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PA G E S 6 4 VOLUME O2 | ISSUE 09 APRIL 2015 WWW.ENTERPRISECHANNELSMEA.COM

STEPHAN BERNER, MANAGING DIRECTOR, HELP AG

REDEFINING ENTERPRISE

SECURITY

INDIAECM042015

After a whooping business of $38 million in 2014, HelpAG has made a magnanimous entry into managed security services market /44

redefine_simplicity(31x22cm).pdf

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EDITORIAL

An year of Implementation

S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M

The Middle East and Africa market will be a global boiling plate as far the ICT market growth is concerned. Enterprises including private and government would start investing in all the futuristic technologies that are going to determine their business outcome. As per IDC only Middle East would be responsible for investing US$ 219.8 billion in the ICT market. The first and foremost investment point would be cloud computing. Further they would also invest in Big Data and IOT for sure. UC, CC and telepresence would be the core technologies along with security solutions that they would be looking at seriously from the core enterprise perspective. They will also look at enterprise applications including ERP, CRM and SCM kind of solutions. They would either refresh these solutions or add on modules using cloud model.

The information workers would be more mobile this year and would have more chance to work in wireless environment. Therefore, there would be a lot of hardware refresh.

Although the core focus would be on the cloud but there would be new hardware to accommodate the new age technologies. The enterprise data centre would also see a lot of cleaning and leaning. The old legacy machines would be given away to accommodate hyper virtualized machines to make the data centres more intelligent and lean.

During last couple of years the enterprises were having honeymoon period with the new concepts but now they feel the new technologies are trustworthy and productive.

There will be a lot of emphasis on the service level agreement. The partners will see a lot of integration opportunities coming on their way. At the same time they would also get call for services opportunity.

But one thing is for sure -the market has to think beyond the traditional ways and means as far as their Big Data and IoT strategy is concerned. The reason being the two things are going to determine the result of every competitive business. Be it a small business or a very large enterprise, they would certainly add a lot of automation to their entire system starting from the warehouse to the end- point, all the machines would provide information about their status so that communication has to be collated to make actionable plan. Secondly, the enterprises would also be creating actionable plan around their employees’, users’ or consumers’ opinion.

Probably the growing sentiment around Big Data and IoT has compelled DWTC to organize a large event in the month of June. ë

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2015 CONTENTS

VOLUME 02 ISSUE 09 APRIL 2015 W W W. E N T E R P R I S E C H A N N E L S M E A . C O M

COVER STORY

STORAGE TRANSCENDS

PLATFORMS

Today businesses cannot consider storage as a separate entity working independently of other components or services... /26

MY VIEWS /50

“Enabling Partners with Education &Exclusivity” MOHAMAD MOBASSERI, CEO OF EMT DISTRIBUITION

MY VIEWS /52

Replacing Legacy RAJ SABHLOK, PRESIDENT OF ZOHO CORP (MANAGEENGINE IS A DIVISION OF ZOHO CORP)

INNOVATIONS /62

BROCADE ICX 7250 SWITCH

FEATURE STORY Video-the new voice of the Channel /36

The Brocade ICX 7250 Switch delivers the performance, flexibility, and scalability required for enterprise Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) access deployment.

EDITORIAL::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 04 CHANNEL STREET:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 06 CIO SPEAK /58

Aligning innovation with company vision MUBARIK HUSSAIN HEAD OF IT, PETROSERV, QATAR

MY VIEWS ::::::::::::::::::: 22, 24, 50, 52, 56, 60 COVER FEATURE (HELP AG):::::::::::::::::: 44 CIO SPEAK::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 58 GUEST TALK : ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 51, 54, 61 INNOVATIONS : ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 62

ADVERTISER INDEX: STORIT 02, EMITAC 03, TOSHIBA 07, CYBEROAM 09, COMGUARD 11, TP-LINK 13, HID 15, ESET 17, FDC19, ACTIFIO 21, EMT 23, FINESSE 25, STARLINK 29, OPTIMUS 31, NEXANS 33, TALARIAX 35, BULWARK 39, OXYGEN 41, GEC OPEN 43, GEMAC 47, GEMEC / GISEC PARTNER SHIP 49, IOTX EVENT 55, AFRICA EVENT 57, UNIFY 63, DELL 64

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STREET SMART CITIES TO CONSUME 1.1 BILLION CONNECTED ‘THINGS’ IN 2015

Smart homes and smart commercial buildings will represent 45 percent of total connected things in use in 2015 and Gartner estimates that this will rise to 81 percent by 2020. “Smart cities represent a great revenue opportunity for technology and services providers (TSPs), but providers need to start to plan, engage and position their offerings now,” said Bettina Tratz-Ryan, research VP at Gartner.

“Homes will move from being interconnected to become information- and smartenabled.” said Ms. Tratz-Ryan. In addition to residential IoT investments, there are a number of IoT deployments .While investment in IoT hardware is fundamental for smart cities, the real revenue opportunity for TSPs is in the services and analytics sector.

‘INTERNET OF THINGS’ INCREASES RISKS OF CYBERATTACKS IoT is one of the many topics that will be dissected and debated at the 3rd GISEC scheduled to take place from 26-28 April 2015 at the DWTC. With the consumer, automotive and industrial sectors having been identified as those that will drive the immense growth of IoT, Cisco has warned that while IoT presents conveniences to individuals and organisations, greater challenges await companies and those responsible for defending the network from cybercrimes.

“As organisations continue to seek ways to capitalise on the vast opportunities that IoT brings, the number and type of attack vectors will only continue to expand,” said Philippe Roggeband, Business Development Manager of Cisco Security Architecture and one of the keynote speakers at GISEC.

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DR ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON, BRUCE SCHNEIER, FELLOW, THE DIRECTOR OF BERKMAN CENTER FOR INTERNET AND SOCIETY AT HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

“..a world where cyberattack is easier than cyberdefence” Cybercriminal attacks around the world will continue to rise as long as personal data provides the ability to commit fraud, and intellectual property is worth stealing, leaving both individuals and organizations vulnerable to harmful computer and network intrusions. According to cybersecurity guru Bruce Schneier, one of the keynote speakers at GISEC 2015, a cyberattack is much easier to implement than it is to install impenetrable cyber defences.

One of the world’s most recognisable voices on cybersecurity, Schneier is also the CTO of Resilient Systems and a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School in the U.S.A. Schneier is the author of the popular security blog Schneier on Security, and has recently released his book Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World.

During the second day of GISEC on 28 April, Schneier will discuss the reactions and lessons

learned from last year’s devastating Sony hack scandal. During his presentation, Schneier will also highlight how companies in the ME can secure their networks against this sort of attack.

Schneier advises that organisations should take cybersecurity seriously. “Companies need protection against peopleusing common hacking tools, which are known as low-focus attacks and can impact thousands of networks worldwide. They need detection to spot the attackers and then if they do get through,a response to minimise the damage, restore security and manage the fallout is needed,” Schneier said.

Meanwhile, cloud services will remain a hotbed of activity this year. Cisco Systems Inc. believes present cyberthreats are stealthier than ever following last year’s widespread man-in-themiddle (MITM) attack on Apple’s iCloud system.

www.nimblestorage.com

Adaptive Flash Storage for the Cloud Age

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Š 2015 Nimble Storage, Inc. Nimble Storage, the Nimble Storage logo, and InfoSight are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nimble Storage, Inc. All other trade names are the property of their respective owners.

CHANNEL STREET

ESET Launches New Retail Partner Program The scheme recognizes and rewards partners who have a proven track record of promoting and selling the ESET Smart Security and the ESET NOD32 Antivirus products . “We have in the last couple of years really strengthened our ties with our retail partners by deepening collaboration and conducting regular incentive, rebate and cash-back programs. Based on

PRADEESH VS, GENERAL MANAGER AT ESET MIDDLE EAST

this success, we have decided to formalize our retail rewards with a well defined and completely transparent framework,” said Pradeesh VS, GM at ESET Middle East.

“The goal is to further drive uptake of our home user solutions and provide as many regional internet users as possible with ESET’s brand of proactive protection against malware, spyware, identity theft and social media scams.”

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC ACHIEVES HIGH SUSTAINABILITY SCORE As per the non-financial results for the Q4 of 2014 in the Planet & Society barometer, Schneider Electric has scored a 9.52 at the end of December 2014. The barometer exceeds its 3 year target of 8/10. Gilles Vermot Desroches, Senior VP Sustainability at Schneider Electric, said, “This quarter marks the end of the Connect company program and the related Planet & Society barometer, taking stock of three years of commitment to sustainability in the period 2012-2014. “The new Planet & Society barometer is organized for the first time around our “megatrends” in sustainability as defined in our company program: climate, circular economy, poverty, ethics and health” added Gilles.

IBM CONNECTS “INTERNET OF THINGS” TO THE ENTERPRISE IBM gears up to invest $3 billion over the next four years to establish a new Internet of Things (IoT) unit whilst building a cloud-based open platform to help clients and ecosystem partners build IoT solutions.

The new unit will be led by Pat Toole as General Manager. “Our knowledge of the world grows with every connected sensor and device, but too often we are not acting on it, even when we know we can ensure a better result,” said Bob Picciano, senior vice president, IBM Analytics. “IBM will enable clients and industry partners apply IoT data to build solutions based on an open platform. This is a major focus of investment for IBM because it’s a rich and broad-based opportunity where innovation matters.”

DESERT ISLANDS RESORT DEPLOYS ARUBA SOLUTIONS Desert Islands Resort & Spa by Anantara, part of the Minor Hotel Group and regarded as one of the luxurious Abu Dhabi resorts, has upgraded its wireless network with Aruba Networks’ 802.11ac Wi-Fi across its property. The new network has enabled the hotel to provide gigabit Wi-Fi connectivity to guests and allowed staff to utilize a host of business-critical applications with greater ease.

Graeme Kane, Sales Manager, Hospitality at Aruba Networks said, “To remain competitive, hotels in the region need to leverage a smarter, adaptive wireless network infrastructure. By installing the latest wireless network technologies from Aruba Networks, Anantara has demonstrated its leadership in providing an exceptional mobile experience for its guests and employees.”

According to Harikumar Nair, Director Information Technology at Anantara Hotels, Resorts & Spas, Abu Dhabi, perhaps the most important benefit of the new Aruba network has been its ability to help his team realize the full potential of their network investments. “We are very happy with the new network’s performance. Aruba offers plenty of opportunities to grow this solution with the evolving needs of our guests and staff in order to ensure that we continue to deliver the excellent quality of service that our brand is renowned for,” concluded Mr. Nair.

CANON TO LAUNCH PARTNER PROGRAMME FOR BAHRAIN Canon Middle East is all set to launch its first-ever partner programme aimed at IT dealers based in Bahrain. The year-long campaign will recognise the channel community’s efforts to boost the sales of Canon printers and further consolidate its position in the country.

“The Canon channel partner programme is designed to support and grow business in the IT channel

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and also seeks to continuously recognise the contribution of key players and team members who in turn contribute to our success. The feedback from the channel community for the programme has been.” said Hendrik Verbrugghe, Marketing Director, Canon Middle East.

The current channel programme focuses on sales targets set for main

body printer business in Bahrain.

The results with the details of the top performing dealers will be announced in 2016. “Our channel partners are invaluable in fuelling growth and combined with Canon’s robust channel support, incentives and marketing programmes, we are creating ever-more rewarding relationships between the vendor and channels,” said Dinesh Ramankutty, General Manager - INTERCOL.

CHANNEL STREET IN PUBLIC

I believe the biggest challenge is not the technology itself so much as linking technology to the business case.

DAVID STEPHENSON, CHIEF DATA OFFICER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, DATA SCIENCE INNOVATION

emt Academy partners with Pearson VUE emt Distribution’s training and Avaya, F5, Fortinet, Microsoft, certification arm emt Academy EC-Council, HP, IBM, Oracle, has partnered with Pearson VUE Riverbed, EMC, RSA Security, to offer computer-based testing SAP, SAS, VMWare, VCE, for IT Professionals in the Middle Symantec, Veeam, Unify, ZTE East region. ErdalOzkaya, CISO at and many more,” said Ozkaya. emt Distribution, said, “Partnering Pearson VUE operates and with Pearson VUE is in line with maintains the test delivery our vision to grow our training and system, providing test centers ERDAL OZKAYA, CISO AT EMT certification services. We will now with L1 and L2 support, logging DISTRIBUTION offer testing for IT professionals and resolving faults, software on wide variety of technology testing and enhancements along platforms like Cisco, Juniper, Citrix, Aruba, with backup services.

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SECONDS

FUJITSU SCANSNAP IX100 RECEIVES RED DOT AWARD Designed to support the needs of business professionals, the ultra-portable and very light Fujitsu ScanSnap iX100 comes with built-in Wi-Fi connectivity and lithium-ion battery to allow mobile workers to capture documents directly to smartphones, tablets, PCs and Macs via Wi Fi and to share data via cloud services.

MIS JOINS EPICOR PARTNER NETWORK

Epicor has added Modern Information Systems to its inspired partner network as its VAR in the Middle East. Modern Information Systems represents Epicor in Oman and will sell and implement its ERP solutions, as well as provide after-sales support. Epicor, in collaboration with Modern Information Systems, aims to primarily reach out to the manufacturing and oil and gas sector in Oman.

LEXMARK APPOINTS METRA AS A VAD Both companies, in tandem, will allow resellers to help organizations capitalize on unlocking the potential of unstructured data. New and existing

PALO ALTO NETWORKS AND VMWARE PARTNERSHIP TO ADDRESS MOBILE SECURITY Palo Alto Networks and VMware have expanded their strategic partnership to address mobile security needs. Saeed Agha, GM Palo Alto Middle East said: “Mobile computing is transforming the ways organizations do business. This introduces new security challenges for organizations by exposing them to new risk vectors and creating a need to protect business information and applications accessed via employee-owned devices, while also respecting the privacy of personal information and traffic”.

To address these challenges, Palo Alto Networks and VMware will integrate their enterprise security and mobile management technologies to give organizations a rich and unique combination of mobile device management (MDM) with advanced threat prevention for secure enterprise BYOD support.

Lexmark customers will benefit from Metra’s deep expertise in the IT industry and a roster of more than 30+ vendors.

PHILIPS PARTNERS WITH TRIGON Vineeth Sebastian, Regionals Sales Director-MEA at MMD said: “We believe this partnership will allow existing and new partners to benefit from the expertise and depth of knowledge about display solutions that are integral to Trigon. It will support us to access new business opportunities and grow our market share in the region.”

SILVER PEAK LEADS IN WAN OPTIMIZATION

DSG SHOWCASES BENCHMARK ACHIEVEMENTS

Silver Peak grabs the leadership position in Gart-

The Dubai Smart Government Department (DSG) highlighted its exceptional achievements in the emirate’s move towards government excellence at the Dubai Government Achievements Exhibition 2015. Held for three consecutive days under the theme ‘Local Governments, Global Achievements,’ the event cast the spotlight on the latest milestones in the move towards a smart government based on innovation and competitiveness.

H.E. Ahmed Bin Humaidan, DG for DSG department, stated, “Our continuous success pushes us to further work on seriously elevating government services towards higher levels of excellence and raising the UAE’s competitiveness worldwide in line with 2021 plan.” The Customer User Laboratory emerged as one of the most important accomplishments in making Dubai the most innovative city in the world.

DSG saw achievements in other areas as well with regards to information security which has received a lot of attention as the rapid adoption of smart services amplified the need for special procedures to ensure the privacy and security of information.

According to Gartner, “As WAN optimization

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ner’s 2015 Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimization. appliances increasingly include WAN path control and local link load balancing capabilities, these products are morphing into SD-WAN solutions.”

“We believe Silver Peak is best-positioned to help customers meet these new WAN requirements.

With Dynamic Path Control, Silver Peak offers customers the most comprehensive solution today for building an SD-WAN fabric” said David Hughes, CEO of Silver Peak.

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Ruckus Unveils High-speed ZoneFlex R710

Ruckus Wireless has unveiled the improvements, reaching over 445 Ruckus ZoneFlex R710 AP based megabits per sec speed with twoon Wave 2 features. It is being stream-capable laptops, and over projected as the first Wi-Fi AP 200 megabits per sec with singleto now support major technical stream mobile smart phones. advances in the 802.11ac and “The R710 is an extraordinary comes with a highly anticipated feat of engineering that marks new capability called multi-user a new era for our industry,” said multiple input/multiple output Selina Lo, president and CEO of (MU-MIMO).

Ruckus Wireless. “The work and SELINA LO, PRESIDENT AND CEO OF RUCKUS WIRELESS According to Vijay Sammeta, innovation we’ve put into the R710 CIO for the City of San José, reflects our leadership in deliverafter installing the Ruckus ZoneFlex R710, the ing the world’s best in class wireless products that City was able to achieve dramatic performance stand the test of time.”

FORTINET FURTHER INVESTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST Fortinet has moved to a new and larger office and at the same time opened a unique Technical Assistance Center in Dubai, UAE. These changes aim to more effectively address the requirements of Fortinet’s customers across Middle East and reflect the company’s strong growth and commitment to the region. The center will be staffed with engineers providing the comprehensive range of FortiCare Services from technical support, premium and focused security services as well as Professional Services.

“Fortinet is growing exponentially and we continue to invest in high-growth territories such as the ME in order to meet the rising demand from our customers and partners” said Yann Pradelle, VP EMEA South at Fortinet. “Fortinet is the first security vendor across the region to have a dedicated and senior technical support team on-the-ground to provide high quality services to our customers.”

TP-LINK TARGETS GROWTH IN EGYPT MARKET TP-LINK has urged its channel partners in Egypt to take advantage of the improving business climate and increasing government and public sector IT spending. Roger Gong, SM, Egypt, TP-LINK ME, said “TP-LINK in-country office for Egypt will be ready soon,” “We are already working with distributors who serve the traditional IT segment and SPs.” He pointed out that to support partners in the country, TP-LINK is planning initiatives for new and high-end product portfolio and these are already set.“We see most of TP-LINK’s growth in 2015 coming from the growing need to have Internet connected homes and growth in the SMB sector,” he said.

CITRIX INTRODUCES NEW SOLUTIONS FOR CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE Citrix has unveiled its all new revolutionary Citrix WorkspacePod, a fully integrated software solution for delivering modern workspaces, leveraging the recently acquired software-defined storage capability from Sanbolic. In collaboration with technology partners, Citrix is developing pre-packaged offerings that include integrated compute, storage and networking to reduce the cost and complexity for delivering applications including: Windows, Web and Linux.

Speaking on this, Tyrone Pike, Vice President, Market Development, Citrix said, “While we’ve made great strides in simplifying session, app and desktop delivery management, we see tremendous market demand for offerings that reduce the infrastructure cost and complexity for workspace delivery. Citrix WorkspacePod solutions provide create simplified architectures that streamline and accelerate workspace deployments at an attractive per-user price.” Paul Santeler, Vice President and General Manager, Moonshot, HP says, “HP ProLiant Moonshot and Citrix offer solutions that deliver tremendous value for businesses deploying mobile workspaces, providing the compelling application experience demanded by today’s mobile workforce.

The technology demonstration at Citrix Summit is proof positive that our strong partnership with Citrix will continue to excite our customers.”

FIREMON REPORT RE-INFORCES ROLE OF FIREWALL FireMon’s “State of the Firewall 2014 Report” reinforces the firewall’s role as a foundational element of network security infrastructure, both today and in the future.

The report reveals that firewalls remain highly strategic to organizations’ current and future security strategies. Conducted in Q4 2014, the overriding interest of the study was to surface current perceptions

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on the role that firewall infrastructure continues to play in the larger domain of network security management, in particular related to emerging trends such as adoption of next-generation firewalls (NGFWs), cloud computing and SDN. “Previous observations that the ‘firewall is

JODY BRAZILCHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

dead’ were clearly premature or overstated,” said Jody Brazil, CEO of FireMon. “Not only do today’s practitioners consider firewalls as critical an element of their network security strategy as ever, but they also see a crucial role for the firewall within evolving paradigms including the cloud and SDN, which may surprise some industry watchers.”

CHANNEL STREET

New Xerox Solutions to Help Businesses Print Less The new Xerox Print Awareness Tool will help enterprises reduce their carbon footprint and encourage workers to be more environmentally responsible. Created by Xerox’s Research Centre Europe, the tool uses gamification technology and provides real-time print metrics and tips on how to change behaviors. Employees can voluntarily track how their efforts support companywide print reduction and print smarter goals.

An easy-to-use interactive desktop software widget monitors and analyzes print history and wasteful habits. Fun factors, including peer competition and incentives, can also be used to encourage participation.

“Printing less isn’t just about using less paper – it’s about working smarter, improving productivity, connecting with clients faster and using data to bolster business,” said Mike Feldman, president, Large Enterprise Operations, Xerox.

“At first thought, we may be an unlikely source to say ‘print less’, but we bridge the digital and paper worlds to help enterprises better understand, protect and use information more intelligently.” Print Awareness tool is part of Xerox’s approach to MPS – assess and optimize; secure and integrate; and automate and simplify. The Print Awareness tool has not yet been launched in the region.

WEB CLIPS R&M ANNOUNCES NEW PARTNERSHIP WITH VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTS R&M has entered into a new partnership with Virtual Instruments. As a monitoring platform, R&M today launched its Total Network Visibility solution, a holistic approach to network visibility that integrates passive traffic access points (TAPs) seamlessly into its automated infrastructure management system R&MinteliPhy. “The VirtualWisdom platform provides complete visibility and for the first time, automated infrastructure management and automated infrastructure performance management are married as a single solution,” states Dr. Thomas Wellinger, Market Manager Data Center, R&M. EATON INTRODUCES OPEN FRAME 2-POST RACKS

EPICOR FELICITATES TOP CHANNEL PARTNERS 2015

The new RE Series 2-Post Rack complements the already successful RE Series IT rack range designed with value added resellers and system integrators in mind and it can also form an

Epicor has given away its 2015 Channel Partner Awards for EMEA and Asia Pacific. “It’s important to us that we celebrate the success of our partners and growing momentum in the channel across EMEA and Asia Pacific. Our partner base continues to go from strength to strength.” said Keith Deane, EVP and GM for Epicor International. “We take pride in supporting an inspired network that can provide both industry and product expertise and we are extremely proud of all our talented partners for their excellent performance levels.” he added. The awards took place as part of the annual Epicor Momentum Partner Conference, a three day event that brings together channel partners for Epicor ERP and Epicor iScala solutions.

integral part of Eaton’s Intelligent Power Pod.” said Hany Maurice, regional channel and alliance leader, Eaton Middle East. The open access design of the RE Series 2-Post rack enables quick and easy installation and provides secure connectivity for all internationally recognized cabling standards, including CAT 8.

FORRESTER CITES SOFTWARE AG AS A LEADER IN PORTFOLIO

MOVEMENTS HESHAM EL KOMY, has been appointed as the Sales Director, Middle East and Africa at EnterpriseDB.

VMware has appointed BASK IYER to the role of senior VP and CIO of VMware.

Riverbed Technology has promoted ELIE DIB to the position of MD for the Middle East and North, Central and West Africa (MENA) region.

Xerox has appointed Xerox has appointed CHRIS GOVIER as the GM for its ME operations

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MANAGEMENT

NUMBER GAME

26.1 percent

MEA tablet market grew 26.1 percent year on year in Q4 2014

The report noted that Leaders have “a product strategy [that] emphasizes portfolio management as a game changer. Differentiation here was a clearly articulated road map that included significant investment in innovative solutions that leverage leading-edge technologies to provide sophisticated analysis while providing a great user experience.”

RED HAT UNVEILS NEW SOFTWAREDEFINED STORAGE PORTFOLIO Red Hat has launched its latest unified open software-defined storage portfolio that brings together Red Hat Ceph Storage, formerly known as Inktank Ceph Enterprise, and Red Hat Gluster Storage, formerly known as Red Hat Storage Server. The unified Red Hat Storage portfolio helps enterprises manage their current and emerging data storage workloads using open source software and standard hardware. It is available worldwide now.

Secure access to cloud, data and door

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With the ever increasing risk from advanced IT security threats, organisations are looking to take authentication beyond passwords, while lowering cost at the same time. HID Global’s authentication solution provides you with the convenience, flexibility and comprehensive control you need to deliver secure access, without compromising on security. HID Global can empower your employee’s, partners and customers with anytime, anywhere access to enterprise cloud applications, data and the door.

Experience authentication beyond passwords. hidglobal.com/identity-assurance © 2014 HID Global Corporation/ASSA ABLOY AB. All rights reserved. HID, HID Global, the HID Blue Brick logo, and the Chain Design are trademarks or registered trademarks of HID Global or its licensor(s)/supplier(s) in the US and other countries and may not be used without permission.

CHANNEL STREET

Gemalto Recognises EMEA Channel Partners

TUMBLING OIL PRICES SUGGEST THERE MAY BE TROUBLE AHEAD

Gemalto honoured 2014 EMEA Annual Channel Partner Award winners in Athens at a ceremony that took place on the 9th of March.

Gemalto is significantly expanding its global network of channel partners focused on data security solutions for enterprises, financial institutions and other organizations.

“Through the acquisition of SafeNet, Gemalto

The MEA PC market posted its third successive quarter of YoY growth in Q4 2014, continuing its recovery from the seven consecutive quarterly declines it experienced leading up to Q2 2014. “The market’s growth was also spurred by several mid- to large-scale education deliveries that took place across the region in Q4 2014, with the largest being in Pakistan,” says Fouad Rafiq Charakla, research manager for personal computing, systems, and infrastructure solutions at IDC Middle East, Turkey, and Africa.

Looking ahead, IDC expects the MEA PC market to suffer an overall decline of 3.9% year on year in 2015.

Some country markets are expected to suffer in early 2015 due to currency fluctuations, including Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, and Nigeria. “At the same time, the market’s performance will be hindered by uncertainty overthe outcome of general elections in both Nigeria and Turkey,” says Charakla. “And the recent rapid decline in global oil and gas prices will have an impacton almost all parts of the region, although the extent of this will vary from country to country.

Nigeria and Ghana are expected to suffer the most, with PC shipments to these countries set to shrink around 40%year on year in 2015.”

“In the longer term, IDC forecasts the PC market to remain almost flat from 2015 through to 2019,” continues Charakla.

has extended its reach into the Enterprise market in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region and will further support our goal of market growth. All of our partner network will now also benefit from the opportunity to work with astronger combined portfolio,” said Gary Clark, vice president of EMEA Sales & Operationsfor Identity and Data Protection at Gemalto.

ELASTICA POSITIONED TO LEAD CLOUD APPLICATION SECURITY MARKET Elastica has closed its series B funding round with an investment of $30 million. Robert Schwartz from Third Point Ventures joined the Elastica board. The cloud app security provider will use the investment to further fuel its global expansion, channel sales, engineering, marketing and research teams as it takes a leadership role in the market. “Elastica is the kind of company we like to invest in – one that is rapidly becoming a category leader,” said Robert Schwartz, managing partner at Third Point Ventures, the venture arm of Third Point LLC. “Elastica has very strong momentum as it fundamentally changes the way the enterprise makes usage of cloud apps secure. The company’s innovative solutions, strong management and deep bench of data scientists and researchers have enabled a new category of security for cloud apps that traditional security solutions cannot bridge.”

According to Rehan Jalil, CEO of Elastica, “Our unique data science technology that delivers effective security across cloud application and services has positioned us to lead the cloud app security category.

New financing will further fuel our growth.”

DELL LAUNCHES INNOVATIVE NETWORKING SOLUTION FOR SMBS The new portfolio includes the new X-series of smart managed switches and an expanded N-series family with the addition of the Dell N1500. “Dell brings decades of experience delivering enterprise-class features in technology solutions specifically designed for small and mediumsized customers,” said Arpit Joshipura, VP Strategy and Product Management, Dell Networking.

“Today’s announcement is another example of our commitment to enable customers to break free of outdated networking paradigms.”“Dell now provides networking products for every need and budget and SMB partners and midrange customers will benefit from this enlargement of the portfolio.” Said Uwe Kannegießer, Director Advanced Solutions, Ingram Micro Germany.

DU INTRODUCES BUSINESS MOBILE PLAN FOR SMES Building on its popular marketleading offers for business, du is all set to simplify its existing portfolio of SME offerings with the introduction of the Business Mobile Plan.

The Business Mobile Plan is a result of du’s ongoing ‘simplify’ strategy for 2015 which is aimed at forming an evolutionary approach to the future of business in the UAE.

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Hany Fahmy Ali, Executive Vice President, Enterprise Business, du, said: “SMEs constitute the biggest chunk of UAE’s economy and are key to the nation’s growth. It is only fitting that we have a telecom plan that matches the ever-evolving needs of this dynamic business segment. Our new Business Mobile Plan – designed using customer

feedback, combines sought-after product attributes such as simplicity, flexibility, free calls and latest smartphones at zero upfront cost making it the most complete suite of plans for SMEs in the UAE.” Business Mobile Plan will be the primary product offered to small and medium enterprise customers (SME) and will be sold across all du

channels. This new plan will replace all other business plans for SMEsduring the course of 2015. Existing customers can continue using their existing plans as is; however, they will have the choice to move over to the Business Mobile Plan at any time free of cost in order for them to derive more value.

CHANNEL STREET

Mobility Remains a Top Initiative in 2015 For CIOs Mobility remains a top initiative SMART (sensors, maker in 2015 for CIO’s in the GCC with machines, augmented a focus on moving customer-fachumans, robotics and ing applications and transactions thinking machines) on to mobile-based platforms, technologies, a lot more according to Gartner’s 2015 CIO focus will be required Agenda survey. “Adoption of toimprove existing infracloud-based solutions in the GCC structure and processes” has been very low due to concerns In 2014, the oil and with security,latency, availability gasand financial sectors BISWAJEET MAHAPATRA, RESEARCH DIRECTOR AT GARTNER of local cloud-based solutions, in the region experienced credibility of local providers” vibrant opportunities; said Biswajeet Mahapatra, research director at therefore there is a stronger focus this year on Gartner.“Despite increasing adoption of the latest industry-specific applications.

PROLOGIX PARTNERS WITH ZEBRA TECHNOLOGIES Prologix is authorised to distribute the entire range of indoor and outdoor wireless network solutions with break-fix service maintenance and advanced services and Support.

The highly scalable WLAN solutions from Zebra enable high-speed data transfer, video streaming and further multimedia rich applications in the warehouse and on the loading ramp, which require high bandwidth. Aditya Sahaya, director, Business Development, Prologix Distribution said, “Prologix is extremely proud to be associated with Zebra Technologies. Our aim is to use Prologix’s extensive network of channels to buoy the reach of these solutions into unexplored customer territories.”

TALARIAX INNOVATES ENTERPRISE CLASS MOBILE MESSAGING WITH SQOOPE APP Named sQoope, the product is operated via a physical appliance located at an enterprise’s premises. Ashok Kumar, Chief of Business Development [EMEA & SAARC], TalariaX says, “Have you used Whatsapp, Line or wechat? These are mobile messaging applications that help you connect and start a conversation with another user anywhere in the world. Enter ‘sQoope’ from TalariaX. sQoope is an appliance that facilitates messaging (over wifi and mobile networks) for the enterprise. Send Text, Pictures, Sound Bites or Video Grabs to your colleague or user group in a secure environment. Raise Issues, Collaborate on Projects or Comment on Posts. It’s all possible with sQoope”.

OBG LAUNCHES 2015 ECONOMIC REPORT ON DUBAI Dubai’s recovery from the global financial crisis of the late 2000s and its preparations for the 2020 Expo are just two of many topics given wide-ranging coverage in a new report just released by the global publishing, research and consultancy firm Oxford Business Group (OBG). The Report: Dubai 2015 combines detailed analysis with data charting the latest developments across Dubai’s economy, which have put it on course to notch up GDP growth of around 4.5% this year and in 2016. The cautious revival under way in Dubai’s construction industry is a key focus of OBG’s latest report. Figures put the sector’s contribution to GDP in 2013 at 8% which, while well below 2008’s 14%, suggests the emirate is unlikely to witness a repeat of the overreach that led to the 2009 property crash.

The Report explores the significance of MSCI’s decision in 2014 to upgrade the UAE from frontier to emerging market status, which is already boosting liquidity levels and generating new interest among companies considering listing.

The emirate’s efforts to carve a niche in the global Islamic finance market are also analysed, including its drive to develop sharia-compliant industries and anticipated equities and sukuk. There is also detailed coverage of developments in the emirate’s transport sector, including the key role played by DIA, which is now the busiest airport in the world in terms of international passengers, and Dubai’s hopes of becoming a major maritime centre.

GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION PARTNER EVENT SUCCESSFUL IN EAST-AFRICA Global Distribution recently conducted its 1st Reseller Partner Event at the Serena Hotel in Kampala, Uganda to mark its inauguration of its East-Africa Office and debut into the African Market.Global’s Senior Management from Dubai and the newly appointed Team from Kampala joined the Event. Key partners such as The Copy Cat, Mercury,

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Mantra Technologies, PC-World Computers, Southern Business Solutions, MFI and many other key VAR’s from Ugandajoined the evening Event.

“Global is continuously investing in building a strong Partner community on all continents and is very proud to have made an entry into Africa with its Solutions Portfolio now, too. We

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are very happy with the positive response we have received from Partners and Vendors alike for this new venture. It’s a proud moment for us to have most of local key partners attending and supporting this events and our entry into the African market,” said Parvez Ahmed, Executive Director – Global Distribution Group.

GLOBAL-AFRICA-EVENT

FZCO P.O.Box: 17543, Dubai, UAE Tel: +971 4 870 3333 Fax: +971 4 870 3330 www.fdcinternational.com

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EES BECOMES THE FIRST GOLD CLOUD PRODUCTIVITY PARTNER FOR MICROSOFT IN THE UAE Emitac Enterprise Solutions (EES) has attained Gold Cloud Productivity competency in the Microsoft Partner Program. By achieving this competency, EES demonstrates that it can be trusted as an adept adviser to customer’s having long-term strategic technology plans on cloud . Madhav Reddy Kolli, Microsoft Business Unit Head, EES said, “Our plan is to power and accelerate our customer’s growth and adoption of the cloud by being their trusted consultant and help them understand how Cloud can support and improve their business” “Our partner ecosystem is critical to delivering best-in-class technology solutions that enhance productivity and at Microsoft, we are committed to working with them to help our customers do more in a mobile-first cloud-first world. EES has demonstrated efficiency and innovation in making Microsoft solutions available to end users making their attainment of Gold Cloud Productivity competency in the Microsoft Partner Program, very well deserved. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate EES on this milestone as we continue to work together to provide businesses in the UAE with technology solutions that solve their toughest productivity challenges,” said Tareq Hijazi, Regional Director – Microsoft Gulf Small and Mid-market Solutions and Partners.

Cisco Launches Mobility IQ Cisco has introduced Mobility IQ, a mobility software as a service analytics solution that unlocks the power of visual network knowledge and drives unparalleled business outcomes for service providers in the Middle East.

Mobility IQ combines data from Wi-Fi, 3G, and LTE network activity for real-time visibility into the network, user, and business intelligence.

By 2019, mobile data will represent 40 percent of MEA’s total data traffic; worldwide Wi-Fi offload traffic will exceed cellular traffic. The Gulf countries are among the world’s best-connected

countries.

Commenting on the new launch, Fady Younes, Head of Service Providers, Cisco UAE says, “Mobility IQ is a great example of Cisco executing on its service provider strategy in the Middle East can enable our customers to drive profitable business outcomes through transformation. This powerful new solution helps service providers and their business customers understand their own networks better, optimize the delivery of their services, and ultimately increase revenue.”

INJAZAT IMPROVES ENTERPRISE CLOUD SOLUTIONS Injazat Data Systems is all set to make further enhancements in the areas of enterprise cloud solutions to address the growing demand by businesses across the Middle East looking to adopt advanced cloud technologies.

Ibrahim Mohamed Lari, CEO, Injazat said: “With our enhanced portfolio of secure cloud services, Injazat offers organizations a platform to combine the highest security levels with the reliability of the cloud and join enterprise IT movements towards virtualization, big data and advanced data recovery.”

Injazat’s new service will play a key role in optimizing business efficiencies in the UAE, further supporting its efforts to establish the UAE as a regional leader for advanced technology adoption.

Injazat will also offer secure cloud services to businesses across the Middle East, delivering local support combined with a mature framework of integrated processes and governance.

HID UNVEILS ACTIVID TAP AUTHENTICATION HID Global has unveiled its latest ActivID Tap Authentication platform for secure multi-factor authentication to cloud applications and web services. The new solution enables users to simply tap their smart card to laptops, tablets, phones and other NFC-enabled devices for easy and convenient access to Office365 and other cloud apps and web-based services.

“ActivID Tap Authentication is designed to improve both security and the user experience across a wide range of enterprise applications where it can require 20 or more logins each day in order to access enterprise data and services,” said Tim Phipps, vice president of product marketing, Identity Assurance with HID Global. It makes it easier than ever for users to leverage a single smart card to seamlessly access data, login to cloud resources and open doors.”

ACRONIS SURVEY EMPHASIZES ON DIGITAL RESPONSIBILITY Acronis revealed the results of a survey conducted among 350+ consumers, showing how they value and protect the information located on their devices .

According to the research, over 75 percent of consumers store their data digitally and more than 50 percent state that their personal data are more valuable than their

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actual devices – solidifying that consumers know they need to preserve their data. In fact, the survey results show that consumers would be nearly three times more upset if they lost their photos than if they lost their phone, computer or tablet. In time for World Backup Day, the survey findings reveal that consumers are

putting little effort into ensuring their data is safe. Less than half of the respondents do not save their data on an external device or in the cloud.

“The majority of consumers do not realize the importance of backing up their digital memories, until a catastrophe occurs,” said Serguei Beloussov, CEO,

Acronis. “What consumers should understand is that there are easy and inexpensive ways to safeguard the digital data that they’re most afraid of losing.”

World Backup Day serves to educate and motivate the public on the importance of taking action to protect their most precious information stored digitally.

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MY VIEWS

integrated with virtualisation, and going forward with cloud and big data solutions.

Software defined storage is another trend that will see an increased uptake as it offers enterprises increased flexibility, automated management and cost efficiency over traditional storage models.

Converged infrastructure is becoming the most important building block of a modern data center infrastructure.

Enterprises are moving towards SSDs which can be leveraged to speed up applications and performance without the cost of adding additional servers. The storage arrays are fast becoming full solid state, where the speeds will double every 2 years.

KARTIK SHANKAR

SENIOR SALES MANAGER, STORIT DISTRIBUTION

“Converging storage & expanding business” DYNAMICS OF TECHNOLOGY HAVEN’T LEFT THE STORAGE DOMAIN UNDISTURBED EITHER. WITH THE COMPETITION OF INCREASING DATA-VSSPACE GROWING STRONGER DAY BY DAY, STORAGE HAS BECOME A KEY FOCUS AREA FOR ENTERPRISES. KARTIK SHANKAR, SENIOR SALES MANAGER, STORIT DISTRIBUTION TALKS ABOUT HOW THE FUTURE IS GOING TO BE ALL ABOUT CONVERGED AND SOFTWARE DEFINED STORAGE.

What are the current trends in storage solutions deployment in the Middle East?

More businesses are investing huge amounts of resources into their infrastructures by bringing in storage as an essential requirement to all classes of business. Organizations need to consider solutions which provide a secure and seamless integration of storage into their existing IT setup. Deployment is also affected by the performance levels and the scalability of

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the storage. They need to also ensure that the invested solution is cost effective for their data centre.

What changes can we expect in the enterprise storage segment in this region over the next few months?

Storage architecture is undergoing drastic changes with the emerging models being unified, scale-up, scale-out and full flash based storage. Most storage models now need to be compatible and easily

What role will software-defined and virtualised storage play in the Middle Eastern market?

Virtualization has been gaining momentum and storage virtual machines are geared up to provide application agility. The future of storage is software-led and that too open system based.

Many existing vendors will build building blocks and frameworks around it thus exploiting the open source better than others by introducing feature rich options for their customers.

Platforms will standardize over a software layer and all hardware will see a variant or two of the software communicating with each other.

The race towards software defined storage is at its peak. The key benefits of software-defined storage over traditional storage are increased flexibility, automated management and cost efficiency. Converged infrastructure becomes the most compelling building block of data center infrastructure.

What are the factors driving the adoption of converged storage?

Organisations today are looking to make their IT infrastructure simple and easily manageable.

Earlier, storage and computing would be separate entities but with the increase in data and the growing demand for resources in the virtual, physical and cloud-based environments, it has become necessary for companies to look at converged storage solutions, where the storage and computing hardware are integrated to optimize network and application performance, minimize physical space requirements and increase speed of delivery. Government organizations, enterprises and large companies are looking at ways to reduce risks as the scope of threats grows.

They are looking for fast and efficient converged storage solutions for their data centers, which is one of the main factors driving the adoption of converged storage solutions in the region. ë

MY VIEWS

data, regardless of source or type, to provide organizations with fresh insights in real-time and the confidence to act on them. Watson Foundations supports all types of analytics including discovery, reporting and analysis as well as predictive and cognitive capabilities.When evaluating what big data solutions are right for you, we encourage organizations in the region to consider the unique demands of their own industry and search for partners who can offer complete, tailored solutions.

What’s your opinion on the regulation of big data analytics?

Making the risk factors transparent for all of your big-data sets should thus be a top business priority. You cannot have a perfect predictive model of how the future business and regulatory environments are going to evolve. However, you can have a comprehensive data-risk mitigation program that helps you deal with new challenges as they emerge.

RICHARD DUNN

ANALYTICS PLATFORM LEADER, IBM MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA

“Harnessing the power of big data” ESCALATING DEMAND FOR INSIGHTS REQUIRES A FUNDAMENTALLY NEW APPROACH TO IT ARCHITECTURE, TOOLS AND PRACTICES. RICHARD DUNN, ANALYTICS PLATFORM LEADER, IBM MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA TALKS ABOUT HARNESSING THE POWER OF BIG DATA AND HOW IBM WATSON IS REVOLUTIONISING THE ANALYSIS.

What kinds of opportunities are present in big data analytics now and in the coming years?

Insights from big data enable all organizations to make better, more informed decisions. To gain the competitive advantage that big data holds, organizations need to infuse analytics everywhere, make speed a differentiator, and exploit the inherent value in all types of data. To gain the most value, you will need to combine data from inside and outside of your organization faster

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than ever before.

Taking advantage of cloud-based services to support advanced analytics is also helping to accelerate innovation as well as spawn quick new projects that can show value fast and generate larger investments over time.

Which are the solutions being offered by you in this sector?

IBM Watson Foundations is a big data and analytics platform that taps into all relevant

According to IDC the big data market is expected to grow from $3.2 billion in 2010 to $16.9B in 2015. So, what developments does this bring with it? How can these be managed for the best benefits?

Our latest IBM Institute for Business Value survey on analytics conducted in late 2014 shows that Middle East companies, organizations and governments are anticipating that the demand for data-driven insights will accelerate in the next 12-18 months, with most expecting a significant increase in the pace of demand and executive appetite for insights.

While customer-centric objectives are still the primary focus for the majority of organizations, more are starting to integrate big data technologies into back-office and operational processes. To provide meaningful insights, organizations are blending traditional data infrastructure components with newer big data components, use real-time data processing and analysis to act in the moment. Organizations are also implementing information governance to accelerate trust, optimize integration, and enforce standardization of data within their data environments.

Business executives are also demanding more data insights to create stronger relationships with customers or target improvements in customer experience. This is particularly visible in banking and telecom industries. Even in the public sector, there are examples of this including the UAE Government’s smart city vision or mobile wallet project. ë

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Storage Transcends Platforms

Today businesses cannot consider storage as a separate entity working independently of other components or services. More organizations are investing huge amounts of resources into their infrastructures by bringing in storage as an essential requirement to all classes of business with opting for cloud storage and Big Data which is driving up the adoption of flash and hybrid storage arrays. n B Y: S O U M YA < S O U M YA @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M > n P H O T O : S H U T T E R S T O C K

F

rom the initial days of magnetic tape which evolved to the hard drive

by IBM, today we see the entry of flash with data access. Over the last decade, flash performance, resilience, density and cost have made the technology suitable for aggregation into system-level products. Since data is growing at an exponential rate, the need to reuse, manage and distribute it efficiently in a secured way is a challenging task.

This is where storage will play a pivotal role.

MARKET FOR STORAGE SOLUTIONS IN THE MEA REGION According to IDC, enterprise storage typically grows by 35 to 40% per annum, driven in large

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part by the adoption of virtualization. Networkattached storage (NAS) in the MEA region is expected to grow from 24% of the storage hardware market to 41 % by 2016, indicating a strong opportunity for storage hardware vendors.

According to Gartner, the MEA’s IT infrastructure spending will reach $3.9 billion by 2017. With Middle East emerging as a big market for IT, innovative technologies like software defined storage will be the key drivers.

However, there seem to be another angle to the scenario too. According to Sanjeev Singh, CTO of Spectrum Group, “The external storage array market size has increased but the revenue from the Enterprise Storage array has declined over last 2 years. EMC the one with the largest market share has seen below 7% Quarterly growth and

only EMC, Dell & NetApp grew in the market but that growth has been in the decline. The flash and Hyper Converged storage has not shown more than 3% growth till 3Q2014. Overall the market has grown only 1.27%. These are challenging times for Enterprise Storage Array Vendors, which will have severe margin pressures and operating profits will decline. This has trend has already taken a toll on the industry where IBM has announced its sale of most of its storage business to Lenovo. Oracle is considering some changes in its hardware business, and EMC is under pressure to spin off its Non-Storage business or software business”.

VERTICALS DRIVING STORAGE SOLU-

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especially large enterprises, to rethink the way they procure and manage IT equipment and services. As a result, we are seeing a move from the centralized IT approach to an approach that allows employees to be self-sufficient in meeting their own IT needs.

A recent report from Gartner reveals that the global back-up and recovery software market segment is valued at around USD 92 million, while the all storage segment is worth over USD 260 million.

SANJEEV SINGH, CTO OF SPECTRUM GROUP (COMGUARD)

SUDHEER SUBRAMANIAN, IT SOLUTIONS DIRECTOR, HUAWEI ENTERPRISE, MIDDLE EAST

“We help customers and partners to transform their journey to WebScale IT and thus reduce the pain of adoption of these disruptive technologies. ”

“Huawei worked closely with JG to deploy a virtualized server, which acted as the platform allowing the hotel group to build complete software defined IT infrastructure and data center solution.”

TIONS MARKET

Big Business houses. “Media and surprisingly Hospitality (groups) will be the new consumers of volume intake in the coming years. In spite of this region being a great Shopping destination the Retail industry has not grown significant numbers primarily because the retail is yet to innovate and adopt newer ways of retailing”, he adds.

“All verticals demand storage of some form including SMB’s. The challenge is in realizing what should be the price point and many large vendors are already considering this in their pricing strategy”, comments Salil Dighe, CEO at Meta Byte Technologies. “Storage is no more a luxury but rather is a necessity. The market will soon be commoditized and you will see cheaper options for larger storage vendors soon.”

Sanjeev of Spectrum Group is of the view that the storage Market will be driven by volume only and will be driven by the Government, BFSI, and

CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE VIS-À-VIS THE TRADITIONAL PRODUCTS Consumerization of IT is forcing businesses,

In the region, the Government and businesses of different sizes are looking at ways to reduce risks as the scope of threats grow and are hence looking at fast and efficient converge storage solutions. One of the main drivers for converged storage are the virtual and cloud environments as companies who use these environments need their storage infrastructure to respond quickly to user requests and be quick to enable fast decision-making. As Gurprit Ahuja, Director – MEA, Acronis puts it across, “The market is moving towards Hyperconvergence – it is the way to go for most businesses. IT staff now has more time to manage projects and spends less time rebooting physical servers”.

Enterprise landscape will witness the decline of the traditional ‘Scale Up’ storage arrays and growth of more and more ‘Scale Out’ storage needs, as the compute needs will have to grow as the storage grows. Sanjeev of Spectrum Group says, “Traditional storage array vendors will face competing challenges from new nimble players who use commodity hardware, and deliver similar or better customer experience and cost benefit using the overlaying software eg.,Nutanix, Simplivity, Tintri etc., However, some of the major storage vendors are taking note of it and rolling out similar offering from their portfolio.

Eg., EMC VSAN 6.0, VSPEX Blue, EVO Rail etc.”

CLOUD STORAGE –MYTH OR REALITY Cloud security and multiple data outage incidents were the major hurdles causing slowdown for

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GURPRIT AHUJA, DIRECTOR – MEA, ACRONIS

KARTIK SHANKAR, SENIOR SALES MANAGER, STORIT DISTRIBUTION

“Acronis Storage exploits innovative new software-defined storage capabilities to change the economics for service providers”

“StorIT works towards enhancing our Reseller Partners’ ability to stay on par with the best of breed technologies and enable them to provide world class solutions and services to enterprises”

failover capabilities as part of a disaster recovery (DR) strategy. This is evidenced by a number of companies who are now creating solutions that allow you to have disaster recovery for your storage in the cloud. “The latest trend of converged and hyper converged infrastructure as well as Copy Data Virtualisation will enable businesses to eventually leverage from the promises the cloud made”, comments Grant Amos, GM MEA at Actifio.

Citing a successful example, Sudheer Subramanian, IT Solutions Director, Huawei Enterprise, ME states, “Huawei worked closely with Jumeirah

enterprises in adopting cloud storage. However hybrid cloud storage is helping organisations to keep business critical data within on premise data centre and the rest to cloud, which saves a lot of cost at the same time offer on premise storage service level for critical data.

There has been a broadening of backup toolkits for users and managed service providers offering backup and recovery services for SMBs. Many customers are looking for a vendor who could provide the entire spectrum of backup capabilities as well as disaster recovery. Moreover, the cloud is now increasingly emerging as a home for

Group to deploy a virtualized server, which acted as the platform allowing the hotel group to build complete software defined IT infrastructure and data center solution. The hotel group is currently the only organization in the world’s enterprise market that has deployed a Software Defined Data Center of this scale”.

But then when it comes to cloud, there always are a variety of opinions. For example, according to Salil of Metabyte Technologies, “Well, when you have so much to choose from and so much investment yet going in to data centers and infrastructure why would you pay for cloud?”“Whether its storage or any managed services, I have only seen Telecoms are doing some justice to the cloud concept. Off course Off365 has made an impact globally but again regionally The role of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) in an organization is evolving. According to Gartner, the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO by 2017. The CMO now has a long-term role as a technologist for the enterprise.

the success factor is depending on SMB’s as well as a few very matured enterprises”, he adds.

“There is a flawed perception in the market about cloud storage not picking up as expected” says Khalid Wani, Sales Director - India & MEA at Western Digital. “According to IDC, ICT is predicted to reach $270 billion by the end of 2015, among which 280 million will be on cloud investments. Adding to these figures, overall growth for cloud storage market will be 33% YoY, as regional SMEs and large companies plan to transfer physical storage and backup network s to virtual clouds. Frost and Sullivan predicts that the Gulf ’s cloud computing market will register 7-fold growth to reach $668.5 million by 2020”.

Sanjeev of Spectrum Group further re-affirms the acceptance of cloud trends. “Cloud storage has the largest adoption in the Enterprise Space.

Complex integration to AWS, EC2, S3 and Azure platforms are currently ongoing or have been accomplished by many enterprises. Azure from Microsoft is leading the adoption along with AWS”, says Sanjeev. “Cloud storage is for SME is

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Secure Yourself!

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COVER STORY

KHALID WANI, SALES DIRECTOR - INDIA, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA - WD

SALIL DIGHE, CEO ,META BYTE TECHNOLOGIES

“We are strongly involved in all aspects of technology. It’s not just about selling a solution but also the post-sales support and commitment towards your customers. ”

“Our products are equipped with the latest hardware and technology to compete in GCC as well as globally, and we foresee a very bright future”

and cost model. “Applications will have to run multiplatform, security has to be platform agnostic, or secure anywhere. Big Data will always challenge the cost factor of Infrastructure to address the Volume & Velocity of the 3V’s (Volume, Variety & Velocity), of Big Data”, says Sanjeev of Spectrum Group.

Mobility, video surveillance and Big Data are the key driving factors within the Middle East storage market. Also the adoption of flash based storage with businesses is growing tremendously.

Solid states and hybrid systems are also emerging models wherein they will be gateways to clouds

just popular gossip talk rather than some serious architecting thought to it. SMEs today can’t afford the integrating skill set or consulting to embrace Cloud”

STORAGE TECHNOLOGIES TO WATCH OUT FOR IN 2015 Cloud or the 3rd Platform is bringing the main change. Enterprise IT is changing into “WebScale-IT” that means the technologies, platforms & applications which will be used (majority of them) will have to support Web Scale Growth

and IP will play a big role in connecting these storage platforms. The storage arrays are fast becoming full solid state, where the speeds will double every 2 years. This will in turn see next-generation solid state devices with higher redundancy and write speeds.

“After Server, Compute and Network Virtualization, Data Virtualization is the next consequent step any CIO should consider”, remarks Grant Amos, GM MEA at Actifio. “Application Data is the core of any business. Managing this efficiently and ensuring availability any time anywhere, Copy Data Virtualization will be essential. “ Research by IDC has shown that data volumes will globally grow by 50 times by the year 2020 and 40 per cent of all data will be stored and processed in the cloud. “In line with this, Acronis Storage exploits innovative new software-defined storage capabilities to change the economics for SPs”, says Gurprit Ahuja, Director – MEA, Acronis.

PARTNERS – IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS ANYMORE!!

Technology disruption always brings along with it some extent of partner ecosystem disruption.

“Partners will be welcome to act as trusted advisors with consulting competence”, says Grant of Actifio. “Years of selling commodity products however have left many partners not developing their competence and consultancy skills. Revitalising these skills and adopting detailed knowledge about transformational technology will be essential for them to differentiate. Customers want to be certain that their trusted advisor truly focuses on maximizing the customer’s data center efficiency and converts their infrastructure into ‘future-ready’ state as opposed to continuing to sell them commodity point tools. ” According to Sanjeev of Spectrum , “There will be emergence of new set of ‘Agile’ partners who adopt agile methodology of service and integration provision. The existing partners are having trouble adapting to the new system because the current business need has to be addressed keeping in view of the customers new need.

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COVER STORY

Old partners may quickly evolve by adopting or acquiring the new nimble partners or making a paradigm shift into their practice”.

Kartik Shankar, Senior Sales Manager, StorIT is of the opinion that partners need to keep abreast with understanding and adopting emerging technologies .“It becomes our responsibility to keep our channel partners conscious of skills to successfully propagate and sell the technology solutions of our vendor partners and their vision.

It is important to educate and train our partners on product sales, implementation, system integration and technical support through Reseller Partner on-boarding program” he adds.

To overcome technology challenges, vendors and resellers have to continue working together to push the very real benefits of IT for overcoming the prevailing mindset challenges. “WD has introduced effective partner programs which offer training that can also enable resellers to continuously train their staff without requiring them to take time out of the office. Vendors can also work more closely with resellers to convert opportunities for a seamless transition”, says Khalid of WD.

Infrastructure, Software & Services needs. These select partners have also rolled some Projects and are currently working on ongoing opportunities.

Comguard is also coaching select CIOs and IT professionals to adopt these technologies into their Enterprise Landscape. This year we intend to accommodate more partners who anxiously want to join into this program so, that they can transform their business to face the Cloud Challenge and stay relevant in the landscape” Gurprit Ahuja of Acronis states, “45% of Acronis headcount and 20 %of its investment is in R&D, clearly demonstrating Acronis’ commitment to delivering the most innovative, robust products on the market”.

According to Salil of Metabyte, “Our approach to the whole engagement is based on firstly understanding and analyzing what the customers’ main challenges are; we offer first level consultancy and work closely with customers to build a framework which will allow him a quick solution as well as scalability”.

“Education is key to help both customers and partners understand the value proposition and the underlying benefits of current transformational technology.”, says Grant Amos of Actifio.

“WD’s growth is in line with the changing trends of technology which are to be expected in this digital age” says a confident Khalid Wani of WD “ Introduction of products like WD’s My Cloud family with the expert and business series and also NAS drives has been growing in the region over last couple of years.”

Grant Amos of Actifio says, “Companies start to understand that they need to move away from point tools that were designed in the last century and instead invest in efficient solutions that can help them maximize efficiency and enable business growth not only today, but also in tomorrow’s environments”

DIFFERENTIATION VIA UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION “Through our training workshops and enablement programs and services, StorIT works towards enhancing our Reseller Partners’ ability to stay on par with the best of breed technologies and enable them to provide world class solutions and services to enterprises” says Kartik Shankar, Senior Sales Manager, StorIT Distribution.

Spectrum Group (Comguard) is right on track too; Sanjeev says, “We help customers and partners to transform their journey to Web-Scale IT and thus reduce the pain of adoption of these disruptive technologies. Comguard today can address customers need of Petabytes of WebScale-IT Compute, Storage, Big Data Analytics, Consulting, Training & Service needs. Comguard selects partners who are currently offering these solutions and are trained in Cloud Integration, New Data Center Technologies, and Hyperscale

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FINALLY… With the emergence of cloud computing connected to myriad interaction devices and applications, we are living through the next wave of IT ubiquity and pervasiveness. It is dramatically changing the way we do business,

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GRANT AMOS, GM-MEA ACTIFIO

“We have a dedicated team to consult train and assist both partners and customers on this journey to become successful and enable their business growth.”

entertain, and connect with others — essentially, how we live our lives. Enterprise Storage will continue to be the fastest growing technology and there are no signs of it slowing down any time soon. Higher uptake of flash storage is one of the biggest storage trends anticipated in 2015.

Further along the road map, storage will only get smarter. CIOs will have access to advanced data processors to retrieve, filter and analyse the right amount of information at the right time. This alone will contribute massively to organisations running more smoothly and efficiently, which will be a real treat for CIOs. ë

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COMMUNICATE INSTANTLY SAVE TIME • SAVE COST • MANAGE EFFICIENTLY

Appliance based Gateways for Enterprise Mobility

APPLICATION AREAS • Alert Notifications (Datacenters/IT) • Third Party Application Integration (ERP, CRM, etc.)

• Enterprise Messaging (SMS On-The-Move) • 2-Factor Authentication • Email-SMS Integration • Network Monitoring • IM-SMS Integration The sendQuick portfolio consists of appliance based Gateways for Enterprise Mobility. sendQuick devices such as Alert Plus and Entera helps in alerting on failure across IP address infrastructure - by either working on its own or with NMS solutions already in place. sendQuick Entera is a device that integrates with third party applications such as ERP, BI, DMS, SCM, MMS to facilitate messaging on set criteria. sendQuick ConeXa facilitates enhanced remote access security by integrating with RADIUS based SSL VPN and Active Directory to generate and deliver 2-factor authentication via SMS OTP, while sendQuick Alert Plus with HTTP Plug-in works with RSA to SMS-enable soft token delivery to mobile phones.

In addition, sendQuick portfolio has sendQuick Communications for email-SMS integration on Microsoft Outlook, sendQuick Avera for Network Monitoring and sqoope, an in-premise appliance based Instant Messenger.

TalariaX is an undisputed market leader in the purpose built appliance based Enterprise Mobility segment with clientele in 30 countries across 50 distinct verticals and a recipient of several awards worldwide.

www.talariax.com 76 Playfair Road #08-01 LHK 2 Building Lobby 1 Singapore 367996 Tel: +65 6280 2881 | Fax: +65 6280 6882 | Email: info@talariax.com | Support: support@talariax.com

FEATURE

FEATURE

Video- the new voice of the Channel Video adoption has doubled over the past few years. Encouragingly, the Middle East and Africa is ideally placed to tap into the new era of visual empowerment, given that mobility is proving increasingly important in the region. Cisco sees mobile video traffic growing almost 21-fold from 2014 to 2019, a compound annual growth rate of 84%.Globally, video will represent 69 percent of mobile data traffic in 2018, up from 53 percent in 2013. n W O R D S : S O U M YA < S O U M YA @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M > n P H O T O : S H U T T E R S T O C K

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hichever way you look at it, the sheer scope of video technology and its current application potential in MEA is breathtaking, particularly when it comes to the collaborative benefits it can deliver in fields like education, healthcare and government services. According to IDC, the barriers to acceptance of video in the business environment have diminished, especially as video becomes an integrated application for improved communications and collaboration.

There is a gradual shift with Emerging workforce culture specifically in the Enterprise sector showing migration to satellite office, home-based offices, and Remote workforce culture. Enterprise

video conferencing system helps in linking these diversified offices, which drastically reduces the complexity in communication and travel time in the MEA region.

While the emphasis in the region has been on video conferencing, there is an increasing adoption of its usage in the wider enterprise space. “Some of our largest customers are already deploying the technology in a number of creative ways, such as one of our oil and gas customers using video-enabled dynamic team formation in times of crisis, to quickly and efficiently solve critical issues”, comments Mohammed Areff, Managing Director, Avaya GCC, Levant, Iraq, Pakistan.

There are various factors which are inhibiting

a larger adoption of video solutions such as high cost of bandwidth, regulatory compliance on VOIP, etc. Further, many free tools such as Skype, Viber, etc being used by SMBs for video communication purposes.

EVOLUTION OF THE MARKET FROM THE TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE Video collaboration technology solutions can be used to improve communications, relationships, and productivity by helping people meet face-to-face over distances. This helps to reduce delay in decision making, build greater trust and understanding and encourages knowledge-

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sharing, while also reducing travel time and expenditure. Businesses that understand the implications of video to communicate, collaborate, educate and protect people and assets stand to gain a significant competitive advantage.

In terms of solutions development, Avaya is focused on several innovative technologies, which will be available this year. In most of the video solutions, the focus is to use technological achievement to simplify the usage of the existing technology. For example, says Areff, “Based on same core technology, which we call proximity, we are now capable of understanding when a user with a mobile video application enters a room where there is an high quality room system, thereby enabling transfer of the call

from the mobile device to the room system, which increases the quality of the experience by transferring from the personal device to a group setting automatically and simply”. “Our R&D efforts are focused on improving the capability to add interactive content to a video session, delivering full web collaboration capability within a standard video conferencing environment, including dramatically enhancing our streaming and recording capabilities”, he adds.

Enterprise video is a market experiencing tremendous change in terms of adoption, traffic growth, business-model evolution, and technology innovation. According to Nehul Goradia, Vice President of Channel and Alliances Sales at Optimus, “the latest advancements in video

technologies are high efficiency video codec, alter-HD, web real-time communication, search, indexing, captioning, transcoding and aggregation. These technologies are enriching the video delivery among enterprises”.

HUGE MARKET FOR VIDEO SOLUTIONS Based on Optimus Market research, the video market is very large and growing at an estimate of $735.98 million in 2014 to around $2 Billion by 2020, at 7% growth year on year. This is inclusive of Enterprise Video hardware, software & services combined. “But there isn’t enough of this technology – according to our research, industry statistics show that more than 93 percent of

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WAEL ABDULAL

NEHUL GORADIA

SENIOR MANAGER COLLABORATION, CISCO UAE

“The future of video technology in the ME is networked - using the full power of video and mobility. Cisco has the only business video architecture designed for scale, speed, and reliability”

meeting rooms globally aren’t equipped with high-quality video”, says Wael Abdulal, Senior Manager - Collaboration, Cisco UAE. “In this era of the Internet of Everything (IoE), video needs to be available everywhere: from the browser to the boardroom to all the spaces in between, including the other 93 percent of meeting rooms.

The future of video technology in the Middle East region is networked - using the full power of video and mobility, citizens will be able to collaborate, create and share knowledge as well as

RENJAN GEORGE

VICE PRESIDENT OF CHANNEL AND ALLIANCES SALES AT OPTIMUS

MANAGING DIRECTOR OF DVCOM TECHNOLOGY

“Whilst enabling and working with our channel partners to promote our solutions, we also connect with a lot of end users to position our solutions.

Once the customer expresses any commercial interest, we then work with our strategic partners to fulfil these requirements.”

“Yealink’s Video conferencing system seamlessly connects with third-party enterprise system like Cisco, Polycom, and Avaya. Out-of the box collaboration with PBX connects the COO from their cabin video phone to their partner/employee anywhere in the world.”

benefit from new experiences.”

Cisco is converging social, mobile, video, and virtual communications capabilities to shape the new collaboration experience. “When it comes to deploying collaboration, one size does not fit all”, says Wael Abdulal of Cisco. “Cisco provides a consistent combination of a broad set of collaboration applications; flexible deployment models across private, public, and hybrid clouds; and virtualized applications and desktop clients delivered through Cisco, service providers, and partners.”

VIDEO AS A SERVICE (VAAS)- ARE WE READY? Nehul says, “due to regulatory and security concerns, the adoption rate for VaaS has been quite low in our region. Customers prefer hybrid models wherein instead of relying on a complete VaaS solution they have certain end-points and can use the VaaS service for more of a costeffective multi-site communication mode”.

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GIRISH NARAYANAN

MOHAMMED AREFF

MANAGING DIRECTOR, GRANTEQ DISTRIBUTION.

MANAGING DIRECTOR, AVAYA GCC, LEVANT, IRAQ, PAKISTAN

“We are an enabler of the emerging cloud and video services, with existing tie ups with renowned service providers and vendors.

Our focus will be to bring more awareness and education related to our offerings with the support of our vendors & resellers.”

“Avaya’s integrated approach to Team Engagement Solutions enables richer, more productive interactions with both customers and teams while allowing the technology to ‘disappear’, for a more natural, less disruptive means of meeting across distances.”

But isn’t it true that historically most organizations shied away from hosted services due to a perceived lack of security and control ? According to Wael, “Cisco HCS provides our customers with carrier-grade security and manageability and much more. It offers collaborative technologies delivered as highly secure and reliable cloud services which include Voice and Video as a Service; Instant Messaging and Presence as a Service, Web Conferencing as a Service; and Mobility as a Service”.

Stable and competitive bandwidth in the technology sector and new project declaration for Expo 2020 is the key for the growth of the video conference system which can counter increase in the cost in traveling for new venture and for expansion of the enterprise. “Here the need for setting up the video conference system would be on their priority list. An affordable, interoperable and stable hardware with needed features should be the solutions needed, which is exactly the video conferencing solutions debuted by Yealink targeted at the mid-segment market”, comments Renjan George, MD of DVCOM Technology.

Today, Video solutions are increasingly also enabling healthcare professionals to collaborate more easily, regardless of location, thereby improving both the timeliness and the quality of care delivered. Likewise in education there is no longer the need for educational experts or trainers to travel hundreds of miles in order to deliver education, today and increasingly so in the future they are and will be available quite literally at the

DEVELOPMENTS DRIVING THE VIDEO MARKET There are various factors that would increase the Video market in this region. From an infrastructure front: better & low cost bandwidth; adoption of SIP trunking; etc. From a regulatory aspect: approval of VOIP. From a business use case scenario, the desire for better & quality communication at a lower cost with reduced travel will also be another key driver.

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touch of a button.

Avaya’s initiatives to boost video adoption include the introduction of new algorithms that will enable customers to save more bandwidth; increasing quality. “The convergence of different platforms to a single unique capability to deliver high scale Audio-Web, plus high quality video, is creating a superior end-user experience that will encourage more customers to adopt video solutions”, comments Areff.

The young generation across the ME use video, social media and messaging as their main modes of communication, and voice is being side-lined in favour of these alternatives. To tap into this, governments are leveraging video as a more persuasive medium, by integrating video into community communications and services.

Today, we see Video as part of the transformation of public sector call centers, for example, towards a more omni-channel experience.

SMART CITIES AND THE ROLE OF VIDEO In the government sector, Smart Cities rising across the GCC will have video at their core, with sensors integrated in every object connected to citywide Wi-Fi networks. Such intelligent and innovative use of collaborative video technology will increase productivity, reduce overall costs and ultimately help transform companies, cities, countries and subsequently, individual lives throughout the Middle East. Citing an example, Wael says, “One major government customer is using our solution to connect 75 different sites.

That cuts down both on travel costs and the need for people to be out of the work environment for long periods”.

INNOVATION IN VIDEO TECHNOLOGIES “Cisco offers the most comprehensive and interoperable portfolio of industry-leading solutions for face-to-face collaboration”, says Wael.

Thanks to advancements in video technology, businesses of all sizes can now use reliable, highquality, interoperable, scalable, and cost-effective video solutions to collaborate from any location or device. Cisco recently launched Collaboration Meeting Rooms (CMR) in the ME. Avaya provides a full suite of video conferencing technologies, ranging from Telepresence to Video on Mobile over 3G networks. According to Areff, “Our uniqueness in the video space is based on delivery of HD on narrow Bandwidth, and having the most interoperable solution in the industry”. “Avaya Team Engagement solutions simplify how work gets done by providing an environment where rich, high quality engage-

FEATURE

ment experiences can occur”, says Areff. “Avaya’s integrated approach to Team Engagement Solutions enables richer, more productive interactions with both customers and teams while allowing the technology to ‘disappear’, for a more natural, less disruptive means of meeting across distances.

This is effectively technology recreating the in-room meeting environment even when people are geographically separated”. He adds that they have recently implemented Avaya Scopia into an integrated solution for Dubai-based Dr. Suleiman Habib Medical Group (HMG), in which video is used to build engagement within the enterprise while delivering superior healthcare to the community. “Further, Avaya’s partnership with Mashreq sees Avaya SmartConnect solutions making the bank the most virtual and videoconnected bank in the Middle East, delivering the most flexible, convenient and secure customer experience in the region” adds Areff.

Nehul says, “We currently have two offerings in our portfolio in this space. A hardware driven video conferencing, telepresence & video surveillance solutions from Huawei, which is globally number three, in terms of video endpoint shipments and Maelys, our VaaS, which is

Video is an essential part of effective, natural collaboration. The leading technology providers constantly innovate to provide the breadth of applications and endpoints to make pervasive video a reality.

their branch offices; both models have the same hardware. “So, prices are cost-effective compared to our competitor as they have different hardware model while we have a channel centric model.” says Renjan.

PUTTING THE BEST FOOT FORWARD

ENABLING THE PARTNER ECOSYSTEM

“We made voice over the network the standard for business. Now we’re doing the same for video.

We have the broadest suite of video endpoints to integrate video into the fabric of how you work.

Cisco has the only business video architecture designed for scale, speed, and reliability” says a confident Wael. Avaya believes in driving a very open-standard approach to video. “Avaya looks at video as a very holistic technology; we understand customers are going to have various video requirements, which could range from surveillance to customer service, to enterprise communications, recording and streaming. To accommodate these varied demands we provide a strong foundation of scalability, security and agility within our data network portfolio, and then with our Aura architecture based on a SIP core, can integrate all video requirements, including

Cisco is focused on helping their channel partners in the Middle East evolve their business models to respond to market transitions and new consumption models. Wael says-“Worldwide, our networking vendor depth and breadth includes 28 years of industry experience, 50 million devices, 6 million live customer interactions, and a 180 billion install base”. Organizations of all sizes can join the Cisco Channel Partner program. “Our Channel partners benefit today from our existing technology ecosystem and our goal is to empower the ecosystem to enable partners to have more value and opportunity. As they grow their businesses around architectures, solutions, and services, Cisco can help partners increase their reward and profit opportunities” commits Wael.

Avaya understands that video conferencing requires channel readiness from partners in terms of technology understanding, USP and the ability to demonstrate and implement. Its business partners go through a quarterly training program to ensure that so that they learn to sell and implement Avaya video conferencing solutions. Areff adds, “To make training easy and convenient, all Avaya implementation training is available on the Avaya virtual campus, where partners can go through the required certifications wherever and whenever they want.”

Nehul of Optimus says that at Optimus, they work with some of the most leading SIs in this region on this space. “Apart from ensuring they’re able to sell & position our offerings, we also enable them on designing & implementing the most optimal solutions for their customers.

We also conduct various end user reach out & other marketing campaigns with them to ensure that they’re able to derive high value from our offerings & services”.

THE VIDEO MARKET IS VERY LARGE AND GROWING AT AN ESTIMATE OF $735.98 MILLION IN 2014 TO AROUND $2 BILLION BY 2020, AT 7% GROWTH YEAR ON YEAR.

powered by Videxio. With these offerings either stand-alone or as a combination, we’re able to provide a unique and value added best of breed solution to our customers”.

Granteq Distribution provides Vidyo’s Video Conferencing solution. “The reasons we recommend Vidyo are precisely because it is built on a platform that supports Unified Communications, Enterprise Cloud, ensures business to business interconnectivity that delivers video conferencing for multi party. Vidyo is the ultimate platform for HD Video collaboration. Connect, unify and empower: Vidyo puts users in the picture and in control. Vidyo works the way you do”, remarks Girish Narayanan, MD, Granteq Distribution.

Yealink’s Video conferencing system seamlessly connects with third-party enterprise system like Cisco, Polycom, and Avaya. “Out-of the box collaboration with PBX connects the COO from their cabin video phone to their partner/ employee anywhere in the world”, says Renjan George.

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WebRTC as a channel for video communication”, comments Areff.

At Optimus, they have a dual approach to market.

“Whilst enabling and working with our channel partners to promote our solutions, we also connect with a lot of end users to position our solutions. Once the customer expresses any commercial interest, we then work with our strategic partners to fulfil these requirements” says Nehul.

“Over the years, we have delivered video solutions to certain very high profile customers and our experience & expertise in the video & unified communication space is widely recognized”.

Girish of Granteq says, “We are an enabler of the emerging cloud and video services, with existing tie ups with renowned service providers and vendors. Our focus will be to bring more awareness and education related to our offerings with the support of our vendors & resellers”.

Yealink has recently launched its VCS platform this March. Currently they have two models- one for Enterprise Head office while the other for

FINALLY… The way we work has forever changed, from the tools we use to the elasticity of time and place for those that make up our teams. Providing all team members – including BYOD and mobile workers – with seamless voice, video and sharing capabilities in whatever format they need facilitates the productivity and deeper engagement that can lead to higher profitability. ë

COVER FEATURE

ADVANCED POOL OF SOLUTIONS

HELP AG

Redefining Enterprise Security After a whooping business of $38 million in 2014, followed right after by a magnanimous entry into managed security services market, Help AG ME is definitely on a roll as the trusted security adviser – our exclusive interview with Stephan Berner, Managing Director. n W O R D S : S O U M YA < S O U M YA @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

S

ince its establishment in the Middle East in 2004, Help AG has always focused on advanced IT security services, consultancy and solutions, laying specific importance to three pillars: Application Security; understanding of the security impact of the application; and the governance and standards around protecting information. While they have always maintained a strong solutions portfolio that includes a number of the global leaders in IT security, the unique value proposition they bring in is that they do not allow vendors to dictate terms. Help AG identifies key partnerships based on the vendor’s ability to solve unique problems, without allowing vendor pressure to determine which solution to implement.

Help AG has always maintained an 80:20 ratio of technical to sales staff differentiating them from typical channel players by building an extensive range of services. “Today government and large enterprise customers in the Middle East turn to us as their trusted security advisor!”

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remarks Stephan Berner, Managing Director.

GROWING BY LEAPS AND BOUNDS In 2014, Help AG did business of $38 million, up from $26 million the previous year. “This impressive 70% year on year growth was achieved primarily through incremental business with existing customers, demonstrating their faith in Help AG and reinforcing our position as the Middle East’s trusted security advisor” comments Stephan. “Equally impressive is the fact that we have been profitable since our establishment and are financially healthy without any sort of bank loan.”

Help AG provides leading enterprise businesses across the region with strategic information security consultancy services combined with tailored cyber security solutions that address clients’ diverse requirements elevating them to a higher security posture.

INNOVATIVE AND

As Stephan puts it across, “For us a product is defined as a technical security control which enables us to put all the right technologies together to build a highly secure, robust, fast, and reliable best of breed solution. Keeping in mind that the solution has to support any international or local framework, such as ISO27001 and/or ADSIC, ISR, NESA, NCEA. There we address the spectrum from Network Security to Application Security, Visibility and Reporting, DLP, Mobile Security, Database Security, Modern Malicious Malware Detection & Prevention, to Malware Analysis, Incident Response and Forensics as a whole.”

Help AG has the in-depth technical expertise with the highest technical vs. sales workforce ratio and follows a strict internal product pre-selection process to ensure that customer needs are met. New and innovative solutions are constantly identified by Help AG, through their own in-house research & development laboratory, designed to simulate LAN/WAN client environment, in turn guaranteeing the quality and future security of the technical products and the sustainability of the manufacturer.

In a competitive market, it becomes imperative to showcase the best solutions in the kitty so that all enterprises come to know about the uniqueness of the offerings. GISEC is one of the most important platforms at which Help AG demonstrate their capabilities to their customers.

POWERFUL AND THEY SHOW IT Help AG has been participating at GISEC since its inception and has routinely had six or more of our vendor partners sharing their stand. In Stephan’s words, “It is an excellent opportunity to highlight the importance of our services attached to the vendor partner we work with too. Our aim is not selling a product, it is to make sure our customers and prospects can obtain professional services to design, implement, and configure the “tools” in the most professional way possible as well to receive a local 24x7 support and maintenance services certified and authorized by the principle themselves.”

Moreover, they also conduct their flagship event, the Help AG Security Spotlight Forum in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Qatar on a quarterly basis.

This translates to 12 vendor-agnostic events a year wherein they get to educate their customers on the latest regional security trends and demonstrate the solutions and services they offer to address them. Since their inception more than a decade ago, Help AG haven’t looked back and

COVER FEATURE

STEPHAN BERNER MANAGING DIRECTOR Stephan Berner is leading Help AG MEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s efforts to further increase the organizations investment, business activity & partnerships across the MEA region. He works closely with dedicated support teams, to define and drive Help AGâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s growth strategy, and effectively manage its investment plans in the MEA region.

Stephan established Help AG ME in 2004 with the primary objective of servicing the Information Security and IT Infrastructure market, specifically the Corporate, Enterprise and Government sectors in the MEA region. Under his leadership Help AG established itself as a market leader in the MEA region with many successful projects across the region.

Prior to Help AG ME, Stephan was the Managing Director of NOXS / RISC Technology Germany GmbH for 3 years, leading a team of highly qualified sales, pre-sales, consultants, and support engineers across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

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have expanded coverage continually.

RIGHT PLACES AT THE RIGHT TIME Help AG have established offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar. From these locations, they serve customers across the GCC. They are also on the verge of establishing a new office in Saudi Arabia which will give them access to a huge market that deserves its own representation. “To continue to strive our quality approach we do not partner with any third party or free-lancers. All services are delivered by Help AG employees only as this is of utmost importance for our customers’ confidentiality”, says Stephan. Currently, the focus is maintained on the GCC alone.

The best of solutions fail to create a bang unless accompanied with proper support services. With 109+ employees, Help AG ensures help is never an issue for its associates whenever they need it.

LEADER IN SUPPORT Stephan confidently says that Help AG is possibly the largest and most capable partner in the region. “We now have 109 employees and continued to maintain our 80-20 technical to sales ratio.” In terms of pure support which they extend to customers, again they are leaders in the region.

All members of their support division, the Help AG Security Assistance Center, are fully certified on all the major vendor platforms they offer to their clients. They provide locally delivered 24/7 assistance to their customers, many of whom avail of our fully automated support system

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which allows them to obtain information by accessing a web based system.

“Our services are now rated by customers as being of a higher or equal quality as that of our principal vendors. We handle 95% of all cases directly within the organization without support from vendors”, adds the confident Stephan.

Establishment, differentiation, consolidation …and then comes expansion. After having established themselves, Help AG definitely have set their eyes on larger territories and higher revenues. They have wisely formulated a strategy, in order to make the best out of all the market situations around them.

SUCCESFUL AND GROWING Help AG’s expansion plans are fully aligned with their three corporate strategic initiatives outlined till 2016. These are: l Focus on existing markets, UAE and Qatar, driven and measured against quality delivery and customer excitement. l Geographical expansion into KSA in Q4 l Promote the newly launched local MSS, from Monitoring to Incident response, Malware Analysis, and Remediation Services fully hosted, operated and delivered in the UAE After a successful 2014 and launch of the innovative CTM, Help AG made a grand entry into the managed services market. How wise is the decision, given the conservative nature of the ME market, especially when it comes to security?

Stephan tells us.

MANAGED SECURITY SERVICES- SETTING TRENDS “Our decision to launch the MSS division came after a year of careful market analysis which helped us evaluate customer readiness, prime pain points and service requirements. Our services are focused around a localized approach with highly competent resources aligned with appropriate security policies and frameworks, localized data storage and in-house expertise developed over the years by protecting our customers” comments Stephan.

Stephan says one of the corner stones of their offerings is delivering flexible services which combine monitoring, event analysis, and remediation on customer equipment through either remote or on-site response teams defined by their strict SLAs. “MSS is the natural evolution of Help AG’s portfolio as we have always focused on a solution approach instead of just shipping and implementing a product. And this also aligned with what the market is starting to request and demand for”, adds Stephan.

The region has reached a point where risk compliance, governance and even general security awareness mandate that a more strategic approach is followed in dealing security events and management of security devices. MSS allows taking the conversation forward with customers.

As Stephan says, “Today we say that Help AG has evolved from ‘Box to SOCs’ i.e. from selling solu-

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COVER FEATURE

2015 –WHAT LAYS AHEAD

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HEALTHCARE

tion boxes to becoming a comprehensive Security Operations Center. Offerings such as MSS enable us to really engage deeply and more consistently with customers. This opens up the possibility of addressing new areas in their security infrastructures that they had not previously given thought to”.

As they focus on storing their data within the region and delivering services locally, one of the major obstacles for up-take of services have already been eliminated, however certain government organizations may not be able to benefit even from this model, due to strict data regulations. In those specific environments services can be delivered in what they call a “captive model”, where no data ever leaves the customers site. The benefit for customer is that at a fraction of the cost of setting up their own dedicated IT security operations centers, they gain 24x7 access to fullyqualified security professionals who continuously monitor their network to ensure it is secure.

First CTM, and now MSS; Help AG definitely don’t just talk of innovation, they translate it into action as well. So, what are the other exciting things the market can expect coming from Help AG arsenals down the line?

LEADERS DON’T REST; FUTURE PLANS ON THE RADAR “Building a local Cyber Security Operation Center and performing in-country managed

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security services from Monitoring, Device Management, Malware Analysis to Remediation, Incident Response and Forensic services will keep us focused and busy for the years to come”, remarks Stephan. From having a selective go to market approach they plan to extend the services to a wider range of clients over time. “Think about our CTM Coordinated Threat Mitigation Service being integrated in the MSS portfolio, this is awesome because it will give a dedicated analysis & intelligence for the GCC region in specific. The development and advancement of our services is key and we will make sure to play a major role for the regions Cloud adaption and enablement from a pure play security point of view.”

The introduction of new solutions that meet market requirements is an on-going process and HelpAG will soon announce three new vendor partnerships. The reason Stephan gives for this constant addition is that they want to ensure that their portfolio of solutions is capable of addressing every security requirement of our customers. This involves not only the on-going identification and evaluation of new partners, but also continuous assessment of the solutions that are a part of the existing portfolio. “Our aim is to have best-of-breed solutions for each area of IT security and sometimes this means eliminating products that no longer meet these criteria” states Stephan. With such a packed action plan, the year 2015 surely looks promising for Help AG.

Stephan is very confident when it comes to growth performance, “given our proven track record and consistent year-on-year performance, we project a 65% growth in our revenues for 2015”. Soon, they are going to open a new office in Saudi Arabia as they have identified this as a market with high potential for their solutions, consultancy and services. And wait…the journey doesn’t even stop there! “We will replicate the same model that has worked so well for us in the UAE and Qatar and are making the necessary investments in professional staff, facilities and equipment”, adds Stephan.

So, are there new technologies as well they plan to bring in? “Through our research & development team we always make sure to be at the top of the game. Yes, you can be certain that new technologies are identified and short listed and a few of them we will introduce to the market throughout this year and 2016” declares Stephan.

He goes on to add that before they do that, they do their own due diligence and based on technical, commercial and organizational aspects, take the decision to move it forward accordingly.

“Excited? Come and visit us on GISEC. Why? There you see the next cool thing introduced by us.”

No doubt IT security is pervasive, but there surely is a difference in the pattern of the way they perceive and manage security. So, are there specific verticals driving HelpAG revenues?

VERTICALS UNDER FOCUS “Our business therefore doesn’t depend on any specific industry vertical”, says Stephan. They make sure to focus and be present within the leading organizations amongst each and every vertical segment. In 2014, the rough breakup of their business was Government 32%, Banking 30%, Oil & Gas 16%, Education 12%, Misc 10%.

They expect a similar trend to follow in 2015.

FINALLY… In the recent years, Help AG have been making great penetrations into the market and establishing themselves. So, definitely it’s not about all technology, no marketing; so what strategies have been their forte to make headway into the ME market. They do this via a host of awareness, demand generation and lead generation activities aimed at creating incremental business within enterprise organizations with complex technical requirements. “Our marketing strategy is based on positioning Help AG as THE number one trusted partner for information and cyber security services and solutions in Middle East and Africa” signs off Stephan. ë

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MY VIEWS

faced by IT managers and CIOs across the globe on daily basis. And then at the end, we discuss about the solutions that we have for solving their problems.

Moreover, we now have on board Erdal Ozkaya who has joined as the CISO. Erdal is an IT Security Guru with business development and management skills, and is armed with world class qualifications. His global experience and knowledge will bring new perspective to IT security in the region.

MOHAMAD MOBASSERI

CEO OF EMT DISTRIBUITION

“Enabling Partners with Education &Exclusivity”

emt Academy recently launched free online course for channel partners. Could you tell us little more about it?

Yes – we are focusing a lot on partner education. We have invested a lot of time and focus on this program. Initially, we have started with virtualization –which is still a topic that needs to be understood and applied more in this region.

Many companies wish to go for virtualization however they don’t have enough information for that. Our courses not only help them to know about technologies; but also we assist them to know and weigh the various possibilities available for them and choose the best suited one.

We will continue to conduct workshops for channel partners to educate them on the usage of various technologies. So, if we are selling a product we will make sure that the people on the other side know what they are using and how they should be using it.

What are you plans for the upcoming GISEC? In this year’s edition of GISEC, we are investing a lot as it’s a very good event and we are planning to showcase some of our latest security products.

We are devising new solutions and may announce new products. We shall offer special training to channel partners and have some offers.

IN A MARKET WHERE VALUE ADDITION HAS BECOME AN OVER-USED WORD, EMT DISTRIBUTION STANDS A CLASS APART, THANKS TO ITS INTERNATIONAL PRESENCE, EXCLUSIVE CONTRACTS AND EMPHASIS ON PARTNER EDUCATION. MOHAMAD MOBASSERI, CEO OF EMT DISTRIBUITION TALKS ABOUT THE UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSTION OF THE VAD AND THEIR PLANS FOR THE YEAR AHEAD.

How was 2014 for emt?

We were occupied with the recent transformation that we made by venturing into the SME/SMBs. All our products worldwide were enterprise solutions. So, considering the life cycle of enterprise solutions, we decided to have some run rate business products as well. For example, Avira was one such new addition

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How promising does 2015 look?

We shall also work towards strengthening the channel network in the region. We would be focusing on one specific event that we have designed for emt –MMTS –Market Magnitude Technology Seminars. Key advantage of this event is that we don’t talk about single products.

We talk about technology and the challenges

What are the targets you are aiming to achieve by the end of 2015both in terms of geography as well as revenues?

Currently, the Dubai office is covering the whole of Middle East and Africa. Revenue wise, in 2015 we are expecting to grow by 30-35% in the region.

What would be the focus of your marketing strategy in 2015?

We wish to come up with complete solution offerings. Bundling is on top of our priority list; wherein we are trying to offer a bundle of complimentary solutions. ë

GUEST TALK

EPICOR

Are we ready for a new breed of CIO? While once technology was simply the enabler of business, it has now become its advantage. With that also comes this changing role of the CIO.

n WORDS: ANISH KANARAN, CHANNEL DIRECTOR F O R E P I C O R I N T H E M I D D L E E A S T, A F R I C A & I N D I A

The role of Chief Information Officer (CIO) first had a presence on the board of organisations in the eighties when companies, mainly in North America. Technology, for the first time, became recognized as a critical part of business strategy.

35 years on, are we experiencing yet another tipping point where CIOs are not just implementers or influencers but are critically inspiring and transforming how businesses are run today?

With ERP taking a large share of the IT budget and playing a significant operational role in improving the speed and efficiency of processes for faster, better-informed decision-making, we have done our own research into the role of the changing CIO over the past year. What it tells us is that we’re experiencing a moment of change.

Consider the status quo to understand the new breed Typically we are seeing that the role of the CIO now falls into four broad categories and increasingly that the role is moving away from simply being an improver that we would have seen in the early days, to a much more transformative role that is shaping today’s businesses. l Improvers–as hands on operators, Improve control costs, increase efficiencies, optimize processes and make sure that the business gets the IT that it needs l Influencers– they do things better by bringing the power of technology to bear on business problems. Essentially they are tomorrow’s Transformers l Transformers - true Transformers understand the strategic vision and seek out technologies to fulfill that vision for the benefit of the business l Inspirers – those who extend innovation to facilitate a tangible change in perception towards the use and value of technology

CIOs don’t give themselves credit where credit’s due Employees beyond the IT department view CIOs as having much more strategic input than they give credit to themselves. In the Middle East for example, 36 per cent of CIOs feel their role has changed from influencer to innovator but conversely, their peers elsewhere feel the shift is actually less about being an innovator but more about more critically transforming the business (42 per cent).

The CIO agenda changes according to where in the world you work Broadly speaking the role of the CIO is seen as one that is so much more than a facilitator of IT across the world, but when it comes to the objectives and business drivers, these do in fact differ depending on where you are based.

Expansion into new markets features in the top three business drivers across Western Europe, however in MENA the CIO is squarely focused on new customer recruitment and retention (43 per cent) as well as controlling the data explosion (40 per cent). Conversely, non-CIOs in MENA considered both new customers and getting products to market quicker as key business drivers, showing that the two go hand in hand when it comes to overall business profitability.

Equally when it comes to business objectives for CIOs in Western Europe, the top priority is improving information access and analysis with a staggering 80.5% of French CIOs citing this.

Whereas in MENA it’s more about improving the IT user experience for employees and transforming the IT function to support the need for better business agility.

As emerging market CIOs look to leapfrog their western counterparts by assessing existing

and new technologies to help achieve business goals, they are however not considering strategy as one of their top three attributes but see their role as being more about proactivity, innovation and good communication. In the ME, we are seeing a large volume of start-ups and we expect rapid development of online sites that do what eBay, Amazon and others have long done.

It’s likely that CIOs, particularly in the retail industry will get pushed into creating these virtual presences so will typically be hands-on.

But if they are to truly become transformers they need to be more actively involved in strategy setting, enabling flexibility and change.

Today’s CIOs anticipate and solve business problems with IT. Technology investment in this market also tends to be a couple of years ahead of even the most advanced economies in EMEA. CEOs want to automate to extract cost and they need security and governance to meet tides of regulations, but they also want CIOs to provide decision-support through business intelligence and other applications such as ERP. The difficulty is that many CIOs run out of hours in the day or pounds and euros to invest which brings other challenges in how to manage the day-to-day work with the strategic direction.

The advent of the new CIO Where once technology was simply the enabler of business, it has now become its advantage.

Readily assuming the mantle of change and with a seat firmly at the top table CIOs will undoubtedly transform businesses for the better. Driving through change, delivering on an architecture that allows rapid response and providing tools that offer insight and decision support, we will ultimately see the global CIO doing things better as well as doing better things. ë

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MY VIEWS

RAJ SABHLOK

PRESIDENT OF ZOHO CORP (MANAGEENGINE IS A DIVISION OF ZOHO CORP)

Replacing Legacy THERE HAVE BEEN A VERY FEW INDIAN IT COMPANIES WHICH HAVE MADE THEIR MARK ON THE GLOBAL LANDSCAPE; ZOHO IS SURELY ONE OF THE ELITE BUNCH. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA TEAM SPOKE TO RAJ SABHLOK, PRESIDENT OF ZOHO CORP (MANAGEENGINE IS A DIVISION OF ZOHO CORP) ABOUT THE POSITIONING, GROWTH AND MARKET PENETRATION OF ZOHO (& MANAGEENGINE) IN THE MIDDLE EAST MARKET.

â&#x20AC;&#x201A; India has been the hub for service providers and development of IT raw materials. So how feasible it is you think to operate an IT company outside India?

Yes, it is undoubtedly true for the fact. But the

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situation is evolving. We are recruiting many people and many people from our base are going out to the world and establishing their own set up.

India is undoubtedly a very potential country in terms of IT but it has been lagging behind because of the cultural barricades. Till few years back we

had people in our company who hesitated to work for Zoho, just because it was a start-up . But now the scenario is changing. People are open to work in fresh firms and getting more entrepreneurial.

We have purchased a huge hectare in Chennai and have expanded our business base. We plan to

MY VIEWS

have 2500 people there and we anticipate adding 500-600 people annually How would you like to position Zoho and Manage Engine on the scale of Revenue generation?

We are well into the $200 million revenue circle.

On the Zoho side, we are one of the largest SaaS companies in the world. Manage Engine is gradually becoming one of the fastest growing IT management firms in the world. I would definitely agree to it that in absolute size HP, IBM, etc are big in revenue but when we talk about new revenue and new business happening – Manage Engine competes very well against those types of vendors and we win more times than we lose in new deployments.

Reports have shown that the SaaS market growth is comparatively lower than the infrastructure growth.

It’s around 19.2% globally, while infrastructure market is growing at a higher rate. What’s your take?

I feel that both of them are growing at a good rate. The SaaS market is huge; there are still many companies that are not comfortable with the security aspect. Compared to that we have a great expertise in this field. We are probably one of the most knowledgeable companies in the world in data protection and data privacy. As more and more companies will dwell into this reality, the SaaS market will surely see a surge in its growth percentage with companies accepting private clouds. The US government has made substantial moves to leverage the public cloud. A large organization has claimed that they are going to move to office 360 that is on the public cloud. A perfectly viable alternative that will emerge is the private cloud so that the companies who are very sensitive with their data will be able to host their data on the private cloud and garner benefits from it.

Manage Engine has a number of products and services up its sleeve. How does this help you to address the IT needs of modern organizations?

Our perspective is that there are various layers to the IT infrastructure and we have to provide solutions for each of that layer so we have to manage all the services and solutions ranging from desktops, networks, app servers, mail servers etc. in order to get our arms around the entire infrastructure. Our vow is to ensure that companies can leverage technologies to advance their business. Companies that don’t leverage

their technologies are going to be left behind.

And our job is to solve the biggest challenge that the companies are facing is to deploy the latest technology to leverage the IT infrastructure of their business. We make it simple for you. What is ironic is that companies do realize the significance of technology but are reluctant to invest in the manpower required for the IT. What are you plans for the upcoming GISEC? In this year’s edition of GISEC, we are investing a lot as it’s a very good event and we are planning to showcase some of our latest security products.

We are devising new solutions and may announce new products. We shall offer special training to channel partners and have some offers.

Coming to the product development—you have customized ERPs for SMEs. So do you see any changes in that space?

In the Zoho side, yes, we are emerging as one of the strongest contenders in the market for SME ERP solutions and we help you to sell products, support your clients and build relations with your clients through CRM . We provide everything you need to boost sales, step up productivity and manage all day-to-day activities. For finance we help you by providing Zoho books. So we are right in the market as ERP solution providers.

dint have the resources to match the likes of IBM and HP, we couldn’t have that type of sales and support activities.So all we could do was to build a product that surpasses all others in terms of transparency and user-friendliness.

What are the future plans in terms of investment?

Our first priority would be on security. The second on the list is analytics. We envisage absorbing all the machine data and making it sensible. We just announced the integration of Zoho reports and Service Desk. Service desk captures a lot of ins and outs in IT activities and events and Zoho report is a world class reporting tool that we are offering to our customers which allows them to take the data and analyze, publish, share and collaborate all that data and we want to add more to it.

Are you planning any kind of acquisitions or mergers to bring in more capabilities?

Absolutely not! We have been around for over 2 decades now and we believe in thriving on our own. We are answerable only to our customers and investors and I believe that is the way it should be.

Do you plan to expand your geographical presence?

“OUR JOB IS TO SOLVE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE THAT THE COMPANIES ARE FACING IS TO DEPLOY THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY TO LEVERAGE THE IT INFRASTRUCTURE OF THEIR BUSINESS. WE MAKE IT SIMPLE FOR YOU.”

Technology has evolved and cloud has helped even the small businesses to rise and better position themselves by using various ERPs and services that were earlier reserved for the deepest pockets. We have garnered so much experience that we are well positioned to address any complex business process and automate it from scratch to success and the lead the way in that.

Can you shed some more light on the journey of Zoho as an ERP service provider?

Zoho is a special company. I would term it as an entirely ERP company because we have devised and innovated it in such a way that it addresses all your problems. When we entered the market we

We don’t believe that having branches across the globe helps your business. Geographical difference will not allow you to leverage technology and get a unified look and feel of the applications.

We have one big development center where all the integration happens. Middle East is our fastest growing market. We are changing the game with a 40% growth. Our biggest market with absolute revenue is definitely the US but that also is getting diversified with ME and India coming into the picture. India is in no. 6 position behind other western countries. The growth in US is particularly larger than Europe— owing to the economic turmoil happening there.

We are replacing legacy and that is visible in our growth graph! ë

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BIG DATA

XEROX

Improving transportation with Big Data analytics w(ITS) refers to a wide range of services that use information and communications technology that can improve transportation and mobility. n WORDS: RICHARD HARRIS, SOLUTION DIRECTOR OF I N T E R N AT I O N A L T R A N S P O R TAT I O N A N D G O V E R N M E N T, X E R O X .

What do you get when you harness the combined power of computer processing, data management and modern communications to provide new and improved transportation services? Ideally, a better quality of life in our cities.

Intelligent Transport Systems refer to a wide range of services using information and communications technology that already impact our daily lives. These tools have done a great deal to improve transportation and mobility. However, to respond to the safety, environmental and economic challenges that we face, we need to do much more than has been achieved so far.

We need smarter transportation in order to improve accessibility, efficiency and economic performance; reduce accidents, waste and environmental damage. Smarter transportation means using available tools to provide the essential information and communications that balance the supply and demand of our networks better.

Success will mean that travellers will benefit from seamless services and authorities and administrations will reduce waste as network reliability and equilibrium is improved with systems that are more integrated.

As a result, industry will have a stable market to service.

Key to this step change in transportation will be transaction systems (integrated ticketing, road user fees, parking lot payments, electronic fee collection), and improved traffic management and information systems that

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are based on more and better quality data.

Key enablers for accelerating deployment and securing the benefits promised by intelligent transport systems include: l Unlocking information using big data, data analytics and data visualization, and use the resources that we have already collected more effectively. l The game changing potential of connected vehicle technologies that will both improve safety, and the quality and availability of data. l Robust business cases that identify clear returns in terms of achieving objectives and investments needed for a breakthrough in deployment. l Evidence based implementation, stable standards, political stability, and commit-

ment to system and service maintenance.

Deployment of these technologies nearly always leads to new organizational and administrative responsibilities and operations.

Clearly new communications and information technology provides the opportunity for wider coverage (or shared services) than the traditional adherence to administrative boundaries and this means even more political leadership will be needed.

Success will be measured in terms of mobility rather than traditional transportation statistics.

We live in a competitive world, but with transportation we all face similar problems.

Major Chris Hadfield, the astronaut who spent six months orbiting the earth in the International Space Station commented, “The more I looked at the earth, the less I thought of it as them or us, our country or someone else’s, and I soon considered it as just us. It is our only home.”

Global cooperation is an important part of intelligent transport systems,and by working together -- for instance on connected vehicles, where the USA, European Union and Japan collaborate -- we are already helping to set the foundation for future services around the world.

When industry, academia, politicians, the authorities and administrations work together, we can realize the true potential of ITSand create a better greener future. ë

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It’s going to be centered on Brand Recognition, Customer Intimacy and Proficiency enhancement. In the current situation where technology is breaking new grounds and solutions in the offerings galore focusing the channel partners, who are hungry to adapt to these changes and Rittal is supporting by joining forces with channel for greater success for each other in the region.

What will be your product strategy for the period?

It is only possible to remain innovative and successful in the long term by keeping track of current trends and the latest technologies. Supported by active market push from our channel to the end users, we constantly innovate both on the IT Infrastructure and Datacentre offerings How does Rittal plan to showcase its aggressive attitude to the market?

At Rittal, we aim to further increase the focus on our core products and ensure the successful market launch of our innovations. In additional to participation at regional events like GITEX, we are laying focus on local regional events and customized sales and technical boot-camps with our channel partners

IGNATIUS AVINASH EMANUEL

MARKETING MANAGER, RITTAL MIDDLE EAST

“Creating Value for Businesses Worldwide” RITTAL MIDDLE EAST IS ONE OF THE RECOGNIZED INNOVATIVE SUPPLIERS FOR THE INDUSTRIAL AND ELECTRICAL SECTORS AS WELL AS A KEY PLAYER IN THE NETWORKING INFRASTRUCTURE & DATACENTRE ARENA. MR IGNATIUS AVINASH EMANUEL, MARKETING MANAGER TALKS ABOUT THE

What kind of changes are you making to your present channel strategy? Any incentive plans?

We have been following our successful Strategic Partner Rebate Program every year with Key customer channels and which will continue as well. This program is on a 3 fold basis with mutual benefits spreading on focal criteria’s of sales, product and marketing What’s your expansion strategy?

Our aim is achieve continued growth in the region by staging a strong market presence, an enriched partner community & empowered channel partners.

COMPANY’S POSITIONING AND CONSTANT EFFORTS TO INNOVATE AND HELP PARTNERS TO ENHANCE BUSINESS GROWTH ACROSS THE REGION.

As per Gartner report the IT infrastructure market in MEA is poised to touch $4.4 Billion, can you let me know about your perception of this figure?

True, reports from Gartner speak for itself!

Opportunities in the region are growing especially on the IT Infrastructure acknowledging the importance of data management and business continuity for any business or organiza-

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tion – where a strong, scalable and efficient IT Infrastructure system is a mandate.

What per cent of market Rittal wants to grab?

Appreciating other players as well in the region – a win with 40% market share sounds promising!

What is your marketing strategy for 2015?

What are your plans for strengthening presence in various geographies in the year?

Noting the coverage currently – we would like to have a sustained revenue growth from the focus countries in the ME region. More importantly we are working towards enhancing our customer intimacy which will be crucial for success.

What are the verticals you are expecting maximum ROI from?

Educational, Federal, SME will be the main ones; we are focusing on our SMART Solutions offerings for these key potential rich verticals. ë

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MUBARIK HUSSAIN,

HEAD OF IT, PETROSERV, QATAR

Aligning innovation with company vision THE ROLE OF CIOS HAS CHANGED FROM BEING MANAGERS OF IT INFASTRUCTURE TO THAT OF INNOVATION PARTNERS OF ENTERPRISES. THEY ARE THE CRUCIAL LINKS WHO MANAGE BUDGETS, TECHNOLOGIES AND MARKETING TO BRING THE BEST OF TRENDS WITH THE HIGHEST

There seems to be a lot of buzz around –“IT as a business enabler” – so is a strategic relation between the marketing and CIOs the new thing in place? How important is it?

It is important to have a relationship between CIOs and marketing but the CIOs also need to have strategic relationships with business units across the company so that IT can be a real business enabler.

POSSIBLE ROI. MUBARIK HUSSAIN, HEAD OF IT, PETROSERV, QATAR TALKS ABOUT THE CHANGING FACE OF IT IN THE APPLE PIE OF MIDDLE EAST MARKET- OIL & GAS SECTOR

How have you upgraded the IT infrastructure at Petroserv Group?

I did a greenfield rebuild of the datacentre and all the hardware and software. I implemented Force10 10G Core and Edge switches, blade servers, Compellent San, SonicWall HA firewalls, rebuilt Active Directory, Exchange DAG, SQL

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Cluster, ERP, virtual and physical backups. I also facilitated the virtualization of servers using VMWare, desktops and applications using Citrix.

I further brought about the complete rebuilding of physical datacenter, redundant power and cooling, UPS, environmental monitoring system, CCTV and access control.

Time and again CIOs have debated whether IT should follow business change or lead it; what’s your opinion?

I believe CIOs should lead business change, but that they need to follow the CEOs vision for that change. The CEO is the foremost business mind in the organization and is best placed to understand what is required for the business to make it more profitable and reduce costs, once that’s defined, and consultation and input has taken place with business unit Heads so that they are all

CIOS SPEAK

aligned and requirements are met, the CIO is best placed to use and align technology to enhance the capability and skills of the organization and staff. I believe the CIOshould lead the business change that is aligned to the CEO’s vision as this is something I have done.

Which was the most difficult technology related investment decision you had to make?

The greenfield rebuild of the datacentre and all hardware and software was the most difficult technology-related investment decision I had to make as it was highly risky but highly rewarding at the same time. Disruption had to be kept to a minimum in a live environment and it had to done in a short period of time. It was implemented successfully and the benefits were realized for the company.

Have you managed cost cutting by application of technology?

By redesigning the complete IT infrastructure and virtualizing Petroserv IT environment, I reduced the physical size and hardware and resource requirements of the data centre dramatically. A high availability environment resulted in more productivity for the staff as the downtime of the systems was reduced a lot.

What percentage of enterprise revenue is your current IT budget?

How does this compare with your industry peers?

The IT budget percentage of enterprise revenue would be more than industry peers’ average due to the large investments made over the last couple of years into our IT infrastructure and innovation. As the transformation has completed this also decreases the amount required for the IT budget in next year.

What percentage of your IT budget is for outsourced activities? How do you determine what to outsource?

Due to innovation and transformation, a larger percentage of spending was used for outsourced activities but this will reduce gradually. I will outsource activities e.g. project work to specialist teams/companies or areas of business that can be carried out by service providers at a better value for money and quicker than in-house What is the largest IT-related initiative for which you were responsible? How did this initiative deliver in terms of cost, schedule and quality?

The largest IT initiative I led was the IT transformation of the corporate environment along with the business transformation which took 2 years and was a substantial investment.

This involved the greenfield rebuilding of the data centre and replacement of all hardware software for the corporate environment. I led the initiative and it involved multiple partnerships with teams from leading vendors and specialist staff. Its success was evaluated in terms of cost reductions for the company in resource requirements, the performance and productivity increase for business units and the increase in work the company was able to carry out as a result of the new highly available environment.

Provide an example of when the execution of an initiative did not go as planned and what you did.

An initiative that was attempted was to host services to a remote project location which had with very little physical infrastructure. The low level designs and testing showed that there would be enough bandwidth to implement this. Once the

in place in your arsenal to take care of this? Are you willing to entrust your security to a third party SP? We redesigned and rebuilt the security throughout our network. From Active Directory security and group policies, Endpoint protection, Firewalls, Server Desktop rebuilding, data consolidation and access security, so security was at the core of the new environment. We have also tightened security policy and procedures and increased staff awareness. Security is something I would retain control of in-house but there are some third party suppliers who are capable of managing the companies’ security.

What are the technology upgrades you are planning in the coming days?

We are enhancing our business intelligence and analytics capability so there are projects running that will address that.

War of the budget versus technologies is a well-known fact; how do you manage it?

“I ALWAYS LOOK FOR PARTNERSHIPS AND WORK WITH TECHNOLOGY PROVIDERS WHO WILL WORK TOGETHER WITH ME TO BETTER THE CORPORATE ENVIRONMENT FOR OUR CORPORATE STAFF AS EVERYTHING WE DO, WE DO FOR OUR PEOPLE. ”

services were hosted the reality was that we were not consistently getting enough bandwidth to deliver the hosted services to the remote project location. There we no financially viable alternatives from the telecoms providers to increase the bandwidth at which point we decided to setup the infrastructure for the project site locally.

What’s your view on hybrid cloud adoption?

Hybrid cloud adoption is positive. Private clouds give an organization the confidence that they are in control of their own environment but financially it’s good to have some services in house and have certain services managed by SPs who are specialists in their fields and will generally charge you a lower cost to use their services rather than if you were running them in-house.

Security is a prime concern in the ME of late; what designs do you have

At the moment I believe IT budget are increasing as companies invest in IT and business innovation and transformation. Innovation and transformation can create large gaps between companies’ capabilities and services and the companies that don’t innovate or transform will find it very difficult to catch up with their competitors later on.

What kind of technological pain points do you experience on a day to day basis at work; and what kind of solutions do you think can help you?

My IT requirements increase daily as our company wins more projects and each can have substantial and specialist IT/Telecom requirements. These requirements generally have to be dealt with very quickly. Solutions or services provided by companies that assist with very broad Oil and Gas, Civil Infrastructure, BuildingIT project requirements very quickly can help me. ë

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been devising new storage solutions and trying to create a niche there as well.

Can you share something about your NAND storage strategy?

With NAND we are trying to leapfrog the maximum memory density and we have crafted with improved reliability and endurance. Its motive is to extend and enhance the product life of your devices and push the limit of a processor’s capability.

Can you shed some light on your ventures into the Enterprise storage regime?

Nimble’s hybrid storage architecture is engineered to address the industry’s most persistent storage concerns and it is not only for enterprises but it is for SMBs as well. It is a cloud based management service that distributes analytical support and operational simplicity.

What are Toshiba’s B2B plans?

We are planning and focusing more on our B2B solution now. We are working on expanding our product rangeand focus more on ecosystem of reseller partners. We are also planning to focus more on the IoT offering completely a new set of services and products.

SANTOSH VARGHESE

GENERAL MANAGER, TOSHIBA GULF FZE

“Focusing More on B2B Solutions”

Through the various events, what message do you plan to send out to the market?

As we are all set to venture into the B2B plan, the conferences would host an apt platform to connect our partners, distributors and customers.

We would be showcasing our new plans and products during these events and future roadmap would be planned..

Q1 MAY NOT HAVE BEEN SO SPECTACULAR FOR TOSHIBA GULF FROM SALES PERSPECTIVE BUT CERTAINLY A GOOD PERIOD LOOKING AT THE OVERALL PERFORMANCE OF THE COMPANY IN THE REGION. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA’S REPORTER ANUSHREE DIXIT CAUGHT UP WITH SANTOSH VARGHESE, GM, TOSHIBA GULF FZE. EXCERPTS…

What are Toshiba’s latest offerings?

This year is very special for us, as we are celebrating our 30th anniversary. We have brought both evolutionary and revolutionary changes in the laptop and notebook range. As a part of this, we recently showcased our achievements in the ‘Toshiba Museum’ wherein we kept for public display the world’s first industry standard notebook PC— the Toshiba T1100.

What’s your strategy to deal with

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the competition?

We offer value for money and it’s the trust of the customers that makes us swim against the tide.

Our innovation and the trust that our customers have placed on us keep us going. So, there is no competition for us.

How has been Q1 for Toshiba ?

Q1 has been a building stage for us. We are on top of some new milestones which we target to complete by June and Ramadan. Sales was moderate but yes, the performance has been great. We have

Is there any new partnership plans on the cards?

We believe in working closely with our existing partners. Yes, we have Nimble Storage with us now for the enterprise storage initiatives. Apart from that we are not planning any new partnership ventures.

How do you see Toshiba contributing to the building of the smart city ?

Toshiba goes back a long way in that. Smart city is all about mobility and we are right on track when it comes to mobility. Surveys have revealed that 25% of the human life is going to be dominated by smart devices, so Toshiba is on the right track and we are integrating smart devices to match the needs of the smart city. ë

GUEST TALK

FINESSE

Enterprise Mobility Meets Cloud Computing According to a recent survey done by Forrester, the growth of number of firms using cloud services has been increased from 48% to 62% during last 3 years and it is further expected to change the growth gear to top in upcoming years.

During the recently conducted Future-IT Summit by Enterprise Channels MEA, the leading technology providers & SIs like Finesse along with the end users discussed about the opportunities & challenges of Cloud computing, Mobility and latest innovations. The conclusion from all those discussions clearly showcases that cloud services continue to drive big changes in the markets for software, hardware, and IT outsourcing, while providing a foundation for age of the customer innovations.

Conflating Mobility and Cloud computing can have innumerable positive impacts on how an organization operates from boosting productivity, cost savings, improving insights, to empower employees and adding flexibility into the workplace to name a few. At Finesse, we help our clients to optimize their business processes, reducing costs and assets by bringing together advanced technology, robust infrastructure, a large pool of talent and to deliver businesses information and tangible value through CloudReady & Mobility Solutions. Here, with this article I’ll introduce you three of such niche & ready to roll solutions which will enhance your companies productivity by improving efficiency, collaboration and security.

Productivity with Flexibility Tech-savvy workers want the freedom to engage with the latest advances and utilize technologies they are used to in their personal lives. Nearly all the businesses strive to improve their processes to deliver better service and to increase customer satisfaction creating a wow sounding experience to their customers; however over the decades this continued to remain a interminable and tiresome process. With our partner Spoors, who claims to

be India’s first self-service field force optimization solution for monitoring, tracking, and managing field staff to maximize productivity by leveraging GPS/cellular location is expanding their customer base in ME with Finesse as an exclusive partner. The solution named EFFORT is an effective, strategic mobile application which connects your back office to your field workforce.

It caters to industries with field force-intensive operations. It helps you gain better visibility into your field force’s location, activities thereby reducing expenses and customer response times while increasing overall productivity.

Collaboration with Extended File Security Security concern remains the primary reason why enterprises are reluctant to fully embrace the cloud’s true potential. To address this threat effectively, they need to relook at Information Security from a holistic point of view. This could be achieved, by securing the information right from the time it is created till the time it is destroyed or made redundant. Finesse, through its FileSecure Information rights Management Solution (IRM) from Seclore, offers to address these issues . This solution can control document usage rights for documents distributed within and outside of the enterprise. With FileSecure, the document owner can easily attach usage controls prior to the information being shared.

Simplified Wi-Fi Network Management, Security and Compliance With increased usage of wireless networks, emerging trend of free Wi-Fi services enterprises have been yearning for an affordable, easy to use,

n W O R D S : L AT I F S H E I K H , ENTERPRISE ACCOUNT MANGER FINESSE GLOBAL

and scalable Wi-Fi access solution that meets their unique business process and customer service requirements while maintaining their PCI compliance and network security. With our partner - AirTight’s Secure Wifi Solution we provide a level of simplicity unprecedented in the configuration of an enterprise access point (AP).

AirTight’s cloud Management-console was an industry first with an easy-to-use HTML5 interface and a single sign-on cloud dashboard. With AirTight Nano, the company has taken the userfriendliness further, by introducing a mobile web app compatible with any smart device. Similarly, AirTight has pioneered social Wi-Fi and built-in customer analytics, and is now building on its successes by adding additional social sign-on options with WeChat. From a single management console, network administrators can manage security profiles and push policies, generate or schedule consolidated reports on device usage, wireless security incidents and risk levels.

Your employees expect their work style to be as mobile and seamless as their lifestyle. Your customers expect a personalized experience that’s tailored to what they need. Although all these task of injecting mobile with cloud computing to enable the business may seem daunting, there are many solutions available today that allows organizations to keep up with the pace of technology innovation. Most of these solutions are offered as services with a per user, per month fee as a cloud based subscription model which requires very less upfront investment and are scalable. This is how companies will navigate through the first phase of mobile enablement of cloud computing.

What’s your strategy? ë

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KEY CAPABILITIES n The Brocade ICX 7250 is easy to deploy, manage, and integrate into both new and existing networks. n Organizations can buy only what they need today, and easily scale out as demand grows and new technologies emerge. n Brocade ICX 7250 Switches offer an upgrade option to bring full Layer 3 capabilities to the network edge, reducing complexity and enhancing the reliability of enterprise networks. n Can deliver both power and data across network connections, supporting Power over Ethernet (PoE/ PoE+) standards and providing a single-cable solution for edge devices. n designed to fit in server racks by consuming only one rack unit.

Brocade ICX 7250 Switch The Brocade ICX 7250 Switch delivers the performance, flexibility, and scalability required for enterprise Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) access deployment. It raises the bar with up to 8×10 GbE ports for uplinks or stacking and market-leading stacking density with up to 12 switches (576×1 GbE) per stack. This robust switch combines enterprise-class features, manageability, performance, and reliability with the flexibility, costeffectiveness, and “pay as you grow” scalability of a stackable solution.

The Brocade ICX 7250 Switch provides enterprise-class stackable LAN switching solutions to meet the growing demands of campus networks.

Designed for small to medium-size

enterprises, branch offices, and distributed campuses, these intelligent, scalable edge switches deliver enterprise-class functionality at an affordable price—without compromising performance and reliability.

The Brocade ICX 7250 is available in 24- and 48-port 10/100/1000 Mbps models with 1 GbE or 10 GbE dualpurpose uplink/stacking ports—with or without Power over Ethernet (PoE) and Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+)—to support enterprise edge networking, wireless mobility, and IP communications without the need for additional power outlets or power injectors.

The new Brocade Switch Port Extender technology extends the

capabilities of the Brocade HyperEdge Architecture while maximizing the value of Brocade ICX 7250 Switches. It enables the Brocade ICX 7250 to extend ports in combination with Brocade ICX 7450 and 7750 Switches, creating a complete campus network solution with consolidated management across aggregation and core layers, shared network services—adding advanced Layer 3 capabilities to all switches—and scale-out flexibility to expand port density as needed. The Brocade ICX 7250 with Switch Port Extender provides an ideal network access solution for the campus network.

General availability for the Brocade ICX 7250 begins this month.

PLEASE SEND YOUR FEEDBACK AT INFO@ ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM

EATON’S NEW POWER DISTRIBUTION UNITS Eaton’s new Metered Outlet, Switched and Managed range of rack power distribution units (PDUs) are available in EMEA. The latest models include new features that provide greater control at equipment level, enabling IT professionals to accurately monitor and controlthe power consumption of their IT equipment.

As well as metering and switching of individual outlets, users can now group outlets together by pieces of IT equipment so that they can meter and switch equipment with multiple inputs over A and B feeds. Eaton’s new Metered Outlet ePDUs allow energy usage of IT equipment to be monitored locally and remotely, making it easier to determine where energy savings can be made. In addition, since the meters are of billing grade accuracy, the readings can be used by in-house data centre operators to apportion costs between company departments and by co-location data centre operators to charge customers for energy usage.

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KEY CAPABILITIES n Offers space-saving construction, patent pending eGrip plug retention and a maximum operating temperature of 60 ºC n Eaton’s ePDUs are made in EMEA and can be customised to meet users’ specific needs. n Can be incorporated within Eaton’s Intelligent Power Pod – an integrated power infrastructure system for modern IT applications including converged and hyper-converged infrastructures. n Incorporate power backup, power distribution, power management, housing and support services and help increase reliability and uptime of IT applications, and thus ensure continuity of the entire business.

We unify.

You thrive.

In this hyper-connected, always-on world, todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s anywhere workers are demanding more from the devices and enterprise apps they use to connect and collaborate.

We say, give in to their demands.

unify.com/thrive

Formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications

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Copyright Š Unify GmbH & Co. KG, 2014

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Scale smarter.

Manage easier.

Innovate faster.

New PowerEdge servers can be configured up to 99% faster 1 and boost IOPS by up to 10x.2 Whether your business relies on data to predict the future, improve outcomes or engage more customers, the next generation of PowerEdge servers with Intel® Xeon® processors will help boost application and workload performance — so you can scale smarter, manage easier, innovate faster.

The 1st 2.5" hot-plug SSD3 delivers up to

Zero-touch

10IOPS X 99

automation configures up to

%

2

faster1

Deploy

10,000 servers in an

instant1

Learn more about these award-winning servers and revolutionary in-server flash designs.

To Learn More, Visit Dell.com/accelerate Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

1 Based on Principled Technologies report ‘Simplifying systems management with Dell OpenManage on 13G Dell PowerEdge servers’, September 2014, commissioned by Dell, testing Dell’s 13th generation R730 with Enterprise-level Dell systems management. As compared to manual configuration.

2 Based on product specifications for Intel S3700 SATA SSD and Express Flash results from the Storage Networking Industry Association.

3 Based on Dell internal analysis August 2014 comparing SATA SSDs to Express Flash - PCIe-Gen3 x4 testing random reads. ©2015 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Dell, the Dell logo and PowerEdge are trademarks of Dell Inc. in the United States and other countries.

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