NEWS

ZAINTECH PARTNERS WITH ORACLE TO ACCELERATE TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION

ZainTech has selected Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer to introduce new technology services to create business advantages for its customers across the Middle East. With Exadata Cloud@ Customer, ZainTech will now provide in-country cloud hosting services for an organisation’s Oracle Database across its operating countries, starting with Jordan. This will be a first for the kingdom and will help ZainTech customers meet strict data residency and security requirements.

Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer combines the world’s leading database technology and Exadata, the most powerful database platform, with the simplicity, agility and elasticity of a cloud-based deployment. It runs the same Oracle Exadata Database Service and Oracle Autonomous Database Service operated in the Oracle public cloud but is located in customers’ own data centres and managed by Oracle Cloud experts. This enables a consistent Exadata cloud experience for customers – whether on-premises, or in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) data centres.

Commenting on the agreement, Andrew Hanna, Chief Executive Officer, ZainTech, said, “ZainTech provides end-to-end multi-cloud capabilities across advisory, professional, and managed services. Through our network of data centres, significant investments in automation, and partnerships with innovative global players like Oracle, we will drive strong transformational results for enterprises in the MENA region.”

“With Oracle Exadata Cloud@ Customer, ZainTech has laid the foundation for an advanced technology infrastructure that can help the company scale quickly by offering new innovative services to its customers,” said Nick Redshaw, senior vicepresident – Cloud Tech, Middle East and Africa, Oracle. “Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer is the simplest way to move an organisation’s business-critical Oracle Database workloads to the cloud. It can simultaneously run Oracle Exadata Database Service and the automated and fully managed Oracle Autonomous Database Service inside customers’ data centres and behind their firewalls to help meet strict data residency and security requirements. I am confident that the Oracle Database customers of ZainTech will appreciate this new offering.”

ZainTech’s collaboration with Oracle is a strategic initiative as the company prepares to launch Oracle Database hosting services to its customers across the region.

ZainTech’s cloud business supports organisations in regulated and non-regulated industries across its footprint in leveraging the power of the cloud to deliver transformational IT outcomes. ZainTech’s cloud business brings customers highquality cloud capabilities with flexible pricing that helps optimise and reduce their total cost of ownership.

CONSTELLATION ENERGY CHOOSES AVEVA SOLUTION TO ENHANCE DATA ANALYSIS

AVEVA announces a partnership with the U.S.’s prominent provider of carbon-free energy to give third-party analytic vendors secure access to select real-time data from Constellation’s operations.

Constellation will implement the latest release of AVEVA Data Hub, a cloudbased data management SaaS solution, which will help the company accelerate collaboration with trusted analytic partners and implement learnings more quickly, increasing the return on its analysis projects.

Currently, industrial operators, who are focused on data-driven solutions and decision-making, use a variety of methods to make real-time data available to internal and external teams. These methods are time-consuming to develop, maintain, coordinate, and some of them introduce security vulnerabilities that increase business risk. With IT staff in short supply, companies find themselves unable to respond quickly to new data requests or test out new solutions.

Constellation (formerly Exelon Energy), a long-time user of AVEVA PI System, decided to expand their data management solution into the cloud to easily share wind turbine data with a third-party analytics vendor. The company uses AVEVA PI System to collect, enrich, store, and manage sensor and time-series operations data in realtime. It then transfers that data natively to AVEVA Data Hub, a SaaS solution, where they can set up and manage select data sharing with authorised users, applications, and analytic tools both inside and outside the company. The new cloud-based addition to their data management solution is ready to use immediately; users can begin analysing and processing data to achieve deeper insight in hours, rather than days or weeks.

Nearly half of executives (45%) in a 2022 AVEVA survey say information sharing with trusted partners is among the top digital initiatives with the greatest potential to impact profitability and sustainability at their organisation. Executives see direct gains from information sharing withgreater efficiency and innovation (48%), increased employee satisfaction (45%), and continued competitiveness with other companies (44%).

Industrial solution providers can add their own proprietary data into AVEVA Data Hub as well, to establish a common location for data sharing within a trusted community, saving members the time and expense of setting up and maintaining other data transfer methods.

“Compared with what we previously did to share data with third-party analytic vendors, AVEVA Data Hub is much easier to configure and manage and requires far less involvement from our internal IT resources,” said Jay Gasner, Regional Operations Manager at Constellation. “We were able to quickly integrate data from our on-premises PI System into AVEVA Data Hub. It’s very simple to invite AVEVA Data Hub users from other organisations into a community and share information with them.”

AVEVA Data Hub is delivering other benefits in the rapidly transforming energy industry. A California-based energy ecosystem of renewable power producers, an energy consultant, and utility companies is using it to share real-time data from energy assets. Kevin Coffee, Vice President of Electric Operations at ZGlobal, said: “It’s a big deal to be this transparent. We now have the same data as our clients which we can look at together at the same time. This helps to differentiate us from competitors. Using the tools AVEVA provides has given us the insight to flag things that aren’t working which is very valuable.”

Rónán de Hooge, Executive Vice President, Cloud Platform Business at AVEVA, said, “Creating a hybrid information management solution let’s customer access and share critical data with decision-makers across the company and external partners, to unlock new ways of working. The benefits are clear – companies can break down data silos, work collaboratively, drive transparency, and deliver actionable insights that enable them to work in a smarter and more connected way.”

MANAGEENGINE NAMED A CHALLENGER IN THE 2022 GARTNER MAGIC QUADRANT FOR IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT PLATFORMS

ManageEngine has been named a Challenger in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT Service

Management Platforms.

The Gartner report can be viewed online at mnge.it/gmq-itsm-22.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant profiles vendors in the enterprise ITSM platform market to help infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders with objective insights into the business and product strategies of the vendors. ManageEngine, which has been positioned in the Magic Quadrant for the third consecutive year, was evaluated alongside 10 leading ITSM platform vendors for its completeness of vision and ability to execute.

“As work disruptions and economic headwinds persist, I&O leaders look to deliver resilient IT and enterprise services. At the same time, they must review software spending while not losing out on key business-critical capabilities that they have come to rely on,” said Kumaravel Ramakrishnan, director of marketing for ITSM at ManageEngine.

“What can be a key differentiator in these times is a value-oriented platform like ServiceDesk Plus offering deep enterprise workflows and unified IT management capabilities. The recognition by Gartner, we believe, is a testament to our persistent efforts in helping enterprise IT leaders demonstrate value through their service management initiatives.”

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus was also recognised in the 2022 Gartner Critical Capabilities for IT Service Management Platforms. The Critical Capabilities research complements the Gartner Magic Quadrant and analyses eight capabilities that differentiate the ITSM offerings from each of the 10 vendors mentioned in the report.

“Our IT service delivery models around the globe, in 22 countries, depend on the complete suite of ManageEngine applications, including ServiceDesk Plus.” said Jay R. Shell, director of global IT services and governance at DexKo. “ServiceDesk Plus allows us to deliver compliant, measurable, and effective solutions to resolve our IT request and incident workflows. And by integrating with other ManageEngine solutions like ADManager Plus and OpManager, we have been able to support customised task workflows and ensure maximum uptime of our key systems that our users require to keep DexKo rolling and growing.” he added.

This latest recognition by Gartner marks ManageEngine’s fifth Magic Quadrant recognition in 2022 for a specific technology market. The other recognitions include Application Performance Monitoring and Observability, Privileged Access Management, Security Information and Event Management, and Unified Endpoint Management Tools.

PROVEN RECEIVES ISO 27001 CERTIFICATION

PROVEN announced that it has been awarded the ISO 27001 certification, which is the leading international standard for information security management.

Receiving the ISO 27001 demonstrates that PROVEN has invested in its people, processes, and technology by ensuring that they are protected from cybercrime threats. The certification aims to aid the company, its employees, partners, and clients meet their business needs safely and effectively.

“We are pleased to achieve the milestone ISO 27001 certification. This means we can offer a more secure environment for internal and external stakeholders from cyber criminals and data breaches caused by internal forces,” says Uzma Mohsin, Business Excellence Lead, PROVEN. “As such, our company informational management system is compliant, and our customers and business contacts will be able to acknowledge the legitimacy of our risk assessment expertise and information data responsibility.”

“By fulfilling the stringent requirements of these standards, PROVEN has demonstrated its dedication to safeguarding private data and the environment and continually providing clients, partners, and employees with quality outcomes”, mentions Rami Ismail, IT Manager, PROVEN.

Achieving ISO 27001 confirms PROVEN’s constant drive to develop market-leading services, measured against global standards of industry excellence and adhering to best industrial practices. ISO is known as one of the world’s most stringent and well-respected standards.

Additionally, ISO 27001 is one of the most extensively used and highly regarded information security standards. It defines how we maintain and handle information securely, including the necessary security controls, and identifies the objectives for an extensive Information Security Management System (ISMS).

EMAIL CYBERATTACKS ON ARAB COUNTRIES RISE IN LEAD UP TO GLOBAL FOOTBALL TOURNAMENT: TRELLIX RESEARCH

Global eyes are now on the first global football tournament being held in the Arab world, which kicked off on Sunday, November 20, but malicious actors kicked off their World Cup-themed cyberattacks, ahead of the tournament. Email security researchers from the Trellix Advanced Research Center have found attackers to be leveraging FIFA and football-based campaigns to target organisations in Arab countries and consequently, the volume of malicious emails in Arab Countries was observed to have increased by 100% in the month of October.

“It is common practice for attackers to utilise important/popular events as a part of social engineering tactics and particularly target organisations which are related to the event as they are far more promising victims for an attack,” commented Daksh Kapur, Research Scientist at Trellix. “As the hostcountry and the affiliated organisations prepare for and manage the event, attackers take advantage of employee’s busy schedules which increases the chances of human error and the victim interacting with the attack vector. The aim of such attacks can be anything from financial fraud, credential harvesting and data exfiltration to surveillance and damage to the country’s/organisation’s reputation.”

Trellix Advanced Research Center researchers caught various emails utilising the football tournament as an initial attack vector. The following are cases of samples found in the wild: • Sample 1: Pretends to be from

FIFA TMS helpdesk, and the email body shows a fake alert notification regarding the de-activation of two factor authentication and contains a hyperlink which redirects the user to a phishing page. • Sample 2: Attempts to impersonate

David Firisua, the team manager for Auckland City FC, and seeks confirmation of a payment made to the receiver’s account in reference to

FIFA. It also contains a hyperlink to a customised phishing page of trusted brand. • Sample 3: Impersonates the FIFA ticketing office and conveys a payment issue for the victim to urgently resolve. It also contains a html attachment which redirects the user to a customised phishing page. • Sample 4: A fake legal notification informing the recipient about a ban implemented by FIFA from registering new players to create a sense of urgency. It also contains a html attachment which redirects the user to a customised phishing page. • Sample 5: A fake file notification set in the WeTransfer’s template. It attempts to impersonate the Players

Status Department and send victims a legal notice regarding delayed legal fees. It contains a link which redirects the user to a malicious website either delivering malware or hosting a phishing page. • Sample 6: Snoonu, the official food delivery partner of the World Cup is spoofed, offering fake free tickets to those who register. It contains a malicious xlsm attachment. The usage of such trusted organisations’ names and their templates makes the user fall for such attacks easily.

In terms of malware, Trellix solutions have identified several malware families being used to target Arab countries but the five most used malware families are Qakbot (40%), Emotet (26%), Formbook (26%), Remcos (4%) and QuadAgent (4%).

“As the much-awaited football tournament gets underway, cybercriminals are expected to leverage every opportunity they get to capitalise on news trends, ticket demands, human errors due to the busy schedule and more, in order to deliver a cyberattack. We anticipate these attacks to continue through January 2023 and would advise everyone to stay vigilant of any attack vectors. The organisations which are directly related to the event are advised to stay extra-vigilant as they would be the most promising targets for such attacks,” added Sparsh Jain, Research Scientist at Trellix.

HUAWEI SIGNS GLOBAL ITU PLEDGE TO DIGITALISE REMOTE AREAS

Huawei has signed a global commitment to join the International Telecommunication Union’s

Partner2Connect digital alliance, which will bring connectivity to about 120 million people in remote areas in more than 80 countries by 2025.

Liang Hua, Chairman of Huawei, announced the decision at the company’s 2022 Sustainability Forum,

Connectivity+: Innovate for Impact. The forum explored how ICT innovation could unleash the business and social value of connectivity and drive sustainability in the digital economy era.

Speakers at the event included senior leaders from the ITU and United Nations, telecom ministers and regulators in

Cambodia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and

Pakistan, and business leaders, partners, experts, and customers from China,

South Africa, Belgium, and Germany.

“It is clear connectivity alone is not enough. It must be affordable, the content must be relevant and in the local language, and users must have the skills to make best use of it,” said

ITU Deputy Secretary-General Malcolm

Johnson. “Thank you to Huawei for their support of the Partner2Connect (P2C)

Digital Coalition, and for their announced

P2C pledges in the key areas of rural connectivity and digital skills.”

Siddharth Chatterjee, United Nations

Resident Coordinator in China, called for “multi-stakeholder partnerships” of policymakers, the private sector, academia, and civil society to close “the sobering reality” of a digital divide which excluded a third of the global population.

“Our dynamic world urgently needs improved digital cooperation to capitalise on the transformational potential of technology to create new jobs, boost financial inclusion, close the gender gap, spur a green recovery and redesign our world to be more prosperous and inclusive,” he said. “Now is the time to act”.

In his keynote address, Dr Liang stressed that access to a stable network was a basic requirement and right in the digital age. For many who remain unconnected, access to reliable connectivity would mark the first step towards transforming their lives.

“Connectivity will be more than just a tool for convenient communications,” he said. “Together with digital technologies like cloud and AI, connectivity will help bring everyone into the digital world, and provide them with access to more information and skills, better services, and wider business opportunities. This will, in turn, drive further social and economic development.”

Cao Ming, President of Huawei Wireless Solution, said: “As an enterprise with the most complete ICT capabilities, Huawei integrates the full-technology innovation potential of equipment, sites, energy, transmission, and antennas to address the difficulties faced by traditional site deployment, such as high costs, restricted transportation, lack of power, and maintenance challenges. We have continuously upgraded the RuralStar and RuralLink solutions to extend quality coverage to remote areas, enabling more people, community hospitals, schools, local governments, and small- and medium-sized enterprises to enjoy the same high-speed broadband connectivity experiences as those in cities”.

The RuralStar series solutions have provided connections for more than 60 million people in remote areas in more than 70 countries.

The construction of optical broadband networks offers another important route to realising a universal service. Huawei has proposed an innovative AirPON solution for areas with low population density, including remote areas. This solution continuously reduces the footprint of equipment rooms, optical fiber installation costs, and network power consumption, while ensuring the rapid deployment of local communication networks.

In Africa alone, Huawei has laid more than 250,000 kilometers of optical fibers, enabling 30 million households to access high-speed broadband. User experience has seen constant improvement. The average speed of home broadband already exceeds 30 Mbit/s, bringing smarter, faster, and smoother home network experience.

As ICT infrastructure continues to evolve, innovative technologies like cloud and AI are allowing those in rural and remote areas to enjoy the convenience of a digital world. Huawei Cloud has proposed the Everything as a Service strategy and made Huawei’s more than 30 years of technical expertise and digital transformation experience available through cloud services. This means that access to Huawei’s digital infrastructure capabilities on the cloud is now just as easy, affordable, and sustainable as water and electricity.

Digital transformation, digital talent, and new business models are all essential for balanced development in remote regions. Huawei previously announced that by 2025, with the improved ICT infrastructure, the company will work with partners to enable 500 million people to enjoy digital financial services and 500,000 people to enjoy inclusive education.

In Cambodia, the ITU’s first P2C partner country, Huawei will work with government departments through the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and universities to provide 10,000 training opportunities for ICT professionals in the next five years.

Huawei is committed to inclusive development. Through its ongoing technological innovation, Huawei is contributing to a higher level of digitalisation in remote regions, enabling everyone to enjoy the convenience of a digital life, and promoting the balanced development of the global digital economy.

DYNAMO SOFTWARE EXPANDS TO THE MIDDLE EAST

Dynamo Software announced further growth of its already established EMEA presence by expanding into the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The company has opened an office in

Dubai and appointed Tarek Ghannoum as Dynamo’s Regional Director of the

Middle East.

To further build its UAE presence,

Dynamo will sponsor the leading alternative investments management conference, AIM Summit, in Dubai, on

November 21 and 22, 2022.

Globally, alternative investments continue to attract investors in regions like Asia-Pacific (APAC),

Europe, Latin America, and the Middle

East. According to the 2021 EY Global Wealth Research Report, the Middle East Alternative investment usage level is the second highest globally, surpassed only by Latin America.

Data and analytics firm Preqin estimates that the total alternative assets under management will reach $17.2 trillion by 2025. That’s a 320% increase from $4.1 trillion in 2010. Dynamo research conducted in September 2022 further underscored these growth intentions. According to the Dynamo Frontline Insight Report, alternative investments are expected to remain a key strategy for LPs and asset allocators moving into next year. Ninety-six percent of decisionmakers participating in the survey said they will either increase (55%) or maintain (41%) their allocation to alternatives.

“Led by the UAE, the Middle East market for alternative investments has transitioned from emerging to established in recent years,” explained Ghannoum. “The Middle East has seen an unprecedented level of financial businesses relocate or open offices in the region for its tax and regulatory advantages. Even as the market matures, it is still relatively underserved from a FinTech standpoint. Delivering Dynamo’s advanced alternative investments platform to GPs and LPs in the region will help them scale their operations through much-needed automation.”

While expanding into the Middle East, Dynamo will continue to invest in strategic operations and growth throughout North America, Europe, and APAC.

The current bear market is creating ample opportunity for investment firms to refocus on technology as a business enabler. In fact, Dynamo’s recent research indicated the ability to better enable internal teams to manage new investment structures will be a top priority for LPs in 2023.

Additionally, Dynamo’s research uncovered that LPs are increasingly interested in systems that keep critical investment data in one centralised location. This may be due to the unprecedented employee turnover many asset allocators have experienced since 2020.

“With our launch into the Middle East, we are able to further support a broader range of clients while capitalising on the increased demand for the management of alternative assets by Middle Eastern investment firms,” said Dynamo’s CEO Hank Boughner. “We’re excited to welcome Tarek to our team and look forward to substantially growing our presence in the region. We’re building a talented team committed to fueling new opportunities and enhancing the Dynamo experience globally.