Channel Insights March 2023

INSIDE

ENHANCING PARTNER PROFITABILITY

SECURING THE ENTERPRISE

EMPOWERING PARTNERS TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF INNOVATIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES IN 2023

SUCCESS ENABLING

HOW AMIVIZ IS EMPOWERING ITS PARTNER COMMUNITY WITH A MOBILE APP

NEED OF THE HOUR

After navigating through the hardships of the pandemic, the tumultuous times businesses face now impact the channel as well. The prominent discussion points currently are facing the economic challenges in today’s uncertain market and preparing for the future. The processes have become inherently complex, and the business approach has changed. The growth game has completely changed. Partners must increase their technical capability level, focus and match customer needs, and ensure the ecosystem’s profitability. Customers are looking for tailored solutions to meet their business needs. The channel must remember that it has faced similar challenges before, and through challenges come opportunities. Partners can continue to build profitability by understanding customers’ challenges because of the global economic environment and then provide value through support. As the partners evolve to support their customers better, they want a more predictable return on investment (ROI), building solutions, specializations, and relationships. It might seem overly optimistic to say that today’s dynamic market can present opportunities for profitability, but customers need expert advice from the channel now more than ever. In this edition, we have fantastic tips from our channel thought leaders to understand better the key factors that drive partner growth and profitability.

Many technologies are disrupting our lives at the moment – from Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Web3.0 and everything in between. Organisations must prepare themselves for disruption and ensure that their products and services are innovative enough to stand in the competitive space. In such accelerated IT landscape development, digital innovation is the key to sustainable growth. This edition’s cover story is about one such innovative initiative by AmiViz, which demonstrates the company’s commitment to staying ahead of the curve and providing its clients with the latest technology and tools to help them succeed.

We also have exclusive interviews from senior executives of Veeam Software, D-Link, and emt Distribution, discussing achievements, growth strategies, partnerships, latest offerings, and their contribution to the channel ecosystem.

Besides these, indulge in topics ranging from Storage As A Service, Secure Kubernetes’ Future, Chatbot, AI in distribution, cyber threats and innovations, and opportunities in 2023 that give you diverse scenarios of the IT landscape to delve into.

Enjoy reading!

Ruchika Sharma contributing editor, Channel Insights Middle East

Redington Helps Saudi Customers

To Leap Into The Digital Age

agendas at the recently concluded LEAP 2023 in Saudi Arabia – the global platform and unique event for future technologies and the most disruptive technology professionals from around the world.

partner and customer relationships

the company is focusing its efforts on ‘accelerating’ transformation.

Redington Value showcased digital innovation and supported partners and customers to advance their digital transformation

During the event, the Redington team showcased its unique services portfolio around cloud, cybersecurity and IoT, digital solutions from global leaders and networked with existing customers while also meeting new ones. The Redington brand is an established one in the region and LEAP offered a great opportunity to reinforce

Over the years, the distributor has undergone a great evolution. From being an ‘aggregator’ for innovative solutions and services, it became a ‘catalyst’ for partners to empower customers’ digital drives. The company doubled down on its mandate to help partners position themselves as the ‘go-to’ advisors for customers’ transformation journeys.

In the past year, Redington has been solely focused on ‘simplifying’ customers’ cloud and digital journeys. Today, along with simplifying,

Sayantan Dev, President, Redington Value, said, “Saudi Arabia is an important market for Redington. It was great to meet and network with partners and customers from the Kingdom and discuss innovations and latest developments. It was also encouraging to see how the market has evolved and how transitioning to the cloud is a top priority for customers. Redington has done incremental business in the Kingdom and observed a great appetite for digital solutions. We look forward to future editions of LEAP as it’s an ideal indicator to understand the pulse of the market.”

FVC Expands Footprint With New Office In Egypt

FVC announces the launch of its new office in Egypt. The new office will provide professional services to the growing customer base in the region and make it easier for them to access the products and services. This is an exciting time for the company, and this new office in Egypt is an important step in the global expansion. In line with the Egyptian government’s ambitious Vision 2030 agenda, our local presence will help the country in it’s digital transformation journey across the range of sectors including government, education, healthcare and technology industry.

FVC envisions the country as a key market in the Middle East and North Africa region. Having a local presence there will support FVC’s vision of helping companies in the region, translate their business requirements into realisable, dynamic IT solutions. The new office will serve the local and regional market focusing on a range of technology products, services and solutions on an enterprise scale.

The current team in Egypt include professionals who have a wealth of experience in the local market and are dedicated in delivering the highest level of service to the customers. The team is ready to assist the customers with their needs and will work closely with them to guarantee their satisfaction with their services. To ensure its complete portfolio of solutions is available with full local support for the market, FVC intends to hire more people in Egypt in the coming years.

”FVC is happy to announce its new office in Cairo, Egypt. Today FVC sees Egypt as a growing market with great opportunities for the complete

IT solutions portfolio. We see megatrends in terms of digital transformation that’s taking place over there. Our new entity is the support and commitment to the local market place towards bringing leading edge technology to help partners formulate their customer experience better”, commented K.S.Parag, Managing Director, FVC.

Essam Khafagi, CEO & Partner, Egypt at FVC, said, “I am honoured with this new joint venture and the confidence that Parag has entrusted in me with this partnership. FVC is an industry pioneer and together we aim to support all sectors of the market in Egypt towards achieving their digital transformation plans. I am excited to be part of a highly capable team, and to introduce and represent class A vendors to the Egyptian market”.

With more than a decade of crossdomain expertise, FVC draws their strength from 150 world-class channel partners across 45 countries. They are eagerly looking forward to serving the customers in Egypt and help them achieve their business goals.

A10 Networks’ New Service Addresses Expanding Cyber Threat Landscape

Threats from distributed denial of service (DDoS), ransomware and malware cyber-attacks continue to rapidly expand, targeting critical vertical industries such as healthcare, banking and government infrastructure.

In response to the growing demand from customers for tools that will help defend against DDoS attacks, A10 Networks is launching A10 Defend, a pilot software-asa-service (SaaS) offering, with threat insights combining unique network traffic know-how and analyses of indicators of compromise used to carry out attacks. A10 uses internal networking expertise working across a large global customer base along with cybersecurity research to create unique and actionable insights into our customers’ use case needs.

A10 Networks’ own research now tracks upwards of 15.4 million DDoS weapons. This presents a significant threat to organisations, large and small. At the same time, customers are increasingly overwhelmed with new security solutions, a lack of expertise and compressed budgets during a time of economic uncertainty.

The security service enhances A10’s current solution portfolio, enabling enterprises and service providers to access real-time data that matches their unique characteristics and strengthens their security posture. A10 Defend provides a level of intelligence and defense from multiple sources that a single organisation would not be able to have on its own.

“Our deep understanding of network traffic combined with primary research into cybersecurity helps us to tailor the service as an enhancement for customer vertical industries as opposed to generic cybersecurity solutions. This service further enhances A10’s solutions to provide customers with timely, relevant and tailored threat insights required to better protect their networks,” said Dhrupad Trivedi, president and CEO of A10 Networks.

A10 is working with lead customers around the world to begin testing this solution in early 2023 with expanded capabilities to come. A10 Defend is designed to work with existing infrastructure without requiring the purchase of new A10 equipment, enabling customers to better manage their budget priorities while continually enhancing their security posture.

IoT Academy By Software AG

Expands In Middle East & Türkiye

Software AG has opened registrations for the second batch of its IoT Academy, following the astounding success of its inaugural programme in 2022 in UAE. In its second year, the programme, themed under simplifying a sustainable tomorrow to help developers build IoT systems on sustainability principles, extends registrations to professionals, students, tech enthusiasts and freelancers from the entire region of Middle East and Türkiye. The programme equips learners with skills and knowledge to address the 21st century industrial revolution over a 16-week IoT-focused curriculum for all participants.

With diverse IoT applications and several vertical IoT deployments emerging, the programme encourages participants to emphasize on new ways thinking, adapting to new industry norms and deployments of IoT technologies that establish the benchmark for industries globally and gain the ability to build real-world applications on sustainability and other pressing business cases. The course centres on general and specific IoT market intelligence, trends and market growth opportunities, go-to-market strategies, sales and technical workshops.

“The industrial revolution 4.0 will increase the adoption of IoT technologies to spur new opportunities,” said Rami Kichli, Senior Vice President, Middle East and Turkey, Software AG. “The IoT Academy is a parallel step in this direction to equip IoT aspirants and future workforce with expert level capabilities required to innovate, build mission-critical functions founded on IoT and future become IoT leaders. We remain committed in our goals to build advanced IoT ecosystems and support the future of digital transformation as the world moves towards a robust digital economy.”

Acting on the regions’ objectives and the company’s global agenda, the training programme fosters sustainable talent development to master transition to 4IR best practices. It also aims to narrow and alleviate the skills gap and maximise potential of this technology through experiences of transforming real-world objects into smart objects.

Participants from the 2022 edition of the academy programme included executives from Moro Hub, Vision Valley, Cognit DX and students from University of Dubai who developed successful smart city IoT use cases such as Traffic Management, Rainwater harvesting, E-stations & Smart asset management.

The certifications and badges awarded by Software AG enable students use their skills in regional and international markets. Participants also benefit from Software AG’s learning platform for specific certifications designed for each profile.

As per recent reports from Gartner, Forrester and MachNation, Software AG is named as the leader in the IoT.

Du UAE And Huawei Sign MoU On 5.5G Strategic Cooperation

At Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona 2023, du, from Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC) and Huawei signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on 5.5G strategic cooperation, marking a new phase of their long-standing partnership.

As one of the fastest-growing telecommunication operators in the UAE, du works closely with Huawei and has outstanding performance in 5G network experience and service development, capturing a large share of the Middle East market. Through this partnership, du and Huawei will strengthen cooperation in 5.5G innovation, including technological innovation, and E2E network evolution, to help du continuously enhance user experience and lead the UAE market in 5.5G development.

Saleem AlBlooshi, CTO of du UAE, Cao Ming, President of Huawei Wireless Network Product Line, CEO of Huawei UAE, Liu Jiawei, and other executives

Epicor Acquires Cloud-Based Financial Planning And Analysis Provider DSPanel

Epicor has announced it has acquired DSPanel, a global provider of cloudbased Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) solutions and existing Epicor ISV partner. The acquisition extends the Epicor portfolio of best-in-class financial management solutions, helping makers, movers, and sellers worldwide streamline and simplify budgeting, planning, forecasting, scenario modeling, and financial reporting. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The acquisition includes Performance Canvas, DSPanel’s cloud-based FP&A solution. The technology, which is currently offered to Epicor customers as Epicor Financial Planner, is fully integrated with the Epicor Industry

from both parties attended the signing ceremony.

According to the MoU, du and Huawei will collaborate on 5.5G in three aspects. For innovation, they will focus on key technologies, including ELAA-MM (Extremely Large Antenna Array Massive MIMO), Passive IoT, Virtual Large Carrier among others, and discuss E2E network evolution roadmap. In terms of application exploration, they will conduct research on new scenarios and identify potential applications based on local requirements, such as Metaverse, holographic meeting, XR. In ecosystem

ERP Cloud and delivers a unified, configurable, data-harmonised solution that supports financial, supply chain, workforce, sales, and marketing needs across an organisation.

“Agility is paramount in today’s complex landscape of ever-changing market dynamics,” said Epicor CEO, Steve Murphy. “Our acquisition of DSPanel will give CFOs and other business leaders a highly scalable FP&A solution to get to the right insights at the right time and take action to maximise business performance.”

Epicor Financial Planner transforms financial and operational data through the power of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, such as the ability to predict financial models and uncover insights by aggregating and analysing data from diverse sources including ERP and Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems. The solution also automates complex tasks to reduce errors and save time in period-end closings, multi-site

construction, they will work together with local and global industry partners to build a sound 5.5G ecosystem and promote multilateral business success.

Saleem AlBlooshi, CTO of du, said, “du is committed to working with industry leaders around the world to create new solutions that help us stay at the forefront of digital innovation. In line with the UAE’s Metaverse strategy, our partnership with Huawei will enable du to achieve our goal of making 5.5G technology available for commercial use, and together we can create immersive XR experiences for users that are high-quality and reliable. Our goal is to create an ecosystem in which every aspect of life can benefit from the unique features that 5.5G technology has to offer, ranging from improved connectivity and faster speeds to fullscenario IoT and extensive coverage.”

Cao Ming, President of Huawei Wireless Network Product Line, said, “We’re committed to provide innovative solutions based on user requirements. We will work with du on 5.5G innovation, explore and promote 5.5G technologies, and commercialise high-value use cases based on the local scenarios in UAE, to improve network experience and build a digital, intelligent world.”

management and communications.

“At DSPanel, we’ve always been focused on helping organisations optimise their financial and reporting processes to support strategic decisionmaking across the business,” said DSPanel CEO, Jan Morath. “By joining with Epicor, we’re excited to expand on our long-time relationship and strengthen our work to help companies increase profitability, manage and improve departmental performance, and facilitate organisational change.”

Areeba To Introduce Biometric Reading In MENA

Areeba sal is strengthening its partnership with the Swiss payment expert, Netcetera. This partnership started in 2020 with the implementation of the latest 3-D Secure protocol, supported by Netcetera’s Access Control Server (ACS). Today, in cooperation with Netcetera, Areeba introduces Out-of-Band authentication (OOB) with biometric reading (fingerprint scan or face recognition) as the most convenient method for its customers and their cardholders to do secure and flawlessly e-commerce transactions.

This enables Areeba to provide its issuers’ customers (banks and fintechs) with innovative authentication experience through their mobile apps to create tailored cardholders’ authentication experiences that prevent fraud. Instead of entering a password or receiving a text message, the cardholder can use fingerprint or even facial recognition to authenticate a payment through the mobile app.

“Areeba is always an early adopter of cutting-edge technologies to provide its customers with the highest level

of fraud protection. We are pleased to launch the OOB with Netcetera, a company that combines quality, reliability, service, and innovation. Everything goes smoothly when you have a partner like this. When we started our cooperation, we recognised the big potential for growing the business of our customers and for improving their lifestyles. This guides us during our work. By accepting what Netcetera enables as proven success in other developed markets we act proactively to our customer’s demands and keep their competitiveness at the highest level” –stated Maher Mikati, CEO of Areeba. The card-not-present authentication solution has customer protection as a

Tupan Signs Partnership Agreement With ForestAu Green

Tupan, an innovative air vehicle technology, has announced a partnership agreement with ForestAu Green to start its operations in the United Arab Emirates. The announcement comes as the company wraps up its participation in IDEX 2023, the largest defence exhibition and conference in the Middle East.

ForestAu Green is an environmental digital asset investment fund, focused on promoting the regenerative circular economy in the Amazonian region. The fund is the issuer of the “Tupan Token” and intends to promote economic and social-environmental integration by promoting the qualified management of these digital assets.

“We are excited to partner with Tupan and support their innovative technology in the UAE and beyond,” said

ForestAu Green CEO, Oderli Feriani. “Tupan’s versatile air vehicles have the potential to revolutionise cargo transport, and we look forward to working together to advance our shared goals of promoting sustainability and economic development.”

Tupan’s CEO, Alberto Carlos Pereira, expressed his enthusiasm for the partnership. “Their commitment to fostering the regenerative circular economy aligns with our own goals, and we believe that this partnership will enable us to have a positive impact in the region and beyond,” he said.

The partnership agreement was made in the presence of Marco Minerbo, Tupan’s Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) and Alan Zettelmann, Tupan’s Ambassador in UAE, besides investors

priority but combined with the daily needs and habits as is the quick modern lifestyle of the customers, reaches the highest interest and daily usage in the western world already.

According to Statista, in 2022, the digital identity solutions market – of which biometric technology is a major component – was valued at 28 billion US with a forecast of exceeding 70 billion US by 2027.

Ramy Fouda, Director of Sales, Middle East and Africa at Netcetera, commented: “MENA is such a strong market with still great potential. And here at Netcetera we have the expertise, we understand the local regulations, and we have customers and online shoppers keen to experience the latest technology. Strengthening this partnership with a brand like Areeba makes us extremely proud, it makes us feel part of boosting the MENA regional digital payments.” Mikati added that “Great customer experience and journey is the current, but even more the demand of the future. Areeba will continue to attract customers by bringing the latest technology to our markets”.”

and partners in the UAE that preferred don’t be disclosed.

Tupan’s participation in IDEX 2023 has been a major success, with the company’s stand visited by most of the official delegations. The event has provided Tupan with an ideal platform to increase its visibility and reach, as well as to demonstrate the capabilities and benefits of its HSVSTOL unmanned aerial vehicles. Tupan’s technology is also set to impact the new portfolio of special forces.

BeyondTrust Intelligent Identity And Access Security Solutions Are Now Available In The Microsoft Azure Marketplace

giving customers choice and flexibility in purchasing its identity security solutions. Customers can expect a simplified procurement process through Azure Marketplace with flexible payment terms, consolidated billing, committed cloud spend burndown, and enterprise discounts.

publisher, and reseller engagements with a single transaction and invoice.

BeyondTrust has announced the availability of BeyondTrust Password Safe and Privilege Management for Windows & Mac in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online store providing applications and services for use on Azure. Customers can now take advantage of the productive and trusted Azure cloud platform, with streamlined deployment and management. This furthers BeyondTrust’s commitment to

For years, BeyondTrust has delivered some of the industry’s leading solutions that allow organisations to secure and manage privileged identities and access. This announcement progresses the identity and access security market forward, helping organisations consolidate procurement capabilities as they continue the rapid adoption of cloud initiatives.

In addition, BeyondTrust channel partners currently enrolled in Microsoft’s CSP programme can bundle BeyondTrust and Microsoft software and services, simplifying customer,

“BeyondTrust is committed to making it easy for customers to adopt and implement BeyondTrust solutions,” said Brent Thurrell, Chief Revenue Officer at BeyondTrust. “As organisations increasingly pursue hybrid or multicloud strategies and expand cloud infrastructure, CISOs and IT decision-makers seek greater flexibility in purchasing and deploying chosen security solutions. By enabling them to quickly and easily leverage their existing Microsoft Azure commits, we can help customers accelerate their identity security journey and defend against cyberthreats.”

“Through Microsoft Azure Marketplace, customers around the world can easily find, buy, and deploy partner solutions they can trust, all certified and optimised to run on Azure,” said Jake Zborowski, General Manager, Microsoft Azure Platform at Microsoft Corp. “We’re happy to welcome BeyondTrust to the growing Azure Marketplace ecosystem.”

Salesforce Recognised As A Leader In 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant For Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms

Salesforce announced it has once again been named a Leader by Gartner Inc. in its 2023 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms.

According to Gartner, “By 2025, 70% of new applications developed by enterprises will use low-code or no-code technologies, up from less than 25% in 2020.”

• As businesses look to do more with less amid an uncertain economic landscape, Salesforce Platform has enabled companies to reduce costs and increase worker productivity with its suite of low-code development and automation solutions.

• These solutions empower IT and business leaders to

unlock efficiency through automation, build intelligent apps at scale, and personalise every customer interaction through secure, compliant access to realtime data.

“Companies today are looking to reduce costs and drive efficiency by building apps and workflows faster, which is why so many are turning to low-code solutions,” said Patrick Stokes, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Salesforce Platform.

“We’re thrilled to see that Gartner has recognised us as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for low-code application platforms,

as we have designed our Salesforce Platform to empower fusion business and IT teams to build and extend their Customer 360 with low-code automation and development solutions that help them meet today’s challenges.” Patrick Stokes, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Salesforce Platform.

Across multiple industries, customers like Vonage, Schneider Electric, and CarMax have adopted low-code practices to accelerate speed to market, eliminate manual work, and reduce the costs of traditional software development.

“As a global leader in business cloud communications, we are

always looking for ways to enhance productivity and efficiency,” said Savinay Berry, Executive Vice President, Product and Engineering, Vonage. “Salesforce’s solutions have helped us to automate workflows that allow our teams to collaborate more easily, drive value for customers, and fuel our international expansion.”

CREATING VALUE

emt Distribution is committed to selling through its channel partners, enabling its large reseller base. Mo Mobasseri, CEO, emt Distribution, discusses how they are empowering its regional channel partners on path of self-sufficiency.

you have something emerging and new to the market, you must spend a lot of time and resources to make these technologies palatable. You need to educate the market and create awareness. Then, after the customers start showing interest is when you can start selling. Last year, we looked mainly into emerging technologies and signed up with multiple vendors. And some of the new technologies we have signed up for are backed by a VC like Insight Partners, which owns most high-tech companies globally.

We were also lucky that acquisitions were in our favour. Most of the time, when an acquisition happens, it causes fundamental changes in the distribution landscape, and you might lose the distribution to a different partnership based on the strategy. Last year, Progress, one of our key vendors, acquired two more companies. One is Kemp, which is into load balancing and application performance management. We were happy to add that to our portfolio, and we already have some fantastic projects in the region. And they acquired another company called Fkowmon, which is focused on network detection and response. So, this is another technology that we have onboarded

Last year, emt Distribution forged many new partnerships. Please elaborate on these. emt stands for emerging market technologies. So when we started 34 years ago in Australia, the idea

was to go to developing markets and bring-in emerging technologies. Many companies sell established technologies. We don’t want to get in there because it is already crowded. So, our focus has always been on emerging technologies. But, when

Some of the other new vendors we have partnered with include DNSFilter. This is one of the companies backed by Insight Partners and they are making a lot of investment in DNS security and content filtering.

We have also signed up Storvix. In emt globally, we never had any hardware products because we always focused on cybersecurity and software. Storvix is an interesting one for us because they have so

many patented storage and data management technologies. Though this is a new domain, we are leveraging our experience and collaboration with other vendors to make this work. We focus a lot on integration and value addition. Another partnership that I must mention is with OPSWAT, which is focused on protecting critical infrastructure. There is a lot of demand for OT and ICS security in this region, and we are one of the first disties to enter this space.

Are any new partnerships in the pipeline?

As you know, the emt group was acquired by rhipe last year, an Australian publicly listed company. This acquisition strengthens rhipe’s presence in security software distribution, and we are evaluating many new solutions. We will soon announce new collaborations.

What are the latest cybersecurity and IT management trends to watch out for in 2023?

Currently, one of the major challenges is the lack of awareness among employees. There are many organisations in the region where the workforce needs to be made aware of the new attack modes. So security awareness, especially among non-IT staff, is important. Unfortunately, many regional organizations do not provide awareness training to their employees. This is why you see there is a demand now for phishing and spam simulations in the market today to keep employees aware of how threats can jeopardise their organizational security.

Another major shift is organisations moving their data to the cloud, thanks to the presence of hyperscalers in the region. Cloud migration started last year and is a great opportunity for our partners. This includes understanding the customer’s environment, assisting them in their migration journey, and optimising the cost. Cloud migration is an endless process that includes constant investment at various levels. There should be some control over the cost. Otherwise, cybersecurity would become the most expensive cost for the organization. Hence, cost

optimisation as a service is another major trend this year.

Another trend is around CDR (content disarm and reconstruction). We always suggest to resellers, IT companies, and even customers that they should plan to have CDR implemented at different levels of their organizations.

What are the latest value-added services that emt Distribution is offering?

We focus mainly on services, as 25 percent of the revenue is from this domain. We are planning to launch our vendor neutral services soon. Many IT companies, especially the large ones, cannot convince customers to invest in a particular solution, or the sales cycle is taking long.

So we are launching a couple of vendor-neutral services like VAPT, and many others, that we’re selling to our resellers, so they can actually white label our engineers, and we can jointly go to market. This will help them generate more revenues and cash in on cross-selling opportunities as well. Also, we are the only distributor focusing on vendor-neutral training. Many organisations offer product training, but our focus is on emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, cybersecurity and data science.

How is emt Distribution leveraging the power of AI in its solutions?

We have solutions that are based on AI, especially around IT Service Management (ITSM) domain. This domain involves a huge number of resources, so our effort is to minimize the required resources to respond to service requests and maximise the speed. With AI, we are focusing a lot on increasing productivity and enhancing the quality of services. We are also using AI to automate parts of cybersecurity.

How emt Distribution is empowering its regional channel partners on the path of selfsufficiency?

We have been working with the channel closely, and last year we’ve appointed a regional channel

manager to focus specifically on the META region.

At first, we go through the entire new enablement session for the emerging technologies with all of our partners, irrespective of whether they are existing or new. We then conduct thorough technical training specific to the technology they’re interested in. We also do certain events like MMTS - Market Magnitude Technology Seminars, where being vendor neutral, we focus on salespeople of resellers to understand their perspective. We also do brainstorming sessions with them to understand how they can upsell and cross-sell solutions other than what they are comfortable with. These are the approaches we follow to strengthen this relationship.

And then, when it comes to technical presales, we conduct training sessions on regular basis to enable them to become self-sufficient. Honestly, there are many projects in the region where emt is white labeling its service. So we approach the customer, do an entire implementation, and support as the partner so that they understand the value and plan to invest in more resources and do it themselves.

What are your plans in terms of business strategy and innovation for 2023?

Our business strategy has always been to expand in different regions. This year we are focusing on our expansion in Saudi Arabia. Having our headquarters here in UAE, our business is growing phenomenally in this region. So we are making a lot of investment in Saudi. We have a local team that we plan to expand in the coming years. We’ve already done a lot of activities in a couple of African countries, so now, in 2023, we’re going to focus a lot on the African market as well.

We have launched Center of Excellence in regions like Europe, Asia, and here. We will continue doing such services and simultaneously scale up offerings to the MSPs because we have some really good solutions targeted at this market. We are also setting up a portal for our resellers, enabling them to onboard their customers and simplify the process.

ENHANCING PARTNER PROFITABILITY

As the partners evolve to better support their customers, they want a more predictable return on investment (ROI) building solutions, specializations, and relationships. Read these tips from the channel leaders to better understand the key factors that drive partner growth and profitability.

the supplier and benefit from loyalty programs and volume rebates. Monitor the cash conversion cycle to control and manage finance cost. These are some of the areas that partners should pay attention to when looking to enhance profitability.

How do you help your partners drive their profitability?

Arkan Saleh Vice President, Finance & Operations, Mindware

What are some of the key steps for partners to improve profitability?

Diversify product offerings including value-added services, in order to differentiate offerings and increase chances of upsell. Streamline operations by implementing efficient processes and systems to reduce costs and improve efficiency, such as automating order fulfilment and invoicing. Invest in the right tools. Focus on customer satisfaction. It is cheaper to retain existing customers than identify and acquire new ones. Providing excellent customer service and support can help increase customer loyalty and generate repeat business. Monitor prices and margins and adjust them as needed to stay competitive and maintain profitability. Build a long-term relationship with

As a distributor, we support partners and drive their profitability by providing product training and technical support. We also offer marketing services including lead generation, market research, and demand generation activities, helping them reach new customers and drive sales.

By offering value-added services such as installation, configuration, and ongoing support, distributors like us help partners differentiate their offerings and increase their revenue. Inventory management and logistics is another area where we support partners, thereby helping them reduce the costs and headaches associated with these activities. This frees up their time and resources to focus on growing their businesses.

Our partners benefit from our B2B eCommerce platform and marketplace which makes the purchasing process more efficient and also provides a host of advantages

like unique offers, volume rebates and loyalty programs. Our digital sales platform is supported with last mile deliveries so our partners can manage just-in time orders, reducing the complexities and costs involved in stock management.

We also offer financing options to partners through alliances, where they can finance the full project rather than on a product-by-product basis.

Do you see a greater focus on services in the channel now?

There has been a shift towards services in the tech channel in recent years. As technology has become more integrated into businesses and personal lives, there is a growing demand for services such as managed services, cloud services, security services, and consulting services to help organizations maximize the value of their technology investments. In response, technology companies and channel partners are increasingly offering a wider range of services to meet these demands, and many are investing in building out their services capabilities to remain competitive in an increasingly services-focused market.

Kinda Baydoun Manager of Channels, Distribution and Alliances - Middle East & CIS at Veeam Software

What are some of the key steps for partners to improve profitability? This is the topic that I discuss the most with my partners constantly – “How do we make sure that their business is always sustainable and profitable?” – In my opinion the answer is very simple: Read the Market, Build Synergies and Focus. Digital transformation didn’t impact customers only. Partners, as well, had to navigate through it as the traditional linear model of selling to customers a large portfolio of random and unmatched products became obsolete. The landscape is shifting to a more inter-connected ecosystem

(Vendors, Telcos, Service Providers, System Integrators, Resellers, etc.). there is definitely an increased collaboration among partners and an appetite to co-create together with vendors and customers.

IDC defined a framework of 8 focus areas for partners as a guidance to help partners remain profitable in this disruptive era: “1/Switch from Resell to aaS, 2/Having the right technology portfolio, 3/Specialization, 4/New Go-To-Market (such as marketplace), 5/Customers (access to C-suite), 6/Competition (creating smart partnerships), 7/Ecosystem (creating synergies) and 8/Solutions. I believe this is a great tool for partners that they can use to design their strategies and develop their key priorities in 2023 and beyond. In reference to the IDC Partner Transformation Framework, I always advise my partners to be the best at what they do. Focus and specialization are key to have a profitable business, and this can be achieved by creating smart synergies within the right ecosystem and by investing in the right talent.

How do you help your partners drive their profitability?

As I mentioned in my first answer, focus and specialization are key to drive profitability. To support our partners in their skill development, we are providing training and certification programs that increase skill specialization and diversification that help differentiating the partner´s offering in the market. This way, he can scale his business model and address the needs of his customers in a very flexible and customized way. We also have a very lucrative rebate program which rewards partners who achieve their goals with Veeam which are defined as revenue and pipeline generation targets. Last but not least, Veeam business has always been very profitable for partners as they directly manage and deliver all the customers’ services related requirements.

Do you see a greater focus on services in the channel now? Definitely. IT environments are getting more and more complex and IT leaders are facing multiple

challenges. They are building and supporting increasingly complex hybrid environments. They are under so much pressure to integrate the latest market trends, and they are lacking the right talents from numbers as well as skills perspectives. Channel partners are very aware of this gap and therefore they are working closely with vendors, like Veeam, to be able to cater for this very high demand for consulting and implementation services.

In the current economic climate, enterprises have been looking to maximize the sustainability of their business by cutting operating costs. This has impacted IT spending too, as is evidenced by Gartner cutting its projections for worldwide IT spending growth this year from 5.1% to 2.4%. At the same time, enterprises are turning to IT to drive efficiencies and optimize their operations. Channel partners can transform these challenges into opportunity and thus increase their profitability in the many ways.

In their quest for optimisation, enterprise and mid-market customers are looking to utilise their current IT investments to their full potential. Channel organisations that can empower their customers to achieve this will find opportunity while also elevating themselves as trusted advisors. This will call for a deep understanding of the customer’s IT environment, business needs and organisational objectives.

While all vendors have partnership programs, not all of these are equal. Channel organisations must therefore align themselves with those vendors

Karthikeya Bhatt

Regional Channel Manager – MEA, Kissflow

who focus on partner profitability with robust and transparent programs. Partners must also ensure they fully utilise the benefits they are entitled to such as marketing development funds, rebates, and sales promotions. The added benefit of this is that vendors prioritize engaging with partners who demonstrate their commitment through active involvement with such programs.

Instead of seeing cloud as a threat, partners should recognise the clear preference that customers have for these solutions. They can build their own service offerings on popular cloud marketplaces. The channel is also ideally positioned to combine cloud solutions from various vendors and wrap their value-add services around these to create comprehensive solutions that can be easily consumed by end customers.

While the margins on implementation services can be impressive, the effort and expertise required for complex deployments could mean that revenue doesn’t necessarily translate to profit. Partners should wisely create their product portfolios, with a focus on solutions that can be rapidly implemented with limited resources, while measurably driving business outcomes for customers.

How do you help your partners drive their profitability?

Kissflow has developed its platform and partnership programs with a focus on increasing profitability for partners. We have designed a rebate program that is one of the industry’s most profitable for channel organisations. Our partners can start making profits from the moment they sell their very first $1 worth of solutions to customers. The simplicity of our licensing model means that every partner is eligible for rebates not only in the first year of selling, but also on the recurring annual revenue. In addition, we have a transparent backend rebate for partners who want to strategically align with Kissflow for a long-lasting relationship.

Unlike with other vendors, channel partners do not have to incur any

additional costs to certify their resources for Kissflow services. The implementation of our solutions can be done at a rapid pace and is not resource intensive. This enables partners to achieve project completion in a limited time and reassign their resources to other projects. Moreover, at Kissflow, we are always focused on partner enablement sessions to enhance skills in our channel. Our platform also offers the ability to ‘land and expand’. enterprises who have utilised our platform to automate a few processes are inevitably impressed and eager to build on their utilisation. This means that our partners have the ability to grow their business with existing customers, thus maximising the value of existing relationships rather than having to only focus on growing their business through acquiring new customers.

Currently, the biggest channel profitability and finance related challenge in the region relates to forex fluctuations in some countries. Because of dramatic swings, the committed prices in local currencies often significantly change their values against the US dollar. These fluctuations in countries like Turkey, Egypt, and Lebanon among others are causing partners to incur losses at the time of payments.

Another challenge is the delivery delays that result due to the extended time needed to clear the goods from shipping ports. These delays impact the ability of the partner to invoice the customer on time and hence, realise revenues.

Finally, another major last challenge is manpower related. Due to the growing IT skills gap, partners do not always have the resources they need to deliver professional services and carry out implementation on multiple projects simultaneously. This results in project delays which in turn delays the ability to invoice clients and impacts revenues and profitability.

Ghassan Abou Rjeily

Regional Channel Sales Manager – Emerging EMEA, Riverbed

What are some of the key steps for partners to improve profitability? Channel financing plays a significant role in partner profitability. It is what allows partners and distributors to bridge the gap in the payment terms between them and their customers. In the region, it is especially important for the large public sector opportunities which typically have longer payment processing cycles. Credit facilities also allow partners to compensate for shipment delays that may occur, which in turn delays their invoicing to the customers and potentially affects their cashflow.

The solution to the financial challenges that partners face could be achieved through a combination of one of these approaches. Sign contracts with remote affiliates of the resellers that are based in countries that have higher financial stability. Agree with customers on fixing the amount of the booked orders in US Dollars or their equivalent in the local currency at the time of payment. Establish an open Letter of Credit with a value in US Dollars to execute at the time of the agreed payment

How do you help your partners drive their profitability? Resellers should consider having branches in multiple countries to allow them to secure their cash and perform transactions freely by avoiding local currency fluctuation challenges. And resellers should work on their partnership levels with the vendors to secure higher discounts and increase their profit margins to compensate for delays and uncertainties.

AmiViz is the first B2B enterprise marketplace focussed on Cybersecurity business in the Middle East and Africa, designed specially to serve the interests of enterprise resellers and vendors

10 Years Industry Experience

Resellers

50+ Vendors

ENABLING SUCCESS

AmiViz offers one-of-a-kind consumer-style e-commerce platform with a fusion of human touch, offering products and services catering to localized market conditions and regulations across the Middle East. Ilyas Mohammed, COO at AmiViz discusses how the channel community can leverage the company’s recently launched mobile app for its resellers and vendors to grow their business.

How was the previous year for AmiViz in terms of growth and partnerships?

I am proud to say that we had an outstanding year with a remarkable 40% growth year on year. This is a testament to the dedication and hard work of our team in achieving our business goals.

In addition to our growth, we have expanded our portfolio by adding a few niche technology vendors to our offerings. This has allowed us to diversify our services and cater to a broader range of client needs.

Furthermore, we have invested in increasing our sales and technical resources, which has enabled us to provide even better support to our clients. Our team is now better equipped to handle complex technical issues and provide a more seamless experience for our customers.

Another significant milestone that we achieved in 2022 is that our partner community started to understand the value of the AmiViz platform and its ease of use. This has resulted in more collaborations and partnerships, which have further strengthened our position in the market.

Overall, AmiViz has had a fantastic year, and I believe we are well-positioned for continued growth and success in the years to come.

What is the latest offering or initiative that AmiViz has launched in the market?

We recently launched a mobile app for our resellers and vendors. This latest offering is a significant disruption in the industry, as it provides a cutting-edge solution that changes the way businesses operate in the space.

The app is designed to help Resellers and Vendors manage their accounts more efficiently, enabling them to access realtime information about their business, including pricing, and order history. The app also provides access to marketing materials and product information, making it easier for businesses to promote and sell their products.

This innovative initiative by AmiViz demonstrates the company’s commitment to staying ahead of the curve and

providing its clients with the latest technology and tools to help them succeed. The app is user-friendly and intuitive, making it easy for Resellers and Vendors to navigate and use.

Overall, AmiViz’s latest offering is a game-changer in the Enterprise Value Added Distribution space, and it will likely have a significant impact on how businesses in this industry operate in the future. With this mobile app, AmiViz has set a new standard for innovation and customer service, and it will be interesting to see how other players in the market respond to this disruption.

How is this supporting or adding value to its regional partners?

The app is designed to support and add value to its regional partners in several ways. Firstly, the app streamlines the process of requesting and receiving quotes, enabling partners to save time and increase productivity. Similarly, the app’s Order Management feature allows partners to place orders and track them, simplifying the purchasing process.

Renewal Management is another key feature of the app, which helps partners keep track of upcoming renewals to ensure that these are followed up in advance. This feature is particularly useful for partners who offer ongoing services to customers.

The app also provides a range of Accounting and Finance tools, allowing partners to track credit limits, upcoming payments, and transaction history. These features help partners manage their finances more effectively and avoid late payments or other financial issues.

Furthermore, the app’s Business Analytics feature provides partners with valuable insights into their performance, allowing them to view their current pipeline and historical revenue by product. This information can help partners identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions.

The app’s Marketing features allow partners to manage their marketing activities more efficiently, including managing MDF processes, viewing upcoming partner training, and registering for them, viewing promotions and incentive programs,

tracking incentives earned, and redeeming rewards.

Collaboration through instant messaging is another key feature of the app, providing partners with a single place for all communication, including quotations, purchase orders, and past conversations. This feature allows partners to access a full transaction and conversation history for any project in one place, simplifying collaboration and increasing productivity.

Finally, the app also enables partners to request online CEC Demos utilizing the AmiViz CEC Lab, providing partners with the tools they need to demonstrate the value of AmiViz’s products and services to their customers.

Overall, the AmiViz mobile app adds significant value to its regional partners by providing them with a range of tools and features that streamline processes, increase productivity, and provide valuable insights into their performance.

Is there anything in this app that is directed to the vendors?

Yes, there are several features in the AmiViz mobile app that are directed towards vendors.

Firstly, the app provides Pipeline Visibility, allowing vendors to view the current pipeline as well as historical revenue by product. This feature provides vendors with valuable insights into their sales performance and helps them make data-driven decisions.

Renewal Management is another key feature of the app, which helps vendors keep track of upcoming renewals to ensure that these are followed up in advance. This feature is particularly useful for vendors who offer ongoing services to customers.

The app also provides API integration with vendor ERP, enabling seamless and automated order processing between AmiViz and the vendor. This integration helps vendors streamline their processes, saving time and increasing productivity.

Business Analytics is another feature of the app that provides vendors with visibility on performance and pipeline for each reseller. This feature helps vendors understand their resellers better and identify areas for improvement.

Finally, the app’s Marketing features include targeted marketing activities such as promotions and incentive programs. These features help vendors drive sales and increase revenue by incentivizing their resellers to promote and sell their products.

What are your plans in terms of business strategy and innovation for 2023?

AmiViz plans to continue with the same growth rate and has several initiatives planned for the year.

Firstly, AmiViz intends to add a couple of Tier 1 Technology vendors to its portfolio, which will help the company expand its product offerings and better serve its customers. The company plans to increase resources in its Technical team to support the growth of its business and ensure that it can provide high-quality technical support to its customers. AmiViz is also planning to add a Customer Success team to help ensure that its customers achieve their goals and get the most out of the company’s products and services. In terms of geographic expansion, AmiViz plans to expand to North Africa, which will help the company grow its customer base and reach new markets.

AmiViz has already launched its platform on a mobile app, and the company plans to continue to invest in this technology to provide its customers with the best possible user experience. The company plans to conduct regular partner trainings on products across the region and utilization of CEC Lab to ensure that its partners are up to date with the latest technologies and can effectively market and sell AmiViz’s products.

Finally, AmiViz plans to conduct a series of marketing activities spread across the year, which will help raise awareness of its products and services and drive demand for its solutions.

Overall, AmiViz’s plans for 2023 demonstrate its commitment to growth, innovation, and customer success. By expanding its product offerings, increasing its resources, and expanding to new markets, the company is well-positioned to achieve its goals and continue to provide value to its customers.

KARM LEGAL RELEASES A REPORT ASSESSING REGULATORY FRAMEWORK FOR VIRTUAL ASSETS

KARM Legal Consultants in collaboration with prominent legal experts –Eric Hess (Hess Legal Counsel), Jonathan Geen, Andreas Glarner (MME) and Thomas Nagele (Nagele Attorneys), published a new report analysing the regulatory landscape for virtual assets in various jurisdictions.

The report titled ‘Virtual Assets Regulatory Framework: An Evolving Landscape’ identifies key regulatory developments in relation to virtual assets in the UAE, Bahrain, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, UK, and USA.

As the use of blockchain technology and its use cases continue to grow, so does the need for regulation. In the last few years, several positive regulatory developments for the virtual assets sector have been witnessed, as many jurisdictions globally have started to recognise virtual assets services.

With overall favorable regulatory ecosystems, UAE, Bahrain, Switzerland and Liechtenstein have cemented their position as leading virtual assets friendly jurisdictions. The regulatory frameworks in general focus on several aspects of business such as token classifications, AML/KYC, custody of private and public keys, wallet configurations and client suitability assessments.

Navigating the regulatory landscape for virtual assets can be a complex exercise. However, with the report, KARM aims to simplify the regulatory framework for readers.

As regards the UAE, KARM’s report provides an overview

of regulations issued by the federal, emirate level and free zone authorities. The report covers various licensing options available for virtual assets activities, token classifications, compliance requirements and capital requirements.

The UAE was one of the first jurisdictions globally to introduce a regulatory framework governing virtual assets activities.

With several initiatives supporting the sector, the UAE has transformed into a global hub for virtual asset service providers. The establishment of the Dubai Virtual Assets.

Regulatory Authority (VARA), a regulator exclusively focused on virtual assets has contributed to development of an exceptional ecosystem for crypto businesses.

“We are pleased to have compiled and published this report, which we hope will contribute to the ongoing conversations around the regulatory landscape for virtual assets,” said Kokila Alagh, Founder of KARM Legal Consultants. “As the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency continues to evolve, it is crucial to keep up with the latest developments and understand how they impact the industry,” she added.

KARM Legal’s commitment to providing top-tier legal services for businesses operating in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industries is unwavering.

With their team of legal experts who possess a deep understanding of the regulatory landscape, they are able to provide their clients with the guidance and support needed to navigate this complex environment. As the blockchain and cryptocurrency space continues to evolve, KARM Legal will remain at the forefront of legal services, as the team stays up to date with the latest developments in the industry and supports cutting-edge projects achieve legal legitimacy.

MANAGING RISK, BUSINESS PLANNING OFFERING AND GREEN POSITIONING KEY FOR CHANNEL TO UNLOCK GROWTH IN 2023

As the channel looks ahead to 2023, here are the three areas Paul Flannery, VP of International Channel Sales at Epicor believes resellers, VARs, integrators, MSPs and consultants should focus on to continue to grow.

Channel experts’ value lies in de-risking technology purchases

The current economic climate means that appetite for risk is extremely low. Despite this, businesses know they need to continue to innovate and digitise if they are to survive, and this involves staying at the forefront of technology.

The role of channel businesses is to position themselves as consultants, as buyers look for experts to provide validation and confirmation, which de-risks their technology purchases.

For business technology purchases that will become the core of a business — such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), Warehouse Management Systems (WES) and equivalent software services — buyers want to speak to an expert to understand what digital transformation actually looks like in their industry, including best practice, process, and what success looks like.

Buyers are also likely to want strong project management alongside implementation support, to ensure that the customer isn’t left with an expensive piece of complex technology that they must figure out for themselves.

Predictable business planning tools with interoperability

Business planning technology solutions have never been more vital. Channel partners that can offer solutions that include forward planning, financial planning and simulations that give buyers the

data to make the right decisions in a volatile environment should be well placed in the next 12 months.

Customers need one source of truth for all their data points, with a digital core that runs through their businesses. Other apps which monitor disparate parts of the businesses should be able to integrate with this digital core, so interoperability of all software solutions will be a key selling point. For example, if unpredictable energy prices, stock costings or the wage bill data is in silos, any financial and business planning tools will be of limited use.

Although there is a lot of hype about the potential of predictive analytics, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), these solutions can’t offer full value to customers if that one source of truth isn’t already in place.

Getting green positioning right

In our hyperconnected business environment, many people realise that the only way whole industries are going to significantly reduce emissions is by managing the sustainability of their connected supply and value chains. Otherwise, it’s too easy to claim one company is ‘green’ without acknowledging that the companies its buys from aren’t. However, due to rising interest rates, energy costs, and many other factors, survival over the next 6 months and beyond is the most pressing issue for most businesses. This is particularly true in the energy-intensive sectors we serve, such as automotive, construction,

distribution, and manufacturing. Channel partners and vendors need to strike the right balance in their own marketing and sales pitches to technology buyers; first and foremost the technology solutions they are recommending will help customers improve their businesses resilience and increase profit margins, and therefore justify the investment when spend is under increasing scrutiny.

However, new technology must help buyers achieve their business goals without rolling back any progress that’s already been made on decarbonisation or emissions reduction, as the C-Suite needs to report to stakeholders (including investors, media and end consumers), that their operations and the vendors they work with are taking steps to become greener.

Today, pleading ignorance down your supply chain isn’t good enough. This positioning challenge is where channel partners can provide trusted guidance on the right technology buying decisions, which will give the C-suite the confidence it needs to proceed.

Paul Flannery, Epicor

YOUR 360 CYBERSECURITY PROVIDER

Data Protection

Critical Infrastructure Security

IT Asset Management

Cost Optimization

OT Management & Security

Infrastructure Management & Monitoring

Device & Network Protection

Email, Web Security &MFT Identity

Education & Awareness

SECURING THE ENTERPRISE

Veeam Software announced the NEW Veeam Data Platform, a single platform delivering more advanced data security, recovery, and hybrid cloud capabilities than ever before. The Veeam Data Platform provides best-in-class secure backup and fast, reliable recovery that keeps business running. Kinda Baydoun, Manager of Channels, Distribution and AlliancesMiddle East & CIS at Veeam Software, details the significance of this platform and how channel partners can benefit from this.

SaaS and Kubernetes applications across complex and expanding IT environments and the increasing set of challenges facing every organisation, from outages to errors and ransomware.

What factors led to the innovation and final release of this NEW Data Platform?

What is so significant about this release?

We are very excited about this release, and it’s highly important for us. Veeam Data Platform provides organisations with data resiliency through secure backup and fast, reliable recovery for the hybrid cloud. There are three main key pillars at the heart of Veeam Data Platform. The first is data security. Considering how aggressive and relentless all the cyber-attacks are becoming, we have to ensure that we have a secure backup, recovery, and access. The second pillar is data recovery. We want to ensure that our customers can recover what they need, when they need it, and where they need it. It’s very important to have a granular recovery to the fine level, highly reliable and fast recovery, and also well-orchestrated. The third key pillar is data freedom. We never compromise on this at Veeam because we are a completely vendor-agnostic company. We want to ensure that our customers don’t feel restricted when choosing their data protection solutions for their data security strategy.

We also did some re-engineering to the licensing, making it even simpler. Veeam Data Platform has

three enterprise-grade editions. The first is the Foundation EditionVeeam Backup & Replication (VBR) v12. It is our most comprehensive data protection solution today, adding more than 500 new features and enhancements, and the second one is the Advanced Edition - VBR plus Veeam ONE (ONE). We also refer to it as the visualisation tool to give customers deep, intelligent monitoring and observability to identify and resolve backup or recovery problems before they begin. And the third is the Premium Edition – VBR, ONE plus Veeam Recovery Orchestrator (VRO). Building on the other editions, Premium adds the full automation of complex data recovery processes with near-zero Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) while automating testing and providing complete data resiliency with the confidence of one-click recovery. Premium edition customers are also eligible for the new Veeam Ransomware Warranty, which covers the cost of data recovery, up to 5 million dollars, in the event of a ransomware or cyber-attack.

It combines the latest features offered by Veeam into a single robust solution offered in three enterprise-grade editions for protecting Cloud, Virtual, Physical,

The market led to this innovation. Cloud is no longer an emerging technology as all our customers are either in the middle of the journey or at the end, and the hyper-scalars are investing in the region. As per Gartner, in 2023, there will be nearly 43 billion connected devices worldwide. The world’s population is 8 billion, meaning that each person will have five devices on average in 2023. All these complexities around connectivity, cloud, hybrid environment, and virtual world – Metaverse is exposing a huge platform for cyberattacks, phishing, ransomware, data loss, especially in the cloud etc. Organisations are more vulnerable than ever.

We believe that it’s our responsibility to keep our customers’ business up and running all the time. This is what we truly believe, and it’s in our DNA. Therefore we always make sure that we are innovating, adding new features, making enhancements to ensure that the data is never compromised.In addition, we are protecting all our customers’ IT assets.

What change do you envision in the Data Protection landscape after the launch?

We at Veeam want to be the trusted provider of Backup, Recovery and Data Management Solutions that deliver Modern Data Protection and we continue to prove it. We have more than 450,000 customers worldwide, 81% from the Fortune 500. We are number one with the ability to execute in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for data protection. We got the net promoter score of 82. All this proves that our solutions and products are the most reliable

and are highly trusted by our customers. We have earned this trust. So now, with the Veeam Data Platform, our customers will be able to test our products and witness that having a security strategy is not only about testing or detecting and predicting ransomware attacks or cyber-attacks. It’s not only about having this first line of defence but also about ensuring that data protection is integrated well within their cyber preparedness strategy. It will give the customers more confidence in instant and reliable recovery and ensure that their business runs smoothly.

How has the market reacted to this launch?

The market’s response to this launch has been highly positive because firstly, they were asking for it. At Veeam, we take customer’s feedback very seriously. We have special forums – internal and

external, to send direct feedback to our Products Team and Research and Development Teams. We take into consideration all those requirements and enhancements while planning for our future product releases.

We had the official launch on February 14 and we already have a huge number of requests from customers to upgrade to Veeam Backup and Replication v12.

How will channel partners benefit from this launch?

With Veeam Data Platform being one platform covering all the workloads of the customers, our partners can sweat out all the opportunities that are coming with this new launch because they can fulfill all the customers’ requirements related to data protection and data security. In addition, they can work with one vendor to address their customers’

challenges, and even participate in enterprise projects.

And also services are a very important area. As you know, there is a gap in the market today regarding skills and expertise as many technologies are emerging rapidly. We at Veeam, whenever we have a new launch, make sure that our partners are very well equipped to help the customers not only to choose the right solution but also to implement it and ensure that it is well integrated within their environment. Hence our partners can benefit from the opportunities that this product is bringing as well as from the services. This is definitely a highly profitable revenue stream for our partners.

We are very excited about this launch, as I mentioned earlier, and we can’t wait to work closely with our partners and customers, so they can also have a first-hand experience of the New Veeam Data Platform.

UCC Collaboration Summit 2023

Connecting the World and Empowering Teams with Zoom and Microsoft.

In collaboration with

INNOVATING CONNECTIVITY

Sakkeer Hussain, Director - Sales & Marketing, D-Link Middle East & Africa, discusses D-Link’s achievements, growth strategies, partnerships and their latest AI powered offerings.

How was the previous year for D-Link in terms of growth and partnerships?

Customers are growing their cloud practices and we have observed this with D-Link’s business in the region. The increasing appetite for cloud solutions have also resulted in the growth of related technologies such as cybersecurity and networking including advanced Wi-Fi and highperformance routers.

2022 was a high-growth year with new customer acquisitions and even stronger business with existing ones. Our channel partners have gone above and beyond and is striving towards achieving mutual business growth. We appreciate their efforts and hard work and look forward to many more new wins in this year together.

Any new partnerships in the pipeline?

We do have a lot of exciting announcements planned for the year in terms of products and solutions launches. We are looking to strengthen our existing partnerships and see if any new partnership will add value for our business.

What are the latest digital connectivity trends to watch out for in 2023?

Customers across sectors are identifying technologies and strategies that will help them fasttrack their digital transformation journeys. D-Link plays an important role in helping them realize these digital agendas.

Wireless infrastructures will bring in enhanced efficiency, flexibility and cost savings. D-Link is laying the foundations for a world that’s more connected, smarter, and more convenient with our extensive range of products and solutions.

What are the latest innovative products or services that D-Link has launched in the market?

D-Link’s Eagle Pro AI series feature built-in AI capabilities. Infusing AI technology into the products helps monitor traffic, improve efficiency, and greatly enhance the home network. How it works is that the AI Wi-Fi

Optimizer scans and monitors the network in real time to ensure that users are connected to the most ideal Wi-Fi channel.

The devices feature AI Traffic Optimizer feature, which automatically allocates bandwidth to different applications for the best connectivity. This feature also informs users which activities are causing congestion and allows them to deprioritize.

D-Link’s AI Mesh Optimizer is a unique AI beamforming technology that enhances mesh connectivity between routers and extenders for more powerful, reliable mesh Wi-Fi all throughout a home.

The AI Assistant gathers performance information over time then sends detailed reports to update users about network quality. With AI Parental Control, parents have customized management options, giving them greater control to monitor children’s online activity.

The EAGLE PRO AI App has an embedded SpeedTest to assess Internet speed and an exclusive Health Mode function allowing households to schedule internet access, keeping family members offline during specific times. Integrating AI into the products has helped users to multi-task and stay connected seamlessly with an intelligent network while working in distributed environments.

D-Link’s EAGLE PRO AI series of Wi-Fi solutions is powered by Wi-Fi 6 technology. The solutions deliver up to four times more capacity and up to 40% throughput increase than current Wi-Fi standards with dualband speeds up to 1.5Gbps. Designed to fit seamlessly into any room or office, it also works with Google Assistant and Alexa for convenient voice control.

How D-Link is supporting or adding value to its regional partners?

At D-Link, we pay special attention to empower our channel network to efficiently enhance their businesses and thrive in the digital era. We will continue to introduce pioneering offerings across cloud, networking, and security to help partners accelerate customers’ digital journeys. We have many training programs and

workshops in place to help partners grow their business. They can also access our huge repository of resources for marketing and sales activities.

How is D-Link including sustainability in the process of product development?

At D-Link we are committed to green technology and related initiatives that help protect the environment. D-Link was the first company to introduce green ethernet technology with environmentally friendly SOHO Gigabit switches that decrease energy costs by reducing power consumption without sacrificing operational performance and functionality more than 10 years ago. Our focus remains the same even today, and we continue to develop green networking technology – which means our products help to reduce power consumption. This is important in today’s business environment. Internally too, we are committed and constantly working towards reducing our own carbon footprint. This has increased momentum and we are proud of our achievements in this regard.

What are your plans in terms of business strategy and innovation for 2023?

We have a lot planned for 2023. Building on our smart 4G AI-enabled routers and Eagle PRO AI series of Wi-Fi solutions, we will have more line-ups centered around AI, 5G, IoT, and wireless all integrated with strong cybersecurity.

How D-Link is planning to include AI technology in their future products and services?

AI investments together with automation tools are gradually increasing as customers seek better efficiency in their business processes. AI has the capability to transform all industries, and at D-Link we have integrated AI into our new products. AI helps us to take advantage of analytics and optimize the DNA of our products. We are always looking to use the most advanced technologies to create fantastic products that will help in solving customer’s challenges.

Under the High Patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI of the Kingdom of Morocco

One AFRICA. Limitless opportunities.

Begin a transformational journey at Africa’s largest, most inclusive tech and startup event with ground-breaking innovation with 400+ startups, 250+ leading investors and VCs, 500+ tech companies from 95+ countries.

GITEX AFRICA will unlock the limitless opportunity of world’s rising tech continent, where the most advanced companies amplify Africa’s digital aspirations, and the best minds elevate culture and society.

The time for Africa is now, and you’re invited!

SECURE KUBERNETES’ FUTURE

While more and more DevOps teams turn to Kubernetes to keep up with their organisation’s scalability demands, basic principles like security and data protection mustn’t be overlooked says Michael Cade, Senior Global Technologist, Veeam.

As organisations increasingly adopt a cloud-native approach to develop and scale up applications, containers and Kubernetes are playing a critical role in managing growing complexities and enabling workloads to be deployed in multi-cloud environments.

But a survey of DevOps professionals found that 94% had experienced at least one Kubernetes security incident in the past year, and 59% consider security to be their biggest concern when it comes to using Kubernetes and containers. While more and more DevOps teams turn to Kubernetes to keep up with their organisation’s scalability demands, basic principles like security and data protection mustn’t be overlooked.

Deploying Kubernetes

Developers are being asked to build bigger and more scalable applications across more dynamic environments. So, for the operations or infrastructure team, it can seem like a full-time job keeping up with changing software development practices. Kubernetes is just the latest (and arguably more complex) challenge, but their objective stays the same: how can we reduce risk, minimise costs and provide an overall better business outcome?

Development teams are the ‘pioneers’ – they explore new ground and build something where nothing existed before. Operations and infrastructure teams on the other hand are the ‘settlers’ – coming in a second wave to consolidate new developments and make sure it survives long-term. This is exactly the case with Kubernetes. By the time Kubernetes is at the virtualisation or adoption stage, it’s normally up to the operations teams – the responsibility of the real business outcome lands with them.

But it’s a big ask to expect these teams to understand the intricacies of Kubernetes and containers. Even with new technology, basic principles need to be adhered to – security, backup and recovery are all still needed. But it’s the unique technical requirements that can present challenges.

Security in Kubernetes & zero-trust

As a cloud-native programme, many of the security challenges for Kubernetes come from the dispersed nature of cloud architecture. Different workloads can be running across several different locations, including multiple clouds as well as both off and on-premises servers. Not only does this vastly increase the ‘threat scape’ where an attack or mistake can occur, but it can also mean visibility challenges, making monitoring containers and detecting issues more difficult.

While Kubernetes is designed to be secure, only responding to requests that it can authenticate and authorise, it also gives developers bespoke configuration options, meaning it is only really as secure as the RBAC (Role-based access control) policies that developers configure. Kubernetes also uses what’s known as a ‘flat network’ that enables groups of containers (or pods) to

Michael Cade, Veeam

communicate with other containers by default. This raises security concerns as in theory attackers who compromise a pod can access other resources in the same cluster.

Despite this complexity, the solution to mitigate this risk is fairly straightforward – a zero-trust strategy. With such a large attack surface, a fairly open network design and workloads sitting across different environments, a zero-trust architecture, one that never trusts and always verifies, is crucial when building with Kubernetes.

The principle of zero-trust architecture is to move the focus of security away from the perimeter of an application while applying those principles throughout. All internal requests are considered suspicious and authentication is required from top to bottom. This strategy helps mitigate risk by assuming threats exist on the network at all times and so constantly maintains strict

security procedures around every user, device and connection. For the fluid and decentralised architecture of Kubernetes, this is a must.

Backup and recovery

Another basic principle that is needed to mitigate risks for Kubernetes applications is backup and recovery. This is a well-known concept but there are lots of unique considerations when backing up Kubernetes and containers. These different requirements for data backup are because Kubernetes is fundamentally different from other architectures, for example, it doesn’t have mapping applications to servers or virtual machines.

Kubernetes backup systems also need to be application-centric rather than focused on infrastructure. This is due to DevOps philosophy and ‘shift left’ principles which essentially mean the developer has more control over infrastructure and deployments. Other

unique requirements for Kubernetes backup are the application’s scale, protection gaps and ecosystem integration.

When recovering Kubernetes environments, a detailed execution plan is needed that identifies cluster dependencies, updates applications to reflect new storage components and translates the plan into relevant Kubernetes application programming interfaces (APIs). While backup does require a more bespoke Kubernetes native solution, such recovery processes remain critical to the long-term health of the business. Efficient restoration and disaster recovery are non-negotiable in today’s environment.

Beyond this, however, backup has huge value in terms of testing and development purposes and enabling application mobility. Application mobility refers to the ability to migrate an application to a different environment – across on-premises, clouds, clusters, or Kubernetes distributions. This is increasingly important as IT environments become more complex and businesses need to respond to new business requirements, adopt new technology platforms or optimise costs.

Preparing for change

Despite Kubernetes presenting new technical challenges, ultimately the more things change the more they stay the same. Operations and infrastructure teams are wellaccustomed to incorporating new tools into the ever-expanding tech stack and core principles like risk mitigation via modern data protection still serve their purpose.

Once these capabilities have been established, ops teams can begin to look further afield and explore leveraging the value of their data through activities like testing and optimisation. Through a robust backup that supports app mobility, teams can also go a long way to future-proofing applications by ensuring services can more easily ride the next wave of change. While Kubernetes is the current tool that is changing the dev landscape, it most certainly will not be the last.

STORAGE AS A SERVICE: A WIN-WIN FOR THE CHANNEL AND MODERN BUSINESSES

The channel is looking for ways to continue delivering the innovation that companies desperately need, with never before seen levels of flexibility and customisation, all without large upfront costs. Geoff Greenlaw, VP of Channel for EMEA & LATAM at Pure Storage explains why STaaS is a win-win for the channel as well as the modern business.

In the wake of the pandemic, it was crucial for IT departments to ramp up their technological capabilities to support increased digitalisation efforts. Overnight, businesses were dealing with challenges such as implementing contactless payments, teleconferencing, telemedicine, and e-commerce. Unfortunately, this acceleration meant some businesses did not factor in tech debt, which refers to the off-balance-sheet accumulation of all the tech work companies are required to do in the future. As a result, today’s digital transformation investments are being threatened by this tech debt. To compound this challenge, pressing ahead with digital transformation initiatives on top of a foundation of legacy IT architecture risks creating an expensive and difficult-to-maintain infrastructure, which is also impacting organisational performance and increasing cyber risk. It has become a vicious cycle.

The channel is constantly evolving in step with the changing business landscape, and never more so than in the last couple of years. IT budgets have been cut across the board against a challenging macroeconomic environment, coupled with war and energy crises. The result is companies being stuck with underperforming, complex and energy inefficient legacy solutions. This has also meant there is less opportunity for the channel to help organisations with their digital transformation, as technology

CapEx spends have been reigned in, impacting the channel’s bottom line. Today, the channel is looking for ways to continue delivering the innovation that companies desperately need, with never before seen levels of flexibility and customisation, all without large upfront costs.

Enter Storage as a-Service (STaaS)

STaaS is a service focused consumption model for storage procurement that allows organisations to provision the capacity and performance they need on-premises, in the cloud, or any other combination, and pay for it on an as-aservice basis. STaaS is a great option for enterprises that need infrastructure to accommodate different workloads for short and longer-term projects without operational or cost penalties, so long as effective SLAs are put into place. It removes much of the complexity and risk associated with data storage and reduces friction, costs and complications associated with sharing data across the enterprise. Crucially, STaaS doesn’t require the same substantial CapEx outlay of traditional IT infrastructure.

A win-win for the channel and today’s businesses

The storage as-a-service market was valued at $17.30Bn in 2020 and, according to research firm ATR, is expected to grow 16.1% by 2027 to $49.54Bn. For partners, this development offers a promising outlook. STaaS provides a means for the partner community to offer modern, energy efficient solutions to meet customer aspirations and challenges. They can serve a wider range of customers, both those who buy hardware through a CapEx model, those looking for more flexibility through as-a-service and also a middle option where customers want to own the hardware but not manage the solution. At the end of the day, it’s all about being able to provide customers with choice and meet their needs. Without the ability to offer this, partners might see themselves sidelined in favour of hyperscalers which offer convenient, though often not ideal solutions, to channel partners’ customer bases.

The reason why STaaS is resonating so well is because organisations can do more with less, when STaaS is delivered as a true service offering, allowing customers to streamline processes and operations traditionally managed internally back to the STaaS provider. This benefit is over and above the ability to align spend with actual consumption and the significant economic benefit that delivers. Furthermore, STaaS can deliver the same cloud-like experience without necessarily requiring a commitment to public cloud. This has created new opportunities for customers to realise the outcomes that are typically associated with the public cloud without the associated adoption challenges.

Hurdles for partners to avoid with STaaS

Not all STaaS offerings are created equal and partners need to look to offer a true value-added service, as some vendors simply offer OpEx billing disguised as a service. This would be more like a lease, where products are deployed on a multi-year cycle and upgraded at the end as part of forklift upgrades. For channel partners to succeed they should offer solutions with guaranteed service levels and automated upgrades to meet performance and capacity guarantees at no additional cost. Partners should also check if the STaaS provider is able to provide file and block access storage as well as fast file and object storage on the same hardware. Only then will all workloads be covered — from fast transactional block access to unstructured file data to fast throughput for analytics and recovery. Monitoring software is another plus as it gives customers an overview of the capacity utilisation and performance of the storage infrastructure on-premises and in the cloud.

Some partners that do not have a wealth of experience selling as-aservice solutions may see challenges in shifting from a CapEx orientation to selling service subscriptions. Such challenges might include a lengthier revenue collection timeframe, adapting quoting/invoicing systems/processes to subscription-oriented transactions, and adjusting the compensation models of

Geoff Greenlaw, Pure Storage

their internal sales teams. Partners also face the challenge of ensuring internal sales teams are trained to sell as-aservice/subscription/consumptionoriented solutions, a skillset that can be different from selling hardware/ software/maintenance packages. Partners that want to participate in the growing as-a-service market should establish a formal transformation programme to analyse and adopt the changes needed to internal skills, processes and technology.

STaaS driving the channel’s bottom line

With those challenges come new opportunities, however. As-a-service sales present a unique moment for partners to add value to offerings by bundling in additional services, reducing investment needed by the customer in the areas of IT admin and maintenance. Even partners that do not have aspirations to ‘layer in’ a higher-level service wrapper will find that STaaS sales will drive more frequent contact with the customer and greater insight into customer challenges and opportunities to address them. The as-a-service model generates much higher frequency contact with the customer than would a traditional CapEx transaction.

The best technology vendors out there are offering everything from training and enablement activities for pre-sales and service delivery teams on how to position and then deliver STaaS, to consultation on how partner organisations can smoothly transform themselves from traditional productoriented organisations to serviceoriented. This partnership will make a real difference to the channel’s bottom line this year and beyond.

TIPS FOR USING AI IN DISTRIBUTION

Khaled AlShami, Vice President Solution Consulting, Infor Middle East & Africa advises on how the distribution industry will benefit from AI and where can AI create value for the businesses.

Across most industries, the buzz is about finding use cases that promote the value of artificial intelligence. But how will the distribution industry specifically benefit? And where can AI create value for your business and workers?

First, there was robotic process automation (RPA), and then chatbots. They started dumb, handling menial tasks. But, infused with AI, they got smarter and added more value to their output, moving into all types of business and operation. Now almost any digital office or production application comes with AI features baked in, and they are learning fast.

For distribution leaders and IT teams, there is plenty to focus on already without getting distracted by possibilities that haven’t quite materialised yet (think self-driving vehicles, augmented reality glasses, drone deliveries, etc.). But the rise of AI will not fade away because it’s making so many tasks quicker and easier. Here’s what you need to know.

What is artificial intelligence?

In short, AI is software, linked to data, or sensors, and capable of processing it, learning from it, and providing a valuable output. That might be an insight based on complex data, predicting supply variations, or performing big data tasks (facial recognition, medical scans, voice chat, and more) incredibly quickly.

AI use has grown dramatically thanks to the massive scale of the cloud, with powerful processors crunching complex math and accessing huge data sets, often in real-time.

To the end user, AI is just another service that might be called “predictive analytics” or “smart learning” to give it a more

business-friendly name. Whatever the descriptor, AI is tasked with performing a process, with all the magic working underneath.

Using AI in distribution

For today’s distributors looking to be ready for tomorrow, AI can:

1Manage suppliers

Many distributors are rightly proud of their supplier relations, but AI and machine learning can inspect the data behind their service and suggest ways to deliver improved supplier performance, ironing out process inefficiencies or product weaknesses that might only be visible in easily neglected returns logs.

2Improve the sales experience

AI can constantly tweak prices or display dynamic recommended buying options to increase the chance of completing a sale. Based on customer history and market conditions, AIpowered sales applications can suggest volume discounts using both sales data and sentiment analysis.

3Optimise your inventory

Most distributors already run inventory applications to keep the right amount of stock ordered for today, but AI can monitor sales patterns and ensure that the right stock is in the right warehouse constantly as seasons, markets, and products or supplies change.

AI can also monitor transport costs and supplier charges, finding the most cost-effective ways to purchase, deliver, and distribute goods to-and-from your warehouse operations. It can provide buyers with recommendations, and update routings, ensuring the fastest service for customers.

4Maximise sales and buying efforts

With AI making an increasingly powerful appearance in business processes and management tools, it can take over many of the dull and time-consuming tasks that workers used to put up with. The extra time can be spent building relationships with customers up and down the supply chain, providing them with datadriven insights, and highlighting your company as one on the cutting edge.

5Make it easy for everyone to use

Everyone from a new warehouse staffer to the CIO will get maximum value from their AI tools if you choose a platform with preconfigured AI models. This makes machine learning more accessible through low-code and no-code implementations. And the automated retraining means handsoff maintenance. Infor’s Coleman AI offers these capabilities.

To summarise, in just a few short years, AI solutions have crossed from science fiction into business reality, delivering on their potential to save time, cut costs and deliver value through smart insights. Fear of AI has largely been left in the rearview mirror, and this is only the beginning of AI’s place in technology.

Khaled AlShami, Infor Middle East & Africa

EMPOWERING PARTNERS TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF INNOVATIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES IN 2023

Last year brought many challenges for IT vendors and their partner ecosystems, with rapidly shifting IT demand trends, extremely volatile macroeconomic conditions, and continued supply chain constraints. With these challenges still at the forefront, it remains important for vendors to listen to their partners to understand conditions on the ground and make necessary adjustments to find areas of opportunity.

Through our solid relationships and feedback loops with our amazing partners, Nutanix was recognised by Canalys, as a Champion Vendor in its 2022 Channel Leadership Matrix for EMEA and APJ markets. This prestigious position was based on channel partner feedback to the Canalys Vendor Benchmark, combined with an assessment by Canalys of recent channel activities and prospects.

Canalys Champion Vendors have shown the highest levels of success in channel management over the last 12 months compared with their industry peers, while also achieving the difficult task of improving their performance as compared to

the prior year – so repeating as a champion is not easy!

I believe this recognition comes from staying true to Nutanix’s core tenets regarding our relationship with partners in our ecosystem:

• The success of our channel partners is our success.

• We must continually optimise and adapt our Elevate Partner Programme to help partners build skills and sell successfully and profitably throughout the customer lifecycle.

• We offer solutions focused on simplicity, freedom and flexibility of choice to run customers’ applications with no lock-in, with a core focus of delighting our joint customers with the best customer service in the industry.

Looking further into 2023, we at Nutanix will continue to capitalise on new innovations and opportunities together. Nutanix is committed to aligning our go-tomarket strategy and investments so that partners can seize the advantage and lead the way in accelerating our joint successes while adapting to ongoing market dynamics. We’re laser-focused on building an increasingly profitable subscription and renewal flywheel for our partners to find success throughout the entire customer lifecycle.

We will also continue to simplify our portfolio and streamline partner tools, so they are more customer and channel friendly. Instead of fifty different products and price points, we’ve consolidated down to essentially four solutions: Building hybrid multi-cloud environments, managing a cloud, unified storage, and database as a service. In 2023, partner enablement will be key to success in helping businesses tackle everevolving IT challenges.

I look forward to ramping up the feedback loop even more this year and listening to our valued partners to ensure we continue to be a trusted and award-winning vendor.

Dave Gwyn, SVP, Worldwide Channels and Customer Success at Nutanix talks about Nutanix being recognized by Canalys, a leading IT market analyst firm, as a Champion Vendor in its 2022 Channel Leadership Matrix for EMEA and APJ markets.

Dave Gwyn, Nutanix

CHATBOT PHISHING EMAILS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Phishing has evolved in skill and complexity over the past few years. Ryan Kalember, EVP, Cybersecurity Strategy at Proofpoint gives tips on how to avoid taking the bait.

Phishing has evolved in skill and complexity over the past few years. Proofpoint researchers have observed the evolution of phishing from threat actors spraying out thousands of emails in hopes of someone, somewhere clicking on a link to focused, sophisticated attacks against company employee login portals. In fact, a recent Proofpoint research found that 30% CISOs in KSA believe that smishing/ phishing attacks are the most significant threat targeting their organization.

You may have heard about a new chatbot technology, ChatGPT that uses recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) to create humanlike conversations. As ChatGPT is free and available for widespread use, cybersecurity experts are looking at the risks of ChatGPTgenerated phishing emails.

Proofpoint has long thwarted threat actors who use similar tools to construct phishing lures and its platforms are already blocking ChatGPT-generated phishing threats.

While chatbot spammers may generate text for the body of a phishing email, that’s only one part of the threat. Headers, senders, attachments and URLs are among the many other threat indicators.

ChatGPT isn’t changing the game for more targeted spearphishing attacks, either. Although

it can create extended prose in the style of famous authors, ChatGPT doesn’t have any specific information about how your colleagues write, which means ChatGPT is unlikely to improve highly targeted phishing attacks. Ultimately, attackers may use ChatGPT to improve grammar or randomize attacks, but the nature of phishing threats is likely to stay the same. Robust detection systems, like those of Proofpoint, will continue to catch these chatbot scams.

How to avoid taking the bait.

It’s important to be vigilant and look for potential signs that an email may be a phish. Also, keep in mind that ChatGPT can only create text, not entire emails with logos and well-formatted, professional layouts.

In today’s evolving threat landscape, people must remain cautious and take part in regular training to stay safe and protected online.

Security awareness programs are instrumental in teaching people to look for many different aspects of messages and indicators of threats to avoid falling for a phishing scam, including:

• Not trusting the sender immediately, even if the message appears to be from a trusted source or brand

• Scrutinizing the sender’s address and inspecting any links

• Looking for odd formatting or logos

• Not clicking on calls to action within the email, like “verify your account” or “log in now”

• Understanding that file-sharing links aren’t always safe

Chatbot generated phishing not only affects consumers or individuals but can also be the foothold a threat actor needs to get around the hardened corporate perimeter to be able to steal data and drop further payloads, including information stealers and ransomware. While user education reduces overall impact, there will always be a percentage of people that fall victim to the persistent and evolving threat of phishing. Therefore, having an ongoing and comprehensive cyber security awareness training in place is crucial to safeguard employees.

Ryan Kalember, Proofpoint

REDUCING CYBER THREATS

Ateeb Wani, Business Development Manager, Cyber Security, Finesse on how to reduce your organisation’s Cyber Threats with CyberSecurity as a Service from Finesse

In the age of digital transformation, cybersecurity has become a critical aspect of any business. Cyber threats are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and businesses of all sizes need to be prepared to prevent, detect, and respond to these threats. Finesse is a leading provider of cybersecurity as a service (CaaS), offering comprehensive solutions to help protect their digital assets.

Finesse’s CaaS offerings are tailored to meet the unique needs of businesses across different industries. The company’s approach is to provide a complete view of a business’s security posture, enabling them to detect and respond to security incidents in real-time. The solutions are delivered and managed by Finesse’s team of expert security professionals who use advanced technologies to detect, monitor, and respond to potential threats.

Finesse’s CaaS offerings include three key services: Security Operations Centre (SOC), Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT), and Managed Detection and Response (MDR).

Finesse’s SOC services offer businesses 24/7 monitoring and incident response capabilities. The SOC is staffed with highly skilled analysts who use advanced technologies such as Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA), and Threat Intelligence to detect and respond to security incidents. The SOC analysts work closely with businesses to provide

personalised recommendations and incident response services.

Finesse’s VAPT services help businesses identify vulnerabilities in their IT systems and applications. The VAPT services are delivered by a team of expert security professionals who use a combination of automated and manual testing techniques to identify vulnerabilities and provide recommendations for remediation. Finesse’s VAPT services include regular vulnerability scans, web application testing, and mobile application testing, among others. Finesse’s MDR services provide businesses with continuous monitoring and threat detection for their IT environment. The MDR services are delivered by a team of expert security professionals who use advanced technologies like Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA), and Deception Technology to detect and respond to security incidents. Finesse’s MDR analysts work closely with businesses to provide personalised recommendations and incident response services.

Finesse’s CaaS solutions provide businesses with several benefits, including:

Comprehensive Security: Finesse’s CaaS solutions cover all aspects of cybersecurity, including SOC, VAPT, and MDR, ensuring that businesses have a comprehensive security solution.

Cost-effective: Finesse’s CaaS solutions can be more cost-effective than building

and maintaining an in-house cybersecurity program. This means that businesses can get the benefits of cybersecurity services without the added cost of hiring in-house security professionals.

Expertise: Finesse’s team of security professionals are highly skilled and experienced in handling security incidents, providing businesses with access to the latest technologies and expert advice.

Scalability: Finesse’s CaaS solutions can be scaled up or down based on a business’s needs, providing the flexibility to meet changing requirements.

In conclusion, cybersecurity threats are constantly evolving, and businesses need to take proactive measures to protect their digital assets. Finesse’s CaaS solutions offer a comprehensive suite of cybersecurity services that can help businesses mitigate risk and protect their digital assets. With Finesse’s CaaS solutions, businesses can have peace of mind knowing that their cybersecurity needs are being handled by a team of experts.

Ateeb Wani, Finesse

ASUS’ Lineup Of Creator Laptops

Offers Unrivalled Performance For An Unlimited Imagination

3050Ti GPU, an essential component for graphics-intensive graphics tasks such as 3D rendering and video editing. With its advanced features and capabilities, it can blitz through the toughest visual tasks. Additionally, the best compatibility, performance and stability are assured by the included NVIDIA Studio drivers.

Despite this staggering performance, all components are kept cool through ASUS IceCool Plus technology, aided by the innovative AAS Ultra mechanism, which vents the chassis efficiently and also tilts the next-generation ScreenPad Plus secondary touchscreen to a comfortable angle for a seamless and immersive visual experience.

For content creators looking for the best laptops to design on, ASUS’ lineup of creator laptops offers the best combination of performance, style and portability. With three standout models to choose from, creators of all levels can rely on ASUS’ creator laptops to always provide a helping hand during their creative sessions. Whether it’s for designing complex 3D worlds, editing large images or working with high-resolution videos, these laptops offer the best combination of hardware and software to make workflows smoother and more efficient, without interrupting the creative process.

ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 (H5600): the ultimate creator mobile workstation

ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED (H5600) is a stunning creator mobile workstation, transcending the ordinary to go far beyond the everyday. It has a refined matte Star Black finish with anti-fingerprint nanocoating to keep your laptop looking like new, always. It also features a stepwise design that enables slimmer screen bezels and makes room for the rear air vents. Its unstoppable AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX Mobile processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU, up to 64 GB of

upgradeable memory and ultrafast storage frees creators to do what they do best: create and design without boundaries. The certified color-accurate 16-inch 4K 60Hz OLED display does full justice to every creative vision, providing unrivalled visuals. A large, stylus-compatible haptic touchpad and the intuitive ASUS Dial rotary control offer ultimate precision and control in apps. It also enables seamless connectivity to all the latest peripherals via dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, with up to 40Gbps transfer speeds. Additional benefits include advanced ASUS IceCool Pro thermal technology, which gives the ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED the edge when it comes to performance and quietness.

ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED (UX8402): The most powerful Zenbook yet

The seriously powerful Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED is a powerhouse that lets creators turn up their creative powers to the max. The powerful 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700H CPU is perfect for launching even the most demanding applications and can handle complex projects and heavy workloads with ease. This powerful CPU is a perfect match for the studio-grade NVIDIA GeForce RTX

For studio-class visuals, the world-leading 2.8K OLED HDR 16:10 main Dolby Vision touchscreen has a smooth 120 Hz refresh rate, PANTONE Validated color accuracy, and a cinema-grade 100% DCI-P3 gamut, as well as TÜV Rheinland-certified eye care. The Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED soars ahead of its rivals in every way, making it the ultimate compact OLED laptop for the discerning creator.

ASUS Vivobook Pro 16X OLED (M7600): prepare to wow the world

The ASUS Vivobook Pro 16X OLED (M7600) is an innovative 16-inch laptop for creators who are just starting their creative journey. It features a 4K 60Hz OLED display and is configurable with up to 32GB 3200Mhz DDR4 RAM and a 1TB PCIe 3.0 SSD for all your storage needs.

This powerful creator-focused laptop is powered by an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX processor, with graphics provided by the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050Ti Laptop GPU, along with NVIDIA Studio Driver support for the best performance across all creative applications. An upgraded cooling system allows the full 150 W thermal design power (TDP) to be safely unleashed. The Vivobook Pro 16X OLED also features the ASUS DialPad for precise and intuitive creative control, and also benefits from dual Thunderbolt 4 ports for ultrafast transfer speeds of up to 40Gbps.

Pure Storage Ushers In The New Era Of Unstructured Data Storage With FlashBlade//E

Pure Storage announced FlashBlade//E, a scale-out unstructured data repository built to handle exponential data growth with industry-leading energy efficiency. At an acquisition cost competitive with disk and much lower operational costs, the introduction of FlashBlade//E means that customers no longer need to settle for disk.

“With FlashBlade//E, we’re realising our founder’s original vision of the allflash data centre. For workloads where flash was once price-prohibitive, we are thrilled to provide customers the major benefits Pure delivers at a TCO lower than disk,” said Amy Fowler, VP & General Manager, FlashBlade, Pure Storage.

FlashBlade//E provides a better way to manage unstructured data growth efficiently, reliably, and sustainably with a best-in-class user experience and economics that enable customers to eliminate the last remnants of disk in their data centre.

• Economical at scale: FlashBlade//E is offered at under $0.20 per GB including three years of service. The platform starts at 4PB and scales from there with reliable performance.

• Industry-leading energy efficiency:

FlashBlade//E consumes up to 5x less power than the disk-based systems it will replace. The larger the system the greater the efficiency, helping organisations achieve their increasingly critical sustainability goals.

• Simplicity, reliability, and a nondisruptive future: FlashBlade//E is built to flex and grow on demand with 10-20x more reliability than hard disk-based systems and evolving without disruption or forklift upgrades. With cloud-like simplicity, flexibility and predictable performance, FlashBlade//E remains simple to manage at any scale.

FlashBlade//E will be generally available by the end of April 2023. In addition to traditional purchase, customers will have the option to deploy FlashBlade//E through a new service tier of Pure’s Evergreen//One Storage as-a-Service (STaaS) subscription, providing payas-you-go economics and a cloud experience with the control of onpremises deployment.

For global organisations, unstructured data capacity is expected to grow by 10x before 2030. For large-capacity, pricesensitive workloads that use current

disk-based storage solutions, this growth is unsustainable.

Disk-based systems are a burden on many enterprises’ IT teams and budgets as they are challenging to manage, require massive amounts of power, take up large amounts of space and their components fail too often, causing disruption and risking valuable data. Ultimately, this diminishes the ability to derive business value from data. While modern file and object storage solutions are capable of addressing many of these challenges, they haven’t been a viable option for large unstructured data repositories that are price-sensitive — until now.

“While the benefits of flash for highpowered workloads have been largely acknowledged, disk’s price point has limited broader perception of its full potential use. Nevertheless, the need for a modern platform to accommodate the rise in unstructured data at scale is evident. FlashBlade//E’s promise of a more cost-effective, energy-efficient and easier-to-manage approach to everyday workloads makes a compelling case for leaving disk behind,” commented Scott Sinclair, Practice Director, Enterprise Strategy Group.

VEEAM APPOINTS DUSTIN DRIGGS AS CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER

error, outages, or a cyber-attack. That’s an incredible value proposition that in turn creates huge opportunity in a fast-growing market,” said Dustin Driggs, CFO at Veeam. “I’m excited to join such a talented and innovative team and look forward to the opportunity to contribute to Veeam’s continued global success.”

at Veeam. He’s made valuable contributions to the company, and I wish him much continued success.”

Veeam Software today announced the appointment of Dustin Driggs as the company’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Driggs will lead Veeam’s global financial function including strategy and reporting as Veeam continues to gain market share and provide best-in-class secure backup and fast, reliable recovery that keeps businesses running.

Driggs is an accomplished finance leader with more than 30 years’ experience in successfully building and managing large multinational businesses. He joins Veeam from Barracuda Networks where he worked for over 16 years, most recently as Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President leading the finance and accounting function. Prior to Barracuda Networks, Driggs held senior leadership roles at Cisco Systems and PwC.

“Veeam is helping to keep businesses running when the unexpected happens, whether it’s ransomware, natural disasters, human

“Dustin brings great experience, insights and skills to Veeam,” said Anand Eswaran, CEO at Veeam. “With more than 5,000 employees, 450,000 customers and well over $1B in ARR, it’s an exciting time in our development and evolution; we’re growing rapidly by keeping businesses running. In a digital world, our value proposition of proactively protecting data across every type of environment and helping companies rapidly recover from unexpected events is incredibly critical to every organisation. Dustin is a valuable addition to our strong leadership team at Veeam, and I’m confident his expertise and experience will make a great impact here.”

Driggs succeeds Chuck Garner who is leaving Veeam after successfully leading the company’s finance, strategy, and operations functions and having completed its $5 billion sale to Insight Partners in 2020. Garner said, “I have enjoyed partnering with our leadership team and investors over the last four years as Veeam has achieved record growth and extended its market leadership position.”

Eswaran added, “I want to thank Chuck for his leadership and dedication

F5 APPOINTS BART SALAETS AS EMEA FIELD CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER

VF5 has appointed Bart Salaets as Field Chief Technology Officer in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

With over 20 years’ industry experience, Salaets will take on the brand-new role to further elevate F5’s

positioning in the market, including engaging with C-Suite customers, partners, analysts, and journalists. Working with EMEA’s solution architect team, and in close partnership with F5 Global CTO, Geng Lin, he will

Veeam recently announced the NEW Veeam Data Platform, a single platform delivering more advanced data security, recovery, and hybrid cloud capabilities than ever before. The Veeam Data Platform, which includes Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR) v12, provides best-in-class secure backup and fast reliable recovery that keeps business running. It brings together the latest features offered from Veeam into a robust solution that is offered in three enterprisegrade editions for protecting Cloud, Virtual, Physical, SaaS, and Kubernetes applications across complex and expanding IT environments and the increasing set of challenges facing every organisation from outages to errors and ransomware.

Veeam will highlight the New Veeam Data Platform during VeeamON 2023, the community event for data recovery experts, which will take place May 22 – 24 in Miami, FL and online. Designed by and built for the backup and recovery professional, attendees will expand their skills, celebrate with the community, and share industry knowledge with special content from Amazon Web Services, (AWS), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and more. Registration for the in-person event is now open.

For more information, visit www.veeam.com.

report to Vincent Lavergne, VP for Solutions Engineering at F5.

Salaets has been at F5 since 2011, most recently as Head of EMEA Solutions Architects. He has also worked as the lead solutions architect for F5’ service provider team. Prior to joining F5, he held consulting and technical leadership positions at Juniper Networks, Redback Networks and Alcatel- Lucent.

Dustin Driggs, Veeam

Vincent Lavergne, VP for Solutions Engineering at F5, said: “Organisations are quickly embracing digital transformation and automation. Meanwhile, applications—how they are built, the infrastructures they run on, and the data that fuels them—are ever-evolving. In his new role, Bart will be uniquely placed to listen to and help our customers and partners. This includes ways to deliver, and protect, apps and APIs – irrespective of where they are hosted.”

Bart Salaets, Field Chief Technology Officer in EMEA at F5, said: “This is an exciting new challenge for me and my Solution Architect team to embark on. Central to my new role will be to ensure our

values are fully aligned with market and industry realities. It will involve a lot of listening and engagement, particularly as we look to support innovative digital transformation in new markets.”

Geng Lin, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at F5, said: “Today, businesses in every industry are on a digital transformation journey. F5’s Adaptive Applications vision and solution portfolio help businesses become more agile, secure, and application driven. Bart’s experience and leadership in application services, solution architecture, and customer engagement made him well suited to this strategic role.”

INFOPERCEPT APPOINTS JITENDRA BULANI AS CMO

where he was responsible for public relations and communications in India and SAARC, Middle East and Africa. Bulani was also one of the pioneering members of the global marketing team at Cyberoam, which was later acquired by Sophos.

The appointment comes three months after the company announced its CERT-In empanelment and association with National Centre of Excellence for SCADA/OT security acceleration program.

Infopercept, a global cybersecurity solutions and services company, announced the appointment of Jitendra Bulani as Chief Marketing Officer.

Bulani brings 15 years of global marketing experience at cybersecurity companies. He will be responsible for driving awareness and demand for Infopercept’s offensive security, defensive security and security compliance solutions as well as services globally.

Prior to joining Infopercept, Bulani was at Sophos for more than 14 years

“Infopercept is a company that is driven by a purpose, which is to solve real cybersecurity challenges of organisations globally,” said Jaydeep Ruparelia, CEO Infopercept. “We have built solutions, platforms and service packages, which enable us to cover the entire IT landscape of customers under various approaches of cybersecurity like offensive security, DevSecOps, OT security, IOT security, cloud security, security compliance and detection and response.”

Excited on the appointment, Ruparelia added, “We were looking for someone with extensive cybersecurity marketing experience

to help us amplify our messaging and brand visibility as well as expand our reach globally. We wanted to ensure that our technology has the right kind of messaging so that nothing is lost in translation, and we can serve our customers better. Jitendra brings with him a wealth of experience of working with Cyberoam right from when it was a cybersecurity startup to helping it scale up, as well as working with globally structured cybersecurity company like Sophos. With Jitendra on board as CMO, our road map looks very promising, and with his expertise, we are sure to create visibility around our innovations and build Infopercept into a globally recognised cybersecurity brand.”

Speaking on his new role, Jitendra Bulani said, “Infopercept is not a company, it is a passion. A group of passionate technology people who have created innovative cybersecurity solutions and services that too all made in India. I am excited to join this company and look forward to working closely with their dynamic team to help Infopercept become a globally recognised brand.”

Jitendra Bulani, Infopercept

Bart Salaets, F5

MARKETING MINDS

Marketing is an important function across all businesses in all sectors. If partners didn’t pay attention to this task before, they are certainly seeing its value today. Investing in digital marketing strategies are becoming fundamental for growing revenues, acquiring new leads and enhancing brand image. In this section, marketing leaders who deal with the regional channel business shed light on the impact of AI on marketing.

Assistant Marketing Manager, TP-Link

In the AI world, how have the marketing strategies changed?

AI has had a significant impact on the marketing industry. AI algorithms can analyze large amounts of data and provide insights into customer behavior, preferences, and interests. This allows marketers to create personalized experiences for their customers by tailoring messaging, product recommendations, and promotions to individual needs. AI can automate many routine marketing tasks, such as email campaigns, social media posting, and ad optimization. This frees up time for marketers to focus on higher-level strategic activities. With predictive analysis, we can now manipulate the past data and make smarter decisions. AI-powered chatbots are becoming increasingly popular in marketing, as they allow companies to provide instant support and personalized recommendations to customers 24/7.

What aspects of a marketing operation can be automated?

There are several aspects of a marketing operation that can be automated using various AI and marketing automation tools. We can run email campaigns using automation tools for lead nurturing and segmentation. Ads can be optimized using the AI. Further, AI algorithms can analyze customer data to identify potential leads and qualify them based on various criteria, such as behavior, demographics, and interests.

What do you think will shape the future of marketing automation?

With the rise of voice and visual search, marketers will need to optimize their content for these new formats. AI-powered tools that can automatically generate voice and visual content will become more valuable in the future.

NIHARIKA MUTHREJA

MEA

In the AI world, how have the marketing strategies changed?

While the fundamental principles of marketing will not change, the use of AI definitely helps us achieve faster turn-around time for some of our marketing activities and make our social media and search marketing tools much sharper and efficient.

What aspects of a marketing operation can be automated?

Most of the marketing activities can benefit from AI but that does not mean we can replace it with AI completely. For example: AI automation can help in scheduling and sending emails, personalizing messages and tracking response. Same way scheduling posts, analyzing user engagement, responding to user queries can be handled by AI for Social Media marketing. Content creation, curation, and distribution can be automated. AI can help in keyword analysis for SEO and ML can help in analyzing customer data.

What do you think will shape the future of marketing automation?

AI can help us get better accuracy and personalization of our campaigns, track and respond to customer interactions in multi-channel marketing campaigns better, help us handle customer data in more secure ways.

In the AI world, how have the marketing strategies changed?

AI is already helping automate marketing processes. To start with, it can collect and process data that helps in segmenting the target audience faster and accurately. This becomes the basis of all the marketing campaigns that a marketeer wants to launch.

What aspects of a marketing operation can be automated?

The success for marketing campaigns and strategies is to a certain extent dependent on the automation processes employed. Automation platforms can streamline marketing work flows, allowing businesses to create and launch campaigns faster. From communications, to lead management to data reporting, all operational aspects can be automated.

What do you think will shape the future of marketing automation?

The future of marketing automation is likely to be more focused on delivering an exceptional customer experience by using data to personalize communications, anticipate needs and deliver relevant content. Marketing automation platforms are likely to integrate with other technologies such as CRM, analytics and social media to provide more comprehensive view of the customer and their journey.

In the AI world, how have the marketing strategies changed?

For organizations to thrive in this constantly evolving digital landscape, it is more essential than ever to innovate marketing strategies that cater to the varying needs of their target audience by offering a more personalized experience. As a result, organizations are increasingly shifting their marketing investment to adopt AI tools that create one-touch holistic campaigns to address multiple touchpoints across the customer journey, right from digital ads to websites to offline engagements to purchase to nurture, resulting in long-term retention.

What do you think will shape the future of marketing automation?

The sheer integration of AI and Machine Learning along with content intelligence will reign supreme in 2023. B2B marketers in particular are weaving the threads of data and machine learning for smart content creation and effectively orchestrating the sync between data distribution and accuracy of engagement across multiple touchpoints. Chatbots will become smarter to rage in the upcoming years as businesses witness massive success by integrating chatbots into their messaging platforms.

SHIVANG SAH

Marketing Manager – MEA, Tech First Gulf FZ LLC

RIDDHI ANILKUMAR

Sr. Regional & Distributor Marketing Manager – ME, Acronis

RIJU JOSE

Marketing Manager, Spectrum Networks DMCC

Industrial IoT Solutions

Improve process agility with advanced data collection, analytics and visualization capabilities at the edge.

Allied Telesis ruggedized Industrial Ethernet switches provide enduring performance in harsh environments, such as those found in manufacturing, transportation and physical security. Offering high throughput, rich functionality and advanced security features, our switches deliver the performance and reliability demanded by deployments in the age of the Internet of Things.

For more information, please contact one of our Allied Telesis Account Managers today.

Tel: +971 4 454 8740

UNCOMPROMISING

GROW YOUR BUSINESS

What We Provide

Managed Services

Cybersecurity ELV

Infrastructure

Software

info@realsecure.ae

IT Managed Services, AMC Services IT Support, IT Outsourcing

Cybersecurity Assessments, Security Training Consulting, Email Security, End-Point Security

CCTV, Access Control & Attendance Systems

IP Telephony, Structured Cabling, Audio-Video

Enterprise Networking, IT Office Setup, IT Relocation, Data Protection, Virtualization

Software Licenses, HEAL Healthcare Solution

Zappy Hire HR Solution, HEAL Vet Veterinary Solution, Smart Inventory, Cash Management

SAVE YOUR COST

SECURE YOUR BUSINESS

1907 Damac Business Towers, Marasi Drive, Business Bay, Dubai