60 Mins - Day 5 - 1PM

Strategic ICT Partner

Technology Partners

60 Mins Show dates: 14-18 October 2012, Dubai World Trade Centre

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| AT GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK | Exhibition hours: 11am -7pm

Specialising in value Prologix Distribution maintains two lines of business, one focuses on value or solution driven business and the other on volume business.

At GITEX Technology Week 2012, Prologix is displaying a vendor portfolio that includes JDSU optical equipment, bandwidth backhaul solutions from Tranco Systems, security and surveillance equipment from Arlotto.

According to Aditya Sahaya, Director, Business Development at Prologix Distribution, the company offers a very specialised portfolio of solution and services that includes optical test equipment, indoor and outdoor wireless solutions, UPS, security surveillance equipment such as megapixel IP cameras in addition to test and measurement services.

With over 3000 resellers across the region, Sahaya says that Prologix is very careful about its choice of partners because of the expert solutions that the company brings to market. “We cannot just deal with any box moving reseller but need the kind of partners who have the necessary experience in dealing with the products and solutions we offer. This is why we

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Aditya Sahaya, Director, Business Development at Prologix Distribution invest in training our partners and keeping them constantly updated on our portfolio,” he said.

Sahaya believes that GITEX offers a valuable platforms for distributors such as Prologix to touch base with existing partners while actively meeting new prospects. “This has

been the best GITEX yet, with a concrete set of visitors who are qualified to do business. We have especially seen and met a lot of leads from KSA, West Africa and Nigeria in particular in addition to Pakistan and the CIS countries,” Sahaya concluded.

FVC signs deal with STC FVC, which is exhibiting its extensive portfolio of communication solutions at GITEX, has signed a partnership deal with STC, which focuses on an information security portfolio and expansion of its BYOD security package.

At its 10th GITEX, FVC claimed that the challenges presented by employees insisting on bringing their own devices into the work place, simple firewall security solutions are inadequate and new, solid, flexible solutions need to be produced.

“We’re looking at GITEX with a different perspective this year.

We want to see what customers need from us in order to better run their business,” said K.S Parag, Managing Director, FVC. “We’re looking into new verticals; healthcare, telecos, oil, education and finance, etc. We need to understand the challenges they

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K.S Parag, Managing Director, FVC

have and how we can deliver the leading solutions to them.”

FVC claimed it will be working proactively to produce a solid, all round security solution package in order to ease the pressure on enterprises having to incorporate BYOD strategies into their business.

“These businesses want to provide the right access to their staffs, our leading technology solutions can offer this. On the security side of things, a typical firewall isn’t enough now. We need to introduce the correct layers of security which can filter through different devices and access points and maintain a high level of security across multiple platforms.”

FVC offers SourceFire, a solution which Parag believes responds to all these concerns, particularly on BYOD trends which the company believes is highly vital in industry today.

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GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK 2012 HIGHLIGHTS

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Digital Forensic Investigations of Any Kind Incident Response & Remediation Training and Services Geoff Brooks Regional Sales Manager - Middle East, India & Africa PO BOX 211364, Dubai UAE Mobile No : +971 506 527659 gbrooks@accessdata.com www.accessdata.com

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Zeroing in on SME security Exhibiting under the theme of Complete security without complexity at GITEX this year, Sophos is raising awareness on IT security, and educating the business community on the risks of not having the right solutions in place. Throughout the exhibition, James Lyne, Director of Technology Strategy, Sophos, could be found in the middle of a crowd, doing live demonstrations, showing just how easy malware can spread on a typical system.

Sophos is also putting a major focus on SMEs, and its main message is one of advice and education as opposed to selling through a gloom and doom approach. James stresses his belief that if smaller companies were able to understand what they need to begin, with that it would second nature for them to adopt the right security solutions for their organisations.

“We try to take network security, encryption and make it simple and easy for companies to adopt. In terms of the Middle East in particular, I’ve noticed an interesting trend. When I first started coming here, whenever I would speak to someone from an SME company, when it came to security solutions, they wanted to know which antivirus how much does it detect and how much it costs. Within the last year, momentum seems to be gaining, people want to know

James Lyne, director of technology strategy, Sophos about device control, and data encryption, SME awarness of these security issues has been raised, and that’s a great change in the market here,”says Lyne.

The company showcased

its mobile security and mobile device management solutions, as well as its new unified threat management solution, UTM 9-,the first UTM specifically designed to integrate gateway

security and endpoint security in a single hardware or virtual box.

Another new solution on display was the Remote Ethernet Device or RED, which is an all-in-one solution which is ideal for SMEs, or employees who are on the go and are frequently working from two or three locations.

Traditionally IT people would set up security solutions in each of those offices. With RED, executives on the road, and you would receive it and you would plug it in instantly; there’s an internet cord, power and local network. You then virtually become connected to your virtually connected into the office network, it’s all managed remotely.

“GITEX is our biggest opportunity to build our brand awareness, in particular with SMES, we’ve certainly had enterprise discussions here but the majority of people we talk to are SMEs, it’s the biggest event of the year for us. Through our seminars we actually demonstrate an actual hacking and show how easy it is for malware to spread on your system, so it’s a great way for people to see for themselves the actual level of threat that’s out there. They walk away not only with awareness of the threat but of actual steps they can take to start making their systems more secure,” adds Lyne.

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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Connecting the world August 7th 2006 was quite a momentous occasion for education in the UAE. It marked the day when a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by the Institute of Applied Technology, Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates University, Zayed University and the Higher Colleges of Technology to establish a consortium for a UAE research and education network.

That network would be called Ankabut.

The idea was to provide a global private network to connect all those universities that join.

The work wasn’t done, however. A few months later another MoU was signed between Ankabut and Internet2, the USA’s NREN (national research and education network), to provide Ankabut’s connection internationally. That connection was eventually established in October 2008.

Perhaps the most important dates of all though came in 2009.

First in April, when an agreement was signed between the ICT Fund and Khalifa University to fund the Ankabut project. And then in July, when another agreement was signed between Khalifa University and Etisalat to build a new NREN in the UAE. Finally, on June 17th 2010, the Higher Colleges of Technology and Zayed University became the first universities to connect to the network. Ankabut was born.

Two years on and there are now 20 universities connected to the Ankabut network for 56 campuses.

However, it wasn’t all smooth sailing, says Dr. Steven Winstanley, COO at Ankabut.

“People here in the UAE didn’t really understand what NRENs were about, so the uptake wasn’t massive in the beginning of the project,” he says.

“We’re trying to push the Printed with GIT cartridges

boundaries of networking here in the UAE. We’re the GCC’s first dual stack network, so we offer IPv6 from the network all the way around all the other NRENs around the world,” he adds.

So what exactly does the Ankabut offer universities that they haven’t already got?

“In the first instance, we’ve got a national network and are offering larger bandwidth services to universities to be able to connect themselves together,” Dr. Winstanley says.

Ankabut’s basic rate is 1GB per second into a particular campus or university, so multicampus universities are supplied with VPN connectivity to connect those campuses together.

“In the second instant, a smaller university with less staff would go for a cheaper device and send all the traffic down the network and we will then branch off Internet traffic. When we look at the traffic going in and out of a university, 70% of it is rubbish – things like Facebook, YouTube and news websites – and this is a part-and-parcel of everyday life,” Dr Winstanley says.

“It’s the other 30% that’s important to the university – like the eLearning, disaster recovery,

grid computing and email services. The network makes sure that 30% has a higher quality and is treated faster and with a greater priority than the other 70% of internet traffic,” he adds.

Dr. Winstanley points to the example of a university doing healthcare research and wanting to transfer x-rays.

“What they need is available bandwidth to be able to send that file there and then. If they want to transfer that traffic back and forth, they need a very large bandwidth connection and they need to put a large impact on that network at that particular moment in time,” he says.

“If you try and do that over the internet, you’re not going to get a very high bandwidth connection, so it’s going to take days to get a large file like an MRI scan through. With the Ankabut network, medical schools are able to get their files backwards and forwards very quickly,” he adds.

Besides the immediate benefits of connecting to such a network, what the guys behind Ankabut are really hoping for is a “Eureka moment.”

“We need to bring universities together for collaborative research. People have said there

will be no Eureka moments, but the Higgs boson discovery happened last week, which was the result of a large collaborative project,” Dr. Winstanley says.

“The reason the network was set up in the first place was to push collaboration. We all know this region well enough to know there is not enough research coming out of the Middle East. So Ankabut is bringing a community together to provide a platform for if and when that infamous Eureka moment comes,” he adds.

Not only has the network’s growth been demonstrated by its rising user list, it has also been representative of the interest in Ankabut’s annual user meeting.

“Three years ago we had our first user meeting and 15 people turned up. Last user meeting had over 350 people and our next user meeting in September we expect to be much larger than that,” Dr. Winstanley says.

Amongst the attendees of the next Ankabut user meeting will be the Middle East Special Interest Group, which brings together scholars, educators and development practitioners interested in the study of the region.

“It’s basically made up of people from Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Oman. Some of these guys have started off examining NRENs and the competitive advantage that we have in the UAE because of this particular network,” Dr. Winstanley says.

“What’s really becoming apparent is that the UAE is the only country in the GCC with a national research and education network and suddenly other people are being left behind because they’re not able to collaborate on the same footing as the UAE. In the same respect, universities in the UAE that don’t join the network are missing a major opportunity,” he adds.

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