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Technology Partners
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60 Mins Show dates: 14-18 October 2012, Dubai World Trade Centre
| AT GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK | Exhibition hours: 11am -6pm
HP to fix ‘skills gap’ hampering cloud strategies HP has said its core focus at GITEX is on cloud computing and virtualisation following claims that an IT skills gap is hampering the ability of businesses to execute cloud strategies in the region. Research has shown that 60% of CIOs believe the claims to be an accurate representation of the state of cloud strategies and solutions and HP has underlined its commitment to the trend by partnering the show as diamond sponsor for the Cloud Confex, the region’s largest integrated cloud exhibition and conference. HP Converged Cloud is the industry’s first strategy and portfolio based on a single architecture that combines private, managed and public cloud, as well as traditional IT, to create an environment that can rapidly change based on organisational requirements. “GITEX Technology Week is the Middle East’s premier platform for discussing the latest IT trends and innovations in the region,” said Eyad Shihabi, Managing Director, HP ME. “HP is dedicated to delivering the most cutting-edge solutions
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Eyad Shihabi, Managing Director, HP ME. for customers, from enterprise level technology to personal computers and printing systems, so we are pleased to be promoting discourse on important areas of IT such as cloud computing this year at GITEX.” With cloud adoption in the Middle East increasing, areas of discussion for 2012 include building hybrid cloud environments, managing the next generation of cloud applications and closing the IT cloud expertise skills gap.
In an ongoing effort to close the gap, HP ExpertONE, the company’s extensive training and certification programme for IT professionals, recently introduced two new cloud certifications—the Accredited Technical Professional for the cloud administrator and the Accredited Solution Expert for the cloud integrator. These HP ExpertONE cloud certifications are instrumental in enabling enterprises to transform from product-centric IT to unified service-centric IT that is open, secure, agile and consistent across cloud and traditional IT services. With cloud, mobility and big data initiatives increasingly being adopted to help organisations solve pressing challenges, there is the potential for big security concerns. To address this, HP recently announced additions to its security solutions portfolio enabling enterprises to assess, transform, optimise and manage their security environments to proactively protect what matters. Additionally, overcoming the exponential growth of cyber security threats, and removing barriers to enterprise growth, efficiency and innovation is something which will be focused on during GITEX. Core to this are proactive information risk management strategies.
WHAT’S INSIDE
Huawei goes bigger than ever
Riverbed emphasises performance
Cisco to showcase networking innovations
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Huawei goes bigger than ever Huawei is presenting its biggest ever GITEX presence this week as it previews solutions that span across its Carrier, Enterprise and Consumer Business Groups. With contract sales across the Middle East last year totaling over USD $3.2 billion—a 20% increase from the previous year—Huawei is showcasing many of its latest products, solutions and consulting services that together underscore the company’s new “Cloud-PipeDevice” strategy for evolving into a complete end-to-end ICT solutions provider. Much of the spotlight at Huawei’s exhibition this week is concentrating on the results of the company’s increased investments in global research and development, which expanded by nearly 35% last year with an emphasis in the fields of cloud computing, network security and handset technologies. “To adapt to the revolutionary
Yi Xiang, President, Huawei ME changes that are taking place in the information industry, Huawei has made a number of strategic adjustments to better serve its regional customers through our Cloud-Pipe-Device approach,” said Yi Xiang, President, Huawei ME. “Laying a strong foundation for sustainable business development, the Middle East is an exciting market for Huawei today as ICT is
widely recognised as a key driver for socio-economic development. GITEX itself is a truly unparalleled platform for us to connect with our customers, partners and regulators while demonstrating the breadth and depth of our solutions,” he added. Huawei’s Carrier business has an extensive range of technologies on display, as well as dedicated sessions focusing on the company’s most recent telecom deployments in the fields of 4G LTE and national broadband. Spanning across wireless, core networks, applications and software, and fixed networks, Huawei is placing particular emphasis on its regional business and managed services offerings, which over the last year have become an increasingly important segment of the company’s telecom Carrier portfolio. Huawei’s Enterprise business group also has a busy week
planned with new partners and customers joining its channel partner and customer communities, as well as launching array of new products and solutions. Huawei is holding a particular focus on cloud applications and the different applications of cloud computing in a variety of industry scenarios. This is supplemented by the launch of research conducted by Huawei into the green advantages of cloud computing, with attainable power consumption reductions of 20%. The company is also revealing further details of its upcoming line of quad-core consumer products, which are expected to be launched this fall in select markets across the Middle East. Huawei’s primary display stand is located at stand E13 in the Gulf Comms area of Za’abeel Hall. It is also at stand CLD4 in Hall 6 showcasing its ICT solutions.
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R&M showcases cabling solutions Reichle & De-Massari (R&M), the Swiss structured cabling company, has announced it will be participating at GITEX. At the event, the focus of R&M, which is one of the top 3 structured cabling vendors in the region in terms of market share, will be on its innovative range of data center and Fiber-to-thehome (FTTH) solution offerings. R&M’s newly appointed CEO, Mr. Michel Riva, along with newly appointed CSO Mr. Richard Eichhorn, based in Switzerland will be travelling to Dubai to attend GITEX. Commenting on R&M’s business in the Middle East and Africa region, Mr. Riva says, “MEA represents a high growth market for R&M with huge business potential.” “We are investing heavily in the region to ensure that product delivery speed, quality, and reliability R&M is renowned for is carried through. I am excited to visit the market in my new role as CEO and engage in meaningful business discussions with current and potential customers and partners.” R&M is set to exhibit its Cat. 6A and Class EA copper cabling solutions as well as the Distributed Frame HD cable management cabinet as part of its data centre offerings. Also, given that spacesavings is a mega-trend in data center design, the company will also highlight its ‘High Density Panel’ and the ‘Raised Floor’ solutions. With the Raised Floor Box, cabling connections can be conveniently shifted to under the floor thereby simplifying connections layout and maximising space utilisation The cabling specialist has been aggressively expanding its footprint in the region and now targets establishing itself as the leading data centre cabling solutions provider by 2013. “Thanks to large investments, we have increased the quality and efficiency of service in the region. Our newly opened patch cord assembly facility along with our ‘Fiber Lab’ located in our regional MEA headquarters in Dubai gives speed and flexibility to our customers,” says JeanPierre Labry, Executive Vice President of R&M Middle East and Africa.
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Consumerisation of IT is largest disruptor since Wi-Fi: Intel
The consumerisation of IT is the single largest disruption to IT since Wi-Fi and is fast becoming a permanent fixture in the enterprise environment. This according to Nassir Nauthoa, GM, GCC, Intel. The trend that is taking business by storm is a key focus for Intel at GITEX this week. “The consumerisation of IT is shaped by a number of forces, from technically savvy workers and younger generations entering the workforce, to a range of innovative devices such as smartphones and tablets, as well as cloud computing services that are accessible at any time, from any location. The Middle East market is adopting it slowly but surely,” Nauthoa said. Intel has been an active participant in GITEX since 2002 and continues to place a huge emphasise on the event. “GITEX continues to be one of the Middle East’s leading IT exhibitions attracting key ICT decision makers from around the region including government officials, consumers and educators. Technology is a huge part of our daily lives and it important for consumers to
“Intel has been an active participant in GITEX since 2002 and continues to place a huge emphasise on the event.” understand the different products at their disposal and how they can best serve their needs. GITEX is an excellent forum for Intel to showcase our latest technology, meet customers face to face and discuss the different types of products available to them,” Nauthoa said. He added that Intel’s primary goal throughout GITEX it to be available for its partners and end-customers to educate them on these technologies, showcase its latest offerings and provide the tools for them to educate themselves and interact with these technologies. “Intel is a regular participant in GITEX and the show is an excellent platform for networking, showcasing technology and communicating how ICT development is important to the region’s future. We live in
an interconnected world where technology is critical and central to the growth and development of economies. At Intel we believe ICT development and access is a fundamental component to success in the global economy and GITEX is the perfect event to communicate this message to all stakeholders,” he said. “The region is home to a growing ICT sector and GITEX plays an important role in helping to boost the industry at all levels – B2B, B2C and government. As the region’s largest technology exhibition, the event pulls in thousands of attendees who fly in to participate, network and knowledge share,” he added. Specifically, Intel, along with its partner McAfee, is addressing cloud computing at GITEX and the related security concerns in the Middle East. “We break down on focus on this into four key areas; securing cloud data centers, securing the network connections, securing the devices that connect to cloud services and accelerating the development of unified standards for cloud security,” Nauthoa said. According to Intel, gatherings like GITEX and all its supporting conference are very important forums to advancing the ICT agenda in the region. “We live in an interconnected world where information and data transfer are key components of our lives and economies. Communication and computer technology are now merging and providing new opportunities to connect and enrich the lives of every person on earth. This requires industry players and governments to work closely together to enable this vision,” Nauthoa concluded. Intel is exhibiting at stand CLD11 in Hall 6.
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Spectrami raises the bar Spectrami has said it plans to raise the standard of modern security solutions by taking a homogenous best of breed approach towards modern threats and how customers are dealing with them. The security and protection company claims it has the most innovative solutions available on the market which it is exhibiting at GITEX. “We are bringing some of the hottest and most innovative solutions in the market today, when you look at technologies like Actifio which radically simplifies copy data management, or the likes of Logrhythm; the pioneers in next generation SIEM technology,” said Anand Choudha, Managing Director, Spectrami. “We feel there is definitely something available that the customers will correlate with and appreciate what industry and analysts worldwide are raving about.” Spectrami says that modern day Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks which are gripping and disrupting businesses and governments in the region are covered by its portfolio of protection solutions. “Our solutions; Fidelis Security, Logrhythm and Verdasys, have key offerings which give protection against these modern threats,” said Choudha.
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Riverbed emphasises performance Riverbed Technology is exhibiting for the fifth time at GITEX this year and believes it will capture visitors with its emphasise on performance, according to its EMEA Director of Business Operations, Philippe Elie. The company made the decision to exhibit this year not only to capture the regional market, but also because of the international crowd the event attracts “GITEX is the event where not only all Middle East enterprises come, but companies from around the world come here too. It’s absolutely critical for the IT industry in the Middle East. This region is hot in terms of IT and it needs to continue to be a flexible and dynamic tool that can enable customers to become more agile,” Elie said. “The event is very important for us because we want to increase Riverbed’s awareness in the Middle East market. Also, we see a strong amount of potential in the Middle East for performance in general,” added. Riverbed has moved from being just an acceleration company to setting out to improve the performance of IT overall.”It is about making what customers already have better. Our aim is to allow customers to improve the performance of their existing IT,” Elie said. To support its views, the company conducted a study on 50 IT decision makers in the Middle East to understand what their IT priorities are and how they see performance impacting their initiatives. “Interestingly, what we found that they want first is great applications. Either great existing applications or to
Philippe Elie, EMEA Director of Business Operations launch great new applications. 70% of respondents said they would like to get more bandwidth as the bandwidth or latency limitations prevent them from updating or launching applications,” Elie said. “Another key thing we have found relates to cost reduction. Whilst cost reduction has been important for a while in continental Europe, it has not historically been key in the Middle East. However, we have found that is changing and cost reduction is becoming a top priority for IT decision makers in the region,” he added. A key theme of Riverbed’s GITEX exhibition is consolidation and centralising servers. The first reason customers want to do that is security, according to Elie. “When you centralise servers you centralise data and it makes it easier to back up and secure. The second reason is cost reduction. When you’ve got centralised servers it’s cheaper and easier to manage. 62% of companies plan to consolidate
over the next 12 months, so that is a key focus for us at GITEX,” he said. Furthermore, Elie said he believes Riverbed’s emphasise on performance is a winner in the region because it is something enterprises aren’t getting right now. “We are very optimistic about our business in the Middle East because of its two main attributes. The first is that it’s geographically spread. That makes distance very important and networks are suffering from this. As such, we see a need of performance for this,” Elie said. “The second attribute is that Middle East bandwidth is very expensive and comes with latency issues. Again, companies want to see an improvement in performance,” he added. Riverbed is showcasing at GITEX how it believes attendees can achieve LAN performance for remote and branch office virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) by combining Riverbed Granite edge virtual server infrastructure (edgeVSI) with VMware View. Elie expanded on Riverbed’s GITEX offerings showcase: “They can also improve optimisation, visibility and management of virtualised data centres and software-defined networks (SDNs) by the Riverbed Cascade product family supporting VXLANs and virtual overlay networks. Finally, they can provision and scale highperforming applications faster in the cloud with the integration of Riverbed Stingray Traffic Manager software with VMware vFabric Application Director.” Riverbed is exhibiting at booth ZL C4 in Zabeel Hall.
Publisher Dominic De Sousa, COO Nadeem Hood, Managing Director Richard Judd, Commercial Director Rajashree R Kumar, Group Editor Jeevan Thankappan Editors Pallavi Sharma, Ben Rossi Sub-editor Joe Lipscombe Circulation Manager Rajeesh M, Production Manager James Tharian, Design Director Ruth Sheehy, Senior Designers Analou Balbero, Froilan Cosgafa IV, Glenn Roxas, Digital Services Manager Tristan Troy Magma Web Developers Erik Briones, Jefferson De Joya Photographer and Social Media Co-ordinator Jay Colina
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Cisco to showcase networking innovations What are your company’s key products and services? Cisco is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. As an innovator in the communications and information technology industry, Cisco pioneered the development of Internet Protocol (IP) based networking technologies. This tradition continues with the development of routing, switching and other network-based technologies such as application networking services, collaboration, home networking, security, storage area networking, TelePresence, unified communications, video systems and wireless. Today, Cisco focuses on five key priorities – core routing, switching and services; collaboration; architectures; and video. Through utilising the power of the network, Cisco continues to deliver endend, innovative solutions to our customers and partners. Which product lines and services will Cisco focus on at GITEX? We believe the network will continue to grow in importance and could become our customers’ most strategic information technology (IT) asset. Given this, our principal theme at this year’s event is‘Intelligent Networks Transform Your Business’, where we will showcase how organisations can harness the power of intelligent networks to simplify and speed up the deployment of both current and future technologies to drive business transformation. In an increasingly connected world where information dissemination and consumption growing rapidly, we believe that the need for an
Rabih Dabboussi, GM of Cisco UAE intelligent and reliable network infrastructure has never been more apparent. As part of this theme, Cisco will demonstrate its various solutions across a series of demo areas around ‘Networked Healthcare’; ‘Networked Classroom’ and ‘Networked Banking and Retail’. Lastly, we will also examine the most current and critical trends and issues facing the Data Center and Virtualisation landscape, while focusing on Collaboration and Borderless Networks via a series of in-depth technology sessions and product demonstrations. What benefits do your products and services bring to regional companies? Cisco’s commitment to this region is underlined by our continued focus on innovating and bringing best-in-class solutions that will deliver the transformation and the results that businesses across the Middle East seek. As part of our business focus on the network as the platform for all forms of communications and IT, our products and services are designed to help our customers
use technology to address their business imperatives and opportunities. Cisco aims to help its customers improve productivity and user experience, reducing costs, gaining a competitive advantage and to help them connect more effectively with their key stakeholders. We also deliver products and solutions that leverage the network to most effectively address market transitions and customer technology requirements in the areas of virtualisation, cloud, collaboration and video. We believe that integrating multiple network services into and across our products helps our customers reduce their operational complexity, increase their agility and lower their total cost of network ownership. We also provide products and services that allow regional customers to transition their various networks to a single multi-service data, voice, and video network, thereby enabling economies of scale. In addition to our product offerings, we provide a broad range of service offerings, including technical support services and advanced services that help organisations get the most value from their networks. Why is your company exhibiting at GITEX Technology Week? Amongst the many important events in our calendar, GITEX Technology Week remains the most significant ICT show of the year in the Middle East and Africa, and is increasingly gaining more recognition globally. GITEX has consistently helped create greater opportunities for businesses on an exceptionally good knowledge
platform that has helped the ICT industry grow in the region. After last year’s success at GITEX, Cisco has a bigger and expanded presence at this year’s event where we will be focusing our attention on demonstrating technologies that will play an increasingly important role in improving productivity, reducing costs and helping companies gain competitive advantage. What does your company hope to achieve by appearing at GITEX Technology Week? GITEX Technology Week is an important event to connect with key business decision makers and help build relationships with a global audience. The event also gives Cisco the opportunity to showcase our latest technology solutions and demonstrate how technology can improve and enhance the services that businesses have to offer – from simple connectivity to an intelligent platform that will dramatically improve productivity and collaboration and help drive productivity, competitiveness and societal change in the region. What are your company’s main recent achievements in the Middle East market? Cisco sees tremendous potential in the Middle East, where we have seen our business momentum continuing in 2012 driven by the deployment of some of the most advanced network environments and higher demand for next-generation technologies. Combined with our brand strength and leadership across multiple product categories, we have had major customer wins, product launches, country/regional focused initiatives and awards across the region.
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