, the process is manual and requires heavy use of your own eyes.

Of course, the problem with eyes is that they vary in capability-­‐-­‐and if you’re even slightly colour blind, visually calibrating your display becomes difficult.

Thankfully a host of automated calibration tools exist, ranging in cost from $80 to thousands of dollars. Certainly, if you’re a professional photographer or videographer, you’ll spend what you need to get the tools necessary for precise calibration. Most people, though, can get by with less expensive tools such as Datacolour’s Spyder 3 Express.

Buy an automated tool for simple calibration The Spyder 3 Express costs from $80 to $100, and fully automates the calibration task. It’s just one example of a simpler tool; if you want more precision and a higher level of control, you need to invest more money.

For now, ensure that your monitor is warmed up (leave it running for at least 30 minutes) and that you have installed the latest drivers for your graphics card.

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Using the Spyder 3 is quite easy. First, install the calibration software. Launch the software, and let it walk you through setup and calibration. Connect the puck to a USB port, and hang the puck from the top of your display, aligning the puck with the outline that the SpyderExpress calibration software displays. The puck has a suction cup for attaching to the surface of your monitor; you should occasionally tap it to maintain the suction.

After you click the Next button, just sit back and let the calibration run.

Once installed with the puck in place, the calibration software measures the output from the display, and sets it accordingly.

The calibration process adjusts your monitor to settings that the tool determines are accurate. This basic tool doesn’t allow any manual tweaks, so you’ll need to choose a more expensive model if you want to be more involved.

In my experience, the photographs I’m editing these days look correct, now that I’ve done a proper monitor calibration.

Having a correctly calibrated monitor helped me discover that Photoshop’s Camera Raw application often blows out the highlights of my photographs by setting the brightness too high. Now I can see how garish the changes are, and dial them back accordingly.

In my experience, the photographs I’m editing these days look correct, now that I’ve done a proper monitor calibration.

Having a correctly calibrated monitor helped me discover that Photoshop’s Camera Raw application often blows out the highlights of my photographs by setting the brightness too high. Now I can see how garish the changes are, and dial them back accordingly.

The bottom line: If you’re interested in photography or video, calibrate your display. Even if all you do is the basic Windows calibration, it’s still better than simply staring at weird-­‐looking images and wondering what’s wrong.

NOVEMBER 2011

Computer News Middle East

61

Last word

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Events

Planning for 2012

Redefine data management and analytics

December 2011

It is the end of the year. And the next one promises, to be much tougher, than the one past. So what are CIOs and IT managers planning on? What investments do they consider key across verticals, and how are they planning on making good their spend on the latest in solutions? CNME gets some answers.

Systems integrators Much of the success of any project depends to a large extent on the skill and experience of the systems integrators who put it together at an enterprise end. CNME explores how Middle East organisations choose their SI partners, and what they would like to see from them in terms of improvement in the next year.

14 November 2011 Beach Rotana Hotel, Abu Dhabi http://www.computernewsme.com/ms/sas/ registration-­‐abudhabi.php

Logistics and transportation Remote data collection and information transit gains new importance in this industry. Logistics and transportation, a vertical of key importance in the trade-­‐ hub countries of the Middle East, might maintain a skeletal IT infrastructure and a lean headquarters set up, but their requirements from technology are ϐ ǯ Ǥ CNME researches their requirements and peculiarities in IT usage.

Bust the myth – unified communications revealed 16 November 2011 Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi http://www.computernewsme.com/ms/ fvc/161111/registration.php

Sustainable ICT 2011 21st November 2011 Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Dubai www.sustainableictme.com

What we’re reading The Anywhere Leader

62

Best Practices Are Stupid

By Mike Thompson

By Stephen M. Shapiro

Book The economic crisis and its far-reaching side effects have put business leaders to the test.

Author Mike Thompson, CEO of organizational development company SVI, says anyone in business should be able to rise above uncertainty and disruption. Thompson delves into a number of case studies, including Toms shoes and Johnson aanndd Johnson, that demonstrate qualities that “anywhere” leaders possess—qualities such as uniting employees using enlightening initiatives and culture.

The Anywhere Leader: How to Lead and Succeed in Any Business Environment (Wiley)

Book This unconventional guide provides strategies for fostering innovation.

Shapiro, formerly of Accenture, says most leaders inadvertently suffocate creativity by following tired formulas.

His suggestions? Hiring people you don’t like, not asking for ideas, and going above and beyond thinking outside the box. Doing the unexpected is the key to bright ideas, he says. Each chapter concludes with statements like, “When the pace of change outside your organization is greater than the pace of change within, you will be eaten.”

Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 Ways to OutInnovate the Competition (Portfolio Penguin)

Computer News Middle East

NOVEMBER 2011

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For the latest in news, analysis, features, case studies, and blog articles on trends and issues in the ICT industry across the globe and in the Middle East, please visit www. computernewsme.com

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