18 minute read
NEWS
from FORCE MULTIPLIER
by cxoinsightme
AJMAN DEPARTMENT OF FINANCE LEVERAGES ORACLE CLOUD APPLICATIONS
Ajman’s Department of Finance (DoF) has partnered with Oracle to adopt a cloud-based resource management system that enables more efficient finance, supply chain and HR functions across the organisation.
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In line with Ajman’s vision of economic competitiveness, Ajman’s DoF’s migration to Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications– a suite of standards-based technology that enables businesses to streamline processes in a single platform – presents increased productivity, reduced costs, improved controls, optimised supply chain management and an enhanced HR function which will positively impact the employee experience.
The upgrade is part of the emirate’s commitment to further improve operations and services and promote the digital transformation of the emirate using the latest smart applications.
Ahmad Salem Madhani, Executive Director for Institutional Support at the Ajman Department of Finance, said, “The latest digital developments and technologies are vital in today’s era. Our decision reflects the proactiveness of the Department of Finance to adopt initiatives that contribute to improving the quality and efficiency of work, in line with the vision and directives of the wise leadership of our emirate”.
Ajman’s DoF has adopted an innovationbased strategy that focuses on positioning the emirate as a major contributor to the progress of the UAE. In 2019, the department has launched Ajman Pay, a smart digital payment platform designed to reinvent payment and government revenue collection in a fully secure and inventive manner. True to its commitment to adopting the latest advancements in technologies, Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications is its latest step towards the embracement of the new technology.
“In its digital transformation process, the Department of Finance places a high priority on cloud solutions to meet the accelerating work requirements and the evolving needs of government agencies in the emirate. We are confident that our adoption of Oracle cloud applications will enable us to bring modern innovations to the Ajman government and local authorities by accelerating business progress through innovative technologies,” said Abdul Ghaffar Al Khaja, Director of Accounts Department at Ajman’s Department of Finance.
As one of the leading software companies in the world, Oracle will help improve Ajman DoF’s operational efficiency and customer engagement.
“The Ajman Department of Finance is reinventing its operations as it tackles increasingly complex responsibilities and rapidly-changing performance expectations,” said Rahul Misra, Vice President of Business Applications, Gulf and South Africa, Oracle. “With innovations added every 90 days, Oracle Fusion Applications will help one of the UAE’s most digitally progressive local governments optimise their operations and better serve their staff and constituents.”
Shefiq Abdulla, TCTx
TCTx is the Metaverse arm of Telephony Communication Technologies, one of the early adopters of Web 3.0 technologies in MENA where customers will be able to access a wide range of solutions in Digital, Blockchain, FinTech, Xaas, ICT, Mobility, Telco, and Managed Services to improve efficiency, transformation and grow their businesses.
TCTx is one of the first Metaverse companies from Dubai, building the Digital Twin of the world. After securing the initial approval from the government, Dubai Digital, TCTx is creating the biggest Sustainable Smart City that will provide everything a business enterprise needs to perform in a virtual world in which users can interact with other users.
TCTx aspires to become pioneers in digital transformation with immersive experiences in the future. They have partnered with a group of innovative individuals and entities who are exceptionally passionate about emerging Web 3.0 technologies offering a portfolio of a wide range of services everything a smart city needs such as a Home, Office, Building, Workspace, Sharing space, Hotels, Restaurants, Supermarkets, Hospitals, Fashion, Movies, Sports, Technology and Security.
Today, companies developing Metaverse are focused on building new innovations and features to enable users to interact with each other efficiently and effectively in the digital world.
Shefiq Abdulla, Chief of Avatars, TCTx said, “We are excited to start our journey and bring our Telephony business to a new level in the Metaverse! As a leader in web 3.0 and Metaverse transition in the MENA, we empower businesses in the region towards their ultra-digitalization goals. We want to contribute to building Dubai as the most significant digital economy in the world. We want Dubai and UAE to be the Silicon Valley of MENA.” “We are very excited to announce our soft launch on 28th June on the birthday of Elon Musk, the biggest ambassador of decentralised technology, and the main launch on 15th July on the birthday of our leader, HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Due to the rapid development of exceptional technologies all companies should be ready for the new digital revolution in web 3.0.”
TAQA ARABIA, KYNDRYL TO MODERNISE ENERGY DISTRIBUTION IN EGYPT
TAQA Arabia, the Egypt-based utility and energy distribution leader, has announced its continued collaboration with Kyndryl to support its digital transformation and better serve the daily energy needs of more than 1.7 million customers across Egypt. Kyndryl will now provide TAQA Arabia with cloud hosting and cloud managed application services for its enterprise resource planning (ERP) environment, SAP S/4HANA.
Through its four main platforms and different subsidiary companies, TAQA Arabia delivers more than 7.3 billion cubic meters of natural gas and more than 1350 megawatt of electrical capacities and serves customers across Egypt through a network of 110 retail oil and compressed natural gas (CNG) stations.
SAP S/4HANA plays a pivotal role in enabling these operations, including support for plant maintenance activities, production planning, project management and sales and distribution in addition to company-wide human resources and financial accounting. Due to the missioncritical nature of these workloads, TAQA began its work with Kyndryl in 2017 to help ensure secure, uninterrupted operations and real-time business intelligence from its SAP S/4HANA software environment.
As part of this latest renewal of work, TAQA Arabia will rely on Kyndryl, an SAP partner, to host its data-intensive SAP solutions on a hyperscale cloud infrastructure to help ensure high levels of security and availability, enhanced application performance and the flexibility to meet evolving business needs. With Kyndryl hosting its ERP environment in the cloud, TAQA Arabia has the option of integrating emerging technologies, such as AI and Internet of Things (IoT), at any time.
Kyndryl also provides TAQA Arabia with end-to-end management of its SAP software environment in the cloud and round-the-clock support to address data backup, recovery, security, performance and more. Consequently, the company’s employees are freed up to focus on more strategic initiatives and deliver more value to customers.
“Trust is fundamental to initiate and maintain relationships. Over the years, the Kyndryl team has proved to us that they are an extended part of the TAQA Arabia family, with our success at the forefront of everything that they do for us,” said Hazem El Gaishy, TAQA Arabia’s Chief Information Officer. “We are pleased to renew our collaboration with Kyndryl to drive forward our longer-term transformation goals.”
“As TAQA Arabia continues to evolve its business, we’re working hand in hand to support its digital transformation strategy and help the company better serve the needs of its customers,” said Mahmoud Badawi, Managing Director of Kyndryl Egypt. “Together, we have overcome challenges and celebrated many milestones over the years, and we are proud to continue our strong collaboration as we build on the progress achieved together thus far.”
CISCO ANNOUNCES APPDYNAMICS CLOUD
Cisco has announced the launch of AppDynamics Cloud at the company’s networking and security event Cisco Live. AppDynamics Cloud enables delivery of exceptional digital experiences by correlating telemetry data from across any cloud environment at massive scale. It leverages cloud-native observability to remediate application performance issues with business context and insightsdriven actions.
AppDynamics Cloud maximises business outcomes and customer experiences by continuously optimising cloud-native applications. It accelerates detection and resolution of performance issues, before they impact the business or the brand, with intelligent operations. Investment protection is derived from continuous data integrations with OpenTelemetry standards and technology partnerships with cloud solutions and providers.
The platform enables collaboration across teams including DevOps, site reliability engineers (SREs), and other key business stakeholders to achieve common benchmarks like service-level objectives (SLOs) and organisational KPIs. While many organisations still run their mission-critical and revenuegenerating systems with traditional applications, modern business apps are increasingly built using DevOps initiatives and must support distributed architectures and services. This pandemic-accelerated trend has spawned an end-to-end experience revolution among consumers and end users, and hybrid work is contributing exponential momentum.
AppDynamics Cloud seamlessly ingests the deluge of metrics, events, logs, and traces (MELT) generated in this environment—including network, databases, storage, containers, security, and cloud services—to make sense of the current state of the entire IT stack all the way to the end user. Actions can then be taken to optimise costs, maximise transaction revenue, and secure user and organisational data.
Current AppDynamics customers can upgrade to AppDynamics Cloud and leverage their existing application performance monitoring (APM) agents, or feed both solutions concurrently. AppDynamics Cloud supports cloud-native, managed Kubernetes environments on Amazon Web Services (AWS), with future expansion to Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and other cloud providers.
AppDynamics Cloud commercial availability starts June 28.
F5 has announced enhancements to F5 Distributed Cloud Services to help customers safeguard and deliver the digital experiences that have become vital to everyday life in the ways we interact, seek out entertainment, and purchase goods and services.
Introduced earlier this year, F5
Distributed Cloud Services provide a SaaS-based, platform-driven approach to secure the essential elements of connected experiences through a comprehensive set of web, mobile app, and API protections.
This announcement expands these capabilities with new solutions that support additional platforms, defend against common attacks, and provide customers with more control over modern application architectures.
“Many organisations have found that by adding or expanding digital services for users, they may have inadvertently increased the attack surface for any number of emerging threats,” said Haiyan Song, EVP and GM, Security & Distributed Cloud Product Group, F5.
Some security enhancements to F5 Distributed Cloud Services include: • Distributed Cloud Bot Defense
Connector for BIG-IP – With continuing integration efforts stemming from the Shape Security acquisition, Distributed Cloud Bot
Defense capabilities have been added to F5’s flagship platform, both as a native module in current BIG-IP version 17 software and via an iApp for previous versions. Distributed Cloud
Bot Defense collects rich client-side signals, transmits this telemetry to
its data system, uses AI to detect bot retooling, and immediately deploys rule updates for real-time detection to help organisations stay ahead of attackers. • Distributed Cloud Bot Defense
Connector for Salesforce
Commerce Cloud – Increasing the reach of its security solutions to further support popular e-commerce platforms, F5 has natively integrated
Distributed Cloud Bot Defense for
Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC). • Distributed Cloud Client-Side
Defense – F5 offers a free product to address the growing risks of thirdparty digital supply chain attacks.
This self-service mitigation solution provides signature-based Magecart detection and alerts by maintaining details related to previous attacks, enabling organisations to immediately block otherwise damaging threats with one simple click. The solution also now features simplified onboarding and satisfies the new PCI
DSS 4.0 requirement (6.4.3 and 11).
STC GROUP AND ALIBABA ESTABLISH ALI BABA CLOUD IN SAUDI ARABIA
stc Group has announced the establishment of ‘Alibaba cloud’ in Riyadh, KSA, for high-capacity cloud services in partnership with the Chinese technology giant Alibaba Group, eWTP Arabia for Technical Innovation Ltd., the Saudi Company for Artificial Intelligence (SCAI). and the Saudi Information Technology Company (SITE).
The establishment of the new company in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, came in response to the significant increase in demand for cloud computing services and solutions in the region. The company will provide advanced cloud computing services to companies operating in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, ensuring that they employ the highest standards of security and protection.
The new company’s capital will amount to SAR 894 million , and the new company will benefit from the distinguished position of stc Group in the services and technology solutions sector and will employ the best talent and expertise to support the local capabilities of the Kingdom and enable it to enhance digital development and build an advanced ecosystem capable of meeting the future needs of the Kingdom. Alibaba, one of the best providers of cloud computing services and solutions in the world, will offer a wide range of cloud computing services and solutions, a step that will enable local companies and institutions to digitise their businesses, employ the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, raise work standards and enhance Businesses.
In line with the Kingdom’s efforts to enhance economic diversification and stimulate investment opportunities in the cloud computing sector, the new company will contribute to providing quality jobs, transferring knowledge and expertise to the Kingdom, and ensuring a safe work environment for entrepreneurs in the region
stc’s investment with Alibaba for cloud computing services, in cloud computing solutions in Riyadh, reflects the company’s future vision and its great role in pushing digital transformation efforts in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and its commitment to forging strong partnerships with leading technology companies around the world in line with the Kingdom’s 2030 vision to attract foreign and international investments into the Kingdom, creating a secure environment for entrepreneurs, and enhancing information security by protecting data internally in the Kingdom.
The establishment of the company specialised in cloud computing services and solutions in Saudi Arabia will contribute to developing the Kingdom’s digital infrastructure and preparing it to provide the latest digital data storage services and solutions and ensure its protection and security, which will enhance the Kingdom’s ability to provide cloud computing services to global companies.
LOOKOUT ACQUIRES SAFERPASS TO ADDRESS IDENTITY THEFT THREAT
Lookout has acquired SaferPass, an innovative Password Management company that provides secure online identity solutions for both consumers and businesses. By adding
Password Management technology to its suite of security solutions, Lookout is expanding on its mission to deliver proactive protection and safeguard customer data for individuals and businesses.
SaferPass delivers a robust, innovative solution for identity and password management to both consumers and businesses, enabling users to securely manage their passwords, banking and other sensitive information across devices.
The SaferPass solution provides an encrypted digital vault that stores secure login information used to access services through mobile apps and web browsers.
In addition to keeping a user’s identity, credentials and sensitive data safe, the
Jim Dolce, Lookout
product helps create strong, unique passwords through a password generator tool that ensures the individual is not using the same password in multiple places and that their password has not been compromised in a previous breach.
“We are pleased to welcome the SaferPass team to Lookout, and excited to combine our respective solutions to deliver better value to consumers and businesses alike,” said Jim Dolce, Lookout CEO. “Today, every password owned by an employee is a potential access point to organisations both small and large. At the same time, large scale data breaches have leaked billions of consumer emails and passwords on the dark web, putting individuals at risk of identity theft and financial fraud. The SaferPass team shares our vision for providing seamless security solutions that address all access points and protect personal and corporate data wherever it may reside. This is an exciting next step in Lookout’s evolution.”
The acquisition of SaferPass broadens the Lookout portfolio of security solutions and expands the opportunity for its carrier ecosystem and channel partners – it also expands Lookout’s footprint in Central Europe through its new location in Bratislava, Slovakia. SaferPass will now operate under the Lookout brand and leadership and the SaferPass team will be fully integrated into the Lookout organisation. The financial terms of this transaction have not been disclosed.
AVEVA has announced two new industry templates for customers to accelerate the deployment Rashesh Mody, AVEVA of enterprise visualisation. The AVEVA Unified Operations Center for Water and AVEVA Unified Operations Center for Renewables solutions underline the company’s continuous efforts in supporting global customers’ sustainability initiatives and objectives.
AVEVA Unified Operations Center solutions for water and renewable power enable customers to leverage deep insight and operational guidance from many geographically dispersed assets, delivering enterprise visualisation that accelerates their business goals and contributes to their net-zero targets.
Rashesh Mody, Senior Vice President, Monitoring and Control Business Unit, AVEVA, said, “Our enterprise visualisation category offerings will enable ESG strategies for industrial companies and empower them to reduce their carbon footprint through real-time insights. AVEVA Unified
Operations Center provides enhanced awareness and guides enterprise users in better understanding their global operations and responding to internal and external events that can promote sustainable outcomes. Depending on the industry, customers can unearth value from their data that was previously inaccessible, by improving visibility at higher decision-making levels, while providing organization-wide context alongside other types of information within a single application.”
Enterprise visualisation solutions such as AVEVA Unified Operations Center help teams and users tasked with organisation-wide responsibilities. They make content available through a single pane-of-glass environment, where data from Operations Technology (OT), Information Technology (IT), and Engineering Technology (ET) converge to provide actionable information in context for industrial operations.
Frequently deployed as intelligent operations centers, these systems promote greater operational awareness and improved crisis response, integration, and collaboration across functional departments, and enable the sharing of information and coordination of daily activities and processes.
With the new integrations, companies in the water and renewable power sectors can now enjoy the benefits of integrated and enhanced visibility, enabling deeper insights for quick and accurate decisionmaking to drive sustainability. The solutions enable increased agility allowing teams to make decisions in parallel to each other, expediting responses to performance events and drive reductions in energy consumption and production through optimisation opportunities.
BD AND BURJEEL MEDICAL CITY ANNOUNCE STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP
In a joint effort to accelerate the UAE’s vision for a world-class healthcare system, the Dubai Branch of BD (Becton, Dickinson and
Company), and VPS Healthcare’s Burjeel
Medical City (BMC) have announced a strategic partnership that will enable both organisations to accelerate innovation and deliver healthcare excellence in the country.
“This partnership is a cornerstone of our combined efforts to help advance
UAE’s healthcare system,” said Maher
Elhassan, Vice President & General
Manager, BD Middle East, North Africa & Turkey. “The continued emphasis on patient safety inspires us to invest more into innovative collaborations to deliver safety and care to both patients and healthcare workers, rapid diagnosis, antimicrobial resistance as well as training of medical practitioners.
Together, we will advance the world of health and positively impact patient lives.”
The collaboration between BD and Burjeel Medcial City will create valuable opportunities to offer the healthcare provider with cutting-edge MedTech innovations in pursuit of offering improved safety and care for patients and healthcare workers in the UAE. In addition to medtech solutions, this joint effort will enhance safety practices and measures through providing trainings to enable a better understanding of advanced solutions and safety procedures.
John Sunil, CEO, Burjeel Group stated “As a leading healthcare network in UAE, we understand how laboratories play a vital role in delivering patient care. The Burjeel Medical City’s Central Lab is equipped with total lab automation, allowing us to connect all our sites across the U.A.E. with a capacity of nearly 10 million tests per year.
Our collaboration with BD is yet another important step in our pursuit of constantly delivering healthcare excellence and improving patient outcomes. This partnership will enable us to detect emerging antimicrobial resistance, rapidly implement infection control procedures, initiate appropriate antibiotic therapies for treating these infections and improving patient management .
Burjeel Medical City is constantly investing and establishing new partnerships to identify cutting-edge medical technologies and innovations that can help us deliver world-class healthcare to the people of the UAE.”
JUNIPER NETWORKS ANNOUNCES NEW CAPABILITIES FOR SASE OFFERING
Juniper Networks has announced the expansion of its SASE offering with the addition of Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) and advanced Data Loss Prevention (DLP) capabilities to its Juniper Secure Edge solution. When combined with Juniper’s unique SD-WAN solution driven by Mist AI, Juniper is the first in the market to offer a full-stack SASE solution with visibility into both the edge and the data center.
By building on its Secure Edge solution, the firm provides customers with a highly secure and an operationally efficient way to adopt a SASE architecture, regardless of where they are in their SASE journey. Additionally, customers can connect their SASE architecture at the edge to their Zero Trust data center architecture under the same management UI and single-policy framework, eliminating breaks in visibility and gaps in security posture while delivering on the promise of Juniper’s Connected Security strategy.
“The biggest challenge with SASE solutions today is that they require organisations to abandon existing technology investments that are working for them, forcing them to start from scratch and rebuild Zero Trust principles into a new architecture,” said Samantha Madrid, Group VP of Security Business & Strategy, Juniper Networks. “Now, with the addition of CASB and DLP, Juniper addresses these concerns with a full-stack SASE suite of capabilities that are flexibly adopted and deployed while extending Zero Trust principles already implemented across the network to the cloud.”
Juniper delivers CASB and DLP to secure SaaS applications and help prevent unwanted access, malware delivery and distribution, and data exfiltration. Both capabilities are part of Juniper’s Secure Edge cloud-delivered security solution managed by Security Director Cloud, which secures remote users and on-premises users alike. It easily manages Zero Trust and SASE architectures through one management portal using a single-policy framework.
The addition of CASB and DLP to Secure Edge builds upon Juniper’s highly compelling experience. Juniper Secure Edge provides full-stack SSE capabilities, including Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS) and Secure Web Gateway (SWG), in a single software stack, now with CASB and DLP, all managed by Security Director Cloud.
