Channel Insights 2019

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CHANNEL INSIGHTS

POSSIBILITIES THROUGH OPPORTUNITIES

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SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER, 2019

WORLDS LARGEST IT & INNOVATION EXCELLENCE PROGRAMME

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CONTINENTS QATAR 22 OCT

COUNTRIES KUWAIT 03 NOV

BAHRAIN 06 NOV

3000+

C-LEVEL EXECUTIVES GHANA 11 NOV

OMAN 13 NOV

SINGAPORE 15 NOV

USA 17 OCT

CANADA 14 OCT

SOUTH AFRICA 8-9 OCT

UAE

09-10 DEC DOUBLETREE BY HILTON, RAK

KENYA 18 NOV

INDIA 21 NOV

PAKISTAN 23 NOV SAUDI 11 SEP

EGYPT 25 NOV

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CONTENT OCTOBER 2019

04 RHEINBRÃœCKE

12 TELEPHONY GROUP OF COMPANIES

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06 BULWARK TECHNOLOGIES

14 SPIRE SOLUTIONS

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INTERTEC SYSTEMS

VAD TECHNOLOGIES

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GUARDIAN ONE TECHNOLOGIES

FINESSE

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FVC

MISSAN IT SOLUTIONS BITS SECURE IT INFRASTRUCTURE

CONTEXT

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SCREENCHECK MIDDLE EAST

NETAPP

36 A10 NETWORKS

SOPHOS

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RHEINBRÜCKE

VETRI SELVAN

Managing Partner RheinBrücke

STRENGTHS What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

At RheinBrücke believe in helping our customers succeed in a challenging global business environment. All our products and services are aligned to helping the customer remain focused on their core business.

We have a unique four pillar approach with Solution Architects conceptualising the best-fit solution and staying engaged with our Business Consultants to realise it on the ground. This is complemented by globally-experienced Project Managers who ensure that End Users are fully engaged in process, supported by a Learning Management Solution helps them to seamlessly adopt the new technology.

The experience is made complete by our world class

Omni Channel Support model which accelerates the post-implementation adoption of IT Solutions by business users.

Our industry specific solutions in select verticals such as Manufacturing, Construction, Engineering Procurement & Contracting (EPC) including Furniture, Fitout & Interior Decorators, Oil & Gas, Distribution and Retail has led to a very high degree of repeat business and strong referenceability.

What did your company do best this year? What are your greatest triumphs?

We revisited our strategy to align with the emerging trends in the market across the region. To realise our strategy, we have a two-pronged execution plan.

The first one is Product led, and we have created a company RheinBrücke Technologies that focusses on innovation bringing digital transformation leveraging Cloud, Mobility, Analytics and AI with solutions in Strategic Sourcing and eProcurement, Expense Management and HR & Payroll

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Automation.

The second one is Market led - We have launched Epicor ERP on the Cloud for the Middle East market and are rolling out a distribution network to bring the offering to a broader set of customers. We have already identified 11 channel partners and are expanding our network further in the coming quarters.

These offerings enable businesses in the Middle East to innovate, reduce costs, and boost operational efficiencies and bring advantages like lower capital requirements, innovation, scalability and world-class security.

Which customers or market segments grew the most? What caused this success?

We are seeing increased traction in EPC & Construction, Oil & Gas and Manufacturing and this is a broad trend across the GCC. Our vertical solutions for Construction & EPC as well as Furniture, Fit-out and Interior decorators where we have several large customers, help in rapid roll-out of ERP, helping customers achieve an accelerated Return on Investment (ROI). Our Oil Field Services Mobile enablement solution significantly increases productivity, reduced inventory of spared and quicker turn-around time, this enhancing service levels and bottom-line. The manufacturing sector is now on an upward trajectory in the region and we see our customers from the industry growing exponentially as well. The coming year will see Manufacturers propel their digital transformation journeys.

We see the last mile enablement by our Surround IT Solutions using IOT/Edge Computing devices integrated Epicor on the Cloud offering a key differentiator for our customers in a competitive & challenging business environment.

WEAKNESSES How good is your organization towards one call resolution for customer service?

We provide SLA driven support services based on the ITIL framework with an Omni-channel Support Platform. This platform combines Chat Support, Toll-Free lines and a Customer Support Portal with Integrated email, ensuring the highest level of support for customers in their preferred medium.

We are now providing support to over 20 coun-

tries and are closing over 10,000 Support tickets Year-On-Year. We keep a close track of customer satisfaction with our C-SAT program and publish a NPS score and this helps our teams to enhance service levels consistently, thus making business users’ adoption of new systems smooth.

What were you company’s greatest disappointments or failures this year?

We continue to face challenges in on-boarding and retaining world-class talent to keep up the pace of our accelerated expansion plans and we are actively working on it.

What is you biggest resource limitation?

Our rapid scaling in the region is tied to our need for highly skilled resources. To address this issue, we are tying up with Sharjah University and Ajman University. This is closely tied to our support for the Emiratisation initiative.

We look forward to growing our great team at RheinBrücke.

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers’ wants that you can meet?

We are doing very well in the Middle East this year, we will be growing our presence in KSA. Additionally, through RheinBrücke Technologies we will bring our award-winning MeRLIN Strategic Sourcing and eProcurement solution which is already managing over USD 2 Billion worth of procurement globally as well as our Travel and Expense Management solution Xpensa to this market.

Through our Distribution network, we will nurture a collaborative ecosystem of partnerships across Middle East with ERP, IOT and POS partners that will enable digital transformation of enterprises across the GCC and strengthen the company’s long-term commitment in the region by delivering world class solutions.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

We see a significant increase in enterprise adoption of process automation technologies. This helps make the enterprises nimble, data-centric and quick to make decisions across geographies and businesses.

The region is investing in technologies like IOT, AI, Machine Learning and Cloud and to give it a competitive edge. We are offering a majority (over 60%) of our new customers a unique combination of Cloud, Edge Computing and Analytics solutions. This is completely aligned with the UAE’s 2021 vision of a knowledge-based economy, promoting innovation.

How has the media coverage impacted the growth of your company?

The media coverage we received with the launch of Epicor on the Cloud was overwhelming. It has created a very positive impact for us in the region and has strategically reinforced our place on the map as the Cloud ERP HUB for the region. Media support has resulted in a 20% increased hit rate to our web, mobile and social channels and we attribute a 15% increase the number of leads & opportunities to the great traction we got in the Media in the last one year.

THREATS What are your biggest concerns about your customers? How simple is your customer’s ease of departure?

We have an extremely flexible approach to post-implementation support and we have been noticing a number of new customers coming to our fold over years, because they prefer the superior experience they have with us. As part of their journey with us at RheinBrücke, we ensure that we provide Onmi-channel support to all our customers post the implementation project till the end-user is confident with the solution.

Who do you see as an emerging competition?

Several service providers from India in the USD 500-750 million revenue range, have increased their focus in the region. However, with our deep understanding of the region, significant local presence and vertical expertise, customers realize that the return on investment (ROI) tends to be higher with us, because our solutions address their business needs in a wholistic manner.

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BULWARK TECHNOLOGIES

JOSE THOMAS MENACHERRY

Managing Director, Bulwark Technologies What is your channel strategy for the Middle East region?

How do you cover this huge geography?

We have been empowering our channel community, which has significantly contributed to our growth & development as a value-added distributor in the region. Partners & customers can look forward to more of activities & enhancements in the current year. We offer regular channel enablement & enhancement session for partners to make them self-sufficient on the solution offerings to be able to manage

the opportunity end-to-end. We assist them in conducting product specific roadshows in coordination with vendors.

Generation and assignment of potential leads, along with Sales and technical enablement sessions on regular basis. We also conduct combined customer visits to address customer’s requirements. We offer 24/7 all-round support to partners in undertaking PoC, demos and implementation services whenever required.

We have country-wise dedicated sales resources for every country represented by us including in-country resources for some GCC countries.

07 What is the state of Channel Partner Network is the region? How have you managed to remain focused in a rapidly evolving region like the Middle East?

Bulwark, the cyber security specialized Value-Added Distributor, has been managing the dynamic changes and challenges in the information security space in the region by adopting adequate measures with a systematic & time-bound approach. The solutions portfolio we offer provide a unique value proposition to our partners & customers. With our constant endeavor on customer service & ROI, we have been able to effectively demonstrate a pragmatic approach that clients need to adopt while choosing the right solutions to strengthen the cyber security postures of their organizations. We are very much focused on our product portfolio and offerings to partners and customers in the region. This would enable in the optimum utilization of skills and resources within the organization and deliver world-class and customer centric approach to serve our partners and customers in the region.

With the channel partner market constantly evolving, what are the key elements that a partner should incorporate?

The emergence of the new digital era has caused several challenges to organizations.

There is a new pressure on prices & margins, with competition from unexpected places.

Stay focused on your area of expertise & work towards achievement of customer satisfaction & expectations. Digital technologies know no borders, and the customer’s demand for a unified experience is raising pressure on global companies to standardize offerings. All these above factors cause challenges to stay profitable in the digital era.

Now-a-days, vendors are demanding more from channel partners.

How challenging is it to keep up to their expectations?

Value Addition has been at the very core of Bulwark’s operations since its inception in 1999, making the company a pioneer in the domain of Information Security value distribution and has helped it and its channel grow at an accelerated rate. Bulwark has excelled in providing and

delivering value-added services, that include solutions pre-sales consulting, training, channel enablement programs, post-sales implementation and technical support, and adding value at every stage of product life cycle. Channel development and growth into focused territories across GCC, Middle East & India has been our constant endeavor. As part of this strategy, we execute comprehensive, action-oriented and established Channel programs which benefits our channel through deal registrations, better rebates, joint marketing activities, technical and sales enablement and promotes greater synergy among our vendors and partners and added value to end customers. With the above approach, our channel partners can offer wide range of products and solutions to their existing customers.

How are you adding value to your vendors whose products you represent?

Bulwark is a leading Value-Added Distributor in the Middle East region. Bulwark works closely with its channel ecosystem in the region to deliver solutions spanning across technology domains in Cyber Security, Networking, Storage among others. Bulwark serves the entire region with innovations from more than 20 technology vendors and provides value-added services such as pre-sales expertise to support partners, sales and technical trainings, marketing support, logistics and credit facilities to support and benefit its channel ecosystem and thus adding value to every stage of product life cycle.

How does effective partner programs help you grow your business?

Bulwark plans to keep its channel community up to date on the specialized cutting-edge technology products and solutions and simultaneously provide world-class service to its customers. It is our continuous and ongoing effort to invest on channel initiatives which include long term partner growth plans, partner certification and reward programs and channel enablement sessions. Our constant focus is on channel growth & development. We have been empowering our channel community, which has significantly contributed to our growth & development as a value-added distributor in the region.

If could you improve one thing in the channel

business, what would that be?

Channel growth & development would be a main area of focus for leading VAD Bulwark.

We have been empowering our channel community, which has significantly contributed to our growth & development as a value-added distributor in the region. We are offering certifications and value-added channel enablement sessions to motivate and upskill our partners to the wide array of our Technology offerings.

These partners could enjoy better margins and more leads assigned to them. Apart from these, there are partner incentive programs to motivate and encourage them to engage in suitable Technology certifications.

What product or technology should the channel watch out for this year?

There is a greater demand for emerging technologies as new frontiers of technologies like involving Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Social media, Cloud, Big Data, Mobile & Internet of Things are evolving in the market.

As a security focused value-added distributor in the region, we know the battle is continuous and ongoing as new security breaches / discoveries emerge every moment and we are prepared to meet such challenges with latest technologies.

We have recently added solution for Encryption Key generation / management and Robotic Process Automation.

How are you raising your brand across this region?

A value-added distributor complements the skills, knowledge and portfolio of a reselling company in such a manner that they can enhance their customer base, generate more valuable business opportunities and manage complex business opportunities exceeding its own skill and resource capabilities. The value and volume distribution channel’s success are clearly linked to the success of its partners.

Therefore, to help them achieve and even exceed their objectives, their teams work closely with them in the planning and development of their strategies. The support provided to the business, technical and marketing levels, illustrates the added value brought to the channel and thus raise our brand value as Value-Added Distributor in the region.

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INTERTEC SYSTEMS

NIKHIL KOTHARI,

Executive Director, Intertec System

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What is your channel strategy for the Middle East Region? How do you cover this huge geography?

Intertec is committed to its technology partnerships to improve the range and quality of the services that it provides to end-users. We also have long-standing partnerships with SI’s available in markets where we are not directly present or pre-existing before our presence for market reach.

In these partnerships, our ethics and credibility is very strong in business principles and hence we last the years together.

What is the state of Channel Partner Network in the region? How have you managed to remain focused in a rapidly evolving region like the Middle East?

Middle East is known for its agility and adoptability on technology space. We see new technology getting launched each day and Middle East embraces it within no time. Hence, we as an IT specialist have to maintain a very strong partner ecosystem to stay focused on the latest advancements in technology and ability to acquire the new skills via training and development programs. First hand feedback from customers, and learnings from tech analyst firms like Gartner also help us devise an effective and actionable channel plan.

With the channel partner market constantly evolving, what are the key elements that a partner should incorporate?

Channel partners can potentially fulfill needs along an organization’s value chain by enhancing the efficiency of access to new markets. Channel partners bring the vertical focus, local contacts and business know-how for their area that can take years to acquire – making them a great way to quickly make an impact for a new, or rapidly expanding, vendor. We believe commitment, values and strategic alignment are 3 most important elements for building a successful and long term channel partner.

What is the biggest challenge that the Middle East channel partners are facing?

Managing channel partners is not an easy busi-

ness. Especially when it comes to Middle East, there are several challenges that we face. First and foremost, maintaining price integrity always remains a challenge. Looking at the increasing number of partners in this region, it is quite obvious that price standardization doesn’t work for vendors. Every vendor has some preferred partners whom they want to support based on their experience in specific domain, technical capabilities and of course, their relationship.

Secondly, establishing goals and communicating these to your partners is an important objective.

When your goals are not aligned with your partners you are bound to see disappointing results.

Further, Stagnant Business Model plays crucial role in failure of your channel partner strategy. At some point, your partner management strategy may be working so well that you become complacent. In order to stay ahead of the competition, you need to focus not only on the demands of your existing partners, but the greater demands of the market in general. This is a constant challenge and requires flexibility in planning and support.

While a successful channel program today is something to strive for, it is no guarantee of future success. Make sure you are engaging your channel partners in best practices and looking for ways to improve in areas that may help you expand your partner network and increase market share.

Now-a-days, vendors are demanding more from channel partners. How challenging is it to keep up to their expectations?

It’s not easy to meet your vendor’s expectations.

They don’t just expect you to meet your revenue targets but also add value to their business. These days, we are seeing a number of partner engagement activities that are devised to engage and empower channel partners in various areas such as acquiring new skills, sales trainings, sponsored certifications, etc.

How are you adding value to your vendors whose products you represent?

Being one of the oldest IT services and solutions providers in Middle East, we bring a lot of domain experience and technical knowledge on the table for our vendors to learn from. On top of it, we have our timely customer feedback survey that covers the technological advancements in their specific industry. This feedback gets communicated to our vendors from time to time thus

enabling them to innovate, enhance an existing product, and plan their marketing and sales activities around it. We have also set up a review mechanism with every vendor to check if we are in sync and aligned as per our business plan.

How do effective partner programs help you grow your business?

An effective partner program helps you innovate by gaining the market knowledge, build sales expertise and customer relationships to successfully sell your products and/or services. It further boosts your Marketing and Lead Generation activities thus helping you get better reach and visibility in the market. Investing in trusted advisory services for your partners is a long term strategy that is best suited for established partner programs.

If you could improve one thing in the channel business, what would that be?

I would improve the focus on solutions and vertical businesses to add value, rather than products.

I would also hope to find strategic vendors that understand and support the investment in this direction.

What product or technology should the channel watch out for this year?

There’s a lot happening on AI, Process Automation, IoT and Cloud. We at Intertec are already focused on these solutions and signed a few projects but we believe it has got long way to go.

We are committed to build a Center of Excellence for each of these solutions and innovate.

How are you raising your brand across this region?

Intertec has taken various initiatives to build a stronger brand in the Middle East. We are now more focused on Digital Marketing. In addition, our leadership publishes blogs and articles to create a thought leadership in niche areas. Next, we are participating in Gitex 2019 to demonstrate our capabilities to the world on Digital, Dynamics and Cloud. We also keep participating in many third party and vendor hosted events to gain visibility in the market. Apart from this, the traditional ways of brand awareness and brand building (such as email campaigns, print ads, loyalty programs, etc.) still remains a part of our marketing plan.

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VAD TECHNOLOGIES STRENGTHS What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

VAD Technologies is redefining Value-Added Distribution in the Era of Disruptive Technologies. In this spirit we has successfully introduced disruptive Technologies to the regional market in the Areas of (1) High Performance Storage, (2) Converged and Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, (3) AI and Smart featured Physical Security and (4) CyberSecurity. All Areas supported with Cloud-based Solutions to offer Partners a smooth transition into the “Everything-as-a-Service” Era. Especially the Area of High Performance Storage has performed exceptionally well, as Customers across the region are modernizing their Data Centers and prepare for ever growing Data growth.

MARIO M. VELJOVIC

General Manager, VAD Technologies

Where is your customer growth coming from? Is it from the referrals or a particular sector like healthcare or BFSI? VAD Technologies’ exponential growth over the recent years is coming from a large number of Key System Integrators, VARs, Solutions Providers and MSPs across the wider GCC Region, serving all Industry verticals.

Over the Years we have built an effective and focused Lead & Demand Generation Program to support our Partners and allow them to directly participate.

We are taking pride in this unique Account Mapping Methodology, which allows us to proactively recruit key Partners in the region to allow our Vendors an efficient and effective reach into strategic Customers.

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For us it’s all about - Partners 1st!

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry? Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

VAD Technologies’ Vision is to introduced disruptive Technologies to the regional market, as such we continuously scouting Vendors that are driven by innovation. Our Innovative Product & Solutions Portfolio currently covers appr. 20 Technology Leaders and a significant number of Vendor Alliances to holistically address the Enterprise Solutions needs of our Partners’ customers. We have achieved the highest Number of Certifications with key Vendors and been appointed as exclusive Authorised Service Provider for some.

What did your company do best this year? What are your greatest triumphs?

Despite an overall Challenging ICT Distribution Landscape and ongoing consolidation for the ICT Distribution, VAD Technologies has grown significantly over the recent past and established themselves as a Key Solutions Distributor. We are taking pride in working with all major Key System Integrators, VARs and Solutions Provider in the wider GCC Region.

WEAKNESS Where do your customers think you need to improve – advanced solutions, locations or competitive prices?

VAD Technologies has made major investments to grow the wider GCC Market and in particular the Business in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The Team is have more frequent travel to Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, and we have opened our legal Entity in Riyadh.

What were you company’s greatest disappointments or failures this year?

VAD Technologies has made major changes to its Physical Security Division. For too long we have been working with traditional CCTV Installers and ELV Partners, instead of reallocating our resources and efforts to focus on making the CCTV Install-base Smarter using AI and Smart Analytics. We already see the number of opportunities showing healthy growth again.

What is you biggest resource limitation?

VAD Technologies has built an effective and focused Lead & Demand Generation Program, which continuous to require strong resources with exceptional market knowledge and contacts.

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

For VAD Technologies’ scouting new Vendors that are driven by innovation is an ongoing process and will never stop. It’s us who need to be faster than all others and be the first to introduce new Technologies to our Partners and excite them.

What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

The sky is the Limit! For VAD Technologies’ it’s still important to stay focused and allocate the right resources to ensure exploration of a Technologies’ full potential.

Ultimately, we are still running a Business that needs to ensure the expected returns to its Shareholders.

How has the media coverage impacted the growth of your company?

Media plays an important role to brand our Business and attract Vendors and Partners.

THREATS

What are your biggest concerns about your customers? How simple is your customer’s ease of departure?

We are concerned about some Partners still not making the right moves to stay relevant in the future. Partners continue pushing boxes, rather than building and investing in their own IP (Intellectual Property) to add true value to their Customers.

Who do you see as an emerging competition?

We are living in a time of disruption and as such, we see even Distribution in its pure form being disrupted. We see in some Markets “Marketing Agencies” with a strong expertise in Demand & Lead Generation entering the Distribution Business.

What are the major changes taking place in your industry that can threaten your organization?

The ongoing Cloudification and along with that new Go-To-Markets with a more direct approach is challenging the Value Added Distribution Business and we need to continue to innovate our own Go-To-Market, finding new ways to add value and build new Alliances beyond the traditional ICT Business.

GENERAL INFORMATION How frequently do you conduct partner programs?

This is an ongoing exercise and depends on our Vendors, but we had 6 Programs running this year so far.

What are the new products/solutions added to your portfolio this year?

We will probably strengthen our High Performance Storage, AI and Smart featured Physical Security and CyberSecurity Portfolio

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TELEPHONY GROUP OF COMPANIES

SHEFIQ ABDULLA,

COO, Telephony Group of Companies

STRENGTHS What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

As one of the most respected names in the industry,

in terms of innovation and quality, Telephony Communications Technology sets the bench mark for excellence. We believe that consumer choice is key and we provide solutions to optimize our clients requirements and experience. Our expertise allow us to cater to a diverse category of verticals and clients. We believe that every solution or architecture we prove should reflect our intrinsic learning, both in breadth and scope

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What is your most reliable source of financial growth?

We are in our 16th year since inception and we believe our loyal customer base couple with exceptional services is and will be our most reliable source of growth. Our presence across the MENA region has helped us provide consolidated services to our clients and also replicate success from various regions. Dubai being a regional hub for Information Technology has played a key role in our growth and we have been able to ride on the success of the UAE.

Where do you excel so far as your employees are concerned? Is it your workforce development program or your organization culture?

By embracing three core principles - modernization, expansion and employer of choice - our vision and mission is constantly being strengthened, thanks to team commitment, management support and the can-do spirit that characterizes Telephony in the region today. Our team comprises of business architects and solution evangelists that put their heart to the job. Our workforce development program is a reflection of our organizations culture.

We can proudly say that our man power and succession planning strategies clearly emancipate our success.

OPPORTUNITIES What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

Telephony spend considerable time and invests in research and development. Growth in the IoT section has been considerable in the past few years and we are seeing a lot of traction in that segment. Our investment in IoT has given us considerable advantage in the market with Telephony being awarded exclusive projects from governmental agencies.

What are the technological trends that

are creating opportunities for you?

Information Assurance and Information security is still a primary focus in the region. We have very niche solutions to cater to the requirements of clients. We have been very successful at securing the infrastructure for a majority of our large and esteemed clients, both governmental and nongovernmental. The market for IoT along with the introduction of 5G into the region is an exciting time. We have indigenous (Made in UAE) products ready for the market, lead by almost a decade of research in these platforms.

How has the media coverage impacted the growth of your company?

The media has had a very profound positive impact on our growth. We have almost always shared the limelight with our key clients and partners. The media has always been a very enriching platform for us at telephony.

THREATS What are your biggest concerns about your customers? How simple is your customer’s ease of departure?

The current global market condition fueled by instability in oil prices has had profound impacts and the UAE is no exception. This is the order of the day and these are challenging times for the entire industry.

Having said that, the dynamic leadership that we have seen in the UAE, has cushioned the impact. The direct influence of UAE’s leadership on regulatory bodies and policy makers should be applauded. Most of our major clients in this region are doing well in there business, enjoying a sustainable year on year growth. Our churn ratio has not been majorly impacted and we are happy to see it this way.

Who do you see as an emerging competition?

The emergence of cloud platform has made it a lot easier for primary vendors to reach out to the end consumer and provision their services directly, eliminating the middle man has been one of the trends in the recent past. On the bright side, the primary vendor has created an interface

to proliferate their products and services into the SMB market. But this has reduced the dependence on System Integrators and also affected our ability to provide these services to the SMB segment. We are also seeing that this model is being adopted by many of our distributors, but there will always remain a gap of providing the value-added services and integration capabilities.

GENERAL INFORMATION How frequently do you conduct partner programs?

Partner programs are part of our regular operations. We owe it to our partners and clients to conduct regular programs, primarily to educate and create forms and opportunities for the exchange of ideas. We have regular monthly engagements in this regard. The partner ecosystem in the UAE is highly competitive and regularly challenged to bring in innovative products and optimized solutions.

What are the new products/solutions added to your portfolio this year?

We have a new generation of IoT products that are 5G ready and features robust quick deployment into existing infrastructure. In this way we protect the existing investment of the customer.

We also concentrate on bring the next generation security solutions into the region. We have recently partnered with leading security solution vendors to provision products that are unique and sustainable. We have also introduced few products into the market that target the public infrastructure domain and those which have viable sustainable impacts.

What is the number of customers acquiring this year? Please share the names (Optional) We experienced almost a 50% growth in customer acquisition compared to last year. We credit this mainly to our dedication to service, technical expertise and unique offerings that we provide in the UAE and the neighboring countries. We have been able to clearly address customer pain points and provide cost optimized solutions that are sustainable.

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SPIRE SOLUTIONS

our strategic partnership program in phases with a handful of strategic partners in each of our target markets. Partners in this program are fully committed to succeeding together and growing our respective businesses.

Furthermore, our on-the-ground sales and technical resources in key markets including UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait help acquire and effectively manage partners within their markets.

What is the state of Channel Partner Network in the region? How have you managed to remain focused in a rapidly evolving region like the Middle East?

NAVEEN BHARADWAJ

Director, Strategic Partnerships & Projects Spire Solutions What is your channel strategy for the Middle East region? How do you cover this huge geography?

Our channel strategy is two-fold with fundamental goals of gaining adequate market coverage and ensuring targets are being met or exceeded year on year. The strategy leverages opportunistic

partners for breadth and nurtures strategic partners for depth.

At the product level, a bespoke channel is built across each Middle East country and managed by our team of experienced Regional Product Managers for each vendor in our portfolio. This is an ongoing exercise.

At the organization level, we started launching

We transact with over 450 channel partners across the Middle East and the number is growing. However, roughly only 10% of those partners are strategic to us and are part of our strategic partnership program already launched in our Tier 1 markets and being launched in our Tier 2 markets within the next quarter.

From a vendor’s perspective, we have always been and will continue to be 100% focused on cyber security products, solutions and services.

We are known for proactively solving emerging cyber security challenges by introducing business--enabling vendors to our region.

From a reseller’s perspective, we share qualified opportunities, provide resources, co-drive effective market development and offer unparalleled commitment. So, we are their focused and preferred partner.

Most importantly, our direct touch advisory engine keeps our 750+ customers abreast of the latest developments in the cyber security space and helps prepare and execute their cyber security roadmap.

With the channel partner market constantly

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evolving, what are the key elements that a partner should incorporate?

Incorporating the 4Ps - in-demand Products, qualified People, practical Processes and dynamic Profitability options - are crucial for any channel partner to evolve, differentiate and stay ahead of their competition.

To elaborate, channel partners need to: l Feel the pulse of the market and its changing dynamics frequently to know what products to position proactively to be differentiated; l Invest frequently into qualified sales and technical resources to increase market outreach and projects’ success; l Devise proactive go to market strategies built on a selection of vendors that are aligned to the regional needs/demands; l Include or increase professional services and managed services capabilities to help achieve higher profit margins.

What are the biggest challenges that the Middle East channel partners are facing?

Delayed payments from customers lead to delayed payments to vendors/distributors thereby causing a bottleneck in the financial relationship; l Increased competition on every opportunity due to the large number of vendors and resellers operating in a market with limited number of customers/prospects; l Many existing and new vendors are trying to tap into the same pool of resellers thereby diluting or convoluting their focus; l Dependency on commoditized technologies is decreasing profitability; l It’s hard for many to change the organizational mindset from being stuck in a traditional capex resale model to evolving into cloud, opex and subscription models; l Lack of investment into value added services / resources is restricting them to primarily depend on fulfilment with very thin margins. l

Now-a-days, vendors are demanding more from channel partners. How challenging is it to keep up to their expectations?

Vendors’ primary expectation from partners is to move from a dependent fulfilment model to a proactive opportunity creation and revenue generation model.

Partners focused on being value-added

resellers (VARs) and covering the 4Ps highlighted earlier don’t find this expectation demanding or challenging. In most cases they are preferred partners to vendors.

However, partners who are stuck in a fulfilment mindset with commodity products will find it difficult to match vendors’ expectations as they are unwilling or slow to change their approach and mindset.

As a value-added distributor, we balance the expectations of our vendors and partners in an unbiased fashion to ensure both parties are delivering on their parts of the bargain respectively.

How are you adding value to your vendors whose products you represent?

As a Disruptive Distributor, our vendors embrace us as an extension of their core team in regions/ countries they need access to, as opposed to a traditional box-moving distributor. This key differentiator coupled with our enduser advisory role enables deeper penetration into markets/customers and the tag of ‘preferred security partner’ makes us a partner of choice for our vendors.

To ensure ultimate value to our vendors, we invest regularly in highly qualified teams covering a gamut of necessary functions - product management, channel, marketing, account management, pre-sales, post sales and technical support.

How do effective partner programs help you grow your business?

Partner programs are instrumental in increasing our market outreach and generating higher revenue. We fully understand and appreciate that partners are integral to scale our business across our target markets and we cannot do it alone.

We use our strategic partnership program to encourage partners’ commitment, devise joint business plans that involve integration of teams with a one-team working model and achieve incremental value creation and faster business growth.

Our program proactively covers the 4 most important things most partners expect: l Experienced technical resources from the vendor or distributor during the initial days; l Product training and technical enablement for the partner’s resources to help build their internal capacity; l Flexible prices and terms along with rebates at the organization level or incentives at the sales

team level. l Passing of qualified customer opportunities for the technologies they choose to align with

If could you improve one thing in the channel business, what would that be?

Commitment. Getting partners to formulate or agree to business plans around a vendor is very difficult as many partners are opportunistic in nature or prefer being a fulfilment partner without focus.

Getting the partners to commit to business plans and execute it effectively allows for a better business relationships, enabling the partners to position focused technologies better, gain product expertise, enhance vendor relationships and ultimately lead to greater revenue and profitability.

Hence our strategic partnership program focuses on driving such commitment from partners.

What products or technologies should the channel watch out for this year?

Digital transformation and emerging technologies such as internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), blockchain and fintech have become key drivers of the regional economy. Governments and the private sector are investing heavily in these areas.

Securing these areas and ensuring availability of services enabled by them will be of paramount importance.

Therefore, from a security perspective, nextgen security operations, proactive threat hunting, AI and ML powered security, IoT security and ICS security are amongst those to watch out for.

How are you raising your brand across this region?

Marketing is the lifeblood of our business, so we invest heavily in end to end marketing ranging from email campaigns and newsletters to events and roadshows, managed by our experienced marketing team.

A key driver of raising our brand is our focus on providing high level and frequent thought leadership via various channels as well as launching and leading unique experiential training in the region.

16

GUARDIAN ONE TECHNOLOGIES

ASHITH P, CEO, Guardian One Technologies

17

What is you channel strategy for the Middle East region? How do you cover this huge geography?

Guardian One Technologies DMCC has come a long way in Channel Strategy segment. We have transformed from a Customer to a Service Provider in a period of 6 months, which is commendable.

Even though we are new to the market, being in the customer side in the UAE for decades, has helped us to understand the customer mindset and needs. We have always tried to provide tailor made product options to our customers. As channel partners we concentrate on providing 360 degree solutions to our customers which will cover the organizations complete IT requirements which includes On-Premise infrastructure, CLOUD services, Business Applications, Security and Forensic solutions ERP Systems, Financial Products, ELV solutions Storage etc.

What is the state of Channel Partner Network is the region? How have you managed to remain focused in a rapidly evolving region like the Middle East?

Right now the market is facing a huge drop in the demand when it comes to product and services.

Many partners are losing their loyal customers.

We at Guardian One Technologies, focus on providing services to the BFSI, Healthcare, Education, Logistics and the F&B sectors and we have been able to create a standard demand within our customers.

Our motto is to provide: l In-a-Box solution: customers should be able to customize the services according to their needs. There is always an option to CUT what is irrelevant and ADD what is required l Capex to Opex Model: We don’t want any business to have operating issues because they don’t have enough cash flow to spend on IT on one occasion. We provide, with the help of our financial partners, leasing options which is a huge relief for any entities.

With the channel partner market constantly evolving, what are the key

elements that a partner should incorporate?

A partner should be flexible as per the needs of the customer rather than being rigid. We should be able to provide what customer need, not what we can provide.

Also, the partner should have complete portfolio of system integration which will help the customer to have a one stop solution when it comes to their IT requirements.

What is the biggest challenge that the Middle East channel partners are facing?

One of the biggest challenges is to understand the diverse and constantly changing customer expectations. Since customers can be diverse by gender, race, age, generation, and so on, it is very critical to speak to your customers to understand their specific problems.

Also, consistency is probably the most difficult challenge to achieve. Great customer service must be delivered to all customers, across all business channels, 24/7.

And, Channel Partners should be able to provided flexibilities to the customers when it comes to payment terms and this should be applicable to the vendors as well.

Sometimes Channel partners don’t receive the support that they expect from the Manufactures and the vendors that they expect.

Now-a-days, vendors are demanding more from channel partners. How challenging is it to keep up to their expectations?

Vendors always expect more sales from the channel partners. Sometimes it is challenging as there will be targets and it’s not always necessary that the targets are achieved. Obviously, the best way to handle the challenge is to generate more sales. Also, having a better relationship with the vendor will help.

How are you adding value to your vendors whose products you represent?

We at Guardian One Technologies we always try to promote Vendor’s name along with their

products.

Also, channel partner-vendor relationship provides an opportunity to promote certain products or services which we believe is a value adds. Also as channel partners, we have direct contact with the customers, which help us to closely analyze and understand the exact requirements of the customers. We are able to give timely feedback and suggestions to our vendors, which helps them to customize their solutions exactly as per customer requirements.

How does effective partner programs help you grow your business?

Partner programs help to grow trust among the customers and potential future collaborators.

It also helps to expand the customer base.

It helps to create customer centric sales processes.

It also helps you to get a cutting edge against your competitors as well.

If could you improve one thing in the channel business, what would that be?

Quality of product and services. Customers should not be mislead with false promises and numbers. There should always be transparency in the business.

What product or technology should the channel watch out for this year?

Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security and Virtual Reality, Block chain are some of the technologies that will create an impact in 2019.

How are you raising your brand across this region?

We are mainly concentrating on Cloud Solutions and Security & Forensics. Our aim is to provide quality products and services to all our customers.

Starting with the UAE, we are planning to expand across Muscat, Bahrain & Saudi. Also, next year we are planning to cover the markets of Kuwait, Qatar and APAC region.

18 the best professionals on-board to fulfill client’s requirements.

FINESSE

Now-a-days, vendors are demanding more from channel partners. How challenging is it to keep up to their expectations?

The real deal here is to harness a business relationship. Keeping in mind the market scenario in a region, vendors will also need to behave accordingly. Fortunately, Finesse till now have never failed to fulfill its partner demands. Finesse specializes in industry verticals as well as bringing in the best of breed solutions, it is a win-win for everyone here. We have a command over RPA, Blockchain, BI & Analytics, CRM, Treasury Management, CPM and many more technology solutions. Apart from this, when it comes to industry verticals, Finesse leads the market with more than 80% banks as our clients in the region.

How are you adding value to your vendors whose products you represent?

SUNIL PAUL Co-Founder, Finesse

What is your channel strategy for the Middle East region? How do you cover this huge geography?

Finesse has worked to maintain its comprehensive channel strategy to ensure business growth at all stages and market position. We tend to enhance our terms with channels partners at every point. As partners, we guarantee trained consultants through online trainings and certifications. To be the best, it mandatory to be an influencer when it comes to channel strategy. We have a professional team, one dedicated to each region or a technology, who covers the region thoroughly and maintain customer relationships.

With the channel partner market constantly evolving, what are the key elements that a partner

should incorporate?

It’s imperative for every organization to have a strong relationship with its partners to run position itself as a business leader amidst the competitors. For Finesse, it’s important to align business with the partner to leverage upon the customer base, technical resources and to promote the solutions with commitment. It is essential to have a win-win situation for both of us. From training for consultants and sales team to incentives on deals, it’s important for both to provide some privilege levels.

What is the biggest challenge that the Middle East channel partners are facing?

MENA region is always adopting new technologies, market liquidity and tech infrastructure.

Observing this, every organization, at some point, faces challenges of cultural barriers, corporate governance and talent shortage. With improvising technology, it’d essential for us to get

Value addition plays an important role to run the business in a competitive market, indeed.

Finesse provides a high level of expertise and professionalism. We ensure that high service level is a maintain pre and post the technology implementation. Companies tend to get at ease after implementation process finishes, whereas, we believe that technology needs a regular boost to keep up the pace with the market. Speed of delivery also matters for every customer. It is imperative to delegate at least one dedicated technical resource responsible for every customer.

Some small steps taken in business can add a lot of value to the organization, vendor as well as the solution together.

What product or technology should the channel watch out for this year?

Disruptive technologies can determine the way industries work sometimes. Artificial intelligence, treasury management, Blockchain, AI- based chatbot and RPA are the technologies we will be looking forward to this year. Blockchain comes up as a fundamental part of business processes these days. It is enabling transactional transparency across different business verticals worldwide. Whereas RPA innovations continue to get breakthroughs, and artificial intelligence opens a whole new array with large amount of data to learn from involving machine learning.

Swing

Local

-

Connect

Global

2019-20 AUSTRALIA AZERBAIJAN BAHRAIN BOTSWANA CANADA CHINA EGYPT FRANCE GERMANY GHANA

INDIA INDONESIA IRELAND ITALY KAZAKHSTAN KENYA MADAGASCAR MALAYSIA MAURITIUS NEW ZEALAND

40

PARTICIPATING COUNTRIES

NEPAL NIGERIA OMAN PAKISTAN PORTUGAL RWANDA RUSSIA SAUDI ARABIA SCOTLAND SINGAPORE

SRI LANKA SPAIN SOUTH AFRICA SWITZERLAND THAILAND TURKEY UAE UNITED KINGDOM US ZIMBABWE

60 QUALIFYING ROUNDS

4500 C-LEVEL EXECUTIVES

FOR MORE VISIT: www.gecopen.com CONTACT: ronak@gecmediagroup.com, vineet@gecmediagroup.com, bharat@gecmediagroup.com

20 and results-driven. FVC services works alongside other parts of the business to ensure we deliver the best ROI for our customers and partners alike.

FVC

What are your biggest challenges with the employees? Do you have particularly high turnover in certain departments or a negative perception of the organizational culture?

STRENGTHS What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

We are a leading value added distributor with more than 16 years of cross-domain expertise.

We have excelled in providing our partner community with the support and solutions in the areas enterprise computing: unified communications, unified collaboration, audio-visual, and IT infrastructure and security. We’ve established our leadership in AV and UCC solutions and have a comprehensive portfolio of vendors that complement each other.

Where is your growth coming from? Is it from the referrals or a particular sector like healthcare or BFSI? Our growth comes from across verticals, especially Education, Hospitality, Retail, BFSI, Public Sector, and healthcare.

Do you have a strong partner base?

With more than 100 passionate team members, our strength, experience and expertise is drawn from 350 world class partners spanning across 50+ countries supporting 300+ enterprise customers. We continue to work towards strengthening our channel community across the region.

Where do you excel so far as your employees are concerned? Is it your workforce development program or your organization culture?

Our employees are the core strength of FVC. We encourage open organizational culture where we welcome feedback and open discussion from our employees. It helps us keep the workplace positive and encourage our employees at every

K.S PARAG

Managing Director, FVC

level to excel in their day-to-day activities.

What did your company do best this year? What are your greatest triumphs?

From a business perspective, we strategically expanded our portfolio and signed a number of new vendors including Avaya, Virsec, and Radware. We also refurbished our Innovation Centre with the latest solutions from our vendors to give partners and customers an environment to experience the best-of-breed solutions, facilitate knowledge exchange, and conduct workshops and trainings. In addition, the industry recognition we’ve achieved as a result of our initiatives emphasizes our commitment to the partner community.

Which customers or market segments grew the most? What caused this success?

FVC has witnessed a growth especially in the hospitality, education, public sector, as well as SMB segments.

WEAKNESS How good is your organization towards one call resolution for customer service?

FVC Services provides a range of mission-critical services, including Vendor Agnostic Support, Professional & Managed Services and Exclusive Concierge Services that are dependable, practical

FVC has a history of having some of the longest serving employees and we pride ourselves in being able to motivate and retain talent.

OPPORTUNITIES What are the technological trends that are creating opportunities for you?

We are seeing cloud adoption and digital transformation projects as opportunities for growth.

While cloud adoption was much bigger and evident in the private sectors, over the past two years, governments and semi-governments have been understanding and realizing the value of the cloud. Emphasis towards security is much bigger in government and semi government sectors.

How has the media coverage impacted the growth of your company?

Media coverage has played an important role in helping FVC establish our presence and position among industry players. It has given us a voice to communicate with and update our stakeholders are every level.

Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

The UAE and Saudi Arabia are two key markets that display high growth opportunities owing to increased investment into infrastructure development, modernizing business practices, and adoption of emerging technologies like AI and Robotics to drive innovation. Markets like Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria are promising high growth markets owing to businesses opening up to deploying technology to enable better business processes and to have an efficient infrastructure be on par with the rest of the region.

21

MISSAN IT SOLUTIONS

Where do your customers think you need to improve – advanced solutions, locations or competitive prices?

Locations – they want us to be present all across GCC

STRENGTHS

How good is your organization towards one call resolution for customer service?

What are the solutions or qualities that separate you from your competition? In what

We are on target for this. All our SLA’s are designed to provide immediate solutions as clients are no longer ready to wait. We are further developing our back office to even better what we are doing currently.

areas does your organization perform exceptionally?

Our system of providing MSP services is unique as we have invested time, money and energy into this.

We have a very strong training system for our staff as well as client to ensure our services never fail or businesses never get affected Everything we do has a best practise system, and all involved got to follow it without a doubt.

What is your most reliable source of financial growth? l l l

MSP Services IT Security business Enterprise Content management division

Where is your customer growth coming from? Is it from the referrals or a particular sector like healthcare or BFSI? Referrals – our biggest source

With regards to your internal strengths, are you the first to innovate products in your industry? Do you have a strong customer base or partner base?

Partner Base – In today’s time, if you don’t do it fast, you are out very soon. Your history is irrelevant

Where do you excel so far as your employees are concerned? Is it your workforce development program or your organization culture?

What are your biggest challenges with the employees? Do you have particularly high

A. AMIR MOHAMMED General Manager, Missan IT Solutions Workforce development program – We continue to invest in this area heavily.

turnover in certain departments or a negative perception of the organizational culture?

Mindset of current generation. Most youths are looking for settled jobs rather than job value which is why they don’t join SME’s or even if they do, they are looking to make a move soon.

What were you company’s greatest disappointments or failures this year?

We wanted to open our office in GCC by July but failed due to shortage of resources.

What is you biggest resource limitation?

What did your company do best this year? What are your greatest triumphs?

OPPORTUNITIES

We have shown SME’s how digital transformation is changing way business is done, its not just for enterprises. We have done road shows and have helped SME’s save 30% in their workforce cost by digital transformation.

What are your plans with regards to starting a new product line or expanding to a new

Which customers or market segments grew the most? What caused this success?

geographical area? What are the new customers wants that you can meet?

We are expanding into GCC. With our expertise & products, we can provide the much-needed solutions for SME’s to sustain and grow in these technology disruption eras.

SME – DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION projects. As markets are not doing great SME’s are taking the path of digital transformation path faster than ever.

WEAKNESS

Skilled workers.

Which countries in the Middle East and Africa do you see high growth opportunities?

KSA, Libya & Egypt.

23

BITS SECURE IT

INFRASTRUCTURE

MOHANBABU MURUGESAN,

Business Head Midde East, BITS Secure IT Infrastructure

B

its Secure IT has worldwide partnerships with more than 100 IT firms in 5 countries including the United States, Middle East, and Asia, we have attained rich knowledge, technology and maintenance know-how on an extensive range of products covering from the hardware and middleware to applications.

By utilizing our worldwide network, we are able to delicately catch the latest IT trends and progress the capability to select and operate optimal technologies and products along with the know-how for rapidly delivering suitable support.

By merging the strengths of vendor partners with Bits’ industry knowledge and system integration expertise, we are talented to offer high added value systems utilizing modern technologies and

products in rapid turnaround time.

Our one-stop outsourcing services deliver complete support for all facets of the IT life cycle containing robust facilities along with consulting, system integration, system operation, equipment procurement, and system maintenance based on the latest technologies. Bits have a strong reputation in framework activity in multivendor situations from centralized computer to customer server conditions. We assign 2 system engineers to every client, and they will bolster your framework and react to your solicitations from the daily administration starts. In addition to acting as the contact point for dealing with the status of administration activity, they comprehend the client’s organizations and requirements and tasks and give the best answers for settling the issues

looked in your business at the time.

Our solutions are operated to confirm harmony between individuals/firms, technology, and the environment. Especially 3CX Clients have helped many businesses attain significant advantages in a cost-effective and advanced way.

The following is a determination of 3CX client tributes that outline the experience and bits of knowledge of a portion of our customers and accomplices, featuring how 3CX PBX has effectively helped them to meet their communication needs. The expanded efficiency in workers has been recognizable, especially with regards to web conferencing and the joining with the custom CRM. The staff has had the option to remain portable and work out and about, regardless of where they end up. Most select to have their calls sent to their mobile phones, particularly when telecommuting. In terms of expanded portability and profitability, the opportunity to pick a SIP Trunk that best suits their needs, and a voice message that really works all packaged together have made for a glad group and proceeded with cheerful clients. ARUBA Aruba highlights Airwave for in general system observing and permeability, and ClearPass for system access control and profiling of gadgets and clients to confirm and enable access to explicit assets dependent on jobs and approaches. Aruba Controllers play out all the control plane capacities and complete every one of the information sending capacities, giving full control and adaptability to make an element rich and secure branch. All wired and remote customers are profiled and validated and put in a fitting VLAN dependent on the jobs characterized and overseen by ClearPass. Aruba Access Switches give the POE-empowered availability to all gadgets, including for Aruba controller-based and Instant APS and Remote APs the same. All clients and gadgets, wired and remote, get a job in the controller to control get to and directing.

ClearPass deals with a different visitor and staff arrange for web access, just as the strategy-driven corporate system with a thorough confirmation set up. There is a different system for IoT-based gadgets, including mechanized scales, development apparatuses and utilities and sensors which are utilized progressively in the development space. For Straightforward and secure system One of the key advantages of Aruba is the Dynamic Segmentation of the system and the capacity to give Colorless Ports. This implies any gadgets or clients can be associated with any port and be profiled and confirmed and be given every one of the assets they need. This offers consistent access to corporate assets for staff and to shared printers, meeting room assets or on location web access for contractual workers or providers.

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CONTEXT

TIM DAVIES

Country Manager - Middle East CONTEXT THE OVERALL GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY We live in exciting times for the IT industry There is a huge and sustained interest in digital transformation across the globe; large companies, especially, are aware that they must invest in this area if they are to be competitive in the future.

We are seeing the emergence of new technologies with exponential growth opportunities such as IoT, security, networking, and blockchain. The chip manufacturer Arm forecasts that by 2035 there will be one trillion connected computers, and Bain Capital estimates that spending on IoT will grow to $520bn by 2021. This is an industry which, like the seafaring explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, is about to open up vast new horizons of expansion.

CONTEXT tracks the growth in sales of IT categories in the channel. We see that the enablers for Industry 4.0, and digital transformation drive the product categories with the highest growth.

For example, hyperconverged systems are up 59% YOY. As part of the IoT sector, smart home and

ADAM SIMON

Global Managing Director

office products have continued their expansion with 75% YoY growth.

In our panel, we see that IT consistently outperforms GDP growth, though it has slowed in the last three quarters – in Q4 2018 it was higher by 7.1% on average, in Q1 2019 4.2% and in Q2 3.4%.

In two countries – UK and France – panel growth was below GDP in Q2 2019.

There is no shortage of investment capital for traditional IT and for a plethora of start-ups all over the world. Big investment announcements remind us of the vibrancy of the technology industry. In April, Samsung Electronics announced “Semiconductor Vision 2030”: an investment in the system semiconductor industry of $114 billion by 2030. It aims to retake a lead in the semiconductor industry against other manufacturers such as Intel and Texas Instruments.

After suffering product shortages from September 2018 due to unforecast demand, in January Intel announced its intention to spend $11 billion on a new manufacturing facility in Israel.

One of the major uncertainties in investment

is the disruption caused by the China-US trade war. This has impacted, for example, the future of Huawei’s business in the US, Europe, and other countries dependent on US influence and power. Recent events with Huawei looking to sell off its 5G business gives hope that compromise solutions will be found.

Lastly, we are living in the period of 5G launches and May/June 2019 were remarkable months for this: • Deployment in South Korea has moved at great speed since the official launch of its 5G network on 3 April. According to the Yonhap news agency, the country reached the milestone of one million 5G subscribers in June 2019. Korea Telecom VP Lee Pil-jae has said that he expects more than three million South Korean mobile customers to switch to 5G by end of 2019.

• On 30 May 2019, EE (a mobile network owned by BT) launched 5G services in six cities in the UK. At the same time Vodafone launched commercial 5G services in two countries, Italy and Spain. They are deploying

25

equipment from Nokia and Huawei in five Italian cities. The launch of its commercial network in 15 Spanish cities was scheduled for 15 June.

• In the same week, Etisalat launched 5G service and smartphones in UAE. The initial effect will be to enhance mobile broadband and 5G wireless and it will also impact government smart-city initiatives.

No-one expects the roll-out of 5G to be fast or easy – the technology is such that significantly more masts will need to be erected to ensure the coverage. But this will be a game changer in terms of the speed of upload and download of data and will reinforce in coming years the development of the IT industry.

MARKET INTELLIGENCE REPORT AND KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS OF THE RESPECTIVE VERTICALS The year is progressing well with sustained growth, though the six-monthly trend analysis is showing a decline in the rate of growth from 7.5% in January to 4.3% in July. A decline in June which was concerning was made up for in July, and we are waiting to see how Q3 turns out.

Consumer technology – highs and lows The tech industry is in two parts - consumer and B2B, and we cover both in this overview. It is

important, even if your focus is on B2B, to keep an eye on the consumer tech industry. l In the 7 months to 31st July 2019, the top four growth areas (growing at above 10% yearon-year) in the CONTEXT panel (covering all Europe, Russia and Turkey) were all consumer (with wireless networking, connectivity and computing accessories a mix) l These areas start from a low base, therefore it is easier to grow in % terms. In relative size, the core areas of mobility, printing, servers, software, displays and other hardware dwarf the fastgrowing areas. Nevertheless, these growth areas are vital to monitor closely, as in the categories and products are contained the future of the technology industry. l Keeping an eye of the consumer industry is important for other reasons l Crossover of technology from consumer to business – so, for example, smart home growth is being powered by consumers purchasing voice control devices such as Google Home and Amazon Echo, while at the same time B2B applications for these devices are also being invented l There is a blur between consumer and B2B products with “Bring your own device”, though this trend has been impacted by the increased awareness of the needs of corporate IT security l Expertise in areas such as networking are crossing over from B2B to consumer. So for

Panel includes: UKI, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Merged countries, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Portugal, Finland, Norway, Baltics, Slovakia, Russia, Turkey, Brazil & Argentina

26

example the supply demand curve of wi-fi mesh systems shows how consumers are now adopting the new technology On the other hand, other areas of consumer technology are faring less well, with long-term decline in the number of PC’s being sold, downward pressure on consumables and even smartphones reaching a plateau in 2017.

All eyes on B2B technology The sky’s the limit for B2B. We are at an inflection point where growth in the use of IT to effect business change is lifting off with digital

transformation, where CIO’s are becoming critical business partners instead of functional providers of technology.

As an illustration of factors driving healthy growth in the IT industry, here are 4 fast growing sectors l Desktop computing is being driven by the Windows 10 refresh cycle and has been a powerful engine of growth in the SMB channel (growing 12.1% in Q2 2019) l Mobile computing has seen big increases in the commercial sector, also driven by the Windows 10 refresh cycle. In July, for example,

commercial notebooks were up 11% year-on-year l Software and licences have grown fast through the corporate reseller channel, driven by IBM (+20.2%) and Microsoft (+7.3%). Investment in all forms of security and networking are strong l Networking and storage are increasing as new tech such as Hyper-Converged infrastructure comes into play, one of the exciting new technologies underpinning improvements in efficiency in datacentre management.

Case-study Turkey There is significant trade between the Middle East

27

and Turkey, and it is complicated to follow what is happening in the IT industry in Turkey because of three factors – 1) a high rate of inflation which has nevertheless been reducing for the last 6 months 2) large fluctuations in the exchange rate 3) lack of clear data.

The CONTEXT panel counters all three uncertainties as it is denominated in Turkish lira and/or euros and dollars, is reliable in covering over 80% of the wholesale distribution market in Turkey, and the data can be adjusted for inflation.

It is, therefore, an invaluable reference point for what is happening there. The below tracker shows

with inflation adjusted numbers the history of the recent crisis in Turkey. 8th August 2018 marked the end of an IT boom when the currency lost 10% of its value in one day. The 3-monthly trend went from 25% YOY growth in August to -13% in October 2018 after a disastrous month in September. The situation has been improving steadily since March with inflation going down and growth returning, through the last two months have shown a downward trend. This information is available by product category, vendor, and channel, and includes the volumes and average selling prices.

Forecast for the remainder of 2019 At the start of the year, we forecast growth in the IT Channel to be between 3 to 6% for 2019. We maintain this forecast: growth has been 4.9% year-to-date to the end of July. The major external factors which are causing uncertainty in the CONTEXT panel are: l The impact of Brexit l Slowdown in growth in Germany l Impact of Chinese/American tariffs on world trade

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SCREENCHECK MIDDLE EAST VAMS - Visitor Management System VAMS is the most advanced Visitor Management System in the market today which allow organizations to register the visitors, issue the badges, monitor and control their movement at the premise. It allows registration of the visitors with short time, verify their identification documents

and verify the black list before issuing the visitor badges.

Stand alone and web based: VAMS comes with two versions. Web based and stand alone.

Hence it can address all the type of the customers in the market Visitor Dash Board: the details of how many visitors are signed IN and OUT and the number

of visitors In at any moment is easily available in the executive dash board.

Smart Pre-registration: Host can preregister the visitors and the system will send the QR Codes to the visitors for easy check IN. Photo and signature capture: VAMS enables capture of visitor photo and signature if needed to issue photo badge or store in the

29

database.

Evacuation Ready: System generate emergency report of the visitors in the premise at the time of emergency evacuation National ID and Passport integration: VAMS can read the data from many National IDs and Passports for easy and authentic data capture at the time of check IN Over 600 delighted customers in the region

BENE - Visibility Solutions bene is RFID based Asset visibility solution to manage the organizational assets including computers, furniture, medical equipment, tools etc.The import wizard easily import the asset data from any other sources including the third party software or Excel file. The integrated RFID label printing and encoding module helps the customers to design, print and encode the RFID labels

from the same solution. The software store all the essential information about the assets like name, supplier, cost, location, warranty, maintenance schedule etc. The customer can create additional data fields if they want. The software is integrated with the fixed RFID readers and mobile hand held readers collect the data on the movement of the assets and audit.

Why bene?

Web based software with multi Role-Based User Security l Asset master contain the complete details of the asset including the photo and history l Easy to add, transfer and dispose the assets l Track warranty, lease, expiry dates and verification schedules l Pre-alerts on the scheduled verification l Real time visibility of the assets on the map l Alert on the un authorized movement of the l

assets Integrated mobile hand held reader for the asset audit l Integrated RFID label printing module l Enriched dash board for quick decisions l Extensive reports l Import and Export with MicrosoftÂŽ Excel l Customized integration with third party applications l

Ideal for l l l l l l l

Hospitals Hotels Aviation Educational Institutions Construction Manufacturing Corporates

ASBIS MIDDLE EAST GREAT PERFORMANCE STARTS HERE

SPECS Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 Frequency (GHz)1

4.2

Base Clock Speed (GHz)

3.6

Cores/Threads

4/4

Intel® Smart Cache

6 MB

TDP

65 W

Platform PCI Express* Lanes

Up to 40

Memory Support

Two channels DDR4-24002

Chipset

300 Series (including Z390)

Integrated Processor Graphics

No

Tackle your productivity tasks and enjoy your entertainment with the 9th Gen Intel® Core™ i3-9100F processor inside your desktop PC. This is great performance, designed for the everyday.

This processor requires discrete graphics and must be paired with a motherboard that supports a discrete graphics card.

Great performance for productivity & entertainment

Premium performance for entertainment & multitasking

Blazing-fast performance for demanding applications & gaming

Next-level performance for demanding games & content creation

UP TO Cores/Threads: 4/4 Max Frequency (GHz) 1: 4.6

UP TO Cores/Threads: 6/6 Max Frequency (GHz) 1: 4.6

UP TO Cores/Threads: 8/8 Max Frequency (GHz) 1: 4.9

UP TO Cores/Threads: 8/16 Max Frequency (GHz) 1: 5.0

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KEY CAPABILITIES n Optimized for NAS with AgileArray™. AgileArray enables dual-plane balancing and RAID optimization in multi-bay environments, with the most advanced power management possible. n Actively protect your NAS with IronWolf Health Management focusing on prevention, intervention, and recovery.1 n High performance means no lag time or downtime for users during workload traffic for the NAS. Seagate leads the competition with the highestperforming NAS drive portfolio.2 n Seagate® Rescue Data Recovery.3 IronWolf Pro comes with extra peace of mind for any mechanical, accidental, or natural disaster. With a 90% success rate of in-house recovery, Seagate has your back with a 2-year included Rescue Data Recovery plan. n Rotational Vibration (RV) sensors. First in its class of drives to include RV sensors to maintain high performance in multi-drive NAS enclosures.3 n Range of capacities up to 16TB. More capacity options means more choices that will fit within the budget. Seagate provides a scalable solution for any NAS use-case scenario. n Do more in multi-user environments. IronWolf provides a workload rate of 300TB/year.

Multiple users can confidently upload and download data to the NAS server, knowing IronWolf can handle the workload, whether you are a creative professional or a small business. n Designed for always on, always accessible 24×7 performance. Access data on your NAS any time, remotely or on site. n 1.2M hours MTBF, 5-year limited warranty represents an improved total cost of ownership (TCO) over desktop drives with reduced maintenance costs.

Seagate Ironwolf 16TB

Rewriting Storage Rules – Seagate Ironwolf – a way ahead in its pack is designed for storage hungry business. Built for multi-user environments and high workloads, the Seagate Ironwolf 16TB come with optimal reliability and system scalability. The 16TB IronWolf comes with a PMR + helium technology and 1.8TB platter density.

Creative professionals, SOHO users, and growing business have an opportunity to expand their horizons with the Seagate ironwolf without the need to have any additional expansion units.

Business who do not want to burn a hole in their pocket can consider the Ironwolf as an answer to their worries. The spindle speed of 7200RPM may have given several concerns among the techies, but Ironwolf ’s RV or rotation vibration sensors manages to detect excessive vibrations and protect the drive and heads against any potential damage.

A feature only present in the IronWolf family of drives is Seagate’s IHM (IronWolf Health Management). This is an advanced feature that allows you to test IronWolf drives regularly, view logs of the results, run daily read/write statistics analysis tasks and load historical graphs of drive usage over time.

The standard 16TB IronWolf drive represents the entry point of this family and is designed to be used in consumer and small business NAS appliances with up 8 bays. It still keeps the same 256MB cache as its bigger brothers, but its MTBF drops to 1M hours while its multi-user rating is quoted at 180TB/year – that’s 120TB/year less than the IronWolf Pro.

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DATACARE LLC

SYNOLOGY DS 918+ n n n n n

Powerful and scalable 4-bay NAS for growing businesses Encrypted sequential throughput at over 225 MB/s reading and 221 MB/s writing1 Quad-core processor with AES-NI hardware encryption engine 4GB DDR3L memory, expandable up to 8GB Dedicated M.2 NVMe SSD slots for system cache support

n Dual 1GbE LAN with failover and Link Aggregation support n Scalable up to 9 drives with Synology DX5172 n Advanced Btrfs file system offering 65,000 system-wide snapshots and 1,024 snapshots per shared folder n Dual-channel H.265/H.264 4K video transcoding on the fly3

SYNOLOGY RT2600 n 1.7GHz Dual-core processor for fast, uncompromising performance n Powerful 4x4 802.11ac wave 2 radios with MU-MIMO and up to 2.53Gbps breakthrough wireless speeds n Smart Connect for seamless transition between maximum speed or range n Hardware accelerated Layer 7 traffic control and monitoring n Dual WAN capable for load balancing and failover support n Create advanced VPNs with WebVPN, Synology SSL VPN, and SSTP VPN capability1 n Powerful add-on packages to enhance security, file sharing, and additional functionality n Revolutionary interface, powered by Synology Router Manager (SRM)

SYNOLOGY MR2200

QNAP TS-453BE

n Dedicated Tri-band 2.13 Gbps (400+867+867 Mbps) bandwidth optimized for performance and reliability n Easy setup and remote management from web client or mobile app n Comprehensive parental management and easy-to-use inter face with Safe Access n Single Wi-Fi name and seamless roaming with 802.11 k/v/r support n Create advanced VPNs with WebVPN, S y n o l o g y S S L V P N , a n d S S T P V P N capability n Guest Wi-Fi with features such as guest por tals, scheduling, and password rotation n Powerful add-on packages to enhance security, file sharing, and additional functionality

Quad-core Intel Celeron J3455 processor with Burst Frequency up to 2.3 GHz provides AES-NI encryption acceleration and 4k video hardware decoding and conversion The QTS 4.3 operating system uses File Station as file management center.

QmailAgent as a centralized email management center Supports Virtualization Station, Linux Station and Container Station to host multiple services on one device Provides a magnetic cover, tool-less hard drive installation and a system speaker with audio alerts

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QNAP TS-932X Quad-core 1.7 GHz independent hardware encryption engine with 32k DMIPS computing power Built-in dual 10GbE SFP + ports for high-speed connectivity Hybrid hard disk configuration, Qtier auto-tiering storage and SSD caching The 8GB model supports up to 256 full-system snapshots to help you mitigate the impact of ransomware attacks

WD ULTRASTAR 14TB n Up to 14TB capacity in a standard 3.5-inch form factor Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) technology works seamlessly in capacity enterprise environments Reliable, field-proven design across five generations HelioSeal design delivers power efficiency (Watts/TB) 2.5M hours MTBF rating and a 5-year limited warranty

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NETAPP

MAYA ZAKHOUR Head of Distribution, Partners and Alliances -Middle East and Africa

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N

etApp is the data authority for hybrid multicloud and a proven industry leader. The company provides a full range of hybrid multicloud data services and management solutions that simplify management of applications and data across cloud and on-premises environments to accelerate digital transformation. Together with its partners, NetApp empowers global organizations to maximize the full value of their data to enable new customer touchpoints, to create innovative business opportunities, to protect their data, and to optimize their operations.

The NetApp Unified Partner Program gives partners access to an award-winning portfolio of products, solutions, and services that target fastgrowing segments of the market, such as flash, hyperconverged systems, and cloud.

NetApp embraces a partner-first model and offers a program that is simple and consistent and one that offers opportunities for differentiation.

The NetApp Unified Partner Program offers a wealth of easy-to-use and easy-to-understand tools, enablement resources, and benefits to help partners grow their business in the areas with the biggest opportunity for maximum profitability.

Partner Tiers NetApp’s partner program has three levels: Star, Platinum, and Gold. The qualification requirements and benefits scale up with each level.

NetApp has introduced a new top tier partnership called Global Star to increase partner differentiation. The Global Star level is available to highly selected partners who have global selling rights and are certified across multiple geographies.

NetApp will soon have selected partners from the MEA region who will benefit from this level.

Requirements to be a Global Star Partner: To be a Global Star, partners need to be at Star level in one geography, Platinum in two geographies, and a Gold partner in the third. C-Level executive commitment is a must, as is the partners ability to meet multi-country PSC requirements.

Benefits of Global Star level: Partners enjoy the Global Star status in their qualifying territory, benefit from a consistent engagement model, and worldwide territory of at least two or three geographies, mainly EMEA, Americas, and APAC. Partners also benefit from a customized two-year Joint Investment Program where there are mutual opportunities for the partner and NetApp to grow the business, to identify focus areas for accelerat-

ing growth, and to detail the financial incentives that are available. The incentives are aligned to market opportunities and to the unique ways in which partners go to market to offer NetApp focused solutions to mutual customers.

Benefits that drive partner success NetApp’s Unified Partner Program is one of the industry’s most dynamic programs for raising a partner’s market profile and driving sales success. The program equips partners with the most advanced tools, enablement, and expertise, empowering them to grow their business and succeed. l One Unified Program: The Unified Partner Program is designed to support all NetApp partners and their capabilities and to make it easy to do business. Partners need only one partner agreement to capitalize on their capabilities. l Commitment to partner success: Partners have a dedicated partner management team. The team works proactively with partners to identify and help close new opportunities and to build their capabilities. The team also provides access to the business and technical knowledge that partners need to help customers navigate the rapidly evolving digital transformation market.

Partners have support for growing and promoting their value-added capabilities to differentiate their business as a trusted and proficient provider. In addition, partners have NetApp’s full commitment to open communication to help meet their particular goals.

Rewards and Incentives to Drive Profitability: NetApp provides compelling incentives and rewards to partners for acquiring new customers, for driving sales of strategic solutions, and for achieving sales performance and growth goals. l NetApp offers Market Development Funds (MDF) to help support various go-to-market and enablement activities while encouraging and enabling partners to create and to deliver their own service practices that can maximize profitability. l

Tools and Resources: NetApp supports partner sales efforts with case studies that help them target the most timely and relevant opportunities. l It provides equipment and facilities to host customers and to showcase solutions. l

The company delivers marketing materials to help create awareness and drive demand for solutions. l NetApp provides training and certifications to help partners add even more value. l Various awareness programs help bring customers based on the value that partners provide. l NetApp provides insight into partners’ installed base to help with on-time service renewal opportunities.

Partner Communication Platform: To foster an open dialog, NetApp has developed several partner communication activities with the goal of continually enhancing partnership and growing their shared business success.

Partner Hub: The Partner Hub is an enhanced, persona-based website that makes it easy for partners to find content, resources, and tools based on their job roles. It features integrated partner toolkits that include content, tools, training, and other resources that align to NetApp’s key growth markets. The Partner Hub also automates communication to specific partner segments or types and can push timesensitive information, updates, or alerts within 24 hours. l Partner Webcasts: Regular partner webcasts keep partners updated on NetApp’s industryleading technology, programs, and promotions.

Partners can improve their selling skills and learn about NetApp’s key sales strategies, and practical sales guidance from live and on-demand webcasts. l Partner Listening Program: To improve its offerings to partners, NetApp gathers feedback through both internal and external listening programs. These listening opportunities include regular interactions with the Internal Partner Manager Advisory Council and the Partner Executive Sponsorship Program.

NetApp also periodically conducts a Partner Listening Survey and a Partner Profitability Study to gather views about partnerships and to understand the drivers to partner profitability. l NetApp Nation Mobile App: NetApp encourages its partners to get social with the NetApp Nation mobile app, the company’s global social platform to help partners connect with the NetApp community across the globe.

Partners have access to more than 3000 pieces of regularly updated product, solution, and thought leadership content to share with their audience. l

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A10 NETWORKS

EHAB HALABLAB, Regional Channel Manager MENA at A10 Networks

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What is you channel strategy for the Middle East region? How do you cover this huge geography?

What is the biggest challenge that the Middle East channel partners are facing?

Across the MEA region we work closely with 50 focused partners. The MEA strategy has moved more towards channel and over the last 12 months. In support of this shift, there has been increased investment in the team, activities and partner affinity program.

The team in MEA has grown considerably over the last 12 months and will likely continue to grow. The head office based in Dubai serves several team members with varying roles which include; sales, sales engineers, product services, channel management and marketing. A second office is due to open in the latter half of 2019 in Riyadh for the local sales, sales engineers and product services team. The team manage the whole of the Middle East from Dubai and Riyadh.

True collaboration at all levels can sometimes be difficult to achieve within a company let alone for an entire industry segment. However, the success of the channel can only go from strength to strength with a higher level of collaboration.

This can be achieved through building strong relationships between vendors, partners and customers. We can then work together more effectively to develop a clear and detailed plan on how to drive business and technology while addressing key security concerns.

What is the state of Channel Partner Network is the region?

How have you managed to remain focused in a rapidly evolving region like the Middle East?

The channel network in the Middle East is strong and there are a lot of loyal partners across the region. It is important to work closely with partners and build a strong relationship together.

Investment in partners is also key through training, MDF and leads. Partners also get additional benefits through our Affinity Partner Program.

With the channel partner market constantly evolving, what are the key elements that a partner should incorporate?

Ensure sales and pre-sales resources are fully enabled and certified to keep the right amount of attention on products. Partners should also implement and follow a joint business plan and conduct customer mapping to maintain focus to achieve goals.

How does effective partner programs help you grow your business?

Our company’s leading Affinity Partner Program leverages incentive programs, co-partner end user events and vertical focused events to drive partner engagement and opportunities.

If could you improve one thing in the channel business, what would that be?

Frankly, there has been nothing new or exciting to say about the channel business strategy for many years. It is difficult to single out one improvement. I see it as a six-step process when focusing on head-to-head competition with other vendors: l Make it a priority. Devote resources to channel management –whose sole responsibility is to manage those relationships and build the marketing programs to drive revenue through the channel. l Develop measurements and track performance. Know who your best sales performers are l Communicate! Build relationships at every level of the channel. l Drive revenue through the channel. Take ownership of the marketing campaigns that will drive revenue at all levels through the channel.

Partners have to focus on building their own

customer base, not marketing just your product (remember that you’re not the only solution they offer). l Avoid pricing conflicts. Establish a pricing strategy and stick to it. If channel conflict arises because of price, attempt to resolve it ASAP l Address conflicts swiftly. Since distrust and channel conflict is common, it’s important to address problems quickly to find a solution.

What product or technology should the channel watch out for this year?

Over the last 5 years, the cybersecurity market has experienced an upward trend due to the increasing amount of attacks and type of attack vectors. As a result, I believe the focus should be on IoT, cloud and network forensics. As the majority of data, if not all data, is being moved to the cloud, this should be the channel’s main focus for the next 5 to 10 years. Those who do not adapt and prepare their infrastructure accordingly will be out of the game.

How are you raising your brand across this region?

We recently hired a Regional Marketing Manager based in Dubai and since the onboarding, marketing activities have significantly increased across the Middle East. We have been involved in a number of events which include a customer event in collaboration with Splunk and our channel Partner SBM as well as MENA Information Security Conference, both of which were in Saudi Arabia. In Q4, we will also be participating at GITEX Technology Week and World 5G Show in Qatar. However, it is not just about event participation, the pre- and post-event work helps raise awareness and drive the business.

We constantly work with our customers to create case studies about the different implementations and large projects in the region. There are also several channel marketing activities to really disrupt how we communicate with channel partners, however, more details about this will be announced during GITEX.

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SOPHOS Silver Level Gold Level l Platinum Level Each level increases with the partner’s commitment to selling Sophos’ products.

The program includes offerings such as: l Simple deal registration and discount structure: Sophos’s partner program is easy to implement, predictable, equitable and reliable. Partners can either interact with Sophos directly or use the Partner Portal to do so, which offers a set of tools to simplify deal registration and get pricing l Strong product and solutions portfolio: Our partners have complete access to Sophos’s award-winning network, server and enduser protection solutions, including Sophos Cloud l Sales and marketing tools: Partners can benefit from a flexible and generous partner program, with dedicated support, deal registration protection and competitive margins l Training and certification: Focus on training and technical enablement helps partners increase the skill and competency of their sales and technical professionals, providing them with the knowledge to successfully sell, demo, deploy, support and service Sophos products Sophos partner program provides access to the company’s comprehensive portfolio of market-leading endpoint and network security products, which have been engineered keeping its partners in mind. Partners are now able to manage all Sophos solutions for every customer through a centralized management platform, Sophos Central. Within Sophos Central is Sophos Central-Partner, a specialized dashboard that allows partners to distribute licenses, add new customers on demand, cross- and upsell services, drive recurring revenue and have a clear, real-time perspective on all customer activity. Partners can respond to security incidents faster and track alerts of all levels directly from the dashboard, so time spent handling incidents, including minor ones, is more productive and effective. l l

HARISH CHIB,

Vice president, Middle East & Africa.

S

ophos is a 100% channel driven IT Security Company and the company continues to expand its partner ecosystem in the region.

Sophos has a flexible, generous and dedicated MEA partner program. The core objective of the Sophos partner program is to equip partners with resources and training that

enable them to sell, market, distribute and implement the company’s award-winning cloud, network, server and enduser protection solutions to organizations of all sizes.

The Sophos Partner Program for Middle East and Africa is based on sales performance and consists of four levels: l Authorised Entry Level

END-TO-END BREACH AVOIDANCE @ENDPOINT @NETWORK @CLOUD

Network Traffic Security Analytics Early detection of advanced threats Complete visibility across all devices Automated security alerts triage

Find out more at Gitex 2019 in Sheikh Rashid Hall, Stand SR-E2. bitdefender.com

SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER, 2019

3

CONTINENTS

15

COUNTRIES

3000+

C-LEVEL EXECUTIVES

B R O U G H T BY

WWW. G LO BA LC I O FO R U M . C O M