MARK OF EXCELLENCE by cxoinsightme

ISSUE 41 \ APRIL 2022

MARK OF EXCELLENCE

CELEBRATING IT LEADERSHIP

CONTENTS

PRODUCTS

MARK OF EXCELLENCE

CELEBRATING IT LEADERSHIP

12 12

HOW ADVANCED ANALYTICS ARE POWERING THE NEXT INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

SUPERCHARGING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL

AHEAD OF THE CURVE

LOW-CODE 36 DECODING REVOLUTION

PUBLISHED BY INSIGHT MEDIA & PUBLISHING LLC

NEWS

38 AFORCATALYST INNOVATION PROACTIVE PREVENTION 40 WHY IS THE BEST STRATEGY

DELIVERING MOMENTS OF SERVICE

DEMOCRATISING 42 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

BUILDING TRUST

GARTNER: THREE AREAS DRIVING THE TOP TRENDS IN DATA AND ANALYTICS COMMSCOPE ANNOUNCES HIGH-SPEED FIBRE PLATFORM PROPEL UNIPHORE BUYS COLABO TO OFFER KNOWLEDGE AI AND AUTOMATION

APRIL 2022

CXO INSIGHT ME

EDITORIAL

THE LOOMING SHADOW

recent Gartner study has caught my attention, highlighting the shifting sands in enterprise technology buying patterns. The study reveals that 74 percent of technology purchases are funded, at least partially, by business units outside of IT. In addition, Gartner’s research found that “41 percent of employees today are business technologists, creating technology or analytics capabilities for internal or external business use and reporting outside of IT departments.” It adds that high-tech providers need new approaches to identify whom to engage and how to engage B2B buyers. So what happens when technology purchase decisions are no longer under the sole purview of IT? Do business buyers possibly understand all the complexities of a high-tech product? This has been labeled as ‘shadow IT’ as vendors increasingly target end-users and line of business leaders instead of CIOs, traditionally the vanguards of enterprise technology. Though shadow IT opens up a pandora’s box of security threats, it would be

in the best interest of IT leaders to embrace this phenomenon, especially with the pandemic having turned work environments upside down. It’s time for CIOs to help drive innovation around this new reality of technology. They need to turn this to their advantage by discussing the technology with the users and find out if it makes their job easier. Shadow IT is deemed a necessary evil, and one of the ways CIOs can tackle it is by adopting low-code/no-code platforms that target specific job tasks and functions. It provides a secure environment to business users, and helps them automate their tasks without the help of off-theshelf applications. The adoption of low-code/ no-code platforms is on an upswing, and we have debunked some myths around this new trend in software development in this issue. Of course, it may not completely replace your coding needs. Still, it would indeed enable your workforce to create simple applications and, in the process, free up developers to focus more on creating advanced processes that drive business value.

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Designer Anup Sathyan

While the publisher has made all efforts to ensure the accuracy of information in this magazine, they will not be held responsible for any errors

APRIL 2022

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NEWS

GARTNER: THREE AREAS DRIVING THE TOP TRENDS IN DATA AND ANALYTICS

ata & analytics (D&A) leaders should embrace three imperatives when leveraging the top D&A trends for 2022 in their enterprise, according to Gartner. The three key areas are: Activate Dynamism and Diversity, Augment People and Decisions, and Institutionalise Trust. “This year’s top D&A trends represent business, market and technology dynamics that will help organisations anticipate change and transform uncertainty into opportunity, both of which have come under the purview of the D&A leader,” said Rita Sallam, Research Vice President at Gartner. Activate Diversity and Dynamism The rise of adaptive artificial intelligence (AI) systems, such as AI engineering, drives growth and innovation while coping with fluctuations in global markets. Innovations in data management for AI, automated, active metadata-driven approaches and data-sharing competencies, all founded on data fabrics, unleash the full value of data and analytics. As one example, the trend “always share

data” reinforces data sharing as a businessfacing key performance indicator that an organisation is achieving effective stakeholder engagement and increasing access to the right data to generate public value. The 2022 trends in this category include: adaptive AI systems, data-centric AI, metadata driven data fabric, and always share data. Augment People and Decisions To make insights relevant to decision makers, D&A leaders must deliver enriched, contextdriven analytics created from modular components by the business. This includes prioritising data literacy and putting in place strategies to address the scarcity of data and analytics talent.

Institutionalise Trust Achieving value from D&A at scale is only possible by managing AI risks and enacting connected governance across distributed systems, edge environments and emerging ecosystems. As AI regulations proliferate globally, they are mandating certain auditable practices that ensure trust, transparency and consumer protection. By 2026, Gartner anticipates organisations that develop trustworthy purpose-driven AI will see over 75% of AI innovations succeed, compared to 40% among those that don’t.

respond to an increase in economic life online by building new data centers and investing in ways to dramatically increase data center capacity. “Over the past few years, we have witnessed extraordinary technical advances and a rise in computing devices that connect to the real world. Data centres are key assets in the data-driven economy and it’s critical that the industry pay attention to energy usage and space requirements as we move toward terabit speeds,” said John Schmidt, Senior Vice President, CommScope’s building and

data center business. “CommScope’s Propel solution was engineered to ensure data center operators can maximise existing infrastructure investments while preparing for future applications in a smarter and more efficient manner.” Propel facilitates the modernisation of the network. Propel introduces 16-fiber cabling to support the fast growing 400 Gbps and 800 Gbps speeds, as well as emerging 1.6 Tbps speeds. This enables leading edge network architectures to deliver greater capacity to end devices with increased efficiency, saving time and energy while also greatly reducing the cost per gigabit. Propel modules are available in four different interchangeable sizes with matching cable constructions to easily scale applications with system architectures. All components are ultralow loss for optimal performance and have a specific QR code for performance tracking and online instructions.

COMMSCOPE ANNOUNCES HIGH-SPEED FIBRE PLATFORM PROPEL CommScope has introduced Propel, a high-speed fibre platform designed to help data centre managers respond to the exponential increase in demand they are experiencing for computing power. This new technology facilitates the migration to Terabit speeds, by providing reliable connectivity and a robust network infrastructure that aligns with rapidly emerging data centre applications, enabling faster, more efficient access to data. Data centre demands have soared as workers, students, nurses, businesses, local communities and government agencies have moved to cloud computing, streaming services and AI applications. The industry continues to 6

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Through 2025, the majority of CDOs will have failed to foster the necessary data literacy within the workforce to achieve their stated strategic data-driven business goals. Gartner research shows that organisations that deal with the human elements of D&A are more successful than organisations that only consider technology. A human focus fosters broader digital learning, rather than simply delivering core platforms, datasets and tools. The 2022 trends in this category include: context-enriched analysis, business-composed D&A, decision-centric D&A, and skills and literacy shortfall.

AVAYA AND ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE PARTNER TO DRIVE CLOUD TRANSFORMATION

vaya and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise have announced a strategic partnership that extends the availability of Avaya’s OneCloud CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) composable solutions to ALE’s global base of customers while also making ALE’s digital networking solutions available on a global basis to Avaya customers. Through this partnership, ALE will offer Avaya OneCloud CCaaS, which provides advanced AI, Identity and Security, Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) and customer service capabilities to ALE customers. Avaya will offer ALE Digital Age Networking solutions to its customers, covering the full spectrum of enterprise wired and wireless connectivity technologies with advanced cloud platform services, leveraging the latest in IoT analytics, digital workflow, secure mobility, AI for network automation.

“We are extremely pleased to partner with Avaya to deliver market-leading CCaaS capabilities to our customers and expand the market reach of our Digital Age Networking solutions,” said Jack Chen, CEO, ALE. “The extensibility and composability of the Avaya OneCloud CCaaS platform allows us to work with an ecosystem of industryleading partners to build with Avaya

deeper and more engaging experiences our customers need.” “We are very excited to partner with ALE to offer our OneCloud CCaaS to their global base of nearly one million customers and nearly 3,000 partners, while bolstering our portfolio with the addition of ALE networking technologies,” said Jim Chirico, President and CEO, Avaya. “The partnership we have announced is highly complementary and we believe it represents a significant opportunity for Avaya and ALE customers alike to accelerate their move to the cloud by deploying world-class cloud technologies from two global communications leaders.” Business customers across the globe will be able to achieve their digital transformation and move to the cloud delivering differentiated customer experiences for their end customers and better work experiences for their employees.

HELP AG, WATERFALL SECURITY SOLUTIONS TO BOLSTER INDUSTRIAL CYBERSECURITY Help AG, the cybersecurity arm of e& enterprise (formerly known as Etisalat Digital), has partnered with Waterfall Security Solutions, the global industrial cybersecurity player. With this partnership, Help AG will assist industrial clients in the UAE to securely connect their IT and OT environments for safe and optimal performance. Many industrial organisations – such as those in the manufacturing, utilities, facilities, and rail industries – today are looking to integrate IT into their production facilities for smarter operations. This brings the importance of industrial cybersecurity to the forefront, as a successful attack on an OT system can have catastrophic consequences that range from halting operations to endangering physical safety. Help AG’s industrial clients will benefit from Waterfall’s Unidirectional Security

Gateways and related products to tackle the security challenges involved in IT-OT convergence, as well as Waterfall’s long experience in helping organisations to integrate IT and OT environments safely and securely. Additionally, the company’s suite of unidirectional offerings facilitates integrations with other technologies and services offered by Help AG partners, enabling the delivery of true end-to-end solutions rather than point products. Stephan Berner, Chief Executive Officer at Help AG, said, “One of our key focus areas is helping our clients in the industrial sector to safely integrate their IT and OT systems. For this reason, we are very pleased to partner with Waterfall Security Solutions, a leader in the field of ICS/SCADA cybersecurity. Waterfall’s Unidirectional Gateway technology meets the security needs of

Stephan Berner, Help AG

modern industrial organisations, and our UAE clients now have full access to their patented solutions.” Lior Frenkel, CEO and Co-Founder at Waterfall Security Solutions, said, “Our partnership with Help AG is driven by a shared commitment to secure vital industrial networks in the UAE. Help AG’s deep technical expertise, as well as strong relationships with critical infrastructure utilities, industrial enterprises and other technology providers, will enable Waterfall to contribute more effectively to integrated and comprehensive industrial security programmes.”

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NEWS

ALEC UNVEILS NEW SUBSIDIARY TO TRANSFORM DATA CENTRE CONSTRUCTION

uilding on its strengths in construction, MEP, logistics, fit-out, and technology integration, and looking to cater to growing demand for regional data centres, ALEC has announced the establishment of its newest subsidiary, ALEC Data Centre Solutions. In addition to designing, implementing, and commissioning turn-key data centres that conform to the highest international standards, the company will offer clients prefabricated data centres for quick deployments within the region. It is also set to be the first in the region to specialise in liquid immersion solutions that will result in more sustainable, customisable, and cost-effective data centres. In the coming weeks, ALEC Data Centre Solutions will also inaugurate its flagship experience centre where clients and prospects will have the opportunity to see the company’s solutions first-hand and engage with experts about their specific requirements.

“Until now, cost, expertise, logistics, customisability, and scalability have all presented formidable challenges to regional organisations looking to establish their own data centres, hampering their ability to innovate at pace and scale,” said Kez Taylor, CEO at ALEC. “With our entry into the rapidly advancing data centre space, ALEC is set to fill the void for a single, large-scale specialist organisation that can offer the entire gamut of data centre development services.” ALEC Data Centre Solutions will focus across three primary lines of business — traditional data centre construction solutions, prefabricated solutions, and modernisation & retrofit solutions. Furthermore, the company will have the ability to offer Liquid immersion solutions within all these sectors. With a strong focus on world-class build quality, the company will utilise the Group’s in-house civil, MEP and technology expertise to become the preferred contractor to support enterprises and hyperscalers in the successful delivery of large-scale, customised data centres for cloud service delivery, mission-critical workloads, and disaster recovery purposes. With its prefabricated data centre line, manufactured at its dedicated facility in Dubai, the company will be able to offer

rapid, scalable, edge-type deployments across multiple or remote sites in the region. This line of business will provide future-proof, end-to-end solution for businesses looking to steadily grow their data centre footprints as their computing needs evolve. The wider ALEC Group’s established expertise in logistic, shipping, manufacturing, and on-site installation translate to a unique advantage for ALEC Data Centre Solutions in the prefabricated data centre domain which is set to redefine the market in years to come. Furthermore, through its partnership with Submer, a leading innovator in advanced immersion cooling solutions for Cloud and Edge computing, ALEC Data Centre Solutions is primed to set new benchmarks in data centre energy efficiency with solutions that help save 50% on CAPEX building costs, up to 95% on cooling expenses, and more than 90% water usage for cooling purposes.

UNIPHORE BUYS COLABO TO OFFER KNOWLEDGE AI AND AUTOMATION Conversational Automation company Uniphore has announced that it has acquired Colabo, an AI-powered knowledge automation solution that specialises in extracting and utilising information from structured and unstructured documents in real time. Today, Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) and human agents have access to legacy knowledge management systems not connected to enterprise applications, thus frequently losing value over time from data complexity and quality. With Colabo’s solution integrated into Uniphore’s conversational automation platform, enterprises will be able to leverage AI to extract knowledge entities and graphs from structured and unstructured data. This ultimately helps 8

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ensure the most relevant content and next-best action are delivered to IVAs and live agents, for significantly better customer interactions, said the firm. “Simply put, consumers today expect access to up-to-date information to solve their problems and contact centers can provide better experiences with the latest technologies that do exactly that,” said Umesh Sachdev, Co-Founder and CEO of Uniphore. “This acquisition brings together unique capabilities to arm enterprises with new tools that provide a quick resolution to consumer queries and empower agents with real-time, actionable information.” “From the start, we built Colabo with a vision to help personalise customers’ experiences from when they contact a business to when their issue is resolved,”

Umesh Sachdev, Uniphore

said Yoav Dembak, Co-Founder & CEO, Colabo. “I am now proud to say we have achieved that and will be taking our vision even further by integrating into Uniphore’s conversational AI and automation platform, bringing rigor and best-of-breed agility and accuracy to every contact center inquiry.”

METAVERSE LEADER BEDU LAUNCHES OPERATIONS IN DUBAI

EDU, Dubai’s Web3 technologies and solutions provider, has announced its UAE launch along with a pledge to empower businesses, governments, and individuals with the tools and knowledge they need to ‘build the next digital frontier’. BEDU was formed to bring expertise and investment from around the world to the UAE to accelerate the realisation of the vision for Web3, blockchain, NFT (nonfungible tokens) and the Metaverse. Web3 is the third stage of the web evolution that uses the power of Artificial intelligence (AI), Machine learning and blockchain to make the internet smarter providing greater utilisation for users. And NFTs are digital properties in the form of art or media purchased using Blockchain technology. This evolution of the internet is expected to provide users with access to virtual and augment reality experiences in the real digital world, more commonly known as the Metaverse. “BEDU is committed to creating worldleading blockchain, Web3, and Metaverse solutions within the UAE and then expanding that progress throughout the MENA region and beyond, because we see the country as a potential Silicon Valley for NFTs and

blockchain,” said Khaled Al Huraimel, CoFounder and Chairman of BEDU. “We are born out of the UAE, but global in our vision for the next iteration of humanity’s shared digital world. We are the leader in the blockchain space – a gateway to the Metaverse for the UAE and the region. Together with our clients, we shall build a new virtual economy and the next digital frontier.” BEDU’s leadership and technical teams collectively aggregate decades of international experience working with governments, brands, and businesses. The company operates under two business verticals: BEDU Labs and BEDU World. BEDU Labs is an ‘NFT factory’ that provides turnkey solutions for clients interested in pursuing the potential of the Web3 arena. Services include planning, creation, deployment, and promotion of Web3 and NFT projects, as well as

NUTANIX EMPOWERS UMNIAH TO LAUNCH VIRTUAL COMPUTER FOR FIRMS IN JORDAN Nutanix has announced that Umniah Jordan, one of the region’s fastest-growing and most reliable telecommunications providers, has implemented Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform combined with Citrix Virtual Desktops to offer a fully supported Virtual Desktop Infrastructure to businesses in Jordan. Speaking about the new solution, Ziad Shatara, CEO of Umniah said, “We are constantly looking to pioneer innovative digital solutions and we see our role as an important catalyst in the digital transformation of business in Jordan and the Kingdom as a whole. We launched Virtual Computers to our customers due to its many benefits including user mobility,

ease of access, flexibility and greater security. This service is now even more attractive to businesses looking to enable and empower a remote workforce.” Umniah, in cooperation with ProTech, Cloud Champion partner of Nutanix in Jordan, delivered a turnkey solution comprising of Citrix Virtual Desktop

coaching for digital creators on how to safeguard their intellectual property. BEDU World is the company’s vision to the creation of a future interconnected ecosystem – the Metaverse. Bedu World is to be announced soon and is designed with a unique futuristic approach, and will be an extremely sophisticated and advanced approach, based on a unique blockchain implementation that BEDU has developed. This proprietary Metaverse, will be a breakthrough in its visual and technological implementation and will provide the ability to capitalise on the realm’s limitless potential as it gives rise to a new digital economy characterised by tokenomics and blockchain. BEDU has embarked on a range of innovative projects that will span 2022 and beyond. This includes UAE NFT, an Emirates-based NFT collection that is investing in the advancement of the digital space, the metaverse, and Web3, with a vision to progressively build a community within the industry. The first project from BEDU as part of the UAENFT collection is the ‘From Desert to Mars’ that showcases works created by seven of the most creative and influential international NFT artists.

software running on top of Nutanix Enterprise Cloud hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform. Khaled Al Rashdan, CEO and Founder of ProTech explained, “Having reached the highest level of cloud partnership with Nutanix, we have a high degree of technical proficiency and expertise in the vendor’s infrastructure. The Nutanix and Citrix combined solution that we proposed is the most powerful one available in the market today, which is being utilised by organisations across the globe and now with Umniah.” “With the underlying Nutanix infrastructure, we are confident of a reliable, secure and flexible solution that is highly scalable to accommodate the growing Virtual Computer demands of our customers. We offer our customers a very high SLA for availability,” added Shatara.

NEWS

INDUSTRY LEADERS INTRODUCE OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY CYBERSECURITY COALITION

diverse group of cybersecurity leaders have come together to launch the Operational Technology Cybersecurity Coalition (OT Cyber Coalition). Founding members include Claroty, Forescout, Honeywell, Nozomi Networks, and Tenable, each with decades of experience in building, protecting, and defending our nation’s industrial control systems and critical infrastructure assets. The OT Cyber Coalition advocates for vendor-neutral, interoperable, and standards-based cybersecurity solutions and works collaboratively with industry and government stakeholders on how to best deploy data-sharing solutions that enhance our country’s collective

Marty Edwards, Tenable

defence. Its efforts support the notion that competitive solutions promote innovation and strengthen our national security. The OT Cyber Coalition represents a broad spectrum of people, processes, and technology, and offers a unique and crucial perspective on the best practices applicable across the entire OT lifecycle. Through its direct engagements with the US Government, the OT Cyber Coalition will encourage the adoption of interoperability and vendor-neutral cybersecurity characteristics, provide industry expertise, share feedback on public policy proposals, and advocate for increased funding for federal OT cybersecurity. Grant Geyer, Chief Product Officer & CISO, Claroty, said, “No one entity or

UAE IOT ACADEMY BY SOFTWARE AG BEGINS INAUGURAL BATCH OF IOT ASPIRANTS Software AG welcomed a full house of UAE IoT Academy’s inaugural batch at an in-person session held in Dubai last month. The first session was organised with the aim to impart a perspective of what the students should expect from the specialised programme on IoT that spans 15 weeks of intense learning delivered by the region’s first IoT Academy. The learners will gain the needed knowledge and skills to build and lead IoT-based transformations and benefit from industry information and insights which will further stimulate and enrich students. The programme comprises of four modules that will focus on market, 10

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Rami Kichli, Software AG

technical, project and practical (use case creation), equally divided during the programme period that will impart IoT fundamentals by gaining an understanding of IoT strategies and exclusive insights and practical aspects into managing ideation to adoption through realworld corporate business cases. The classes will be held twice a week for three hours each in a virtual set up. The programme will also cover two tracks in IoT – business and technical

provider has a monopoly on protecting critical infrastructure, and a vendorneutral and open standards approach can ensure that we’re all working in concert to keep the country safe.” “Our combined customer base represents the largest and most impactful organisations in critical infrastructure,” said Shawn Taylor, VP of Threat Defense, Forescout. “We have the potential to collect asset information, vulnerability data, threats and security incidents, and risk status to provide real time insight and data to help support the US government, asset owners and operators as part of our collective defence mission.” “Although we may be a group of competitive OT cybersecurity companies, we also are extremely passionate about working collaboratively to improve the cybersecurity of these sometimes fragile OT environments,” said Jeff Zindel, Vice President and General Manager of OT Cyber Security for Honeywell Connected Enterprise. “This work is essential to protect our country’s critical infrastructure.”

with certifications offered in both. Depending on the function and interest area of the participants, one or both can be chosen. Certifications will be awarded to participants based on attendance, assignments and final projects. Software AG will provide the participants with the requisite devices, technology and architecture to facilitate this programme. Rami Kichli, Senior Vice President, Middle East and Turkey, Software AG, said, “This marks a milestone for Software AG in the region. Our presence in the region has moved beyond business and we have integrated ourselves with the local community with this educational initiative. With a top-down philosophy of always contributing to the communities we operate in at Software AG, we consider it as our responsibility to partake in the visions of regional leaders and this is our humble way of giving back to the society.

INTERVIEW

RAISING THE BAR SASCHA GIESE, HEAD GEEK AT SOLARWINDS, TALKS ABOUT HOW THE COMPANY IS SECURING ITS INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT AND SUPPLY CHAIN FROM SOPHISTICATED CYBER-ATTACKS.

an you share with us your journey to becoming secure by design? It is no secret that SolarWinds was the victim of a pretty sophisticated attack in December 2020. We used what were previously called best practices in software design, but as it happened, that wasn’t enough to mitigate risks. So, we used this as an opportunity to evaluate our own security posture and found some room for improvement. For example, we started enforcing multifactor authentication at all of our systems and resources, which we didn’t do so strictly before. Our build servers were compromised in the breach, and some malicious code got automatically built into what we shipped to customers. We have created independent pipelines to make it impossible for attackers to do this again. Different teams are working on development to code. And there are a lot of cross-checks, both manual and automated, to verify the authenticity of the code. We make sure that what we ship to customers is actually what we intend to send. What about your next-gen build system? Is that active now? It has been active for over a year now. The first product which we shipped from the new system was the latest update of our Database Performance Analyzer. The big difference is that there’s nothing static anymore. So in the previous process, which is still considered best practice, a lot of the environment is static. This makes it easy for an attacker to go inside, find a nice place for themselves and start digging into the environment to find further vulnerabilities. We tested

a few container systems to tackle this, which is a pretty volatile environment. And as soon as we use a resource, and when it’s no longer used, we destroy it. So it is no longer possible for an attacker to find a safe place in the infrastructure. We used a couple of different systems, but we couldn’t really find something that worked for our requirements. Finally, we found one that is a similar framework that IBM and Google are using, which is a base for us, and we build our own stuff around that. The exciting part of this is that it is completely open-source, which is very important to us. What are some of the other lessons you have learned from the breach? Many lessons. We were used as a Trojan to get into different infrastructures. The lesson learned here is something that would apply to the whole industry. It is important to check the entire supply chain. Most companies hire contractors who become part of the supply chain. You need to check what kind of access these people have and close their access once the project is finished. It is a good idea to discuss with your supply chain vendors how serious they are about their own security and what kind of measures they have in place to prevent breaches. We did a good job by sharing our experience and the results of our investigations with the whole community. Do you continuously evaluate thirdparty components to ensure supply chain integrity? We do it wherever we can. We try to use open-source software as much as possible now because it’s not proprietary code. This enables us to look into the

code, which is very important. And each time where we have no other way, we try our best to verify that everything is the way it’s supposed to be. So if you look at systems where it’s not so easy to use open-source, like our executables which has Microsoft build system in the background, we are always on top of it by keeping everything up to date and ensure it works. And it is as secure as possible. Do your developers have any control over how things are validated or secured? It’s a bit of shared responsibility. Our developers actually have complete control in requesting resources and using them. But they have zero control over what they develop is being validated. So they focus on their code and can use the system in any way they want. But securing and validating is the task of a different team. Do you build in parallel and more than once? We have different pipelines, which are kind of in parallel. And there are checks on multiple occasions to make sure that everything is the same. So it was a bit difficult to find a system that could deal with, for example, timestamps. If you use timestamps and when code is not checked simultaneously when different teams are working on it can be a challenge. But we found a way to deal with that.

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VIEWPOINT

HOW ADVANCED ANALYTICS ARE POWERING THE NEXT INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION INDUSTRIAL COMPANIES OF THE FUTURE ARE LEVERAGING DATA TO ELIMINATE DOWNTIME AND BOOST EFFICIENCIES, WRITES MATT NEWTON, DIRECTOR, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND OPTIMISATION, AVEVA

he industrial sector is in the midst of its biggest disruption in decades. Across the globe, organisations are facing major pressures to become more reliable and productive while reducing costs. Amid the rapid changes that are happening in the market, businesses can no longer afford to continue to operate in a reactive environment. It’s critical for organisations to reduce production loss while extending equipment life – 12

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efficiencies that can help businesses achieve operational excellence. But how can this be achieved? The answer lies in Asset Performance Management (APM) – a set of technologies and practices that can monitor assets to identify, diagnose, and prioritise impending equipment problems – continuously and in real time. Well-executed APM empowers organisations to reduce unscheduled downtime, prevent equipment

failures, reduce maintenance costs, improve asset utilisation, and identify underperforming assets to support overall business objectives. At the heart of APM is the concept of maximising profitability by balancing risk, cost, and performance of the plant, of the assets, and of the people that are operating all those things. In the last two years, many companies have undergone digital transformation to foster corporate agility and resilience

amid an increasingly dynamic business landscape. As such, the concept of APM is also evolving. The intersection of Industry 4.0, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and technologies such as AI, predictive maintenance, cloud, big data, and mobility, are bringing assets to the forefront of the business. This shift represents the future of industry. By leveraging APM 4.0, assets can be transformed from cost centres into powerful drivers of revenue and profitability. Step forward, APM 4.0 APM 4.0 is predicated on proactive asset performance management, enabled by predictive alerts and prescriptive analytics. These types of technologies can lower costs, while optimising labor usage and equipment performance. Through the use of predictive and prescriptive analytics, companies can implement strategies that avoid unplanned downtime for their most critical assets – while also deciding which preventative or corrective asset strategy is the best course of action to take for their less vital equipment. True industrial digital transformation can only be built upon a solid APM foundation – through a system that holistically connects engineering, operations, and performance. APM 4.0 creates a single integrated digital thread across the complete asset

WHILE COMPANIES ARE CLOSE TO ACHIEVING APM 4.0, OTHERS MAY NOT BE QUITE SURE WHERE THEY SHOULD BEGIN THEIR ADOPTION JOURNEY. IT’S IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER THAT EMBARKING ON THE TRANSITION FROM REACTIVE MAINTENANCE TO A MORE PROACTIVE OR PREDICTIVE STRATEGY IS A PROCESS. lifecycle. Two key factors play a pivotal role in the implementation of an effective APM strategy: • First, there must be connectivity among assets and workers. • Second, decisions that are informed by sensors and intelligent data must be able to be executed in real-time. The predictive power of data As automation becomes increasingly prevalent across industries, mechanical devices are being replaced by electronic components in manufacturing, industrial, and factory environments. This evolution means more sensors are being used to capture more sophisticated data. In turn, this shift is greatly enhancing potential visibility and insight for owner-operators. Predictive outperforms reactive A networked system of sensors and mobile devices can provide decision makers with real-time data on the condition, performance, and safety of their assets, enabling more precise decisions.

In stark contrast to the widely used – and typically lagging – indicators that report failures only after they occur, today’s APM 4.0 systems can use sensor data to predict performance degradations and component failures before they happen. No ‘one size-fits-all’ approach Predictive and prescriptive analytics have the power to utilise sensor data to make better decisions – creating significant opportunities to improve asset performance. However, it’s also important to understand that it is not always feasible to invoke predictive strategies to mitigate asset risks or optimize performance. For some assets, it might not be financially feasible to apply predictive strategies because the cost of the cure might be more expensive than the value of the benefit – such as planned downtime. In order to implement an effective APM 4.0 solution, the owner operator should utilise predictive and prescriptive analytics within a wider asset risk management strategy. The roadmap to APM 4.0 While companies are close to achieving APM 4.0, others may not be quite sure where they should begin their adoption journey. It’s important to remember that embarking on the transition from reactive maintenance to a more proactive or predictive strategy is a process. In many cases, the organisation’s culture is the biggest obstacle to overcome. In a reactive environment, “firefighting” maintenance is valued, but in a proactive environment, the strategy should focus on preventing fires from erupting in the first place. When the organisation is focused on preventing failures from happening, the culture begins to shift from reactive to proactive. There will always exist some reactive actions, but being able to minimise reactive work will allow for better planning and scheduling, an increase in overall equipment effectiveness and, ultimately, boosted profitability.

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CASE STUDY

SUPERCHARGING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION YOUNIS ABU KENNEH, IT MANAGER, ESCOTELE, DISCUSSES HOW THE TELECOM PRODUCT AND SERVICES PROVIDER REINFORCED ITS CLOUD-FIRST STRATEGY BY TRANSITIONING TO GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM WITH THE SUPPORT OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION SOLUTIONS PROVIDER ISOLUTIONS.

loud has become synonymous with efficiency, 24/7 availability, flexibility, and convenience at affordable costs. Both regional and global customers are increasingly investing in cloud technologies and cloud-based services to enhance business productivity and growth. The pandemic has further accelerated cloud adoption and

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brought its unique benefits to the forefront, driving naysayers to change their attitudes towards the technology. Businesses are realising the importance of developing a cloudfirst strategy to have a competitive advantage and ensure business continuity. Additionally, the launch of cloud regions from hyperscalers has fuelled the growth of cloud computing in the Middle East.

Understanding that cloud is the way forward, Saudi-based telecom products and services provider Escotele, recently migrated its workloads to Google Cloud. Escotele was looking to increase its productivity, enable smooth collaboration, high availability for its app, and secure remote access in a distributed work environment. Younis Abu Kenneh, IT Manager, Escotele, said, “We decided to host

applications on cloud because it is easy to connect to them from anywhere and does not need any resources or management from the company. Cloud allows us to achieve our business outcomes without having to invest in any infrastructure. “We believe cloud is the future – it helps us to ensure application availability and speed are at its highest performance. In our business, application, connectivity, availability, and speed are of utmost importance.” Kenneh explains that the company decided to embrace cloud and move to Google Cloud Platform as its application needed to process multiple transactions simultaneously in less than a second. This would be seamless and efficient on Google Cloud Platform. Escotele approached iSolutions, an information technology company that specialises in providing high-end, innovative tech solutions, in helping it transition to Google Cloud. As a Google premier partner in the GCC, iSolutions boasts many years of experience empowering and engaging customers in the cloud space. He adds, “Our implementation partner iSolutions supported us in our strategic planning and rolling out our cloud strategy. They helped us a lot with the planning and they handled the implementation process from A to Z – meeting our objective, which was to have the full solution securely hosted on the cloud. Our backup is also hosted on Google Cloud in a different region.” Escotele and iSolutions refactored the application before migrating to Google, and according to Kenneh, the company didn’t face any issues during the process. “This has greatly improved the availability of the application. We have expanded from 500 devices in the market to around 3000 devices until now and the plan is to reach 5000 devices before the end of 2022. This is coming from the fact that our app was running smoothly the whole of last year and that we didn’t face any issues that caused a shutdown in the

ESCOTELE APPROACHED ISOLUTIONS, AN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY COMPANY THAT SPECIALISES IN PROVIDING HIGH-END, INNOVATIVE TECH SOLUTIONS, IN HELPING IT TRANSITION TO GOOGLE CLOUD. AS A GOOGLE PREMIER PARTNER IN THE GCC, ISOLUTIONS BOASTS MANY YEARS OF EXPERIENCE EMPOWERING AND ENGAGING CUSTOMERS IN THE CLOUD SPACE.

server. There was no downtime for even a day, and we also didn’t face any cybersecurity attacks.” He explains that the firm set up more than one layer of backup for its security based on iSolutions’ recommendation. “We set up some rules, and so far, we have never faced any issues related to security.”

Kenneh says Google Cloud Platform offers an immense value proposition to the company. “We were extremely pleased with the unique value Google Cloud offers our business. Its solid and flexible infrastructure, auto scalability to scale up and down when needed, and the fact that our server didn’t go down even for a single day, have proved that our decision to go with Google Cloud Platform was the right one. And what’s more, we didn’t have to worry about the infrastructure as it’s all provided by Google. “Saudi Aramco and Google Cloud announced in 2020 that a cloud region is going to be established in the kingdom. Once this goes live, we will not be facing any issues with the regulations required for the Saudi government.” He further adds that the support and services the company received from Google Cloud and iSolutions, and the cost of Google Cloud Platform make it incomparable to any other players in the market. “Google Cloud is well known to us with its solid infrastructure. This is why we trust Google more than any of its competitors. While comparing all the cloud providers in Saudi Arabia, we found that the support we were getting from iSolutions was the best, and the prices were reasonable compared to other vendors.” By moving to Google Cloud, Escotele has begun its journey to establishing a strong cloud-first strategy, which will shape its future growth. Kenneh concludes, “A cloudfirst strategy allows businesses to save money on software, platforms, and infrastructure. Instead of building their own tech stack, they can engage a premier partner like iSolutions who can provide premium services at affordable costs. Google Cloud Partners, like iSolutions, support businesses to get access to highend cost-efficient services.”

APRIL 2022

CXO INSIGHT ME

CXO 50 AWARDS

MARK OF EXCELLENCE CXO INSIGHT MIDDLE EAST HELD THE FOURTH EDITION OF CXO 50 AWARDS AND CONCLAVE AT CONRAD HOTEL, DUBAI, CELEBRATING IT LEADERS WHO HAVE EMBRACED INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY TO DEFINE THEIR ORGANISATION’S PATH TO THE DIGITAL ERA.

ponsored by Gold Partners: Trellix, Fortinet, Proven Consult, Cohesity, NetApp, Lenovo and Silver Partners: Finesse, D-Link, Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, Epicor, Visiontech Systems, Cloud Box Technologies, Teksalah, BSI, Checkmarx, SolarWinds, Help AG, Logicom and Virsec – the CXO 50 Awards was a huge success, with over 100 attendees. The show began with MC Basil Ayass, a technology industry veteran, introducing the day’s proceedings, which included a half-day conference, featuring keynote addresses and panel discussion. Jayakumar Mohanachandran, Group CIO, Easa Saleh Al Gurg, gave the keynote address on ‘Technology leadership in the changing world’. Mohanachandran elaborated on how the role of a CIO is evolving in today’s digital world and why it must be more about driving strategy, innovation and revenues. Following Mohanachandran’s thoughtprovoking presentation, Terence Sathyanarayan, MD, Pulse Innovations 16

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Systems, shared insights on why CIOs need to evolve as chief transformation strategists to leverage digital opportunities. Next up was the insightful panel discussion, where panel members delved into the key technologies that will take precedence in 2022. Moderated by Jeevan Thankappan, Managing Editor at Insight Media and Publishing and CXO Insight Middle East, the panel featured Mohanachandran; Gregg Petersen, Regional Director Middle East & Africa, Cohesity; Vishal Manchanda, Regional Business Development Director, Proven Consult and Vibin Shaju, Presales Director, Trellix. Throughout the discussions, the expert panel took a deep dive into the current challenges faced by business and IT leaders, technology trends and why it is imperative to have a cloud digital first strategy. Manchanda shed light on how CIOs can navigate the complex post-pandemic business landscape and why it is vital for them to balance innovation and execution. Acknowledging

the same trends, Petersen elaborated on how organisations can derive more value from their data and ways CIOs can continuously drive innovation. Meanwhile, Shaju shared insights into the driving factors behind increasing focus and investments on securing digital transformation initiatives, emphasising that more must be done to always try and stay ahead of the perpetrators, especially as the increasing move to flexible workforce is expanding attack surfaces. The panelists were in consensus that the key technologies that will shape 2022 will be AI, more advanced use cases on cloud, cybersecurity, and analytics among several others. The high-profile event concluded with the awards ceremony, where an exclusive set of 50 individuals were handpicked by CXO Insight Middle East’s esteemed judging panel featuring Arun Tewary, VP-IT, Emirates Flight Catering; Jassim Haji, President, Artificial Intelligence Society of Bahrain and Sebastian Samuel, CIO, AW Rostamani.

Jawad Abu Farha

Samer Abu Hayah

Juma Al Majid

Al Zahra Hospitals

Hend Alshamsi

Javeria Aijaz

Ajman Municipality and Planning Department

Farnek Services

APRIL 2022

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Ahmad Darwish Ali

Ali Juma Alajme

Nakheel

Ministry of Health and Prevention

Mubarik Hussain

Aiman Mahmoud Al Jabr

Bloom Holding

Havelock One

APRIL 2022

Rushdy Mubarak

Jayesh Maganlal

Radisson Hotels Group

DAMAC Properties

Eyad Kashkash

Piyush Kumar Chowhan

Al Ramz

Lulu Group

APRIL 2022

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CXO 50 AWARDS

CXO INSIGHT ME

Jayakumar Mohanachandran

Garry Taylor

Easa Saleh Al Gurg Group

DataFlow Group

Suresh Muthuvadath

Eric Gayet

Apparel Group

Majid Al Futtaim Global Solutions

APRIL 2022

Highest and Furthest Again Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for Primary Storage Find out more

Purestorage.com

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Awais Bin Imran

Abdelghany Eladib (on behalf)

Noor Takaful

SIG Combibloc

Dr Mohamed Baka

Mario Foster

Centre of Excellence for Applied Research and Technology

Al Naboodah Group

APRIL 2022

Manish Bindra

Sulaiman Abdullah Alkharashi

Galadari Group

Tabadul

Anas Salman Kamaluddin

Tariq Valani

YBA Kanoo

ACCOR

APRIL 2022

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Mohammed Al Sharqawy

Sohaib Mohamed Alabdi

Arab Shipbuilding and Repair Yard Bahrain

University of Bahrain

Jacob Mathew

Ahmed Salim Nasser Al Jabri

Government of Abu Dhabi

Directorate General of Health Services Al Dhahirah Governorate

APRIL 2022

Gigi Mathew Thomas

Fayaz Ahamed Badubhai

Ittihad International Investment

Al Yousuf Group

Aliasgar Bohari

Shaker AlOwainati

Zulekha Hospital

BIBF

APRIL 2022

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CXO 50 AWARDS

Bader Husni Abdel Razaq Zyoud

Shrenik Jain

Sharjah Finance Department

Siemens

Shrikant Kaboor ARADA

CXO INSIGHT ME

Umesh Moolchandani

Arul Jose Vigin

Bin Dasmal Group

DIFC Courts

APRIL 2022

Mathew Sheath

Samit Jha

Majid Al Futtaim Global Solutions

Laticrete International

Nithin Geo Thomas Amity University

Girish Chouhan

Arnab Debroy

Motivate Media Group

Metito Overseas

APRIL 2022

CXO INSIGHT ME

CXO 50 AWARDS

Shah E Room Khan

Anoop Paudval

Emirates College of Technology

Al Nisr Publishing

Sreedhar Suragouni Oman Insurance Company

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Eng. Fatima Ali Asgar Ali

Ahmed Al Ahmed

Sharjah Electricity, Water and Gas Authority

Nakheel

APRIL 2022

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FEATURE

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL HOW TO UNLOCK THE PROMISE OF DIGITAL TWINS

digital twin is a virtual replica of a physical system or process. Using sensors, digital twins gather realtime data from physical assets that can be used to run simulations, study performance issues, and improve products or processes. The rapid adoption of digital twins technology is reflected in the market numbers. The research firm, MarketsandMarkets, says the global digital twin market was $3.1 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach $63.5 billion by 2027. According to the Global Market Trajectory and Analytics Report 2022 by Business Wire, the global digital twins market will reach 30

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$35.5 Billion by 2026 - growing by 36.9% over this period. There are different definitions of digital twins, and the concept is not new. To put it simply, it’s a digital representation of a physical product and all its environment representing the entire life cycle of products, including the bidirectional links between the physical asset and its correspondence digital twin. Furthermore, it allows for simulation with actual real-time data instead of prototype. “Digital twin is not limited to one industry or vertical it spans across all industries; the trend initially is embraced where the value is in assets and more

complex systems. It’s designed to improve speed to market, reduce cost, improve performance, predict problems, and open new design capabilities by leveraging data coming from the field,” says Nidal Azba, Head of Solution for Middle East Africa and Turkey at Kyndryl. The digital twin concept is driving innovation and transforming the industries across verticals in terms of market trends. As a result, we are seeing increasing interest in digital twins solutions and that the market is investing, he adds. Stephen Gill, Academic Head of the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt University

Khaled AlShami

Dubai, says digital twin technology is gaining significant attention due to its ability to support innovation and facilitate product development. “It is being embraced by several industries, including manufacturing, automobiles, aerospace, energy and power, oil and gas, and others. Digital twin technology is also increasingly adopted in the energy industry as it can expedite the transition towards renewable energy and net-zero emissions.” The digital twins market is being shaped by advances in technology on the one hand and demand for more useful data on the other, says Khaled AlShami, vice president of solution consulting, MEA, Infor. “We are seeing fast-growing development of digital twin solutions because of the convergence of new technologies including 5G, Internet of Things, Edge, and Cloud. When integrated, these technologies give organisations all the key components they need to develop a digital twin of their operations, or aspects of their operations.” What challenges do digital twins solve? The key drivers for Digital twin technology are clearly in the areas of cost optimisation, increasing process efficiency and customer experience. AlShami from Infor says the use of digital twins is becoming increasingly important in sectors including healthcare, manufacturing,

Mehmood Khan

DIGITAL TWIN TECHNOLOGY CAN HELP AVOID POTENTIAL ISSUES IN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT BY MEANS OF RECEIVING INPUT FROM SENSORS. THE SENSORS GATHER THE PHYSICAL PRODUCT DATA AND SIMULATE THE OBJECT IN REALTIME, PROVIDING VALUABLE INSIGHTS INTO PERFORMANCE AND POTENTIAL PROBLEMS. and logistics. It makes interaction between machines and humans more understandable, helping users to visualise what is happening, take away key insights, and share insights with others, enabling collaboration. “Digital Twin technology can be very beneficial for driving digital transformations, business model innovation, and operational optimisation,” says Vijay Jaswal, CTO,

Nidal Azba

Middle East and Turkey, Software AG. “For example, a virtual digital representation of a supply chain can enhance the visibility that all stakeholders know exactly where a delivery is, which route it has taken, and when it will arrive at its destination.” Digital twin technology can help avoid potential issues in product development by means of receiving input from sensors. The sensors gather the physical product data and simulate the object in real-time, providing valuable insights into performance and potential problems. “Digital twin capabilities can eliminate many aspects of prototype testing using 3D simulations, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), allowing for better streamlining of the design process. For example, engineers can identify potential quality and manufacturing issues even before finalising the designs. This saves costs as prototyping is accelerated and production is done more efficiently with real-time data, “ says Gill. He adds another way that digital twins can resolve issues is through predictive maintenance. Digital twins can help identify malfunctions even before they happen. Sensors embedded in machines feed performance data into the digital twin in real-time. This helps to tailor service and maintenance plans, enhance worker safety, reduce the risk of accidents and lower maintenance costs. Examples include

APRIL 2022

CXO INSIGHT ME

FEATURE

Stephen Gill

Vijay Jaswal

pumps, engines, power plants, and manufacturing lines. The possibilities of solving problems are endless, says Azba from Kyndryl. “Engineers can leverage the digital twin to inspect the state of the real-world object, and to me, this is extremely valuable. As a result, you can imagine the number of problems that can be solved. The connection between physical and virtual drives instantaneous perspective of manufacturing combined with AI and machine learning will deliver optimum performance and use of resources to provide the right solution at the right time.” 32

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THE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY CONTINUES INVESTING IN RESEARCH AND DESIGN TO EXPAND THE TRADITIONAL SIMULATION TO A DIGITAL TWIN MODEL LEVERAGING THE RAPID ADAPTION OF 3D PRINTING TECHNOLOGY, WHICH BROUGHT REVOLUTIONARY CHANGES TO THE INDUSTRY. What is the difference between simulations and digital twins? While a simulation replicates what could happen to a product, a digital twin provides real-time data by replicating what is happening to an actual product in the real world. Simulations can be used to analyse the shortest distance between workstations or the impact of having more storage facilities. “A digital twin, however, can recreate digital representations of existing shop floors and can run multiple simulations. The regular transfer of information between a digital twin and its corresponding physical environment makes real-time simulation possible. This can help improve multiple aspects in operations from staff training, customer service to scheduling and more,” says Gill from Heriot-Watt University. In terms of product design, while advanced simulations can analyse thousands of variables, digital twin technology can do more. For example, Boeing integrated digital twin technology in aircraft design and production to analyse how diverse materials will fare throughout the

aircraft’s life cycle. As a result, Boeing achieved a 40% improvement in the quality of certain parts it designed - as quoted in Aviation Today. Additionally, Tesla uses digital twin technology for each vehicle to optimise design, predictive maintenance, and enhance self-driving initiatives. New use cases The manufacturing industry continues investing in research and design to expand the traditional simulation to a digital twin model leveraging the rapid adaption of 3D printing technology, which brought revolutionary changes to the industry. 3D vendors are collaborating and integrating their capabilities with digital twin technology using a software solution to reduce production cost and eliminate the need for multiple physical prototypes using sensor. Internet of things (IOT) technology, the availability of increased bandwidth, compute power and storage are also enabling such solutions. “We see an increasing demand in healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. The FDA, for example, is working with researchers to develop digital twins of drugs to improve medical product safety. The FDA is also actively working with Siemens to demo drug production with a digital factory line,” says Azba. Mehmood Khan, IFS Managing Director, Middle East, says it’s less about new use cases and more about the increased scope that comes through data interoperability and the potential to link digital twins together. Simulations can now cover broader processes than just a single asset, such as an entire supply chain. “The fact that so many machines are now connected through IIoT means a much richer source of data for modeling as well. In manufacturing for example, any individual machine may be relatively simplistic and in the past may not have warranted a digital twin in its own right, but in the aggregate, those machines provide crucial information for monitoring and optimising entire production plans,” he concludes.

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INTERVIEW

AHEAD OF THE CURVE INFOBLOX CEO, JESPER ANDERSEN, TALKS ABOUT HOW THE COMPANY IS TACKLING THE THREAT LANDSCAPE WITH CLOUD-MANAGED DDI AND NETWORK SECURITY SERVICES.

ow has Covid-19 affected your business? I would answer that question in two ways. First, there’s the impact on the people side of the business - the culture, the employees. That has been a little tough. Not just on Infoblox but the industry in general. We call it the Great Resignation. Everyone in high tech is experiencing higher attrition than usual. And a part of that is because many people we hired in the last two years have never really met another Infoblox person face to face; so they don’t have quite the same feeling for the company. But that is on the employee side. On the business side, it’s been super positive for us as this move to work from home has been good for us. I can give you a good example of one 34

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of the largest professional services companies in the world. They had to figure out how 300,000 employees could work from home in a secure way, literally overnight, when the pandemic hit. We are critical in that mix. We are rapidly becoming a half a billiondollar company. We’re growing at over 20%, and I’m very proud that we are approaching 1800 employees. Are you investing in more resources in the region? We have been hiring a lot of people here over the last couple of years to make sure we have the right coverage across the Gulf countries and Africa. We have hired a much bigger team in Saudi Arabia. So I am always looking to add more people where there’s demand.

Do you have a cloud-first approach now? When I came to Infoblox seven and a half years ago, my vision was that just like compute, and storage had moved to a cloud-managed world, the same thing would happen in networking. That was one of the reasons why I left Cisco because I just didn’t see them having the ability to do that. Around six years ago, we started building our cloud-managed platform, which we call BloxOne. First, we launched BloxOne Threat Defense, and a couple of years ago, BloxOne DDI, the industry’s first and true cloud-managed DDI solution. It means that controller’s single pane of glass management is in the cloud, and you can deploy DNS and DHCP in containers, wherever you want

If you are a heavily regulated big bank, you are often three or four versions behind our newest version in the NIOS world. That is not because of us, but because of your ability as a customer to manage your infrastructure and upgrades. That’s why ultimately cloud is a huge advantage. If you think about proxy servers, it used to be Bluecoat Networks or Websense. They had an appliance-centric model. Today, it’s Zscaler, and they’re just a cloud solution.

– at a remote branch level, in your data centre, or even on your laptop. Most of our customers still run an on-prem, traditional NIOS (network identity operating system), and we have worked very hard to extend that NIOS solution into the public cloud. As companies extended their corporate networks into the cloud, we needed to ensure they maintain the same great visibility and control over their DNS and DHCP services.

What is the idea behind Infoblox 3.0? Infoblox 3.0 is my term for the transformation that Infoblox has been going through. It is a very different ball game when you transform from a company that primarily sold NIOS appliances on a perpetual license model to a new world where you sell cloud services on a subscription basis. Here you are managed by different type of financial metrics. Of course, we have a P&L, but the metric that the financial markets value us as a company is based on our annual recurring revenue and gross and net

What is the advantage of moving the management pane to the cloud? You’d want to move to a cloud world because it is the cheaper total cost of ownership, and it is easy to manage. In the old days, when we created a new version of NIOS, we used to either send our customers physical appliances or a CD or DVD. Or they just downloaded it via our support site. The upgrades to NIOS have always been our strength. But companies always have to be careful about upgrades because of the missioncritical nature of DNS and DHCP. If you are a big bank, you’d want to schedule that upgrade over a weekend or a holiday. But in a cloud-first world, there is no need for that. We manage it all. We are rolling out new features and capabilities, and for the customer, it is just a browser refresh. That is a lower cost of ownership, and you get new features much more frequently.

IF YOU ARE A BIG BANK, YOU’D WANT TO SCHEDULE THAT UPGRADE OVER A WEEKEND OR A HOLIDAY. BUT IN A CLOUD-FIRST WORLD, THERE IS NO UPGRADE. WE MANAGE IT ALL. WE ARE ROLLING OUT NEW FEATURES AND CAPABILITIES, AND FOR THE CUSTOMER, IT IS JUST A BROWSER REFRESH. THAT IS A LOWER COST OF OWNERSHIP, AND YOU GET NEW FEATURES MUCH MORE FREQUENTLY.

retention. And in a SAS world, you have things like customer success managers that are very different from your traditional support model. Infoblox 3.0 is the transformation from Infoblox 1.0 through 2.0 and into this new world where we are a modern cloud-managed SAS company. Is DNS security critical to the overall security posture? I think it’s critical. In today’s modern enterprises, the approach they take is a defense in depth strategy. Companies realise that they can’t buy all the security solutions from one vendor. You need firewalls and perimeter defense from someone. You want your cloud-managed security solutions from someone else. You want your threat intelligence to be a collaboration across different domains. There’s a big difference between applicationlevel security and infrastructure-level security. So a defense in depth strategy says that I will use point vendors for what they are best at. Now, we are the best at DNS security. Large enterprises are very focused on getting all of their security solutions to work well together. And it does me no good if I have dozens of point solutions that don’t talk to each other. This is why solutions like security orchestration and SIEM solutions, where you integrate data from different products, have become so important. Our job at Infoblox is to make sure our solutions integrate as best as possible with other solutions. We have a lot of pre-built integrations with what we call the security ecosystem because the information we manage is so critical for other solutions. For example, when we see a query to a malicious website, we shouldn’t just keep that information and block that to ourselves. We know the IP address that made that query. We should tell the endpoint protection software that this IP address may be at risk. We should make sure the SIEM systems have not just the raw information from log files we have but correlated information. That’s why we built a lot of different integrations with other systems.

APRIL 2022

CXO INSIGHT ME

FEATURE

DECODING LOW-CODE REVOLUTION TIPS FROM INDUSTRY EXPERTS FOR MANAGING LOW-CODE/NO-CODE PLATFORMS

an you build software without coding? The unthinkable has become a reality with the advent of low-code/nocode platforms that allow the broader IT and business community to create applications that drive business value. Compared to traditional application development methods with high maintenance costs, low-code/nocode tools offer a compelling value proposition as enterprises can reduce the turnaround time of business applications development. In addition, low-code platforms are easy-to-use with drag and drop features and generally don’t have any bug-related issues that plague traditional coding. According to Gartner, 70 percent of new applications developed by enterprises will use low-code/no-code technologies by 2025. The research firm 36

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says, on average, 41% of employees outside of IT – or business technologists – customise or build data or technology solutions. Gartner predicts that half of all new low-code clients will come from business buyers outside the IT organisation by year-end 2025. “Enterprises rely heavily on low code for building fit-for-purpose and customised applications. It helps users cater to their specific business requirements, develop and deploy applications rapidly, deliver personalised customer experiences, and ensure flexibility,” says Varun Goswami, AVP - Products, Newgen Software. Also, enterprises are looking at leveraging low code in conjunction with other newage technologies such as robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the cloud. These technologies can help users become future-ready and maximise the return on their investments

in low code. Lastly, more users across industries will consider investing in a low code-based platform to develop enterprisegrade applications rapidly. Though low-code/no-code platforms are way cheaper as you pay for a service, it comes with a few risks and don’t have an array of tools or functions to create highly complex apps. “Low-code is advantageous for the agility it delivers, but if the application build is too rigid, even with the right low-code platform, it’s very difficult to make changes on the go. When it comes to the modernisation of legacy applications using low-code, organisations should have a deployment plan, and it should be done in modules, following a phased approach,” says Dinesh Varadharajan - Chief Product Officer - Kissflow Low-code is not a silver bullet or solution for all the inefficiencies of

Varun Goswami

Dinesh Varadharajan

modern business, says Mark Ackerman, area VP – Middle East & Africa, ServiceNow. “You don’t want to have citizen developers use low-code to automate bad workflows — the “garbage in, garbage out” principle applies here. It probably also isn’t smart to use low-code to build redundant apps. For example, even if an employee dislikes the company’s app for managing leave, it’s probably not a good use of time for them to go off and build their own app. “In short, you don’t want your citizen developers turning into a shadow IT department. You can avoid that outcome by putting guardrails around low-code app development. As an example, at ServiceNow we launched a lightweight governance program that certifies citizen developers, reviews all proposals for new apps, and checks their work to ensure no bad code is implemented in our production instances.” A common mistake with low code deployments is siloed application development, leading to vulnerable apps. However, modern low code platforms empower organisations to onboard fusion teams for developing applications. “In a fusion team, application skeletons designed by citizen developers are further nurtured by professional IT developers and the ops team. Users must opt for low code platforms that facilitate the efforts of fusion teams and help deliver quality applications while ensuring security and compliance. Furthermore, a low-code platform

must offer visibility into the application development process to ensure monitoring and governance,” says Goswami. As low-code/no-code platforms become increasingly common in enterprises, there is also a need to create awareness of these frameworks’ security risks and vulnerabilities. One of the ways to mitigate risks is to buy software and platforms from reputable vendors in the market and use software bill of materials (SBOM) from them to gain visibility into applications developed by these tools. “Low-code application developed should have a robust audit system,” says Varadharajan. “Again, just because it’s developed in low-code doesn’t mean it can have its own process; all protocols should be followed when it comes to security. For example, consider access control - low-code often allows business users to develop applications, but IT needs to control access for what they can do, and what data they can use should be monitored and controlled.” According to Goswami, enterprises need to remain cautious while selecting the right platform. They need to assess the criticality of the data and documents in their business operations and determine the required level of security and control for meeting the statuary compliances. He adds users must look for a platform that provides complete control over applications and documents. “They should also seek application and infrastructure monitoring capability to

Mark Ackerman

have a bird’s eye view of the production ecosystem. Enterprises must choose a duly certified and time-tested platform to comply with industry standards like PCI DSS, HIPAA, and others and mitigate risks associated with data security.” What should users look for while evaluating a low-code development platform? Not all low-code/no-code platforms are made equal. Effective low-code platforms need to be able to provide the right support for developers and citizen developers alike. “It should have built-in intelligence that can predict possible issues before they arise and assist in promoting better business decisions. In addition, a full suite of app-development tools can help empower developers at all levels to create powerful apps at speed and scale,” says Ackerman from ServiceNow. Varadharajan from Kissflow sums up: “Look for a platform that integrates easily with various products and platforms. This will ensure that you’ll be able to coordinate complicated workflows involving many systems and automate clean-up using AIpowered tools. The more pre-built, ready-to-use templates there are, the better. These will help with faster implementation and thus deliver a more rapid return on investment. There’s no sense in investing in a platform if it can’t accommodate your demands as your business grows.”

APRIL 2022

CXO INSIGHT ME

INTERVIEW

A CATALYST FOR INNOVATION ABDUL RAHMAN AL THEHAIBAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST, TURKEY & AFRICA GOOGLE CLOUD, TALKS ABOUT HOW BUSINESSES IN SAUDI CAN UNLOCK BUSINESS GROWTH AND NEW OPPORTUNITIES WITH CLOUD TRANSFORMATION.

e are seeing significant investment and expansion opportunities in Saudi Arabia post COVID-19. What impact can digital transformation and businesses migrating to the cloud have on the Saudi economy? The Saudi market is one of the largest across the MENA region in terms of IT spending. From the Google Cloud perspective, we wanted to have an in-depth assessment of the market potential in Saudi. Accordingly, we commissioned the economic strategy firm Alphabeta to identify cloud adoption’s potential and economic impact. The study encompassed ten countries in the Middle East, which included the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The study has revealed that businesses in these countries can potentially unlock almost $600 billion worth of opportunities by 2030 through digital technologies, powered by cloud adoption, which is a key pillar of digital transformation. In Saudi specifically, the study has revealed that businesses in the Kingdom can unlock almost $202 billion of economic impact in 2023 by fully utilising the digital technologies enabled by the cloud. This figure is nearly equivalent to 25 percent of KSA’s GDP in 2019 and clearly shows how digital technologies enabled by the cloud could transform economic development in KSA. The study also sheds light on the different sectors in KSA that, when digitally

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transformed, can have the highest potential in driving economic growth; public sector, consumer, retail and hospitality, healthcare, manufacturing, education, and training. Over the past decade, the Saudi government has taken very proactive steps in driving digital transformation across the Kingdom to power digital growth. For example, the Kingdom launched the National Strategy for digital transformation, a five-year strategy to realise a smart government with digitally enabled services across the board. We’ve also seen important government-led initiatives launched, such as the “Industrial cities telecom infrastructure initiative,” which aims to develop the digital infrastructure of industrial cities in the Kingdom. Can you tell us about Google Cloud’s region in KSA and your upcoming plans there? Our strategy in the MENA region consists of three pillars – infrastructure, people, and the partner ecosystem. Our cloud regions provide faster service with low latency in a given location so organisations can deliver their products and services more reliably and at higher speeds. Since KSA is one of our key markets in the region, Google Cloud has announced a memorandum of understanding with Aramco in 2018 to launch a cloud region in the Kingdom. Building on that MoU, we concluded an agreement in December 2020 where Google Cloud will deploy and operate a cloud region in Saudi Arabia, while a local strategic reseller, sponsored by Aramco, will offer cloud services to customers, with a particular focus on businesses in the Kingdom. This new cloud region will enable Google Cloud customers in KSA to confidently grow and scale their offerings in this market and support companies as they deliver their products and services to consumers. The cloud region will be located in Dammam, and we are currently investing in resources and building our team out of a Riyadh-based office. The team will support the cloud region’s deployment

THE INCREASE IN CYBER AND RANSOMWARE ATTACKS OVER RECENT YEARS HAS BEEN A WAKE-UP CALL FOR THE REGION ON THE EXTREME IMPORTANCE OF SECURITY, AND WE TAKE THIS MATTER VERY SERIOUSLY. WE HAVE BEEN WORKING WITH BUSINESSES TO ENSURE THEIR DATA IS SECURE IN THE CLOUD. and operation as we prepare for the launch – which we are yet to announce. The cloud region will be twice as energyefficient as an average enterprise data centre when it is active. Already, our customers based in KSA, such as Herfy and customers who have a footprint in the Kingdom such as Namshi and Noon, depend on us to drive operational efficiencies, reduce IT costs, and accelerate their digital transformations to serve end consumers better. Are there any sectors in KSA where Google Cloud is seeing the potential for growth and interest in digital transformation? Our strategy in KSA is to work closely with government and private companies, supporting them throughout their digital transformation journey with our expertise that goes beyond decades of best security practices, and by providing infrastructure, platform, industry solutions and expertise – all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers who choose Google Cloud as their cloud provider do so due to several differentiated technology

offerings: flexibility (open source/multicloud), which creates room for greater collaboration; artificial intelligence/ machine learning of the highest quality and data solutions enabling better decision-making; culture of innovation in research, development, and engineering, producing modern products and services; security- protecting the privacy and security of corporate and customer data; and lower IT costs and the opportunity to optimise operations using AI and machine learning solutions. In KSA specifically, we have seen interest from several industries to go digital such as the digital natives, startups, retailers as they transform to e-commerce platforms, and financial institutions as the Central Bank has started issuing new licenses to encourage FSIs to become digital banks, in addition to telecom and the public sector. How secure is Google Cloud? The increase in cyber and ransomware attacks over recent years has been a wake-up call for the region on the extreme importance of security, and we take this matter very seriously. We have been working with businesses to ensure their data is secure in the cloud. Having a data centre in the country is also an indicator of how we are addressing the security aspect so that businesses run their workloads locally. We help our customers minimise cyber attacks using the strength of our platform, security tooling, security analytics, and fraud management products. Customers who work with us trust Google Cloud with their data as we have decades of experience in security best practices. We have pioneered the “zero trust” approach– an architecture that builds in multiple layers of defense against unauthorised access. This approach, and other security solutions, help customers minimise the impact of cyberattacks and prevent them completely. Google Cloud also launched Beyond Corp, a securityoriented engineering effort begun in 2012 to re-architect the Corp network to remove privileges granted solely based on having a Corp IP, instead basing authentication on more secure factors.

APRIL 2022

CXO INSIGHT ME

INTERVIEW

WHY PROACTIVE PREVENTION IS THE BEST STRATEGY MAYA HOROWITZ, VP RESEARCH AT CHECK POINT SOFTWARE, TALKS ABOUT KEY CYBERSECURITY TRENDS TO WATCH OUT FOR THIS YEAR.

hat did you showcase at GISEC Global 2022? At GISEC, we showcased all of our product lines. Today, you see fifth-generation attacks across networks, cloud, and endpoints. Our main focus at the show was our Infinity architecture, which offers protection against these threat vectors and simplifies security management. Infinity architecture is based on two primary principles. The first one is that we do prevention. Infinity platform is powered by our cyber threat intelligence database, which correlates data from our customers. Our top priority is to ensure that we don’t block real traffic and create false positives. We want our customers to use this platform to stop the attacks, not just see something has happened. The second one is to be a holistic solution. We don’t believe in point solutions but an integrated threat prevention platform that can protect the entire IT infrastructure of our customers and help them stay ahead of threat actors. What has been the impact of this pandemic on the threat landscape? It has gotten worse. Our 2022 security report revealed that organisations experienced a 50 percent increase in weekly cyber-attacks last year. It is because these attacks are more successful and lucrative. We have also seen evolving attacks on mobile devices, major cloud services vulnerabilities, and supply chain attacks. The move to remote and hybrid work has expanded the attack surface because employees now connect from everywhere. Because this transition was done so fast, no one had time to think about security. As a result, threat actors are growing in confidence and sophistication. 40

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of these types of attacks, and they could come from anywhere. It is true nationstates are using ransomware more than ever before, and sometimes they do it to extort money. However, the good news is that governments and law enforcement agencies worldwide are cracking down on these ransomware groups.

What kind of key attack vectors and techniques do you see now? One of the most prevalent vulnerabilities is remote code execution. We also see many DDoS attacks. But, the most interesting thing is the rise in the number of ransomware attacks, which cost its victims millions of dollars and stolen data. Especially in the past year, we have seen the emergence of a large number of ransomware and wipers, which are ransomware without a key, targeted at critical infrastructure, leading to massive disruption of day-to-day lives and posing grievous harm to physical security. Have there been any nation-state attacks against critical infrastructure in the Middle East? There have been some of them, but we don’t really know whether these are nationstates or cybercriminals. Some of these attacks were attributed to cyber-criminal gangs like in the case of the Colonial Pipeline attack in the US. But there are others like the attacks on railways and gas stations in Iran, for which no one has claimed to be responsible. So it could be external or internal. We see more and more

Should companies pay after ransomware attacks? That is a million-dollar question. The more you pay, the more will be the number of attacks. So FBI and other law enforcement agencies recommend not paying the ransom. But on the other hand, if it is a hospital where human lives are dependent on systems, it is harder to say don’t pay. So the best thing is to be prepared with a plan and block these attacks. It is important to note that the nature of ransomware attacks is changing. The ones who attacked Nvidia and Samsung didn’t even encrypt the files; they just stole them. So, it is no longer about protecting your backup servers. Yes, backup is important. But you need to prevent data from getting exfiltrated out of the network. Do you see more supply chain attacks now? When we released our cybersecurity trends report in mid-2021, we said this was the hottest thing because there were high-profile supply chain attacks against SolardWinds, Kaseya, etc. In addition, we saw the emergence of ransomware gangs like REvil. But it’s stopped now. Although we saw vulnerabilities like Log4j, which would have been perfect to be exploited for supply chain attacks, it is not something we see too much of now. Maybe, these attacks have become more sophisticated, something only top-tier threat actors can carry out.

INTERVIEW

DELIVERING MOMENTS OF SERVICE MICHAEL OUISSI, CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER, IFS, ON WHY THE ELEVATED CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IS AN IMPORTANT COMPONENT OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION SUCCESS.

they produce value for themselves and their customers. So that’s the target of business value engineering that we do with our customers. And we always did that in a very face-to-face fashion and recorded the outcomes. However, we didn’t have a specific tool to document where value is created. Now, the team has come up with a way to do that – to document value in a tool that has got more than 7000 assets in it. This speaks for how much we had to change our business model to adapt to what you might want to call new normal.

hat has been the impact of the pandemic on your business? We have seen incredible growth over the past couple of years. The question is, could it have been more? It would have been easier if we hadn’t had a pandemic. Organisationally, the impact was that we had to suddenly start delivering projects from A to Z, including go-live kickoffs, without any face-to-face customer interaction, which was new. Obviously, we had to internally organise ourselves around delivering projects and capturing value virtually. And there’s a nice byproduct that has evolved from this, which is called our digital business value engineering tool. We usually do business value engineering as part of our culture to understand where our customers provide a moments of service to their customers and how

Now everyone is talking about business recovery and postpandemic new normal. Do you have any tips for the companies in the region to navigate this new landscape? The new normal for me is that interactions have changed. Supply chains and their resilience have changed massively through the pandemic. And I think there are a few things that customers and any business need to realise. One is what we call the moment of service or outcome-based services. In the absence of personal interaction or a reduction in personal interaction, the experience you create with your customers becomes more critical. So any moment of service becomes more important, and you need to deliver it in different ways. The first one is outcome-based service. You need to understand what is essential to your customers and build your business around it to provide perfect moments

of service. And secondly, you have to make sure that your customer service is up to scratch, and you can deliver it both reliably and profitably. And the third piece is supply chain has become a vulnerable point in anybody’s business, especially in production and manufacturing-oriented businesses, where securing supply chains from various sources and having transparency has become more critical than ever. So you need to understand where the risk in the supply chain is, how it affects the rest of your business and how it impacts your moment of service to your customer. What is the idea behind the moment of service? Let me give you an example of the moment of service. Let’s assume you are a telco consumer, and you’ve got a problem with your internet connection at home. So the first moment of service is, for example, your experience when you try to get help. The second experience is how fast and well equipped the person who needs to help is. And the third piece is if it gets fixed the first time that person visits your place. It goes through the whole supply chain. You need to have the right stock in place to be able to do the first time fix; you need to have the optimal routing and scheduling of your field service technicians not only in terms of who’s closest and who’s fastest, but who knows how to deal with such a problem. So there are many things you need to get right to provide this one moment of service.

APRIL 2022

CXO INSIGHT ME

INTERVIEW

DEMOCRATISING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RAMPRAKASH RAMAMOORTHY, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AT MANAGEENGINE, TALKS ABOUT WHY AI IS A GAME-CHANGING TECH TREND.

o you think the future of work is going to be hybrid? Yeah, it’s going to be hybrid. If you look it broadly, on the one hand, consumers are going digital the first interaction with your brand will probably be digital. But, on the other, many of your employees are going to be remote. And that opens a lot of opportunities, but at the same time, it also leads to a lot of security and privacy challenges. So, it is important to be well prepared so that you don’t lose your competitive edge. Is AI going to be one of the top trends in IT this year? Yes, AI is definitely going to be the biggest trend, and it is the rubber meets the road moment for AI. We have seen a lot of consumer AI over the last few years in terms of personal assistants, and better social network feeds, etc. In the post-pandemic world, AI will be a crucial component of managing IT because many new variables have come in. For example, it is imperative for customers to interact with your brand only digitally. Your employees are faced with many new security vulnerabilities because data is no longer restricted to only corporate networks. Traditionally, security has been rule-based, and now, AI will change the game by looking at your past behaviour and analyzing patterns from reams of data. AI will help you create ad hoc rules on the fly, identify what is normal for your organisation, and then create a very flexible, non-rule-based system that can make a difference in how you manage security in this increasingly digital-first environment. Can you tell us about know-how in AI? We have been working on AI for the last ten years, and we have shipped a lot of products

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APRIL 2022

across our suite of products, primarily focused on statistical machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing. We have made many strides in this, even in the early years of AI. In the last three-four years, we have been specifically focusing on AI with explanation because enterprise AI is something where there are a lot of workflows involved—for example, predicting an outage using my network monitoring solution. If there is a 60 percent chance of an outage, I alert my teams and set the ball rolling to see what is potentially coming. But if there is an 80 percent chance of outage, I will probably have to inform my customers about some service disruption. So there are a lot of workflows that we built around these decisions with AI. We have created an explanation-first, causationfirst AI module across statistical machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing. Are you offering any low-code/no-code platforms, given the lack of AI skills? At our recent user conference, we have launched our App Creator solution, which is basically Zoho Creator hosted on-prem. Now, we have a lot of AI features in Zoho

Creator, a low-code platform for building custom apps. Slowly we would see them coming into App Creator as well because they have the same backend. The idea is that when you put a lot of these no-code, low-code power into your developers’ hands, the possibilities are endless. We’re also investing in techniques like transfer learning, few-shot learning, etc., with very limited data. With as little as five to 10 samples, users will be able to customise the AI module. So today, we have our OCR stack or sentiment analysis stack available via Zoho Creator, which will be available to the app creator the on-premise version of the same as well. Your data centre products are built from the ground-up right. Is that a significant differentiator for ManageEngine? Yes, that was possible because of dogfooding all the experiments we did initially. Our data centre runs on ManageEngine, and our business runs on Zoho. So we had a lot of Zoho Corp only releases, which helped us set the ground. In 2014, when we moved from the research into the production phase, it was all very new. People talked about AI in terms of self-driving cars, curing cancer, etc. How do I put this into my everyday work? How can I make an impact and differentiate from the competition? That is when we realised the need for explanation. Our first AI release was insight24/7, which is our network monitoring solution. Even our own ManageEngine users were not able to appreciate it because there were no explanations in it. So when we added an explanation, we saw the usage going up. So definitely, this dogfooding has helped to gain some perspectives on this very emerging tech.

INTERVIEW

BUILDING TRUST WAEL MOHAMED, CEO OF FORESCOUT, TALKS ABOUT HOW THE COMPANY IS HELPING ITS USERS TO REMEDIATE CYBER THREATS FROM CONNECTED DEVICES WITHOUT DISRUPTION OF BUSINESS.

ou joined Forescout in March last year. Before that, the company had three CEOs in six months. What is your vision as the CEO? As you know, I joined Forecout after an 11-year stint at Trend Micro, where I successfully transformed it into one of the largest cybersecurity companies in the world. Forescout is a great company that is a market leader in IoT security, an area that will be the focus of next surface of attacks; it’s something cybersecurity needs to pay attention to. The more I looked at Forescout, I realised that some of the largest customers already use it. The company had multiple CEOs before I joined because, during COVID, the company went through the process of being a public company to a private one. So naturally, in the process, the company had gone through some level of change in priorities. The previous CEO asked me to come and help as a board member. And then, as I got closer, I got more excited about the company and became the CEO. Forecout is talking of active defense for the enterprise of things. What do you mean by that? We believe endpoints in organisations have changed dramatically from just being PCs, laptops, and printers to other devices. Either these devices are smart monitors in an office, or they could be smart MRI machines in healthcare. It could be an operational

technology asset or even a connected sensor in manufacturing. All these devices have IP addresses now and have an enormous potential impact if compromised by threat actors. It is our job to be able to help our customers. First, discover all these devices, help them govern these devices, and align them with a framework. Is traditional security failing us? As a security leader in the industry for the last 25 years, I don’t think we’re failing. We hear about attacks that make it to the news. Nonetheless, there are millions of attacks that the industry stops every single day. There are unsung heroes in our industry. However, we still have a lot more work to do because attackers are becoming more sophisticated and have different motivations. We need to collaborate and innovate faster. We have a bigger mountain to climb, and we all work hard to climb it every day. What makes IoT security very difficult? The number and diversity of IoT devices are growing rapidly, and it can be a challenge to control and monitor them. Bad guys are actually targeting these devices to infiltrate networks. So you will see them come into this weak surface, take a position and use it as a launchpad for something dangerous. We have identified millions of IoT devices potentially at risk and have been working with package owners to mitigate these risks.

Is ransomware the biggest attack vector we need to watch out for? It’s not ransomware itself because ransomware has existed for many years. It is the different use case of ransomware that has changed. It is no longer about compromising your PC or stealing files. Now ransomware gangs can capture pipelines and shut down the whole operations. They can disrupt business continuity because they know it is the most valuable to some customers. And they use it as a way to extort money; it is very unique and dangerous. So we definitely we have a lot of work to be able to reduce this type of attacks and organisations also need to revise their processes to basically get in front of it. Is zero trust the way forward? We have been talking about zero trust for a while now. Zero trust is about architecture more than technology. We all work hard to contribute to this architecture. For me, the most secure thing on the internet is something not connected to the internet, which is not realistic. Zero trust is to be able to manage risks and reduce the surface of attack in such a way that customers can continue to do their business. It is the way organisations have to architect their systems with zero trust in mind. But, this is not to say, ‘ I do not trust anything.’ It is basically putting in place an architecture to make sure if something malicious comes in, it should not be able to cause any damage.

APRIL 2022

CXO INSIGHT ME

PRODUCTS

TCL 30 series TCL has launched its TCL 30 series line-up in the UAE market. The line-up include TCL 30 5G, TCL 30+, TCL 30, TCL 30 SE, and TCL 30 E, further reinforcing the company’s winning value, great performance and innovation propositions in a variety of accessible price points. The TCL 30 5G, TCL 30+, TCL 30, and TCL 30 SE all feature a 50MP AI triple camera, while the TCL 30 E has a dual camera with 50MP main lens. And for those that love group selfies, an ultra-wide front camera is available on TCL 30 5G andTCL 30+, so everyone can comfortably get in shot, bottling precious moments with loved ones. Social media enthusiasts will relish Steady Snap, pausing time and clearly capturing subjects in motion; Intelligent AI detection, which detects up to 22 different scenes; AI HDR video, adjusting exposure

CXO INSIGHT ME

APRIL 2022

and optimizing details; Low Light HDR for wellbalanced shots in low light; and One Shot, providing different image types from one snap. With 6.7-inch FHD+ AMOLED screens on TCL 30 5G, TCL 30+, and TCL 30, as well as a 6.52-inch mini-notch display on TCL 30 SE and 30 E, details are crisply highlighted and colors are boosted, enhancing every scene so customers can feel closer to the action. Dual speakers are also featured on the TCL 30+ and 30, so customers can immerse themselves in their own world, whether watching movies, gaming, or listening to music. All five phones feature long-lasting battery power. The TCL 30 SE and TCL 30 E come with 5000mAh of power, whilst TCL 30+, and TCL 30 have 5010mAh battery power, relieving battery anxiety with better than day-long battery life.

Ring security system Ring has announced its affordable, easy-to-install security system, Ring Alarm (2nd Generation), in the UAE. A sleek, customisable and easy to install home security system, Ring Alarm offers commitment-free home security where it’s needed most, keeping you connected to your property when you are both home and away.

Ring Alarm works as a stand-alone product for anyone looking to add an easy-to-install Alarm system to their home. For that extra layer of security, integrate Ring Alarm with Ring Video Doorbells and Security Cameras in the Ring app, so that when the Alarm sounds, it will automatically trigger all Ring cameras to begin recording (when subscribed to a Ring Protect plan), even if they do not detect motion. Ring Alarm also works with select Alexa-enabled devices, so users can arm, disarm and check the status of their Alarm with simple voice commands. Simply use the Ring app to connect the Base Station via Wi-Fi or Ethernet, install the Contact Sensor(s) on the doors and/or windows of choice, and place the Motion Detector(s) to monitor for movement. Customers can utilise one-touch buttons on the Ring Alarm Keypad to sound the Alarm or to activate Assisted Monitoring (with Ring Protect Plus) and notify three preset contacts that there is a medical emergency or fire. Plus, the Keypad’s Modes buttons make it easy for customers to set their Alarm to one of three modes–Disarmed, Home, or Away Mode, as needed. Ring Alarm has compact easy-to-mount sensors to fit into smaller spaces, for added convenience and flexibility where it’s needed most.

OPPO Reno7 Pro 5G Powered by the new Flagship Portrait Camera System built around two imaging sensors — the IMX709 and the IMX766 — Reno7 Pro 5G delivers a generational leap in portrait image performance, offering unlimited possibilities in photo and video at the touch of a button. One of the most exciting developments found on the front camera is the next-gen flagship RGBW sensor exclusively co-developed with Sony for brighter lowlight shooting experience. To make it even better, OPPO’s Quadra Binning algorithm has also been embedded into the IMX709, making it the first time a smartphone’s own algorithm has been embedded into a third-party CMOS sensor, greatly improving cross-platform compatibility and image processing efficiency. Together with the industry-first use of DOL-HDR technology on the front camera, and Smart Wide-angle adjustment, Reno7 Pro 5G’s front camera enables users to easily capture highquality, HDR, professional-looking selfies with ease. Inheriting the hallmark OPPO Glow design of the Reno series, the Reno7 Pro 5G comes in two fresh new colors: Startrails Blue and Starlight Black.

APRIL 2022

CXO INSIGHT ME

BLOG

SECURITY IN THE AGE OF DISRUPTION SUNIL PAUL, MD OF FINESSE, LISTS OUT FOUR TAKEAWAYS FROM GISEC GLOBAL 2022

ccelerated digital transformation agendas and cloud-first environments bring new and sophisticated threats to the forefront. A recent IBM report states that remote work has increased the average cost of a data breach of $3.86 million by almost $137,000. The ever-evolving cyber threat landscape can put to the test the expertise of even seasoned cybersecurity professionals, let alone a layman. Therefore, it is important to stay abreast with current market developments, latest technology, regional use cases, best practices and so on, to stay as protected as possible against advanced cybercrime. This is where exhibitions such as GISEC Global plays a key role. Gathering cybersecurity executives from all corners of the globe, the event reinforces collaboration and innovation in the continuous battle against cyber-attacks. This year the focus was on strengthening public-private sector collaboration and devising robust, disruptive and novel solutions to confront evolving cybersecurity challenges in the digital era, largely around cloud security, ransomware, ICS attacks and so on. GISEC Global facilitated meaningful conversations that explored the future of the cybersecurity industry. It served as a pivotal platform for security professionals to align their mission and vision for a cyber secure future. Knowledge sharing takes centre stage GISEC 2022 showcased sessions in partnership with UAE Cybersecurity Council, Dubai Electronic Security Center, the Telecommunications & Digital Government Regulatory Authority, and Dubai Police to help drive cybersecurity agendas. These sessions underscored the

CXO INSIGHT ME

APRIL 2022

importance of cybersecurity providers’ roles in ensuring that protection and data management protocols are compliant with national laws and are aligned with global best practices. Discussions also highlighted how emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can transform security strategies and how enterprises can stay prepared to counter cybersecurity challenges in the country and wider region, mainly, phishing, ransomware, DDoS, data breaches and so on. Ransomware is here to stay Ransomware, unfortunately, is not going away any time soon. Attackers are using new and more complex techniques in more advanced attacks across sectors like healthcare, banking, retail, hospitality and so on. So how to defend against this rising threat was another main theme at the cybersecurity show this year. According to Mordor Intelligence, the Middle East and Africa cybersecurity market is expected to reach $2.89 billion by 2026 at a CAGR of 7.92% over the next four years. This means regional organisations understand the importance of cybersecurity and will significantly ramp up investments. However, doubling down on investments alone may not be enough – a culture of cybersecurity needs to be nurtured at all levels of an organisation and continuous checks and monitoring should become a part of regular assessments for successful, holistic, and strong cybersecurity. Outhacking the hackers Seamless and ubiquitous connectivity is imperative in the new digital age. This has led to expanded threat surfaces and a massive rise in cyber threats. Ethical

hacking was another highlight at GISEC this year, where in support of the UAE Cyber Security Council National Bug Bounty Program, 100 ethical hackers flew in to participate in the GISEC Bug Bounty programme. They were tasked to hack, identify, and fix certain software flaws in a number of different scenarios and mainframes – including electric cars, mobile phones, and drones. Ethical hacking helps to zero in on threats and secure critical data by addressing vulnerabilities. Cybercrimes increase and get more sophisticated as technology grows and develops. It is critical to stay prepared as much as possible and engage in ethical hacking to help bridge security gaps. Security is everyone’s responsibility Speakers at GISEC emphasised on the significance of the shared responsibility between public and private sectors as well as the whole industry to wrestle the precariousness of cyberspace. There is an imminent need to create a culture of cybersecurity readiness, which was highlighted during the UAE Government’s Head of Cyber Security, Dr Mohamed Al Kuwaiti’s keynote address. The call for increased cooperation in the security landscape was further reiterated by the UAE Cybersecurity Council’s (CSC) partnerships with Huawei, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and advisory firm Deloitte, which were focused on increasing cloud adoption and knowledge sharing. There is no doubt that collaboration is essential for successful and holistic cybersecurity. By working together, organisations across sectors can gain a bigger picture of the threat landscape, which can help them create a cohesive response to cyber-attacks and build a robust security infrastructure.

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MARK OF EXCELLENCE

Articles inside

PRODUCTS

BUILDING TRUST

DEMOCRATISING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

DECODING LOW-CODE REVOLUTION

A CATALYST FOR INNOVATION

DELIVERING MOMENTS OF SERVICE

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL

NEWS

WHY PROACTIVE PREVENTION IS THE BEST STRATEGY

AHEAD OF THE CURVE

HOW ADVANCED ANALYTICS ARE POWERING THE NEXT INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION