ACCELERATING INNOVATION by cxoinsightme

ISSUE 37 \ DECEMBER 2021

ACCELERATING INNOVATION How The Centre of Excellence for Applied Research and Training (CERT) is shaping the future of AI in the region

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CONTENTS

DR. MOHAMED BAKA, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, THE CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR APPLIED RESEARCH AND TRAINING (CERT) GIVES A LOWDOWN ON THE ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) LANDSCAPE AND HOW THE ORGANISATION BRIDGES THE GAP IN AI KNOWLEDGE AND AI TALENT IN THE REGION.

PRODUCTS

ACCELERATING INNOVATION

NEWS

PLUGGING CYBERSECURITY 28 16 THE THE GAPS IMPLICATIONS OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF 18 TIMES DISRUPTION

32 TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE

YOUR 24 APP SERVICE

34 THINK GREEN 36 PLANNING FOR SUCCESS TOTAL 38 DELIVERING APPLICATION EXPERIENCE

SECRET OF DEVOPS 26 THE SUCCESS

STATE 22 THE OF THE SOC

PUBLISHED BY INSIGHT MEDIA & PUBLISHING LLC

THE RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

ETIHAD SELECTS KYNDRYL TO DRIVE THE NEXT PHASE OF ITS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION GARTNER: 50% OF THE TOP 10 AUTOMOTIVE OEMS TO DESIGN OWN CHIPS BY 2025 SONICWALL UNIFIES CLOUD, VIRTUAL AND HARDWARE PORTFOLIO

DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

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

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EDITORIAL

STAYING COMPOSED

s we wind down 2021, it is time to pause and reflect on the lessons we have learned and set the agenda for the new year. In many ways, 2021 was a year of challenge and growth. Though the pandemic woes still linger, business morale, in general, is buoyed by vaccine rates and government support. In addition, rising oil prices and signs of economic recovery in the region have instilled more confidence in businesses preparing for 2022. In this context, it would be timely to think of the most important expectations of a CIO in 2022. With the ‘new normal’ becoming a business jargon, IT leaders must keep the momentum going and drive digital transformation forward. The post-pandemic world would provide ample opportunities for technology leaders to evolve into business leaders simply because every business is a digital business today. Technology is now the cornerstone of change and growth, and CIOs need to deliver new value in business models and customer experiences.

In its recent annual global CIO survey, Gartner has stated the future of business is composable and defines it as “the mindset, technology, and set of operating capabilities” to guide the business through uncertainty and opportunity, with a high-trust culture and empowered teams. The research firm prescribes business composability as the antidote to unpredictable business climate and says CIOs at companies with composability reported superior business performance compared with peers. Composability might not be a new concept, but developing a composable business will become a critical task for CIOs to speed up digital transformation efforts. Gartner says CIOs are uniquely positioned to advance the building blocks of a composable business – composable thinking, composable business architecture and composable technologies. Putting together the pieces of a composable business might appear to be an arduous task, but it all boils down to one simple thing – connecting technology to business strategy. Business should drive technology, not the other way around.

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DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

NEWS

ETIHAD SELECTS KYNDRYL TO DRIVE THE NEXT PHASE OF ITS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

AE’s national airline Etihad Airways and IT infrastructure services provider Kyndryl have announced a multiyear agreement to help accelerate the next stage of its digital transformation journey. Kyndryl will help Etihad modernise its IT infrastructure by facilitating the use of best-in-breed cloud platforms. Innovation and technology have been instrumental to Etihad’s agility to adapt within the aviation industry and enhance its world-renowned guest experience. Previously, the airline has relied on a private cloud infrastructure – but to achieve further flexibility, it needed to adopt a cloud strategy that integrates various public cloud environments to support its workloads. Accordingly, Etihad will tap Kyndryl to work closely with leading cloud 6

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providers to select fit-for-purpose cloud platforms that are based on the specific requirements of Etihad’s missioncritical workloads. Over the next three years, Kyndryl will also help migrate and manage Etihad’s workloads across the new multi-cloud environment. Through a multi-cloud model, Etihad will have seamless access to advanced cloud services and be able to combine the capabilities that each cloud platform provides. This will enable more efficient operations and bringing innovation to market at a more rapid pace. “As Etihad continues to evolve, its ability to push the boundaries of innovation and digitalisation within the aviation industry is necessary to create the next generation travel experience. The airline looks forward to working with Kyndryl as their expertise in cloud environments will support Etihad in

becoming a more agile and sustainable airline,” said Frank Meyer, Chief Digital Officer, Etihad. “Etihad is long known for embedding innovation into every aspect of its operations and continuously transforming to better serve its employees and guests,” said Vickram Nagi, Managing Director, Kyndryl Middle East, Africa and Turkey. “We are proud to have been selected by Etihad to help facilitate the next phase of its digital transformation through the use of best-in-breed cloud platforms. This collaboration reaffirms our commitment to support mission-critical technology systems the world depends on every day and to forge strong relationships with leading technology innovators to serve our customers better.” Kyndryl and Etihad signed the strategic agreement in November 2021.

NEWLY UNVEILED ‘HELP AG AS A SERVICE’ OFFERS COMPREHENSIVE CYBERSECURITY

elp AG, the cybersecurity arm of Etisalat Digital and the region’s trusted security advisor, has launched “Help AG as a Service,” a service-centric model that provides comprehensive cybersecurity offerings that customers can avail “as a service” based on state-of-theart platforms and tools. Help AG as a Service is the culmination of the company’s transition from technology delivery to a service-centric model, which has placed it in the best position to offer the entire lifecycle, from ‘Assess’ to ‘Defend’ to ‘Respond,’ as a service to customers. All services delivered by Help AG are fully compliant with regional and

Stephan Berner, Help AG

country specific data regulations, and the company ensures that it has expertise and infrastructure available on the ground. Help AG follows the concept of ‘think global, act local,’ aiming to give customers all the benefits of the most advanced global technologies, while fully provisioning them with local expertise. Stephan Berner, Chief Executive Officer at Help AG, said, “Help AG has been one of the region’s most experienced and trusted cybersecurity partners for more

AVEVA ANNOUNCES VISION AI ASSISTANT Industrial software firm AVEVA has launched Vision AI Assistant 2021 – an image classificationbased analytics tool. The artificial intelligence (AI) solution, which can be integrated into AVEVA System Platform and Operations Management Interface and AVEVA Insight, enables customers to use video and images from existing general-purpose cameras and convert them into user-friendly information and timely alerts. Designed for low latency industrial environments, Vision AI Assistant leverages deep learning to train and deploy 24×7 artificial intelligence models to enhance situational awareness to help operators focus on the task at hand without continuously monitoring

Jim Chappell, AVEVA

live camera feeds. Vision AI Assistant enables organisations to improve operations, quality, and maintenance capabilities across industrial enterprises by using cameras to determine visual anomalies, assess quality, and vigorously monitor production, optimising efficiencies and improving sustainability in the process. Kenneth Labhart, Innovation

than 16 years, and with the launch of Help AG as a Service, we are truly cementing our place as a pioneer in the regional cybersecurity industry. The future of cybersecurity will be service-led, and Help AG is at the helm of this evolution.” Under Help AG as a Service, customers also enjoy SLAbased offerings; cybersecurity expertise on demand, wherein Help AG’s experts work as an extension of the customer’s team; and elastic capacity based on the customer’s needs. The company has differentiated itself by providing in-country, compliant security infrastructure; capability and agility in the cloud; optimisation-driven service delivery; in-house digital forensics and incident response; automated threat hunting and cyber threat intelligence under its Security Operations Center (SOC) services; and a dedicated team of security researchers with 110+ zero-day findings to its credit, among other factors that add unmatched value for end customers.

Leader, Global Supply Chain North America, Schneider Electric said, “AVEVA’s Vision AI is monitoring and analysing the 1.5 km main drive chain for our Lexington, Kentucky, smart factory which manufactures electric breaker panels. If that chain goes down, our entire factory comes to a halt, which typically happens a few times per year.” Jim Chappell, Global Head of AI and Advanced Analytics at AVEVA said, “This breakthrough technology represents a game changer that transforms factory operations through the power of AI. The Vision AI Assistant enables enhanced process optimisation, thereby reducing time, wastage, and costs. Cameras can also be used in areas that are not suitable for humans for security or safety concerns, freeing up workers to focus on highvalue tasks instead of continuously monitoring live camera feeds.”

DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

NEWS

ARUBA ANNOUNCES SD-WAN SUPPORT AND INTEGRATION WITH AWS CLOUD WAN

David Hughes, Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company

ruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, has announced Aruba SD-WAN support and integration with Amazon Web Services’s (AWS) new AWS Cloud WAN, a cloud networking service introduced at AWS re:Invent.

This new solution will enable Aruba customers to use the policy-based framework of AWS Cloud WAN to create advanced WAN topologies with integrated network segmentation that aligns seamlessly with the Aruba SDWAN fabric. Now, all the advantages of network segmentation at the edge – in the LAN and WAN – can be extended from headquarters and branches across the AWS cloud. With this latest development, Aruba now supports the widest range of integrations with AWS, making Aruba SD-WAN the cloud onramp of choice for cloud-first enterprises. This year’s re:Invent marks the third year in a row that Aruba has been a launch affiliate for new AWS network services. In 2020, Aruba announced support for AWS Transit Gateway Connect and in 2019, Aruba launched API-based

automationwith AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager. “This latest integration with AWS Cloud WAN changes the game for enterprises looking to maximise flexibility and reduce operational complexity while strengthening security posture within their cloudcentric WAN deployments,” said David Hughes, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. “Integrations like these play an important role within Aruba ESP by enabling edge-to-cloud security for organisations as they adopt a Zero Trust SASE approach, while maximising choice and flexibility as they implement their cloud strategy.” Aruba’s SD-WAN solutions, an integral part of Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform), provide enterprises with a sophisticated, flexible on-ramp to AWS network services, allowing users to easily integrate their SD-WAN with a wide range of hybrid and multi-cloud services.

BARRACUDA NETWORKS ANNOUNCES NEW EMAIL PROTECTION PLANS

Don MacLennan, Barracuda Networks

Barracuda Networks has announced three new Email Protection plans which scale to meet customers’ evolving threat protection needs. The firm’s comprehensive solutions combine gateway and API-based AI technology to detect and remediate threats and reduce the risk that a malicious attack succeeds by immediately and automatically eliminating the user’s ability to view or launch flagged emails. 8

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“The threat landscape has evolved and, coupled with the gap in security professional talent facing most businesses, protecting against these threats is extremely complex. Barracuda Email Protection offers customers complete protection by combining gateway defense, APIbased inbox defense, incident response, data protection, and user security awareness capabilities,” said Don MacLennan, SVP, Engineering & Product Management, Email Protection, Barracuda Networks. “Barracuda was the first to bring an ‘API approach’ to impersonation and phishing protection — leveraging AI and machine learning. Today, we continue to lead with our unique combination of gateway and API-based AI technology to detect and remediate email threats in real time for Office 365 customers.” Recent attacks have shown that Office 365 native security alone has gaps and that third-party solutions are required to ensure customers are fully protected.

With Barracuda, customers receive an integrated and validated suite of capabilities to protect their people and business which includes: • Threatprevention: Prevent attacks from getting through by combining email-gateway defenses, API-based inbox defense, and web security. • Post-delivery detection and response:Identify and limit the impact of any threats that reach users with automated response and user security awareness training. • Data protection:Ensure compliance and stay productive during downtime. Back up important Office 365 email and data to recover easily from malware attacks or lost data. • Automated workflows:Easily create custom workflows to completely automate incident response. • SIEM/SOAR/XDR integrations: Public-facing APIs for integrating with third-party platforms to enable seamless and consistent response to security events.

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NEWS

GARTNER: 50% OF THE TOP 10 AUTOMOTIVE OEMS TO DESIGN OWN CHIPS BY 2025

y 2025, chip shortages and trends such as electrification and autonomy will drive 50% of the top 10 automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to design their own chips, according

to Gartner, Inc. As a result, it will give them control over their product roadmap and supply chains. “Automotive semiconductor supply chains are complex,” said Gaurav Gupta, research vice president at Gartner. “In most cases, chip makers are traditionally Tier 3 or Tier 4 suppliers to automakers, which means it usually takes a while until they adapt to the changes affecting automotive market demand. This lack of visibility in the supply chain has increased automotive OEMs desire to have greater control over their semiconductor supply.” In addition, the on-going chip shortage is primarily with mature semiconductor technology node devices that are fabricated on smaller 8-inch wafers, where capacity expansion is difficult. “The fact that

ORACLE ANNOUNCES NEW AI SERVICES FOR OCI

Oracle has announced availability of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) AI services, a collection of services that make it easier for developers to apply AI services to their applications without requiring data science expertise. The new OCI AI services give developers the choice of leveraging out-of-thebox models that have been pretrained on business-oriented data or custom training the services based on their organisation’s own data. The six new services help developers with a range of complex tasks from language to computer vision, and time-series forecasts. The new fully managed AI services include: 10

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OCI Language: Performs text analysis at scale to understand unstructured text in documents, customer feedback interactions, support tickets, and social media. With built-in pre-trained models, OCI Language eliminates the need for machine learning expertise and empowers developers to apply sentiment analysis, key-phrase extraction, text classification, named entity recognition, and more into their applications. OCI Speech: Provides automatic speech recognition through prebuilt models trained on thousands of native and non-native language speakers for real-time speech recognition. OCI speech enables developers to easily convert file-based audio data containing human speech into highly accurate text transcriptions and can be used to provide in-workflow closed captions, index content, and enhance analytics on audio and video content. OCI Vision: Provides pre-trained computer vision models for image

the automotive industry has been conservative in qualifying older devices on larger wafer sizes has also hurt them and will likely motivate them to take chip design in-house,” said Gupta. This model of bringing chip design in-house, or popularly known as ‘OEM-Foundry-Direct’, isn’t unique to the automotive industry and will intensify among tech companies as some changes are happening in the semiconductor market. Semiconductor chip foundries, such as TSMC and Samsung, have provided access to cutting-edge manufacturing processes, and other semiconductor vendors have given access to advanced intellectual property that makes custom chip design relatively easy. Gartner also predicts that by 2025, the average sale price of new vehicles will exceed $50,000 in the U.S. and Germany, leading to greater repair and upfit of older vehicles.

recognition and document analysis tasks. It also enables users to extend the models to other industry and customer-specific use cases such as scene monitoring, defect detection, and document processing with their own data. OCI Vision can be used to detect visual anomalies in manufacturing, extract text from forms to automate business workflows, and tag items in images to count products or shipments. OCI Anomaly Detection: Delivers business-specific anomaly detection models that flag critical irregularities early, which enables faster resolution and less operational disruption. OCI Anomaly Detection provides REST APIs and SDKs for several programming languages, which developers can use to easily integrate anomaly detection models into business applications. It is built on the patented MSET2 algorithm, which is used worldwide in highly sensitive situations like nuclear reactor health monitoring, and can be used for fraud detection, predicting equipment breakdown, and receiving data from multiple devices to predict failures.

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NEWS

STC, NOZOMI NETWORKS TO DELIVER CYBERSECURITY SOLUTIONS IN SAUDI ARABIA

ozomi Networks has announced that it has partnered with stc Group to address the growing demand for security services and solutions designed to holistically address IoT and OT cybersecurity requirements for customers in industrial automation, manufacturing, healthcare, public safety systems, smart cities, utilities and building management systems (BMS) industries across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

stc Group will offer Nozomi Networks’ advanced solutions for OT/IoT cyber resiliency and real-time network monitoring and visibility. “Cybersecurity is one of stc’s main focuses. This partnership supports stc’s continued pursuit of delivering data and AI-driven, purpose-built IoT and OT solutions for clients across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” said Saud AlSheraihi VP of Products and Solutions in stc. Nozomi Networks solutions are available through stc for clients who

need deep insight into their industrial networks. With Nozomi Networks, they gain asset discovery, network visualisation, vulnerability assessment, risk monitoring and threat detection in a single solution. The technology accelerates security and simplifies IT/OT convergence by delivering actionable intelligence to the business and operational decision makers. “stc has created sirar by stc, the cybersecurity arm of stc, to be able to enrich the private sector’s capabilities by helping clients navigate the evolving cyber security landscape, while pursuing our mission of providing intelligence about their industrial systems and empowering them to make the ‘right’ decisions at the ‘right’ time to optimise their business operations. Collaborating with Nozomi Networks is one step further in this direction,” said Fahad Aljutaily, CEO of sirar by stc.

CYBEREASON ANNOUNCES AI-DRIVEN XDR PLATFORM

Lior Div, Cybereason

Cybereason and Google Cloud have announced the availability of Cybereason XDR powered by Google Chronicle, giving defenders the ability to predict, detect, and respond to cyberattacks at planetary scale and maximum speed across the enterprise, including endpoints, networks, identities, cloud, and workspaces. “Together Cybereason and Google Cloud are delivering the industry’s first true XDR platform. Other vendors have simply done an endpoint extension and called it XDR. That’s 12

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not good enough. Defenders need to secure the entire continuum of how work gets done,” said Cybereason CEO and co-founder Lior Div. “Our AI-Driven XDR platform paints one unified story of an attack and it takes one coordinated set of actions to end attacks while predicting and preventing tomorrow’s threats.” In today’s environments, anything connected to the internet can be part of an organisational attack surface, yet defenders are forced to use multiple siloed solutions to try to find and end these complex malicious operations. Now, defenders can leverage Cybereason AI-Driven XDR to predict, understand, and end sophisticated attacks with the only solution on the market that delivers: • Planetary-Scale Protection: Cybereason AI-Driven XDR combines the Cybereason MalOp, which analyses over 23 trillion security events per week to deliver instant detection and incident response, with Google Cloud Chronicle’s unrivaled ability to ingest

and normalise petabytes of data from the entire IT environment for planetaryscale protection. • Operation-Centric Detection and Response: Instead of being alerted about individual events, users can instantly understand the entire attack progression across every device, user identity, application and cloud deployment to end them immediately. The Cybereason MalOp provides automated and guided response actions to reduce human error, upskill analysts, and achieve a 10x faster time to response than competing solutions. Chronicle also allows analysts to map incident intelligence to retrospective data to find persistent threats across their environments. • Predict Attacker Behavior: Defenders can shift from a laborintensive, alert-centric posture to a predictive operation-centric model. Through context-rich correlations, Cybereason AI-Driven XDR identifies subtle signs of malicious behavior and predicts an attacker’s next steps to anticipate and proactively block attacks.

SONICWALL UNIFIES CLOUD, VIRTUAL AND HARDWARE PORTFOLIO

onicWall has announced the latest additions of its Generation 7 cybersecurity evolution, the largest in the company’s 30-year history. Driven by this innovation, SonicWall unifies cloud, virtual and hardware offerings across a single and fully integrated cloudpowered platform. SonicWall’s achievement is marked by the introduction of three new high-performance firewall models — NSa 5700, NSsp 10700 and NSsp 11700 — designed to protect the largest and most complex enterprises, government agencies and MSSPs from advanced cyberattacks, including ransomware and never-before-seen malware, without sacrificing network performance. “More than two years ago, SonicWall set out to evolve its cybersecurity portfolio to meet the diverse needs of our customers and partners across a variety of complex on-premises, hybrid cloud and multicloud environments,” said SonicWall President and CEO Bill Conner. “As a sign of that commitment, we’re proud to announce the completion of a unified foundation that helps protect our customers with more simplicity, flexibility and cost-effectiveness than ever before. As always, our mission remains protecting our loyal users, organizations and data, no matter the environment. This is the next phase of many in exceeding those objectives.” The company’s advanced collection of 17 virtual and physical firewall offerings on the Generation 7 platform ensure that organisations of any size — in any industry — are all able to implement SonicWall’s Boundless Cybersecurity model. SonicWall’s entire line of TZ, NSa, NSsp and NSv (virtual) firewalls can be quickly managed by the cloud-native Network Security Manager (NSM), which gives distributed enterprises a

single, easy-to-use cloud interface for streamlined management, analytics and reporting. The new SonicWall NSsp 10700 and NSsp 11700 firewalls are designed to protect enterprise-class networks — as well as provide more powerful options for MSSPs — by delivering up to four times the threat protection of previousgeneration SonicWall offerings. This includes high marks for firewall throughout (42 Gbps for the 10700, 47 Gbps for the 11700), threat throughput (27, 35 Gbps), IPS (28, 37 Gbps) and VPN performance (23, 27 Gbps). The NSsp 10700 and NSsp 11700 both offer 100G, 25G and 10G connectivity, delivering multi-gigabit threat protection for large environments. These higher port densities, coupled with hardware redundancy and high availability, allow distributed enterprises and large government agencies to purchase fewer appliances while supporting more secure connections as their networks grow.

With the addition of the new NSsp models, SonicWall now offers four government- and enterprise-grade firewalls: NSsp 10700, 11700, 13700 and 15700. This variety gives large organisations choice when scaling high-performance security — up to 105 Gbps of firewall throughput on the NSsp 15700 — for even the most demanding and complex environments. To help mid-range businesses and organisations manage total cost of ownership (TCO) during challenging times, SonicWall also announces the new NSa 5700, the final addition to the company’s Generation 7 evolution. Similar to the new NSsp offerings, the new NSa 5700 accelerates secure network performance with new standards in firewall throughput (28 Gbps) and threat prevention throughput (15 Gbps) — more than four times the previous comparable SonicWall appliances. This improvement is complemented by similar increases in IPS (17 Gbps) and VPN (15 Gbps) speeds.

DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

COVER STORY

ACCELERATING INNOVATION

an you please give a brief background of CERT? The Centre of Excellence for Applied Research and Training (CERT) is the commercial and research arm of the Higher Colleges of Technology, the largest federal higher education institution in the UAE. We have been at the forefront of national development, through technology and life-long learning solutions that deliver value for leading organisations in the UAE and the region. Our programmes combine immersive and impactful delivery methodologies with a focus on practical, industry-oriented development and career success. CERT and its subsidiaries, CERT Soft and CERT Telematics, are market leaders and innovators in the technology sector. We are uniquely positioned at the intersection of academia, industry, and government, offering integrated solutions that contribute to industry competitiveness and government excellence. What makes CERT’s AI Academy unique? The AI Academy is a priority initiative of CERT in line with the UAE government’s strategic vision of digital transformation. Our mission is to bridge the gap in AI knowledge and AI talent, by preparing the national workforce for the jobs and innovations of the future. We offer a holistic, 360-degree approach to capacity development for AI adoption, with five programmes: Talent Acceleration, Knowledge Transfer, Enterprise Technology Integration, AI Start-up Incubation, and Programmes for Young 14

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Dr. Mohamed Baka

Digital Thinkers. The applied nature of the AI Academy and our focus on the unity of human capital and technology makes us unique. We work with organisations to develop roadmaps for successful integration of AIpowered solutions in the government and private sector, to enhance performance and improve the impact of services to the UAE constituencies. We achieve this, by combining our experience in human capital development with the expertise of partners who are in the cutting-edge technology space. The Academy is proud to have the participation of top researchers, policymakers, and thought leaders in the field of AI in our Board of Advisors. Our faculty and subject-matter experts have practical experience in the implementation of AI solutions in the UAE, the Arab region, and global markets.

What are the key offerings of the AI academy? In the design of the AI Academy, we sought input from industry partners, academia and government. Our scanning of the market revealed that the implementation of AI solutions at the enterprise or government level relies on a need to build AI awareness, bridge the skill gap, and connect business and technical teams through reskilling programmes. With this in mind, our Talent Acceleration programmes support the capacity development of technical and non-technical teams. Our AI Foundations programmes for all audiences promote awareness of the impact of digital technologies and AI in the workplace. Our Accelerators in Data Science, AI Ethics, and Data Analytics are project-based training aimed at

supporting Implementers, Sustainers, and Business Users, in the identification of business problems that require AI solutions. For technical teams of Developers and Trainers, responsible for deploying ML models and AI solutions we offer Professional Certifications and Qualifications. Lastly, our AI Leadership programmes for Executives and Decision Makers, focus on the formulation of a vision for this transformation. These programmes are complemented by consultancy services to provide our customers with cognitive technologies insights and roadmaps for success in their digital transformation. Why is there a need for AI talents and skills in the UAE? The Global AI market size in 2020 reached $35.92B and is projected to increase to $360b by 2028, according to a report by Fortune Business Insights. A PwC Middle East report estimates that the Middle East is expected to accrue 2% of the total global benefits of AI in 2030, which is equivalent to $320 billion. This optimistic scenario signals the growing number of organisations in the Middle East that understand the potential benefits of AI. We are actively working with our partner Global Association for Research Methods in Data Science (GRMDS), in a certification system that evaluates and certifies data scientists at various levels, based on their educational background, skills, and practical experience. The purpose of this certification system is to propel the proficiency and employability of these professionals across industries. Committed as we are to technology innovation and capital development, the Academy focuses on supporting organisations to build their internal capabilities, increase their awareness of the benefits of AI, and formulate use cases that bring value to their internal and external stakeholders. Do you see AI use cases going beyond automation in the country? Definitely. Robotic automation has been quite a common and visible type of application of AI. The Ministry of Health, for instance has been using robotic

assistance in cardiac surgeries since 2014 and currently using ML models to diagnose diseases such as TB. Dubai Police launched its robot police officer in 2017 and is now using Oyoon, an AIenabled security surveillance programme to optimise response time. In Abu Dhabi, there is a concerted effort to achieve a strategic agenda for e-government and smart cities, including smart infrastructure as a test-bed for innovation, big data analytics, and e-government. To cite some examples of AI use cases, entities like the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority (ADAFSA) are using AI in smart inspections and disease detection; the Department of Municipalities and Transport (DMT) is applying AI to improve the efficiency of services to individuals and corporations. How are you working with the UAE government in terms of enabling local AI talents? We work with government entities in a synergic manner, to create a pipeline of digital talent, attract and place this talent, and improve its retention in technical, non-technical, and managerial roles. Our collaboration with academic and professional learning partners allows us to formulate competency frameworks and educational pathways for AI and digital professions and occupations. We design our programmes to address the needs of talent requiring retraining and upskilling for mid-career transition. Many IT professionals in entry-level or managerial positions, who have strong skills in software engineering or systems administration, seek to make their cross-over to supporting Data Science projects. The Government and Enterprise Accelerator Programme focuses on this purpose. We work at the enterprise level with groups of 5-10 team members, in a combination of masterclasses, coaching, and applied case studies, specific to their organisation. Where do you see the AI landscape in the UAE in next couple of years? What role will CERT play in ensuring that this market segment thrives? The UAE is ranked as the top nation

ENGAGEMENT AND COOPERATION ARE THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS IN THIS NATIONAL GOAL OF LEADING IN THE AI SPHERE. for the creation of an ‘innovationconducive environment’, according to 2020 GE Global Innovation Barometer, conducted across 22 countries. Amid the pandemic, the UAE demonstrated how to use AI optimally in public health services, to protect its residents and citizens. The success in the application of AI in healthcare can act as a catalyst for industries in all sectors to propel their uptake of AI. Priority areas to stimulate AI adoption in the UAE and the region may include, among others the following: (1) Improve the awareness and understanding of the opportunities, challenges, and risks of AI. This should best position organisational leaders to identify the need for skills or infrastructure to execute their AI strategy. (2) Incentivise collaboration between industry and academia, for applied research with a localised view. This localisation is essential for the deployment of AI solutions that are relevant to the region. (3) Expand opportunities for AI Skill development programmes, that respond to the reality of the countries in the region, while aligned to global practices. (4) Educate in the fair use of AI and technology solutions in general, in line with standards and governance practices at the global and local levels. Our Knowledge Transfer programme in the AI Academy promotes this dialogical connection between industry, government, and academia in the above-mentioned aspects. Through webinars and round tables, we bring the key actors together to discuss the way forward in this journey to AI adoption. Engagement and cooperation are the essential elements in this national goal of leading in the AI sphere.

DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

VIEWPOINT

THE CYBERSECURITY IMPLICATIONS OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION EFFECTIVE CYBER DEFENSE IS A MIXTURE OF THE RIGHT PEOPLE, PROCESSES, AND TECHNOLOGIES. WHEN IT COMES TO CYBERSECURITY AND PARTICULARLY CYBER DEFENSE, IT IS SIMPLY NOT ENOUGH FOR AN ORGANIZATION TO BUY VARIOUS TECHNOLOGIES AND INSTALL THEM ON THEIR SYSTEMS, SAYS ABED SAMHURI, CYBER INSTITUTE LEAD AT AXON TECHNOLOGIES.

t is a fact that organisations that have adopted digital transformation in advance were able to cope with the remote working challenges during the pandemic. And this indeed has pushed many organisations to start considering digital transformation seriously. However, if done with no security in mind, digital transformation can widen the attack surface against the organisation and can open the door to more security incidents. One of the greatest challenges to securely implementing digital transformation is not having enough resources (budget and manpower). For this reason, our first recommendation is to outsource this aspect to a thirdparty cybersecurity firm. The following are three key tips to mitigate any security risks that arise from digital transformation: 16

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• Cloud Security: given that a lot of technologies for digital transformation are cloud-based, it is crucial that you pay attention to this point. Cloud security starts with choosing the right cloud service provider – one that already has a strong security policy. • Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): it is not enough that you have strong passwords on various online accounts. You need to enable/ enforce MFA to prevent account compromise, session hijacking, and other attacks. • Enable Auditing and Logging: whenever you utilise a cloud-based service, ensure to enable logging of various actions (permissible or otherwise). In times of crisis, those logs are the first thing that will give you clues of what is happening, why it is happening, and how to fix it.

Towards zero trust security Zero-Trust Security is a principle in security architecture where “trust” is eliminated between interacting entities – such as a person accessing a system, an application accessing a network share, etc. In this approach, enforcement of authentication and authorization always takes place between entities regardless of their network or location. No network is regarded as trusted where entities in it can interact with no authentication. Thus, it is about eliminating trust. The advantage of the zero-trust approach is self-evident. It reduces any chance of an attacker exploiting a trust relationship and gaining unauthorised access due to that trust. Attacks like spoofing, hijacking, privilege escalation, etc., get reduced tremendously in an infrastructure designed with zero-trust principle.

However, this does not come without a cost. Zero trust security requires more effort in designing a network infrastructure. In addition, there is management overhead; zero-trust security requires continuous monitoring and auditing of users and devices. What effective cyber defense looks like Effective cyber defense is invariably a mixture of the right people, processes, and technologies. When it comes to cybersecurity and particularly cyber defense, it is not enough for an organisation to buy various technologies and install them on their systems. Experience has shown repeatedly that technology cannot meet the expectation unless operated by a team of skilled security specialists. The human intelligence is an essential component of a successful cyber defense program. The team can be composed of security analysts, engineers, and incident responders. Technology can a good preventive measure; but whatever slips through the technology would need the human to analyze, examine, and hunt for otherwise hidden intrusions. Finally, there needs to be a set of processes that govern how the team interacts with the technology so that detection and response are efficient. Processes outline procedures and step-by-step actions to be undertaken by the team. They help eliminate ad hoc reactions in times of crisis and provide visibility and efficiency to the overall cyber defense strategy. Enhancing cybersecurity with gamification Gamification adds emotional engagement to training by providing a competitive context and excitement. Game playing is regarded as a sophisticated way of training and educating security specialists. According to scientific studies, people learn best when they engage their emotions and practical experience in a competitive environment.

The following are two examples where we leverage gamification in cyber training: • Training interns: within our internship program, the intern is assigned an account on a gamified cyber security platform. The intern has to complete around 200 challenges, where each challenge has a certain score. As the intern completes one challenge after the other, their score increases, and they can view their ranking on a leaderboard. The challenges are categorised into different topics such as web application attacks, reverse engineering, security event analysis, malware analysis, cryptography, etc. • Cyber War Game: it is an event that is set up to simulate and exercise cyber offense and defense techniques and tactics in a gamified and challenging way. Participants are grouped into 2 Team categories: Red-Team (Offence) and Blue-Team (Defense). The Red-Team attempts to break into a predesigned virtual infrastructure while the Blue-Team will detect, track, and respond to the attacks. To sum it up, gamification is an effective approach to sharpen the skills of the security teams, enhance

THE ADVANTAGE OF THE ZERO-TRUST APPROACH IS SELFEVIDENT. IT REDUCES ANY CHANCE OF AN ATTACKER EXPLOITING A TRUST RELATIONSHIP AND GAINING UNAUTHORISED ACCESS DUE TO THAT TRUST. ATTACKS LIKE SPOOFING, HIJACKING, PRIVILEGE ESCALATION.

the communication between the team members, and increase the organisation’s resilience to cyberattacks. Empowering cybersecurity professionals The industry needs cybersecurity institutes that offer high-quality intensive courses and workshops in all fields of cybersecurity. IT professionals need to become wellestablished security specialists in their organisations. The courses and training programs should cover a wide range of cybersecurity development paths, such as Cyber Defense, Cyber Offense, Incident Response and Forensics, and Management. For each path, we need progressive courses from a beginner level to an expert level. Participants can build a training path of their choosing. Ideally, the courses need to be handson, with comprehensive lab sessions and exercises. We should not only cover the essential theories and concepts, but also make sure that the participants can apply the skills practically in real-world scenarios. By enrolling in such training courses and workshops, cybersecurity professionals can boost their knowledge and skills, and thus, advance in their career paths.

DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

FEATURE

TIMES OF DISRUPTION TOP TECH TRENDS THAT WILL DISRUPT BUSINESSES IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS

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DECEMBER 2021

he pandemic has redefined the technology landscape, with digital transformation accelerating like never before. Next year promises to bring even more disruption as businesses seek to navigate the post-pandemic world. Innovations in AI and machine learning, IoT, edge computing, and 5G would impact businesses in 2022 and beyond. We reached out to industry leaders to get their take on which disruptive technologies will transform business landscape in the near future. “The past two years have been extremely transformative for the IT sector. We are now operating in an app-driven, cloud-first world, and this will drive disruptive technologies trends in 2022,” says Adele Trombetta, Head of Customer Experience Group (CX) Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia at Cisco. Trombetta says collaboration technology has become essential in the hybrid work environment. “We have seen some amazing innovation in the last two years, with the momentum continuing in 2022. Notably, Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are being used to offer userparticipation insights, deliver meeting notes, transcriptions, and even real-time translation. Platforms are also evolving to include interactive features, such as gesture recognition, virtual backgrounds, polling capabilities and noise reduction. In the next year, I expect those innovations to expand further with a focus on inclusive participation.” Walid Yehia, Sr. Director, Presales – MERAT, Dell Technologies, believes AI and machine learning are

technologies that will have a great influence on how economies will operate. “From smart venues and cities, to autonomous vehicles, the interplay of AI with 5G and the proliferation of IoT devices will revolutionise the way we live. As more data becomes available and analysed, AI and machine learning will become more sophisticated. Organisations can use these technologies to their advantage in many ways, including automating daily tasks, thus freeing up the workforce to address complex challenges and leaving room for innovation. Moreover, the combination of AI with other emerging technologies can be used to better understand and predict consumer behaviour, which can ultimately define what pioneering products and services go to market,” he says. Cherif Morcos, Vice President of Digital Business Solutions, GBM, says we can expect to see wider acceptance of technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) through connected sensors and machines, Responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI), and data and analytics as more industries enhance their infrastructure to make way for these newer technologies. 5G was successfully introduced to several countries in 2021, with the GCC being early adopters, and the coming year will see further uptake thanks to an increase in edge computing. “As security becomes a growing concern in the technology space, we will also see further adoption of cybersecurity mesh which supports the zero trust security strategy by protecting each device and access point,” he says. As with AI, in 2022, there would

Ranjith Kaippada

Walid Yehia

be continued interest and uptake of Internet of Things and cloud solutions, says Ranjith Kaippada, Managing Director, Cloud Box Technologies.There is also a huge interest in advanced robotics which is driving a great amount of innovation especially in the manufacturing industry. This will prove to be a boon for organisations that are planning on upgrading or building smart factories and will bring about massive improvements across the manufacturing process.

DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

FEATURE

“Simultaneously at Cloud Box Technologies we are preparing for additional implementations for AI use in cybersecurity. This is relevant in an environment where our lives are taken over by automation and machines and there is an additional need for protection for both our customers as well as the end users,” he says. Ali Hyder, group CEO of Focus Softnet, says the constant changes in the current business landscape call for dynamic applications that support fast, safe, and efficient change. Gartner defines them as ‘Composable Applications’ as they could be remodeled and repurposed according

WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY

to a firm’s period-specific or projectspecific requirements. “Businesses that adopt a composable approach in their applications (such as ERP) would outpace their competition in terms of speed by 80% in implementing new features,” he says. He further adds that traditional programming and simple automation will not be enough for growing enterprises. They would require self-managing physical and software systems that learn from their environments. Termed as Autonomic Systems, they could dynamically modify their own algorithms without external updates, enabling them to

“One area that I see is ripe for disruption is around threat detection and data recovery. Cyber attackers have been coming after technologies that help businesses overcome paying a ransom. This puts more emphasis on data recovery as the perimeter security tools are consistently breached, but the last line of defence, data recovery, is the fallback position. I think in 2022 the prejudice towards data recovery tools and controls in the fight against ransomware and data exfiltration will finally end. With the evolving threat landscape and continued impact of the global pandemic coupled with enterprises realising that front-end perimeter security is no longer sufficient on its own, enterprises will ask partners and existing vendors, what can you do for us? Along with this, I would also encourage organisations to request vendors to provide them with references of customers who have fallen victim to ransomware so they can speak directly to these businesses and understand if and how the vendor’s technology enabled them to avoid paying the ransomware while preventing any data loss. And that’ll open up a new line of conversation as CISOs and SecOps, keen to take advantage of whatever is at their disposal, realise the benefits of the ML and inbuilt threat intelligence.” Gregg Petersen, Regional Director - MEA at Cohesity

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adapt to changing conditions. Piecing it together How can companies effectively integrate disruptive technologies into existing IT environments? First, organisations need to understand the ramifications of embracing these new technologies and wrap them around legacy systems to fuel digital transformation. Firstly, when making strategic decisions about your technology investment, access to the right data and insights is everything, says Trombetta from Cisco. “Platforms such as the Cisco CX Cloud can give businesses a holistic view of their

“Deploying sustainable technologies in the industrial sector can benefit the development of the country while maintaining the overall health of the planet. The process of making technical and mechanical activities more energy-saving, eco-friendly, and sourceefficient while focusing on innovation, reusability, long-term planning, and social responsibility is known as sustainable technology. “Some of the many advanced sustainable technologies that will transform businesses in 2022 include smart monitoring systems that carry the intelligence to turn the equipment off when it senses that the machine is utilizing more than the required energy, and nanotechnology applications for greenhouse gas management, sustainable living, production of green energy, and green manufacturing.” Marwan Zeidan, Real Estate and Healthcare Segment Director, Middle East and Africa, Schneider Electric

environment and help them stay up-to-date with industry trends. Additionally, tools like ThousandEyes and AppDynamics, provide visibility over what is happening in the cloud, what is performing well, what is not, and how to resolve issues.” Trombetta points out having the technical expertise to deploy, maintain and optimise disruptive technologies within the business is hard. “Luckily, vendors like Cisco have this expertise and can help companies get more out of their investment faster. My advice is to engage with Customer Experience and leverage their expertise when deploying – or even considering

“2022 will witness companies continuing to deploy AI and IoT infrastructure without owning a single server or proprietary piece of cognitive code. Modern no-code interfaces will become more popular as a lack of programming knowledge will cease to become a barrier to offering world-class customer and employee experiences through cloud technology.” Manish Mishra, Head, Middle East & Africa, Freshworks

“Livestream commerce and video commerce are going to be more and more mainstream. AI-based personalization of videos will move beyond early adopters. More companies will recognise themselves as Tech-enabled rather than just Tech supported. This isn’t as much about a new technology but by the disruptive effect of globally available technology that the region is now waking up to.” Aswin Ravi, Director, WebEngage MEA

THE PAST TWO YEARS HAVE BEEN EXTREMELY TRANSFORMATIVE FOR THE IT SECTOR. WE ARE NOW OPERATING IN AN APP-DRIVEN, CLOUDFIRST WORLD, AND THIS WILL DRIVE DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES TRENDS IN 2022. investing in disruptive technologies,” she says. Yehia from Dell says enterprises are striving to stay ahead of the game, with disruption dramatically reshaping the competitive landscape for many industries. Updating their business models to adapt to change is essential in surviving the onslaught of disruptive technologies. Letting go of old systems is also important, but organisations need to take heed of vendor lock-in, and hidden legacy systems. “Moreover, understanding and analysing new trends will also allow businesses to prepare for and grasp new opportunities. Instead of transforming by adopting multiple technologies, focusing on changes that align with business priorities will result in a real competitive advantage. Having customer-centric goals is also essential and can increase the value of the products or services offered, enabling resiliency and business continuity,” he says. According to GBM’s Morcos, it is crucial for companies to think longterm when adopting new technologies by focusing on changes that support business priorities rather than adopting multiple technologies,

Adele Trombetta

Cherif Morcos

all at once. This is where CIOs and CTOs play an irreplaceable role, by understanding and analyzing new trends and bringing technology to the forefront of boardrooms discussions. Hyder from Focus Softnet sums up: “Organisations would have to prioritise digital disruptions by identifying them early. Digital disruptions should be viewed within three dimensions — the scale of the disruption, its reach, and the richness of the experience. A keen watch over their competitors and cultivating a culture of innovation would go a long way in this regard.”

DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

VIEWPOINT

THE STATE OF THE SOC SKILLS SHORTAGES, AUTOMATION AND GAINING CONTEXT REMAIN A CHALLENGE FOR SOCS, WRITES FIRAS GHANEM, REGIONAL DIRECTOR - MIDDLE EAST & PAKISTAN AT THREATQUOTIENT.

he security operations centre (SOC) has been on the front line facing the pandemic-induced escalation of cybersecurity threats in the past eighteen months. A 2020 study by Forrester found that the average security operations team receives more than 11,000 alerts per day and that figure is likely to have grown in the intervening period. While they were deeply engaged responding to the crisis, SOC teams were simultaneously facing the disruption common to all formerly office-based workers. They were switching to remote working and learning how to continue collaborating successfully with colleagues at a distance. As SOCs take stock of the changes and challenges of the past year, it is an opportune moment to explore some of the factors that characterise the modern SOC and the common issues experienced in this crucial sector. The SANS 2021 Survey: Security Operations Center (SOC) does just that in its fifth annual survey. By collecting and analysing the views of security analysts and team managers across a broad spectrum of industry sectors, the study draws insight across a range of issues. It is a valuable benchmark for SOCs who wish to compare their approach and actions with others in the industry. Several findings stood out for me as

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priorities as we aim to equip SOCs for the future. The cybersecurity skills shortage continues to bite It’s not new, but it is a continuing issue: the number one barrier preventing full utilisation of a SOC’s capabilities is a lack of skilled staff. With a typical team numbering between two and ten full time equivalent employees, it seems that within this mix organisations would still like more human resources devoted to SOC activities, and also the acquisition of additional skills by existing staff. Supporting in-house skills development should be a key priority for SOC leaders as it doesn’t just improve SOC performance, it also encourages staff to remain with the organisation for the long term. The most common tenure for a SOC analyst is between one and three years and the report found that training opportunities and career development are the key factors encouraging employees to remain with an organisation. There are further benefits to growing your own expertise. The report found that the top “missing skill” in teams was threat hunting experience, something that can be costly to bring in from outside. It also noted that threat hunting and intelligence monitoring are the activities most commonly outsourced by the SOC. Yet these are two areas where intimate knowledge of internal systems and infrastructure considerably improves effectiveness. If analysts are given the opportunity to acquire these skills and supported with tools that lift the burden of intelligence assimilation, this will amount to a double benefit for the business: they retain key staff and build stronger internal capability in the areas that would most benefit. Work from home becomes the norm Linked to the challenge of staff retention are changes to the work environment. Unsurprisingly, 87%

of those surveyed said that working from home was permitted in their organisation. It may have raised some issues around how to collaborate effectively, but the general success of remote working has liberated SOC analysts. Where previously they may have looked for employment within an easy commute, now they can search further afield. This means organisations will have to work harder to attract and retain employees and gives analysts greater leverage over pay and working conditions. This should lead to greater focus on analyst workload, which is long overdue. Currently, organisations lack an appropriate method of calculating analyst workload with the majority of survey respondents saying their SOC doesn’t calculate it, and the next most common answer being that they use a basic time-per-ticket method. With 83% of SOCs operating 24/7 and the majority of these delivering this capability through in-house resources, managing workload is important to maintain team wellbeing. As the workforce embarks on the “great resignation”, all the above factors should sound warning bells alerting employers that they need to develop and protect their employees if they want to retain them. Automation and data context drive efficiency and security improvements Another efficient way to mitigate the impact of escalating workloads on the SOC is through automation and orchestration, and here teams are also struggling. Automation and orchestration was only just behind skills shortages as the most significant challenge facing SOCs. When you are short of staff and skills it is critical that mundane, repetitive and low value tasks are automated as far as possible, freeing analysts to focus on higher value activities that reduce time to detection and response and are more individually fulfilling. It also supports teams to meet

performance objectives and handle the escalating volume of alerts. There are some quick wins that can be implemented here. The study cites one respondent that has successfully deployed a portal integrating dozens of data sources which enabled consolidation of information from across the business. This resulted in a reduction in Level 0 to Level 2 response times by 25%. A number of respondents cited the lack of context related to the data they are seeing as a major barrier to operating an efficient SOC. The SOC of the future will be increasingly datadriven, ingesting information from multiple sources within and outside the enterprise, but data without context or relevance simply overwhelms analysts. This is a challenge ThreatQuotient has addressed in the latest iteration of our ThreatQ platform. It incorporates a DataLinq Engine for connecting disparate systems and sources to enable XDR, along with Smart Collections for driving automation, plus an enhanced ThreatQ Data Exchange for bi-directional sharing of data, context and threat intelligence. It allows teams to be more thorough in their investigations, collaboration, response and reporting – which is particularly critical in a remote working environment – and results in more efficient, effective operations. The benefits are measurable in terms of time savings and FTEs gained, improved risk management and greater confidence when detecting and responding to an event. Supporting the SOC of the future As SOCs look to the next phase, focusing on people, data and the technology that enables the two to work effectively together is key. By balancing automation to allow machine-based support where possible, together with the right tooling for human analysts, SOCs can drive improvements while also keeping analysts engaging and giving them more time to upskill into key areas such as threat hunting.

DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

CASE STUDY

APP YOUR SERVICE MUHAMMED SHABREEN, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, RIZEK, EXPLAINS THE IMPORTANCE OF EFFECTIVE AND TIMELY COMMUNICATION WITH USERS AND HOW THE ON-DEMAND SERVICE DELIVERY APP MEETS ITS BUSINESS GOALS WITH THE CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT PLATFORM UNIFONIC.

he UAE is one of the most rapidly evolving Arab nations globally. The country’s urbanisation and rising digital economy have made it among the best and most convenient places to live for its growing population. Those who have been navigating the hustle and bustle of the UAE know that mobile apps are lifesavers as they provide access to

CXO INSIGHT ME

DECEMBER 2021

a gamut of services, from booking a cab, ordering food, housekeeping, and lots more. The app-driven lifestyle was already popular during the pre-covid days and has quickly become a norm for most customers now. Creating exceptional customer experiences is the goal of every company, and when it involves not leaving the comforts of your home, then even better.

However, to successfully create those delightful experiences, relying on data is a key component. Organisations must provide the right information at the right time, so effective communication and engagement go a long way in ensuring loyal customers. This was one of the main pillars of RIZEK’s strategy when it kick-started its operation in 2019. The Abu-Dhabi

headquartered company considers itself a ‘super app,’ connecting users with a variety of home services with the click of a button. The services are available across several categories, including home care, car services, beauty, healthcare, and so on. In fact, RIZEK, which means ‘livelihood’ in Arabic, is a marketplace structure that offers healthcare services on-demand to increase accessibility to healthcare, says its Chief Technology Officer, Muhammed Shabreen. The app was the first to offer COVID-19 PCR tests at home during the pandemic’s peak. When the company started, it had enabled SMS API for push notifications and personalised messaging through a global cloud communications platform. Shabreen says, “In our line of business, regularly updating

customers about the status of their services, transactional details, promotional information and other such kinds of communication is critical. We cannot compromise on the technology we use to ensure these types of information are communicated effectively and on time. “After doing a detailed market evaluation, we selected the regional customer engagement platform Unifonic for our end-to-end SMS communication requirements.” Shabreen adds that one of the reasons the on-demand service delivery app chose Unifonic was because of its strong regional presence. The company is currently using Unifonic’s services ad hoc, with plans to leverage more over the coming months. “We were able to avail services from the platform as needed, allowing us flexibility, scalability, and costefficiency. One of the services we plan to explore in the future is Unifonic’s omnichannel communication offering,” adds Shabreen. Unifonic’s cloud platform is designed to make omnichannel communication easy to deploy and manage through a single API that covers SMS, voice and conversational messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook Messenger and so on. He explains, “Before onboarding more services, we want to identify the right use cases and the right approaches of plugging it into the ecosystem. Once these use cases are finalised, we will assess the market and Unifonic is the strongest vendor for us since we already have a collaboration with them. “Also, when we look at the past data, since we have been integrating with Unifonic since 2019, we can see that the vendor has regularly enhanced its platform. This has led to a significant reduction in the SMS dropout percentage for us. It is great to see that Unifonic doesn’t believe

in resting on its laurels and aims to continuously innovate. This also aligns with our business objectives.” Having established itself in the UAE as a strong player over the past couple of years, RIZEK is now planning for an aggressive expansion to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. “We plan to venture into these markets with Unifonic as we have had a great experience with them for their SMS offering.” According to the company’s technology leader, RIZEK is ambitious in its IT roadmap. Shabreen says, “We are in a hypergrowth model, and every day is a learning. We are discovering new problem statements and converting them into opportunities – technology is a key enabler to achieve this.” With an ambitious business growth strategy in 2022, RIZEK is expanding across multiple verticals and countries. It is also innovating its current services to provide a better user and an overall experience for the customer. “To do this, we will continue to invest in advanced technologies that help us maximise data and analytics, enhance the speed of delivery and automation, and improve customer engagement, among other elements,” he concludes.

DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

FEATURE

THE SECRET OF DEVOPS SUCCESS WHY ENTERPRISES ARE TURNING TO DEVOPS FOR FASTER DELIVERY OF APPS AND SERVICES

or the uninitiated, DevOps means brining ‘app development’ and ‘IT operations’ together to build and deploy enterprise software quickly and securely. DevOps was once very niche in cloud-native companies such as Facebook and Amazon and now has gone mainstream among enterprises that rely on software to run their businesses. Gartner defines DevOps as a change in IT culture, focusing on rapid IT service delivery through adopting agile, lean practices in the context of a system-oriented approach. DevOps implementations utilise technology — especially automation tools that can leverage an increasingly programmable and dynamic infrastructure from a life cycle perspective. “Software development and IT operations have never been more connected than today. This level of convergence will only continue increasing in due course and, with demands such as faster product development and enhanced deployment maintenance also sure to increase, there are several DevOps trends to watch out for in 2022. In terms of team topologies, there will 26

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certainly be a heightened focus on organizational structure and dynamics, rather than technology and practices,” says Ayman El Sheikh, Director, Solutions Architect , MENA, Red Hat He comments DevOps will also be the driving force behind creating the right balance between stream-based and platform-based team organisation, enabling broader service resilience and reliability to enable DevOps at scale, and unlocking full cloud potential concerning elastic infrastructure, cloud service catalogue, self-services, automation, and workload migration. “Furthermore, we will likely see hybrid becoming the deployment norm and the emergence of cultural blockers focusing on cultural, organisational, and process changes,” he says. Feras Juma, IoT and Integration Solutions Manager, Software AG, says the concept of DevOps is key when entities have numerous release and operation tasks involved. In addition, extensive automation is key when it comes to DevOps; the automation of the overall delivery and all the associated repetitive tasks. “The more entities automate, the more agile, efficient, and quicker the production

cycles are and the more efficient DevOps will be. Generally, entities with highly developed DevOps would mean that most of the repetitive tasks have been automated. Therefore, as entities look to evolve and transform, the dire need for DevOps will only continue to grow,” he says. However, according to Mark Ackerman, area VP, Middle East & Africa, ServiceNow, the centre of gravity for DevOps will start moving from automation to insights. While there will be some tool consolidation, overall tool sprawl in DevOps will continue to increase, especially with individual product teams optimising for their own unique needs. This will exacerbate the need for a management layer to generate insights across various tools and teams. Engineering and product leaders will need such management platforms to understand the ROI of their investments, delivery bottlenecks, identify highperforming teams, and more. He adds there is an increasing focus on ensuring DevOps teams identify and deliver business value. Managing across DevOps teams, paired with an increased focus on AI/ML-based optimisation, will drive value stream management practices and the increased adoption of

Feras Juma

Mark Ackerman

Ayman El Sheikh

solutions that connect all the elements of the value stream (not just software delivery) – including the demonstration of business impact.

technologies and to increase the pace of innovation. “Wholesale ‘lift-and-shift’ approaches have been shown to provide minimal (if any) value, and so approaches that focus more on migrating services and redefining them to leverage cloud advantages have become popular. This hinges on agile development practices and DevOps approaches to continuous delivery and continuous improvement.” He advocates the same organisations must eliminate silos between engineering and operations teams, that have caused friction in the past so that the rate of change can accelerate to meet the needs of the business. Overall, this means that many businesses are acting in a hybrid mode where some services are in-house and others are in the cloud with more that spread across both.

that are required between operations and development to build the most suitable DevOps team; understanding setting guidelines and the practice itself,” says Juma from Software AG. ServiceNow’s Ackerman says DevOps tools and techniques have advanced considerably over the last ten years so the remaining pitfalls tend to be around people, process and the challenges of implementing DevOps at scale for larger organisations. “DevOps is not something that just gets ‘switched on’. It requires adjustments in skills, and team dynamics. Traditional operational roles must change to either become embedded within the development path or provide a centralised policy role while automation handles what was previously their transactional work,” he says. Red Hat’s El Sheikh concludes: “As with any form of technology-based transformation, opportunities in waiting are accompanied by factors to be mindful of and avoid. In terms of DevOps initiatives, some of more common pitfalls this applies to include white labeling legacy teams, lacking the buy-in of all enterprise IT teams, and focusing solely on DevOpsifying cloud-native workloads and thus leaving monolithic workloads behind. Moreover, other pitfalls to avoid include insisting on a DevOps unified stack from a sole vendor and boasting insufficient dashboarding and reporting capabilities.”

The role of cloud in DevOps Cloud computing makes the implementation of DevOps simpler by bringing accessibility and collaborative workflow tools to empower DevOps engineers. “As a result, applications can be developed, tested, and deployed in various environments, with cloud essentially serving as the platform where IT-based organizations can migrate from mid-DevOps to High-DevOps. Once such a migration has been completed, these same organization will become accustomed to several valuable capabilities, including on-demand deployment rather than daily or weekly frequency, lead time to change (LTTC) of less than an hour, and lead time to recover (LTTR) also less than 60 minutes. At the same time, organizations will also be able to overcome the burden of legacy and maximise team collaboration efforts,” says El Sheikh from Red Hat. Ackerman from ServiceNow opines that DevOps interest is largely being driven by the desire of large organisations with legacy architectures to move to the cloud. Cloud adoption is seen as the right way to take advantage of new

Getting into DevOps Though bringing development and operations is a compelling value proposition for CIOs, many enterprises still face a myriad of roadblocks while implementing and scaling DevOps practices. On top of the list is a lack of required skills. “The role of DevOps means a collaboration between development and operation teams to be able to manage the overall delivery. Collaboration is core when it comes to DevOps. What entities must do is to understand the skill sets

DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

INTERVIEW

PLUGGING THE GAPS RAHIL GHAFFAR, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, MEA AT VIRSEC, ON WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO DETECT AND STOP ATTACKS DURING RUNTIME

hat’s Virsec’s approach to cybersecurity? Virsec has been creating a lot of buzz globally, primarily because of our approach to making cyber threats irrelevant. We make sure we understand the enterprise software running within enterprises at all levels – host, memory, or Web. As a result, we can ensure that existing vulnerabilities – both known and unknown ones – don’t get exploited. This is why customers have started adopting us and realise the legacy approach to cybersecurity isn’t working. They need a solution that can detect and prevent attacks that occur during runtime. How do you define runtime protection? Today, if you look at the recent breaches, cybercriminals exploit runtime in the application infrastructure and corrupt legitimate processes. Most of the other cybersecurity tools can’t see threats at this level and protect you from the deep, vulnerable, blind spots in your applications or software. What makes us fundamentally different from others in this space is we look at it in real-time when the application is executing in process memory. We can look at the code execution in memory, control-flow integrity and ensure it does not get detailed. I will give you an example of a large 28

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government organisation here. They were dependent on legacy solutions and got breached even after having multiple layers of security. They reached out to us after the attack and wanted a solution to protect against unknown zero-day attacks. Today’s fileless attacks make memory the new battleground, and bad guys are trying to exploit vulnerabilities during runtime. The other security vendors treat this runtime – process memoryas a black box. In our case, due to our patented technology, we can look into memory, focus on what applications should be doing, and catch any deviation to the execution flow of legitimate code in milliseconds. How does your platform work? Do you deploy agents? We would like to call them memory sensors, not agents, because it is so

lightweight and reside on memory, protecting system software from memory-based, binary attacks. At the same time, it does look at the file system. Our approach is to focus on the good rather than the bad. So the signatures are basically formed within the customer environment and tailormade for that particular customer. It’s all automated in real-time. This lightweight agent can detect threats in real-time during runtime because we primarily know the application’s DNA and anything outside of it such as files, MSI, libraries, and scripts. If users have a solution like an XDR, do they still need a platform like Virsec’s? XDR is definitely good for endpoint protection, but it is not meant for servers. XDR was extended to servers because of the lack of solutions tailor-made for servers – and it can’t protect against memory-level attacks, which happen now and then. However, we can complement XDR and provide front-line protection for mission-critical apps and infrastructure. Even if you don’t have an XDR, the Virsec platform alone is enough for server security. Are you seeing more and more server-side attacks? There might be more than a million threats being created every day. But most of these are commodity, and what makes news is primarily those few hundreds, which are going undetected. These are primarily fileless attacks that launch malicious code directly from memory and get in without placing any malware on the system. Cybercriminals are spending weeks and months crafting such malicious code and are not going to target endpoints. Instead, they are targeting the crown jewels of the organisation; they use very sophisticated methods to move laterally to infiltrate the most highvalue server assets. And this is where you need security the most

VIEWPOINT

THE POWER OF PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS RESILIENCE AND RELIABILITY ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER IN THE POWER GENERATION AND UTILITY SECTOR. AS ORGANISATIONS LOOK TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION TO REDUCE RISK IN TODAY, THEY’RE DISCOVERING THE BENEFITS PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS CAN BRING TO THEIR OPERATIONS, SAYS DAVID THOMASON, INDUSTRY PRINCIPAL – POWER GENERATION AT AVEVA.

ower generation companies are facing a growing number of challenges, from increased market complexity and demand, through to regulatory compliance, sustainability objectives and a rise in uncertainty spurred by Covid-19. The pandemic caused the industry to accelerate remote working, and to deal with maintenance gaps created by supply chain disruptions. This highlighted the need for operational resiliency and agility in order to ensure the delivery of power, and Gartner has reported that resilient delivery is one of 2021’s top utility trends due to the industry’s underlying belief that this volatility will continue. Power plants are becoming ever more digital, and the combination of assets with connected devices – and most importantly the data captured from these assets – supports the sector’s growing focus on resilience, agility and reliability. The benefits of digital transformation The use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) enables organizations to have full visibility of operations, and create insights that can help overcome some of the sector’s most disruptive challenges. The amount of big data produced by power generation companies means that forward-thinking businesses are investing in monitoring and predictive analytics tools that help leverage this data to its full capacity. By supporting agility, organizations can more quickly respond to change. 30

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Predictive maintenance allows the power industry to identify malfunctions before they happen, ensuring the reliability of their operations. This better positions them for growth in the uncertain times ahead. What does predictive analytics offer? Predictive analytics enables operations and maintenance personnel to be more proactive in their work. In addition, the reliability and performance of assets are improved through early warning notifications and diagnosis of equipment problems days, weeks or months before failure. It can even forecast the remaining useful life of assets to help provide deep insights into operations and maintenance risk. Using predictive analytics, companies are able to implement asset strategies designed to avoid unplanned downtime for their most critical assets, while also deciding which preventative or corrective asset strategy is the best option for less vital equipment. But benefits go far beyond optimizing maintenance schedules to ensure

reliability of operations. As risk assessment becomes more exact, prioritization of capital and operational expenditures can be optimised, and companies can also realise financial savings by avoiding costs related to loss of power and/or productivity, replacement equipment and additional man hours accrued when a fault occurs. Tangible business benefits A great example of the benefits of predictive analytics in the power sector comes from EDF. The French utility company uses predictive analytics for fleet-wide asset monitoring (coal, gas, renewable – wind and solar – and the world’s largest fleet of nuclear assets), and to check equipment health and performance and identify failures before they occur. To date this has helped the company to not only optimise power production, which in turn improves energy security, but also ensure resiliency and continued sustainable delivery of critical services by avoiding downtime. For example, just one single early warning catch saved the company an estimated €1.5m. Knowledge capture and transfer Knowledge capture and transfer is another key benefit of predictive analytics, an area of huge importance to a sector which is seeing many of its experienced staff reaching retirement age. Accumulated knowledge stays available to new staff as they join the business, ensuring best practices, operating procedures and maintenance processes are passed on to the next generation, again reducing risk and therefore improving reliability. The power generation and utility sector is grappling with a world that’s more volatile and complex, but demands greater speed, agility and resilience. In response it’s undergoing a digital transformation that enhances the way power is produced and delivered. Predictive analytics has a key role in this transformation, as it enables organizations to become more resilient, reliable and efficient by moving from a reactive to a proactive way of working.

WHY 5G NEEDS TO BE EVERYONE’S BUSINESS 5G CAN ADDRESS MANY OF THE WORLD’S PROBLEMS. BUT ONLY IF ALL SECTORS JOIN FORCES WITH TELCO TO MAKE IT HAPPEN, SAYS SUSAN JAMES, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY, RED HAT

t feels like the world is spiralling from crisis to crisis. The basic things we take for granted are now subject to doubt. Empty supermarket shelves, mile-long queues at petrol stations and closed borders are clues to the fragility of many supply chains. The causes — take your pick from COVID, stiffer immigration policies, an over-reliance on a few oil producers, dislocated climate strategies, low-paid jobs, poor working conditions — have exposed chronic under-investment in many industries. It has also illustrated how deeply integrated industries are. For example, CO2 is used widely in food production and packaging, which is a byproduct of manufacturing farm-grade fertilizers, which is dependent on supplies of natural gas, as is the transportation of food from source to shelf. One complication sets off a chain reaction. The 40% of food that the U.S wastes every year costs $218 billion to grow and produce, unnecessarily contributes 2.6% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, and fills up more than one-fifth of the country’s landfill sites. Everyone suffers. So it’s everyone’s responsibility to fix things. The solution, just like the cause, is multifaceted. 5G should be a big part of the conversation as an enabling technology, along with other key pieces like edge computing, blockchain and AI. These have now matured enough — cheaper, more secure, more global in reach — that we have a real window of opportunity to make a dent in what have been considered insurmountable

problems. The use cases are almost limitless. IoT sensors that determine the optimum harvesting time will save crops going to waste. Driverless trucks that deliver factory components, which are offloaded and assembled robotically, takes the availability (and willingness) of humans out of the equation. Remote connectivity can give communities access to education and financial services for the first time. Businesses that take a reactive stance are missing the point; and the profits too. People are increasingly judging prospective employers by the role they play in building a better world. It is no longer enough to lure the best talent by offering the biggest salaries. Doing good matters too. Consumers are also inclined to judge brands through the same lens. Neither is this about making 5G a zero-sum game. Competitive instincts that seek to protect a position and destroy others are more likely to stifle

innovation than spark it. Industries must foster a more collegiate spirit of competition. Better for everyone to grow the pie, than squabble over the slices left on the plate. The telecommunications sector already has a good track record of this. Leading telcos are comfortable collaborating with each other on everything from licensing agreements, technical standards, interoperability testing and patents. When wider collaboration happens, it is typically with technology vendors, governments and research institutions, such as 5G-VINNI and FUDGE-5G. Much can be learned from the way that open source technology communities act. Collaboration provides the fundamental standards, tools and frameworks, which then enable innovation to happen faster and more effectively. There’s no better example than the breakneck speed that COVID-19 vaccines were produced and distributed when pharma, governments, regulators and health services joined forces. It also demonstrates how entrenched and unproductive ways of working can be ripped up overnight, when the will is there. To address these major global issues, the whole ecosystem needs to work together. Telcos bring more value than just enabling connectivity, and will do a better job of 5G with other industries guiding them. So businesses must be clear what new commercial opportunities and customer experiences they want to create with scalable edge computing, as well as be willing to share the gains with service providers. It may sound like hyperbole to compare the scale and severity of the COVID crisis to the potential of 5G. But let us consider how 5G can bring about better healthcare, increase education standards, enable greener production processes, deploy robots and machines to do dangerous jobs, and connect the disconnected. How it can shore up supply chains and embed resilience so that crises are averted. That’s a prize we should all get behind.

DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

INTERVIEW

TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE GOVERNMENT IT SPENDING IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA (MENA) REGION IS FORECAST TO GROW 1.1% IN 2022, ACCORDING TO THE LATEST FORECAST BY GARTNER. IT WILL TOTAL $11.8 BILLION IN 2022, FROM $11.7 BILLION IN 2021.

peksha Kaushik, principal analyst at Gartner, says that MENA government CIOs will increase their investment in AI, Human Augmentation, blockchain, IoT, and digital workplace technologies in 2022. This will be a stepping stone towards providing an improved total experience (TX) to citizens. What is driving government IT spending growth? The global crisis has escalated an already existing imperative to accelerate digital government. As a result, usage of existing and demand for new digital government services has increased. In 2022, government IT spending in the Middle East and North Africa is forecast to grow 1.1%. Technology has become essential for remote working, distance learning, maintaining economies, tracking COVID-19, and keeping governments running. Gartner predicts by 2023, over 60% of governments will have tripled citizen digital services, but less than 25% will be integrated across organisational silos. Compounding the urgency is the crisis, which has created an increased demand for some services and declining revenue for many governments, leading to austerity measures and stronger accountability, and stimulus funding expectations. Automation and delivering services digitally wherever feasible are imperative to the sustainability of many government operations 32

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Apeksha Kaushik

Which new technologies will be key to digital government transformation? Over the years MENA region has taken strides to move to digital transformation. The government has focused on accelerating digital diversification, including citizens, the workforce, and businesses. The digital push is also attributed to initiatives like smart cities, tourism, healthcare. With public-private partnership initiatives linking the models working, offering incubation platform inviting private sector through single sign-on and a full range of capabilities to link to utilisation of open data. The adoption of digital services has also gotten amplified with increasing investment in AI, Human Augmentation, blockchain, IoT, and digital workplace and thereby stepping towards the strategic trend of Total Experience. Are governments in the region rethinking their public cloud strategies? Public cloud computing expands

public cloud offerings and presents organizations with opportunities to simplify management and strengthen their commitment to “green IT.” However, it could also present potential regulatory compliance pitfalls. Sustainability policy targets make for more challenging choices. Pressure for access to features, functionality, security, and scalability counterbalances political fears and drives toward a more balanced, pragmatic use of hyperscale cloud services. Scalability with security becomes a must-have for government agencies. Hyperscaler security requires taking action, such as controlling encryption, to address security needs to reduce potential threats, be that inside or external to the organisation. What are some of the top challenges government CIOs will face in 2022? The most common risk identified for digital transformation is the combination of siloed strategies and decision-making (51%). The challenges associated with government silos are constantly raised by our clients and impact every aspect of digital transformation from strategy to funding, to successful implementation. The silos exist across governments, departments, and business areas, and each type of silo requires different types of interventions. Along with this, governments are particularly sensitive to the risk. Executives are fearful of failure that reflects poorly on elected officials, and that often leads to a risk-averse culture. Resource management, digital skill gap and funding are also critical. Government leaders should start tackling the challenges associated with siloed strategies and decisionmaking even before they start to develop a digital government program. They must be creative, opportunistic, and pragmatic when it comes to approaching digital transformation strategy.

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VIEWPOINT

THINK GREEN ALAA BAWAB, GENERAL MANAGER, LENOVO INFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONS GROUP (ISG), MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA, ON FIVE SUSTAINABILITY PRIORITIES FOR A ‘GREENER’ DATA CENTRE.

ith the UAE being announced as host of the COP28 talks in 2023, and Saudi Arabia committing to reach net zero by 2060, environmental issues have never been higher on the agenda in the region. For many businesses, sustainability has joined efficiency, flexibility and resilience as their chief priorities. In the post-lockdown economy enterprises are embracing the opportunity to integrate sustainability into the fabric of their data centre operations, both as a business win and for the benefit of society, and to define their pathway to zeroemission computing. Sustainability isn’t only about taking incremental steps to reduce carbon emissions and resource consumption. It’s a mindset that permeates organisational culture, and as IT organisations, we have a collective responsibility to set the benchmarks and operate in a way that creates a positive impact on workforces, society, and the environment. Enterprise decision makers need to balance the growing demand for IT with rising expectations around environmentally responsible operations. Here are five areas of focus that can help align data centre operations with sustainability goals. Reduce the resource impact of data Data is growing at an exponential rate. While the potential utility of data makes it a powerful asset, a lack of strategy around its accumulation can quickly turn it into a liability. Currently, around 1% of global electricity is used to power data centres and as we progress towards a world where data is projected to grow to 463 exabytes of data created every day by 2025, electricity consumption could multiply rapidly. The energy impact goes beyond just the electrical. According to a US Government report, a data centre will need on average around 1.8litres of water for every kWh consumed, predominantly

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for air conditioning purposes. As part of reducing resource consumption, enterprises should consider moving the infrastructure that underpins their data operations, towards infrastructure built with energy efficiency in mind. For example, we recommend Liquid Cooling Technology for larger data centres to reduce energy consumption by up to 40%, whilst maintaining uncompromised performance. More energy efficient servers benchmarked by SPECPower, and software platforms like Energy Aware Runtime (EAR) that manage power consumption, can also make a difference. Create a circular product lifecycle The circular economy is the name given to reducing the use of materials and energy in manufacturing products and recovering as much of the end products as possible through reuse and recycling. In the data center industry, many thousands of servers and other hardware are deemed to be ‘end of life’ each year. To reduce the risk of environmentally damaging waste, the industry needs to set a high bar in terms of recycling, reusing or repairing 100% of equipment stopping it from ending up as landfill. Set aggressive targets Becoming a sustainable business requires accountability. This can be done by

committing to stakeholders to meet high standards and industry-recognised sustainability standards. Once you set your targets, there’s no backing away. We discovered the success of this approach more than a decade ago, setting the 2020 target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40% - a target we surpassed through a 92% reduction. We’ve now set our sights on a further 50% reduction by 2030. We have also signed up for the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), the first ever science-based Net-Zero Standard for emissions reduction which will combat the current inconsistencies that surround net-zero targets and enable consistent measurement and evaluation of a company’s emissions reduction. Put measurement in place to track progress It’s vital for today’s enterprises to get data center measurements under control. The range of metrics that can be tracked, such as water usage, electricity consumption and use of renewable energy, offer wide avenues for energy savings. Understanding how you’re measuring environmental efforts and what metrics you need to see moving in the right direction will help to show whether you are really making progress. At Lenovo we issue an annual report for ESG (Environmental, Societal and Governance) that ensures we are tracking our goals, meeting our climate-change mitigation targets and generally measuring what matters most for the business and for society as a whole. Optimise your supply chain Data centres, like any complex structure, are reliant on robust supply chains to replace any failed hardware. Unanticipated downtime can result in wasted energy, so companies need to consider their supply chains to cut costs, strengthen business and mitigate environmental risks. This includes incorporating transport methods and reducing the distance that products travel along a supply chain. By distributing production to more local facilities, such as we have done with our new factory near Budapest in Hungary, companies can cut the number of steps and dependencies required to get the product from factory to customer and lower the fuel consumption required as a result.

THE FUTURE OF DATABASE SYSTEMS PAULO PEREIRA, SENIOR DIRECTOR, SYSTEMS ENGINEERING – METI AT NUTANIX ADVISES ENTERPRISES TO FOLLOW A SOFTWARE-DEFINED APPROACH TO DATA SERVICES IN ORDER TO BUILD AN INVISIBLE DATA INFRASTRUCTURE.

data-driven culture is needed if a business wants to lead through digital innovation. But traditional data management infrastructures are rigid and unable to combine diverse data types. Then there is the challenge of storing, managing and securing growing volumes of data and extracting insights out of it. Throw in cloud data and the fact that data is moving closer to the application and the user, and it becomes a hotbed of poorly managed databases sullying the role of analytics. Those organisations that are unable to access accurate, timely, relevant, and reliable information from their data run a legacy datacentre infrastructure based on proprietary SAN arrays and storage fabric networks. These “hardware-defined” datacentres are, in essence, the first problem. What is needed is a data services platform that supports open architecture and is maximally available, assuring business of continuous access and insights from the data, where the infrastructure itself is effectively invisible to users. To turn data into a competitive advantage, one needs to understand that data comes from different business areas and needs to be organised in three primary ways, namely relational databases, unstructured data, and high-velocity data. Because data is diverse, its collection often results in the formation of silos or individual repositories and as there is no cohesion between these sources because storage formats and data types differ. Once data is organised, silos can be eliminated by adhering to open standards, adopting open paradigms,

offering choice, and avoiding lock-in to users, customers, and operators alike. This helps the business firstly bring in all data types and secondly consume the data – or in this case, use the data to glean insights for improved business decision-making. Maximally Available Infrastructure Making infrastructure maximally calls for systems that can self-heal, dynamically adjust the write path to suit the workload, and dynamically apply data transforms based on heuristics. Maximally available data is simple to manage through a central management plane that offers end-toend capabilities around alerting, events, and monitoring. It brings data closer to analytics – which is where it should be. But what do we mean? Let’s look at a traditional database environment where an application or database update may lead to issues across systems. Here DBAs take a snapshot before each update if they need to roll back to an ideal state. With a maximally available data architecture, this can be

avoided entirely, and any upgrades to underlying infrastructure supporting your data are continuous without interruption to services. Now, adding capacity for storage or performance, or performing a software update, is seamless and non-disruptive to your data services. Traditional database management is done through an error-prone siloed approach to provisioning or cloning, which is time-consuming and makes troubleshooting exceptionally difficult. With an invisible data infrastructure, you know that the environment is integrated with your automation tools and gives DBAs the ability to create a self-service catalogue and perform delegation that controls who gets access, what they get access to (provision, clone, patch etc.), how much (storage, RAM, vCPU), and for how long (spin-down of resources). Companies do not have the time or the resources to perform these functions manually in this digitally connected world. There are too many moving parts (applications). Today’s DBAs must be able to copy/paste a particular database instance and create clones from any point in time. To build an invisible data infrastructure, your organisation must follow a software-defined approach to data services. By adding the tools needed to architect an invisible plane that can orchestrate the functions of your databases, your business can unify how data is stored and consumed with a data services platform that is open, operative, and opaque and is supported both on-premises or in the public cloud. Using integrated database management software, you can automate and simplify management, enjoy one-click simplicity and invisible operations to database provisioning, lifecycle and copy data management. In essence, this platform paves the way to the advantages inherent in Databases as a Service (DBaaS). The benefit to your business is an end-to-end environment for structured and unstructured data with raw storage in a cloud-like experience with full APIfirst automation and self-service.

DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

VIEWPOINT

PLANNING FOR SUCCESS CINDY RYBORZ, MARKETING MANAGER DATA CENTRES EMEA, CORNING OPTICAL COMMUNICATIONS, ON THE IMPORTANCE OF CABLE MANAGEMENT IN DATA CENTRES

here is a lot we can do to future-proof data centre infrastructures and prepare for unexpected incidents – a key component is cable management, which is essential for the performance of the network. Well-organised cabling means easier moves, adds and changes (MACs), bend-radius control and troubleshooting in case of issues, particularly compared to unstructured “spaghetti” cabling. Today’s data centre networks are faced with constantly growing and changing demands. What seems like more than enough capacity today, will most likely not be sufficient for tomorrow. COVID-19 has of course provided a prime example of how suddenly and unexpectedly our networks can be tested and how data centres need to scale. To give an example, DE-CIX, one of 36

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the world’s leading internet exchanges, saw a record traffic peak of 9.1Tbit/s in March 2020 representing an increase of 800 Gbit/s. To put this into perspective, imagine the simultaneous transmission of up to 200 million HD videos. During the US presidential elections in November 2020, the all-time peak rose even higher, to 10Tbit/s. Structured cabling helps to organise and manage cables, allowing better airflow and preventing loose cabling from tangling up, kinking, bending or even breaking fibres, all of which has an impact on the network performance. Crowded cable trays, pathways or ducts as well as clusters of loose hanging patch cords in densely populated server racks may also create “hot spots” impacting the performance of network components or having them fail, creating possible delays or downtime – something we of course want to avoid.

Structuring the network The deployment of structured cabling, of course, is not a new concept and data centre environments continue to move away from the practice of patching and connecting equipment from point to point or as it is installed. A more recent development, which is impacting approaches to structured cabling in large projects is the growth of massive data centres beyond the confines of a single building or data hall. These campus environments, with multiple buildings, require a high-fibre count cabling infrastructure, which can be a challenge to deploy. There’s a number of solutions available to meet such high-fibrecount requirements. While splicing may be sufficient for ribbon cables of up to 864 fibres, when connectivity requirements are pushing fibre counts to 3456 and even 6912 fibres, preterminated trunks or pigtails with

multifibre connectors are a much better choice. The multi-fibre push-on (MPO) format dramatically reduces the amount of time, effort, and space required to install and deploy network technologies, particularly in parallel optic applications. So whether working with duplex, 8, or 16-fibre transmissions, the MPO connector scales to whatever technology is used – including parallel optic applications such as 400 Gb Ethernet and allows for port breakout applications reducing the TCO (total cost of ownership) of a data centre deployment. Protecting Performance Managing fibres, cables and patch cords inside rack frames or fibre housings rather than outside helps to keep transmission links protected. Ideally, we keep connections short in high-density cabling/connectivity solutions. Fully equipped racks require neat and structured patch cable management, and bend-insensitive fibres are here to help in tight spaces or crowded cable trays. Bend-insensitive fibres can exhibit up to a tenfold reduction in loss at the point of the bend when compared to conventional multimode or single-mode fibres and help to prevent attenuation, loss of signal strength. This protects the system margin or power budget headroom and prevents unscheduled

WE USED A FRAME DESIGN WHICH PROVIDED OPTIMISED ROUTING PATHS FOR PATCH CORDS, REDUCING THE RISK OF ENTANGLEMENT, WHILE THE OPERATIONS STAFF COULD INSTALL OR REMOVE A SINGLE PATCH CORD IN LESS THAN TWO MINUTES REGARDLESS OF THE CABLE ROUTE. downtime during MACs over the lifetime of the infrastructure. Putting it to practice We worked with a large connectivity provider who needed an infrastructure upgrade. They had installed numerous duplex zipcords into a basket and because of the large number of connections (and thus cables), there was concern that some of those connections would be compromised and overall reliability would be impacted. The solution, which encompassed high-fibre-count optical cables, connectors, and hardware hinged upon bend-insensitive fibres and ultimately ensured that the network could withstand the MACs that would occur in their MDA without disruption or downtime. Another project, with a managed service provider to maximise capacity at its 9,717 square metre colocation data centre, required a new cable management solution to support its growth. Fundamental to the project was ensuring a high-density infrastructure solution by maximising port capacity within a small footprint and ensuring the infrastructure was flexible and scalable to changing business requirements and future growth.

The approach here was to provide a scalable fibre management solution for cross-connect applications in the data centre’s central hub. We used a frame design which provided optimised routing paths for patch cords, reducing the risk of entanglement, while the operations staff could install or remove a single patch cord in less than two minutes regardless of the cable route. To further simplify deployment and stock levels, the frame only required a single-length patch cord of just 4m to connect any port to any other port within the frame. In some scenarios, disorganised cables can pose a genuine safety risk too. We worked with a multi-tenant data centre looking for a better way to organise their network. In the MDA, many of the patch cords were longer than the required distances, which was not only an eyesore, but also had safety implications. MACs were also difficult, requiring too much time to identify connections and increasing the risk of accidental disconnection. In addition to the previously mentioned frame design that allows for growth and expansion of the network one frame, module, or fibre termination at a time, we also worked to organise their patch cords. A self-tracking system enabled simplified inventory management and by ordering the specific jumper lengths needed, the company was able to decrease clutter and clean up its interconnection room. As data centres scale and become more complex, the demands for cable management complexities do increase but the solutions are already in place to meet them. Ultimately, not only is a well-planned cabling beneficial to the MACs of current customers, but organised cabling also attracts prospective end-users. The ability to confidently give customer tours is a major bonus, particularly for multi-tenant data centre owners who want to find a way to differentiate themselves and could be the deciding factor between a multi-year contract and lost business.

DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

VIEWPOINT

DELIVERING TOTAL APPLICATION EXPERIENCE DAVID NOËL, GVP EMEAR, APPDYNAMICS, LISTS OUT THREE CUSTOMER TRENDS THAT WILL SHAPE STRATEGY FOR APPLICATION OWNERS

n the past 18 months or so, our lives have been turned upside down. Whether it’s our social interactions, work or shopping habits, we’ve had to reevaluate and redesign our environments to fall in line with the new norms thrust upon us. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) ensured that effective actions were taken quickly by governments and businesses in the region, in the early weeks of the crisis. Almost every change — remote work, distance learning, telemedicine, and a flurry of business-model reengineering was enabled by digital services. A recent AppDynamics report “App Attention Index 2021: Who takes the rap for the app?” shows that 98% of UAE consumers (14% higher than the global average) believe digital 38

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services have had a positive impact on their lives during the pandemic. As they recognise the benefits such services can bring, it is now clear that much of the change will remain indefinitely. That’s why a significant majority intend to increase their use of applications even more in the upcoming months. However, this appetite for applications and digital services is not without consequences, and has implications for brands and for the technologists responsible for delivering incredible digital experiences. Consumers say they want the ‘Total Application Experience’, that means applications which are responsive, easy to use, secure, always on, and constantly improving to align with even more demanding user

expectations. In the coming year, all brands will face the pressure to meet these demands for flawless customer experience. Let’s take a look at three consumer dynamics that brands will need to consider. 1. Digital gratitude The App Attention Index reveals a strong sense of attachment, from customers, towards the brands that supported their needs during the pandemic through digital services. A majority said that applications gave them a sense control and a feeling of empowerment, acting as a lifeline to normality. And consumers aren’t shy to acknowledge and express gratitude for the efforts behind those digital experiences. 85% of UAE respondents said they were grateful

to brands that invested in digital to ensure access to the services they most relied on, and 82% (15% higher than the global average) indicated that they now feel more loyal to those brands that went the extra mile to deliver high quality applications. 2. ‘Blame Game’ Given the fact that consumers are now perfectly aware of how a stateof-the-art application should look and work, it’s no surprise that our report found they’re not willing to put up with flawed applications anymore. They rarely ask questions about the source of an outage, a slowdown, or any other deterioration in a digital service. They immediately resort to finger-pointing. In the UAE, 69% of consumers believe the responsibility for flawless, uninterrupted experiences lies solely with the brand. Of course, if design glitches cause slower page loading or security failures, then consumer dissatisfaction is absolutely justified. But even when the issues are caused by external factors outside the application — such as Internet connectivity, LTE coverage, slow payment gateways or integration issues with third-party plug-ins — consumers will still put the blame on the application owner. 3. First impressions are everything 73% of UAE consumers, a whopping 16% higher than the global average, say they are not prepared to give second chances to brands that disappoint them on the first try. This is, again, hardly a surprising finding, given the volume of choice within reach for consumers. Tolerance for poor digital experience has all but disappeared. And if an alternative brand manages to impress them

the first time, then digital-savvy consumers will have no reason to return to the platform that irked them. Full-stack observability to meet consumer soaring expectations The past 18 months have been fraught with reactive approaches, putting pressure on IT departments that have had to come to terms with their new operating environments and new consumer mindsets and habits. And unfortunately for them, the pressure is not going to relent any time soon. So, in the coming year, they will need to go beyond their existing tools and processes and find new ways to innovate in a consistently high pressure environment. To respond to the demand for the ‘total application experience’, technologists need unified, realtime visibility into IT performance across their entire IT estate, from the applications themselves to the core infrastructure — full-stack observability. Without this level of

TO RESPOND TO THE DEMAND FOR THE ‘TOTAL APPLICATION EXPERIENCE’, TECHNOLOGISTS NEED UNIFIED, REAL-TIME VISIBILITY INTO IT PERFORMANCE ACROSS THEIR ENTIRE IT ESTATE, FROM THE APPLICATIONS THEMSELVES TO THE CORE INFRASTRUCTURE — FULLSTACK OBSERVABILITY.

comprehensive observability, they don’t stand a chance of being able to rapidly identify and fix performance issues before they impact the end user. But even when full-stack observability across the entire IT stack is in place, technologists risk being drowned by the never ending amount of IT performance data coming their way. Therefore, it is essential to be able to link them to real-time business metrics. Only with this approach will technologists have the capability to chase down the highest priority issues and flag them for prompt action, to ensure the most business-critical issues are prioritised. Prepare to be judged The habits of consumers in the UAE mirror the world around them. The surging appetite for digital services, while initially a knock-on effect of a global pandemic, is unlikely to reverse itself when the crisis is over. Brands will continue to be judged on their digital experiences. Only the ones with the best tools and insights to meet heightened customer expectations will prevail.

DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

VIEWPOINT

THE RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

JAMES PETTER, GENERAL MANAGER, INTERNATIONAL, PURE STORAGE, ON TRENDS THAT WILL DETERMINE BUSINESS SUCCESS IN 2022

ith uncertainty rife going into 2021 (and for most part of the year), flexibility and agility were organisational priorities. As such, adoption of hybrid work as the defacto operating model and a significant pivot towards more as-a-service technology investments were two key trends we witnessed across the region. Based on the learnings of the past year, here are a few trends that I believe will have a significant impact on businesses heading into 2022. Failure to retain top talent will cripple businesses As the worst of the pandemic subsides, 40

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and life starts returning to normal, businesses may be faced with a new crisis: employee attrition. The technology industry is not immune to the great resignation that hit the US this summer. This is a global trend that may continue well into 2022 as employees voluntarily reassess their workplace options and change their priorities. To set themselves apart and retain their employees, the industry may see businesses starting to shift travel and expenses (T&E) budgets towards higher salary levels as well as offering flexibility on benefits with an even greater lens on diversity and inclusion. Currently, the high costs of recruitment and high salaries being thrown around are unsustainable — there needs to be a

levelling out, and this will be a key focus for businesses in 2022. Businesses will increasingly embrace a new ‘invest to grow’ mindset The pandemic has dramatically changed how business leaders view IT spend. Over the last 18-24 months, businesses witnessed a power struggle between the CEO’s growth perspective and the CFO’s pullback perspective. With businesses under huge duress, the CFO came to the fore and dominated. However, we’re now at a tipping point with the power shift more finely balanced between the two — and the CEO winning back the conversation. In 2022 we’ll increasingly see businesses investing in new ways of

THE RISK OF MAKING A MISTAKE RIGHT NOW IS VERY DAMAGING FOR ANY BUSINESS, SO THEY’LL NEED A DECISIVE LEADER IN PLACE TO ALLOW THEM TO COME OUT OF THIS PERIOD STRONGER THAN EVER. to hammer any businesses that still buy in a legacy way.

delivering their products or services, while retaining the overall value of their brand. For example, there will be exponential growth in areas such as as-a-service (aaS), managed services, subscriptions and the cloud, as businesses look to partner with specialists for their ‘IT plumbing’ so all the focus and attention can go towards optimising the brand and their products. Businesses are shifting their psyche — increasingly wanting hosters and integrators to do everything for them instead of depending on a private cloud run by their own people. This will keep the CFOs happy because they won’t have the same cost implications as before and the CEOs happy as they’re getting that growth trajectory that they’re looking for. Brands will increasingly cross the chasm between the old and new world, while trying to get their heads and procurement models around subscription models. By my reckoning, we might be 30% further forward in terms of pre-pandemic but there’s still a lot more legacy thinking and technology to shift. It will happen though, as the stock market continues

CEOs must become more decisive and IT-literate than they’ve ever been As a result of the pandemic, CEOs will become more authoritative in their decision making. And this is true across all industries. The risk of making a mistake right now is very damaging for any business, so they’ll need a decisive leader in place to allow them to come out of this period stronger than ever. To make these decisions effectively, it’s critical for CEOs to have far more depth and breadth of understanding of their company, as well as the data they have and how they can manage it to the extent that data must be considered a balance sheet asset. This requires CEOs to be far more IT-literate than they have ever been. As a result, we’ll see them leaning on and working more closely with the CTO and Chief Data Officer (CDO) to fully grasp and understand the value of their technology and data. This applies especially to areas such as containers and Kubernetes to ensure businesses can fully embrace automation, mobility, and agility, and be dynamic in the way data moves throughout their business. Businesses will face dire consequences if they don’t comply with ESG regulations As a society, we all have a

responsibility to do more to use less power and create less of a carbon footprint. This is not just a trend — the planet is dying because we’re doing bad things to it. The myopic view of business success being based purely on measuring how much money comes in and goes out will become a thing of the past. In 2022, companies must be valued by their commitment to ESG. As such, we’ll see governments putting restrictions or applying greater tax on companies that don’t comply with certain ESG regulations. ESG will become a balance sheet item where companies must declare the amount of carbon they’re producing and whether they’re offsetting it sufficiently. Data will be key to this. If companies want to be more efficient, they will need to mine their data to identify patterns and trends, which will inform them of where they’re causing the most damage so they can get to work on fixing it. The rapid changes society has undergone over the past 18 months, present an opportunity for forwardfocused businesses. Companies that focus on their employees, make the right technology investments and prioritise ESG will stand to gain a decisive edge, not just in 2022, but for years to come.

DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

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THE RISE OF THE CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER TERENCE SATHYANARAYAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF PULSE INNOVATION SYSTEMS, EXPLAINS THE IMPORTANCE AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF A CDO

hief Digital Officer (CDO) is a new position that has become increasingly common in organisations of all sizes. Companies are starting to realise the impact they can have on their customers via digital channels and many are hiring Chief Digital Officers to manage these efforts. While CDO’s may not be responsible for every aspect of digital marketing, it is important that they work with other department leaders to ensure coordination between departments and an effective digital strategy across the company. This article will explore what it means to be a CDO and why your company might need one. The duties of a CDO vary based on the company, but there are some commonalities. The job title is relatively new so its meaning may differ across industries and employers. For example, in one organisation an individual might have “Chief” in their title to indicate their high rank in digital strategy, while another organisation may not use it at all. In addition, there is no universal job description for a CDO since the role differs from company to company. However, according to us, most CDOs have similar duties: Innovate and implement crossfunctional digital strategies: They develop and coordinate digital initiatives that leverage all departments within the organization and may work with outside vendors to help build the best solutions. Engage with customers: The CDO manages digital strategy and initiatives that bring their company closer to customers. They stay on top of changing consumer demands and play a key role in customer experience management. 42

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Oversee integrated campaigns: The goal of a CDO is to create a seamless customer experience across all channels. They should coordinate initiatives across every department including sales, marketing, finance and more to make sure they are working together to give customers the best experience possible. Troubleshoot and innovate: A CDO must be a leader who is prepared to face challenges with innovative solutions. This means they must stay on top of new technologies and trends that could potentially impact the company or their department. Digital marketing has quickly become a top priority for many companies. There are billions of potential customers online and the web has made it easier than ever for them to discover new products and services. However, with so much digital noise it is important for companies to showcase their story in an engaging way that sets them apart from other organizations. A CDO helps ensure that a company’s marketing efforts are properly coordinated and in line with the company’s overall strategy. This involves working with other department heads to ensure they are on task and following through with digital recommendations from the CDO. In addition, a CDO can help bring revenue into a business by improving customer satisfaction and conversion rates. Customers who have a positive experience with the organization via digital channels are much more likely to make purchases through other outlets such as in-store or by phone. The role of a CDO has evolved over time and will continue to change as the

digital landscape grows and evolves. More and more companies are investing in online marketing campaigns because they realise it is an effective way to reach consumers. Companies with a CDO have seen an ROI on their digital initiatives and are better positioned to take advantage of online marketing in the future. There is a reason why the chief digital officer job is growing in popularity. The more companies invest in their online marketing strategies, the more they need someone to lead those efforts and keep them on track. In fact, studies have shown that hiring a CDO can add 5-15% to a company’s revenue within just 3-18 months. It is important for businesses to have a strategy in place before going out and hiring a CDO. This will ensure that you can easily fill the role, rather than just picking a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications. Hiring a CDO requires a different type of person compared to other marketing roles. The CDO needs to be an effective problemsolver who can work with various departments to ensure that they are on the same page. The CDO is a new position that has been created to help businesses navigate the digital landscape. CDOs are just as important in the digital landscape of today. This is because they can help their company stay on top of what’s happening in all aspects, whether it be marketing or product development. If you’re looking for someone to lead your team into this new era, hire a Chief Digital Officer today!

PRODUCTS

Ericsson Network Data Analytics Function

Ericsson has launched its Network Data Analytics Function (NWDAF) solution, based on smarter data-driven networks that learn and improve. Ericsson’s NWDAF enables service providers to improve customer experience by using the data generated by the network to flag and fix problems, thus improving service quality. For 5G, automation is a continuous endeavor ranging from automating specific simple and complex tasks to supporting zero-touch autonomous networking, which requires the application of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and reasoning. NDWAF achieves this by getting the right data at the right cost to feed into the AI/ML models.

NWDAF enhances network operability by providing insight that helps the service provider identify and solve network problems on different levels as well as input for taking valued business decisions. One example is automated closed loops (data retrieval, analytics processing, insights generation and action enforcement) on different network and application levels. Ericsson’s NWDAF can drive up to 45 percent reduction in OPEX and CAPEX compared with typical third-party NWDAF implementation with event exposure. Smart data acquisition allows more efficient integration and testing, simpler orchestration and optimal footprint.

Bosch smart connected biking solution The new systems generation from Bosch eBike Systems merges the physical experience of riding an e-bike with the digital experience provided by connectivity and an app. This smart system comprises the new eBike Flow app, an LED user interface, color display, rechargeable battery, and drive unit. Over-theair updates mean it can be continuously enhanced. The eBike Flow app opens up a range of new digital features for e-bikes, such as automatic activity tracking and personalised riding modes. Whether on the daily commute or a leisurely ride, the result is more enjoyment over longer distances. 44

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Lenovo ThinkEdge SE450 Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) has expanded the Lenovo ThinkEdge portfolio with the introduction of the new ThinkEdge SE450 server, delivering an artificial intelligence (AI) platform directly at the edge to accelerate business insights. The ThinkEdge SE450 advances intelligent edge capabilities with best-in-class, AI-ready technology that provides faster insights and leading computing performance to more environments, accelerating real-time decision making at the edge and unleashing full business potential. Designed to stretch the limitations of server locations, Lenovo’s ThinkEdge SE450 delivers real-time insights with enhanced compute power and flexible deployment capabilities that can support multiple AI workloads while allowing customers to scale. It meets the demands of a wide variety of critical workloads with a unique, quieter go-anywhere form factor, featuring a shorter depth that allows it to be easily installed in space constrained locations. The GPU-rich server is purposebuilt to meet the requirements of vertically specific edge

HP TERADICI HP has rolled out new Z by HP, Teradici, and NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise subscription offers to power remote collaboration across multiple systems and applications, at the edge or in the cloud. HP is also releasing its data science software stack for Linux workflows in collaboration with Microsoft on the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2), providing all the development advantages of Ubuntu with the enterprise security and manageability of Windows. Designed to tackle graphics or compute intensive projects from anywhere, the combination of ZCentral Software and

environments, with a ruggedised design that withstands a wider operating temperature, as well as high dust, shock and vibration for harsh settings. As one of the first NVIDIACertified Edge systems, Lenovo’s ThinkEdge SE450 leverages NVIDIA GPUs for enterprise and industrial AI at the edge applications, providing maximum accelerated performance.

Teradici CAS, provides a comprehensive remote compute solution in a single offer Users will have the flexibility to access the software suite they need to tackle graphics or computeintensive projects from anywhere. Teradici CAS offers teams the ability to securely access the cloud and virtual machines while ZCentral Remote Boost enables access to localised workstation performance. The powerful combination of two industry-leading remote work applications provides access from anywhere using most PCs, thin clients, Chromebooks, or tablets, while seamlessly managing remote connections with IT management software. The combined one-year subscription will include Teradici CAS and HP ZCentral software for $240 per concurrent user and includes Teradici CAS, HP ZCentral Remote Boost Sender and Receiver, HP ZCentral Connect and support. HP ZCentral Connect software is included in the subscription for a limited time. The subscription is planned to be available for purchase by the end of the calendar year 2021, additional details to follow closer to availability.

DECEMBER 2021

CXO INSIGHT ME

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DEEP DIVE INTO ADVANCED ANALYTICS SUNIL PAUL, MD OF FINESSE, ON WHY ADVANCED ANALYTICS IS A BUSINESS IMPERATIVE IN THIS DIGITAL ERA.

veryone knows that data is the lifeline of today’s businesses. Traditional Business Intelligence (BI) systems analyse data to educate organisations on historical performances. However, those insights alone may no longer suffice in the fast-paced digitalfirst world. Companies must have a comprehensive real-time view of their customers’ buying patterns and critical event analysis to have as much control as possible in unpredictable scenarios. Legacy BI dashboards and architecture simply cannot rise to these evolving demands and to the increasing data deluge brought on by digitalisation drives. The next generation of BI – advanced analytics – helps organisations to accelerate innovation and achieve business outcomes in uncomplicated ways. Gartner defines advanced analytics as the “autonomous or semi-autonomous examination of data or content using sophisticated techniques and tools, typically beyond those of traditional business intelligence (BI), to discover deeper insights, make predictions, or generate recommendations.” The main difference between traditional and advanced analytics is the kind of process and techniques followed to address a business

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challenge. The latter helps to optimise and enhance operations and achieve efficiencies in areas where BI’s repeatable reporting process often falls short. Advanced analytics enables organisations to glimpse the future through predictive tools, helping them stay well ahead of the market curve. According to Gartner, advanced analytic techniques include data/text mining, machine learning, pattern matching, forecasting, visualisation, semantic analysis, sentiment analysis, network, and cluster analysis, multivariate statistics, graph analysis, simulation, complex event processing, neural networks. These functionalities provide organisations with the capabilities to go beyond data collected from large criteria like geography or product category to act on insights extracted from monitoring and assessing even smaller sources such as social media comments. Advanced analytics is especially useful to predict equipment failures, optimise systems, anticipate supply and demand, detect fraudulent activities, identify customer attrition, enhance customer service and so on. As data can be examined at its most granular form with advanced analytics techniques, it facilitates customisation of marketing activities at an individual, rather than a segment, level. A great

example of this is what Amazon and Netflix do – hyper-personalisation through dynamic pricing, product recommendations, show suggestions – all based on detailed data collected and analysed when browsing their sites at both macro and micro levels. For Netflix, this includes collecting information on what time of the day a show was watched, if it was bingewatched or not, was the show paused, and so on. Advanced analytics is a musthave in today’s digital environment, and another important technology associated with this is – Analytic Process Automation (APA). However, all the interesting insights delivered by advanced analytics are in vain if it is not actioned at the right time. Unfortunately, people are often a roadblock in this area – the right person not having the right data to action. APA is the technology that allows anyone in an organisation to effortlessly share and automate data to unleash predictive and prescriptive insights and deliver business outcomes. Advanced analytics offer enormous business value to organisations of all shapes and sizes. If done right, it can help enterprises address challenges before they become problems and assist business leaders in making strategic decisions with greater confidence..

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Questions? Reach out to your account team.

Bibin George Sales Representative MENA (Enterprise and Systems), Seagate Technology bibin.jacob@seagate.com +971-50-6818529

Arnab Majumder Product Line Sales Manager, – Enterprise Storage, ASBIS Middle East FZE arnab.majumder@asbisme.ae +971-58-5611076

ACCELERATING INNOVATION

Articles inside

DELIVERING TOTAL APPLICATION EXPERIENCE

PRODUCTS

PLANNING FOR SUCCESS

THINK GREEN

THE RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

APP YOUR SERVICE

PLUGGING THE GAPS

THE STATE OF THE SOC

TIMES OF DISRUPTION

NEWS

THE SECRET OF DEVOPS SUCCESS

TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE

THE CYBERSECURITY IMPLICATIONS OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION