IXTEL REDEFINES MANAGED SERVICES/ 48
PA G E S 5 2 VOLUME O4 | ISSUE 12 J U LY 2 0 1 7
Gulf Air comes as one of the strongest cases for Finesse, who are geared up to ink their name in the books of history as the first technology DR. JASSIM HAJI, company to DIRECTOR OF IT, GULF AIR create a human logo in the region /32
INDIAECM012017
WWW.EC-MEA.COM
THE CRITICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE FORUM 2017 28TH NOV 2017
THE NEXUS OF GCC COUNTRIES FOR FUTURE ECONOMY Unveiling the investments, roadmap, technolgies and key infrastructure pillars that put GCC on the map of global competitiveness
ORGANISED BY
www. gec360.org
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Call us: +971 45615400
EDITORIAL
Keep it Simple!
ANUSHREE DIXIT A S S I S TA N T E D I T O R A N U S H R E E @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M
We are all fascinated when we see the ariel images of the earth from the space. I always wonder how it would be, if someone took an ariel view of the infrastructure of the modern organization; of the complex network architectures; of the piles of technologies that are being added on to the infrastructure; of the endless devices that are talking to each other every second; of the inconspicuous security control panels! But wait, the age of complexity is yet to come. Cloud has set a firm foot in the region and the regional organizations, decision makers are ready to welcome the next wave of technologies into the organizations. Being the adaptive region that the GCC is, newer technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics etc will not take much time to become mainstream technologies. The pressure on the organization will be to create a synergy among these technologies that are coming into the organization and create a beautiful result out of it rather than a chaos. Technology, as we all know, can always be chaotic if not layered as per the requirement. So, it is the responsibility of the vendors now, to breathe that simplicity into the technologies that can enable this amalgamation. It is the responsibility of a partner to choose and pick the right portfolio of solutions for a customer to empower this amalgamation. It is the responsibility of the CIO now to find the synergy between these technologies.We have raised this topic during various conversation with the industry leaders. What would be your roadmap in keeping up the spirit of simplicity in the complex environment? On a yet another happy note, GEC OPEN 2017 is all set to hit the green turfs from August. This year, the 6-month tour of Dubai world corporate championship is emerging as the biggest tournament in the eastern hemisphere – a culmination of 22 countries with 2000 CXO’s under the aegis of 800+ global organizations. Stay tuned! ë
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2017 CONTENTS
VOLUME 04 ISSUE 12 J U LY 2 0 1 7 W W W. E C - M E A . C O M
COVER STORY
ADDING FUEL TO SIMPLIFIED INFRASTRUCTURE The rise of next generation technologies in Oil and Gas is definitely a positive sign for the entire economy and aptly reflects that the industry is no more bound to legacies; neither in infrastructure, nor in technology. /24 GUEST SPEAK /22
APPROACHING FINTECH IN INNOVATIVE WAYS AHMED ALBALOOSHI, MANAGING DIRECTOR, FINTECH DIGITAL SOLUTIONS & CONSULTATIONS MY VIEWS /28
AT THE CENTER OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
INNOVATIONS /49
FEATURE STORY Smart devices to Smart World /36
ARUBA 320 SERIES ACCESS POINTS Aruba introduced a new addition to its location-based services portfolio that helps organizations easily track valued assets,
ELIE DIB, SENIOR MANAGING DIRECTOR, METNA AT RIVERBED MY OPINION /31
THE MIDDLE EASTERN TECH BOOM: WHY THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO SELL FLASH.
EDITORIAL::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 04 CHANNEL STREET : ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 06 FOCUS STORY “FOCUS TURKEY”:::::::::: 42 INNOVATIONS : ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 49
CLAUDIO POLLA, REGIONAL MANAGER MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA & TURKEY AT TINTRI
ADVERTISER INDEX: CIF 02, EMITAC 03, VEEAM 07, REDHAT 09, OMA 11, GITEX 2017 13, SPIRE 15, GEC AWARDS 2017 17, FINESSE 19, DARKMATTER 21, SOPHOS 23, GBM 51, GEC OPEN 52
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STREET Veeam and Nutanix Accelerate Digital Transformation for the Always-On Enterprise
Veeam has expanded its partnership with Nutanix in which Veeam becomes the Premier Availability solution provider for Nutanix virtualized environments. In addition, Veeam adds support of Nutanix AHV in its flagship Veeam Availability Suite, allowing joint Nutanix and Veeam customers to benefit from an enterprise-class Availability solution, and therefore help dramatically accelerate enterprises’ Digital Transformation strategies knowing that they can deliver on user expectations for a seamless digital experience. “This partnership brings together the leader in Enterprise Cloud Computing, Nutanix, with the
leader in Availability solutions – both focused on delivering multi-cloud solutions to the enterprise,” said Peter McKay, Co-CEO and President at Veeam. “As we continue to make greater inroads in the hybrid-cloud segment, we understand that our customers now require solutions that span both their on-premises and cloud IT environments. ” Sudheesh Nair, President at Nutanix said, “We are delighted to recognize Veeam as the premier Availability solution provider for supported Nutanix virtualized environments, in helping our joint customers gain peace of mind as they advance their digital transformation strategies.”
DELL UPDATES 2020 LEGACY OF GOOD REPORT Dell has released its annual 2020 Legacy of Good update that recognizes key CSR achievements for the combined company following Dell’s merger with EMC. The plan outlines Dell’s longterm commitment to -society, team members and the environment. As a result of the merger, the company has a broader technology portfolio, more engaged team members and greater resources to address the world’s most pressing challenges. The report summarizes the efforts of Fiscal Year 2017. The updated plan and goals reflect how Dell and EMC came together with a shared commitment to people and the planet.
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PETER MCKAY, CO-CEO AND PRESIDENT AT VEEAM
MOHAP LAUNCHES “AFKARI” TO FACILITATE INNOVATIVE IDEAS The Ministry of Health and Prevention launched its new electronic suggestion scheme platform; “Afkari”. The newly launched Idea Management Hub will be available through the internal and external MOHAP portals, giving the employees the opportunity to propose ideas and suggestions. The ministry will facilitate and implement the best proposed ideas that will lead to the development of its services and to achieve the happiness of its employees and customers. Afkari platform will provide the necessary support for R &D and prototyping and allow high impact projects to develop towards creating value, enhancing our productivity and service excellence for happier community” commented H.E. Abdulrahman bin Mohammed Al Owais, Minister of Health & Prevention.
ENTERPRISES STRUGGLE to deliver Availability across even the most modern environments
Veeam recently surveyed over 1000 global enterprise decision makers to understand the protection, recovery and Availability challenges faced by modern organizations. Research insights identified a startling amount of under-protected or unreliably recoverable data within these organizations, seriously hindering their digital transformation strategies.
It's alarming to see that...
82% 77%
Resulting downtime is inevitable and extremely costly! Downtime happens and it costs the average enterprise each year
of organizations are experiencing an Availability Gap and are unable to meet the uptime SLAs expected
of organizations are experiencing a Protection Gap and are unable to protect data frequently or reliably
$21.8 MILLION 36%
Cost increase year-over-year
How is this affecting digital transformation within the enterprise?
The impact of downtime or data loss
MORE THAN JUST MONEY...
69%
of enterprises recognize that digital transformation is critical to their future
Loss of customer confidence,
Damage to brand integrity,
Loss of employee confidence,
Diversion of project resources,
48%
40%
33%
28%
66%
45%
are planning these initiatives now
admit a lack of Availability is stifling innovation
What can your organization afford to lose? With an average annual cost of $21.8M in Availability challenges, organizations cannot afford the status quo any longer. Organizations must accelerate their planning and implementation of modern Availability solutions that will ensure reliable and rapid recovery.
LEARN MORE
go.veeam.com/2017-availability-report
CHANNEL STREET
NSS Labs Ranks Sophos Firewall amongst Top Performers
DAN SCHIAPPA, GENERAL MANAGER AND SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR ENDUSER SECURITY AT SOPHOS
“Trusted, independent testing is a vital tool for any organization assessing its security needs. NSS Labs plays a critical role in determining which products deserve their place on the IT security shortlist,” commented Dan Schiappa, senior vice president and general manager of the Enduser
and Network Security groups at Sophos. “As proven by the recent WannaCry outbreak, effective network protection prevents the spread of sophisticated, fast moving attacks and will remain a critical component of any comprehensive security strategy for years to come.”
RANDSTAD SELECTS COMMVAULT Commvault will provide full cloud backup and recovery solutions for Randstad across their global infrastructure. Randstad is using AWS cloud infrastructure as the basis for its new central Shared Service Centre and will utilize Commvault to maximize this offering. “Given the scale and business criticality of this AWS deployment, we needed a trusted provider to support this transformation with a robust and compatible solution,” said Bernardo Payet, General Manager for Randstad Global IT Solutions. “Commvault software will enable high performance and simplified data management as Randstad migrates to a global AWS based cloud approach,” said Rob Van Lubek, Area-Vice President EMEA Northwest, Commvault.
GARTNER UNVEILS TOP 100 VENDORS IN IT Gartner unveiled the top global 100 vendors in IT in 2016 based on their revenue across and component market segments. In the Gartner Global Top 100: IT vendors, Apple was the largest vendor with more than $218 billion in IT revenue — approximately $79 billion larger than the No. 2 vendor, Samsung Vendor Group. Gartner analysts presented these findings during the Gartner Tech Growth & Innovation Conference. “The needs of IT buyers are shifting. CEOs are focused on growth and are more focused on realizing business outcomes from their IT spend,” said John-David Lovelock, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. The top five vendors ranked for the year 2016 are Apple with a revenue of 218.1, followed by Samsung Vendor Group with a revenue of 139.1, Google with 90.1, Microsoft with 85.7 and IBM with 77.8. The top three vendors can attribute much of their size to their solid alignment with the Nexus of Forces. Microsoft was a large and influential company when the Nexus of Forces began, having grown to market leadership during the web and e-business phase, and has managed to pivot to remain relevant. IBM gained its size and market dominance in the very earliest IT markets when servers, storage and consulting services dominated. The need for these devices and services, along with mobile phones and PCs will remain — cloud will underpin all digital business initiatives — but they will become more commoditized and less of a driver for new projects and spending.
MIDDLE EAST SME’S DRIVE BIG DATA MARKET TO $12 BILLION BY 2020 Showing the strong potential for Big Data analytics to enable digital transformation, the Middle East business intelligence market is set to more than double to USD 12 billion by 2020, according to a recent report by MicroMarket Monitor. “Small and Medium businesses in the Middle East and North Africa need the right channel partner to succeed in the Internet of Things. Partners should have specialized training in new digital business models, especially across artificial intelligence, blockchain, and machine learning innovations,” said Zakaria Haltout, Head of Global Channels and General Business for the Middle East and North Africa at SAP.
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ZAKARIA HALTOUT, HEAD OF GLOBAL CHANNELS AND GENERAL BUSINESS FOR THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA AT SAP
CHANNEL STREET
VMware Gets to the ‘Pulse’ of IoT
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CISCO JASPER EXPANDS IOT CONNECTIVITY Cisco Jasper introduced a new expanded model to bring the benefits of its IoT connectivity platform – Control Center – to a broader audience. Control Center 7.0 addresses business’ needs for greater flexibility with a new multi-tiered IoT platform that gives companies various options to meet their specific needs, regardless of which stage of IoT implementation they are in. ORACLE NAMED A LEADER IN GARTNER MAGIC QUADRANT FOR AM For this report, Gartner evaluated vendors with regard to their ability to provide a general set of access management functionalities across multiple use cases, and in multiple geographies and industries, and to do so by providing solid value for money as perceived by their customers. Oracle believes its leadership position for Oracle Access Management further highlights AHMED AUDA, MANAGING DIRECTOR – MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA, VMWARE.
the exceptional service enhancements introduced by Oracle Identity Cloud Service so far, this year. VISA LAUNCHES ‘FIRST EVERYWHERE’ INITIATIVE IN MENA
VMware launched VMware Pulse IoT Center, a secure, enterprise grade Internet of Things infrastructure management solution that will enable information technology and operational technology teams to have complete control of their IoT infrastructure and things. The first solution in a new family of VMware IoT offerings, VMware Pulse IoT Center will help customers to more efficiently manage, operate, scale and protect their IoT projects from the edge to the cloud.
“For Middle East organizations, 2017 will be a critical year for those adopting Internet of Things infrastructure to gain a competitive advantage, and enhance the citizen experience, from smart utilities to autonomous vehicles and connected factories” said Ahmed Auda, Managing Director – Middle East and North Africa, VMware. VMware Pulse IoT Center will simplify the complexity of managing customers’ IoT infrastructure and their diverse types of things as easily as one.
Visa launched its Everywhere Initiative, an innovation program designed to encourage the development of the “next big thing” in payments, will expand into the Middle East and North Africa region. Entrants in Visa’s first-ever MENA Everywhere Initiative will have the opportunity to compete for a chance to win up to US$50,000 to support a development program with Visa, or through business partnership with Visa’s clients, and potentially have access to Visa APIs, executive mentors and technologists. RACKSPACE WINS 2017 RED HAT
10
COMMSCOPE FORMS MULTI-TENANT DATA CENTER ALLIANCE
INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR AWARD
CommScope has formed the Multi-Tenant Data Center Alliance as part of the PartnerPRO Network. MTDC Alliance members will be able to offer optimal network infrastructure solutions for customers who need to deploy this technology in multi-tenant environments. “Over the years, a shift has taken place in which companies increasingly outsource IT needs to shared environments in which data centers are viewed as an operating expense,” said Stephen Kowal, SVP, Global Partners, CommScope. Demand will continue for MTDCs from hyperscale data center operators, service providers, cloud providers and enterprises; however, with the increased competition, it is becoming harder to differentiate on build quality alone. An analyst firm has predicted that total operational square footage of global MTDCs can reach approximately 177 million by the end of 2018.
2017 Red Hat Innovation Awards after a public
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It was selected as the Innovator of the Year out of five finalists and category winners for the vote. Rackspace was recognized for its collaboration with Red Hat to build an enterprise, managed private cloud solution built on Red Hat OpenStack Platform. The 2017 Red Hat Innovation Award category winners include Barclays Bank; the Government of British Columbia; the Government of the State of Jalisco, Mexico; Macquarie, and Rackspace.
CHANNEL STREET
LogRhythm Wins Gartner Peer Insights Customer Choice Awards
CHRIS PETERSEN, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF R&D AND CO-FOUNDER AT LOGRHYTHM
LogRhythm has been named the Gold Award winner in the first Gartner Peer Insights Customer Choice Awards for Security Information and Event Management. The Customer Choice Awards are a ranking of vendors by verified end-user professionals, taking into account both the number of end-user reviews, and the overall user ratings. Many users praised LogRhythm’s great customer support, noting that the support team is amazing and responsive, and highlighted that its SIEM product is easy to use and highly customizable. Users also reported that LogRhythm is worth the investment and has more advanced features at a lower cost, with the search, reporting and event management capabilities earning high marks. “It’s an honor to be publicly recognized around the world by real users for our world-class product and support,” said Chris Petersen, CTO, SVP of R&D and Co-Founder at LogRhythm. “We are extremely thankful for the insights provided by our customer community. We believe this Gold Award validates our mission of helping customers quickly detect and respond to cyber-threats.” Gartner Peer Insights transforms the way enterprise software is bought and sold by creating another source of trusted information in the software buying process.
SERVICENOW SURVEY SHOWS 2018 AS THE YEAR OF AUTOMATION ServiceNow has released the results of a new report, “Today’s State of Work: At the Breaking Point,” revealing that a majority of organizations have introduced advanced automation in their workplace, and nearly half of executives surveyed say that they’ll require it more broadly by 2018 to cope with rising work volumes. The survey indicated that adding machines to everyday work drives revenue growth, creates new job opportunities and connects employees back to the work they want to do. The company surveyed more than 1,850 corporate leaders—C-level, VPs, Directors and Managers—to evaluate the workload of organizational leaders, the impact and use of automation in common business services and executives’ opinions on the future of work. The findings include: By 2018, about half of companies say they will need greater automation to handle the volume of tasks being generated. By 2020, nearly 9 out of 10 companies will hit that breaking point; More than three-quarters say data from mobile devices and the Internet of Things contribute to the overload; 94% agree that intelligent automation could increase productivity. This includes artificial intelligence or machine learning to streamline decision making to improve the speed and accuracy of business processes; Over half of those surveyed (54%) have started using intelligent automation in one or more business processes. 87% plan to investigate or use intelligent automation moving forward. Dave Wright, Chief Strategy Officer, ServiceNow said “The shift to greater automation is coming now to transform everyday work.”
KUWAIT SCHOOL DRIVES EXCELLENCE IN CLASSROOM WITH MICROSOFT Microsoft revealed that Ibn ElAmeed Secondary School, an academic institution under Kuwait’s Ministry of Education has joined the Microsoft Showcase School community, a programme dedicated to excellence in education sectors around the globe. The Microsoft Showcase School
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programme is designed to identify innovative leadership and teaching in classrooms around the world. “This is the kind of progress we have in mind – bold, progressive changes to learning that will cement the future of our youth and allow them to enter the workforce as innovators,” said Khalid
AlRushaid, Assistant Undersecretary for Public Education, Ministry of Education, Kuwait. Microsoft’s work with Kuwait’s Ministry of Education includes implementation of Windows devices, Office 365 and OneNote, to support the ministry in its own digital-transformation journey. “We
believe technology has an integral part to play in making lessons come alive. We at Microsoft are not teachers, but we have always been proud to play a supporting role, as enabler, in transforming classrooms around the world” said Charles Nahas, General Manager, Microsoft Kuwait.
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CHANNEL STREET
IST Shines as Genesys ME Partner of the Year
WEB CLIPS DUBAI CHAMBER SIGNS MOU WITH SOUQ.COM
IST has been named ‘Middle East Partner of the Year’ by Genesys. The award recognizes IST for their outstanding technical support and professional service capabilities, investment in Genesys training and certification programs, and inhouse R&D capabilities which have allowed Genesys to extend their partnership with IST and empower them to become the first and only cloud partner in the Middle East, and launch IST OmniCloud.
The Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry has signed a memorandum of understanding with Souq.com in a move designed to facilitate cooperation between the two entities and expand Chamber members’ access to the region’s e-commerce. Under the terms of the agreement, Dubai Chamber members can avail exclusive benefits offered by Souq.com, including free access to its “Fulfilled by SOUQ” services for a three-month period and dedicated on boarding training sessions. CREDENCE SECURITY PARTNERS WITH RSAM
TREND MICRO LAUNCHES NEW $100 MILLION VENTURE FUND
As part of the agreement, Credence Security
Trend Micro Incorporated revealed the launch of a corporate venture fund to explore emerging technology markets. With an initial investment of $100 million, this venture fund will allow Trend Micro to nurture a portfolio of startups that are incubating ideas and living at the epicenter of hyper growth markets, such as the Internet of Things. Eva Chen, Founder and CEO for Trend Micro noted, “Trend Micro’s vision has always been to make the world safe for exchanging digital information. The explosion of devices is transforming how the world works, thinks and acts. It is clear that the ecosystem is still evolving and there is work to do to ensure organizations and individuals can operate and live safely in this new reality.”
focus on vendor risk management (VRM),
will be responsible for distribution of Rsam’s complete suite of solutions, with a particular security incident response and corporate risk and compliance assessments, across the Middle East and Africa. Credence will also be responsible for providing the professional services associated with deployments of these solutions. AUDIOCODES SIGNS EMEA DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT WITH NUVIAS AudioCodes signed a pan-EMEA distribution
MOVEMENTS PFU EMEA appoints TORU MAKI as new President and CEO.
MARYAM BAHLOOQ is the new CEO at TANFEETH
MAHMOUD-SAMY IBRAHIM is Area Vice President at Forcepoint - EMEA Emerging Markets
Booz Allen Hamilton has elected FADY KASSATLY and SOUHEIL MOUKADDEM as Senior Vice Presidents
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NUMBER GAME
6000 percent
According to Infoblox, 2017 has seen a 6000% increase in ransomware infected emails compared to 2016.
agreement with Nuvias, following the recent launch of Nuvias’ Unified Communications Practice across EMEA. Nuvias is now able to offer complete end-to-end solutions and technical support for Skype for Business and BroadSoft Business UC environments, based on AudioCodes’ Session Border Controllers and handsets. LEVTECH CONSULTING NAMED FINALIST FOR 2017 MICROSOFT PARTNER AWARD Levtech’s purpose-built solution for customer engagement in the retail industry, Loyalty 365 is built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and is hinged on data-driven personalization and engagement to deliver deep customer insights to retailers which further help deliver value to retail customers across physical and digital interactions. The solution is integrated with Azure and leverages Power BI.
CHANNEL STREET
Prince Sultan University in Saudi Joins Red Hat Academy
Prince Sultan University collaborated with Red Hat to create the King Salman Education for Employment Program Red Hat Academy. This center is seen as an important national development project that contributes to building a generation capable of achieving the objectives of economic development in Saudi Arabia. Eng. Ibrahim Al Ghemlas, Director of the Community Services and Continuing Education Center at Prince Sultan University said,
“Red Hat is a multinational software company providing open source solutions to the enterprise community. They will be collaborating with us to offer multiple certification programs in System Administration and OpenStack Administration”. “We’re pleased to have Prince Sultan University join us in this growing Red Hat Academy Program,” said Ken Goetz, VP, Global Training and Certification, Red Hat.
DIGITAL SHADOWS UNVEILS CHANNEL REV PARTNER PROGRAM Digital Shadows launched its channel only partner program – Channel REV – and an associated online Partner Portal, designed to accelerate partner revenue and enhance their customers’ loyalty by offering Digital Shadows SearchLight service that combines scalable data analytics with human analysts to effectively manage and reduce the digital risks of cyber threats, data leakage, and reputation risks. The Digital Shadows’ Channel REV portal gives partners the tools they need to move fast to build their own professional services around the SearchLight solution from Digital Shadoiws.
HDS WINS 2 VMWARE INNOVATION OEM PARTNER OF THE YEAR AWARDS Hitachi Data Systems has emerged as a winner of two VMware Partner of the Year awards in the Innovation OEM Partner category for its exceptional efforts both globally and in EMEA at the VMware Partner Leadership Summit 2017. The two awards recognize the company’s accomplishments in 2016, including yearover-year revenue growth and continued integration between Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) offerings and VMware vSphere, vSAN, vRealize and NSX solutions. Furthermore, with its next-generation Programmable Data Center concept, HDS enables customers to consume IT and data services from both traditional and cloud-native workloads, addressing the needs of the entire application portfolio. “We appreciate the recognition for all that we’ve accomplished over the past year and look forward to expanding upon that success with VMware to help customers realize the power of their data for both today and tomorrow,” said Mike Walkey, senior vice president, Global Partner Organization, Hitachi Data Systems. Ross Brown, senior vice president, Worldwide Partners and Alliances, VMware said “VMware is proud to see Hitachi Data Systems win these awards and we look forward to our continued collaboration.”
EPICOR AND RHEINBRÜCKE PARTNER WITH SMARTWORLD TO DELIVER EPICOR ERP SOLUTIONS The collaboration between Epicor, RheinBrücke and SmartWorld will provide businesses in Dubai South with access to enterprise resource planning solutions to help them better manage their business, automate processes, improve operational efficiency, and set their business on course for growth.
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“Dubai South is re-inventing the ecosystem and we are delighted that RheinBrücke along with Epicor is partnering with SmartWorld to drive value to Dubai South’s customers and beyond and we look forward to a successful collaboration that benefits all parties,” said His Excellency Khalifa Al Zaffin, Executive Chair-
man, Dubai Aviation City Corporation & Dubai South. “Working together with RheinBrücke and SmartWorld to help businesses in Dubai South modernize their operations and grow their businesses will be a truly exciting experience,” said Sabby Gill, Executive Vice President, International, Epicor Software.
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SonicWall Surpasses Shipping Three Million Firewalls SonicWall has surpassed the ambitious financial and operational metrics set across sales, partner engagement and support, including shipping its three millionth firewall. This momentum has positioned the company to receive key industry awards and recognition from partners that set it apart as a cybersecurity leader. “In fewer than eight months, SonicWall has already exceeded the ambitious financial and operational metrics established for the business. We believed in this investment from day one,
and we are confident this is only the first chapter of SonicWall’s success story,” said Bill Conner, SonicWall President and CEO. “Cybersecurity professionals are increasingly addressing new cyber threats, like WannaCry, by deploying a record number of SonicWall products and services. We have the right management, the right channel partners, the right technology and the right services, so businesses can run more effectively and fear less.”
LOGMEIN INTRODUCES BOLD360, AIMS AT CRM MARKET LogMeIn introduced Bold360, an intelligent customer engagement platform that provides a modern, flexible way for companies to interact with customers and get a real-time 360-degree view of all touchpoints and contextual data in a single solution. Through a powerful combination of popular digital engagement channels, support tools, and a unified interface, Bold360 is taking on the traditional customer service market by bridging the gap between the customer and vital business information; helping companies deliver the immediate and personalized experience today’s consumers expect. “The rise of digital, artificial intelligence and mobile-first lifestyles has changed how customers want to interact with their favorite brands,” said Mary Wardley, Program Vice President, Loyalty and Customer Care, IDC. Legacy customer service and CRM systems house only a small portion of customer data across various disparate systems, making it hard for companies to ever get a full picture of their customers. Bold360 is addressing this challenge by combining the rich customer profiles and actionable data agents need with the fast, frictionless service customers have come to expect. Intelligent automation also empowers customers with self-service tools, thereby eliminating routine tasks from the agent workflow to improve contact centre efficiencies and deliver the type of customer experiences that build loyalty.
PURE STORAGE UNVEILS ALL-FLASH DATA PLATFORM FOR THE CLOUD ERA Pure Storage unveiled its vision for the data platform for the cloud era. As modern organizations become increasingly reliant on technology, companies that have existed for decades across a wide range of industries have evolved into fundamentally digital businesses. The Pure Storage data platform helps customers put their data to work. Now, organizations can run all operations with cloud agility, improve the economics of data analytics at high velocity and scale, and ultimately derive new insights to deliver data-driven customer results never before possible. “Modern organizations require a data platform that enables organizations to build a new class of applications, to extract new insights from data and to do so in real-time,” said Scott Dietzen, CEO, Pure Storage. Pure Accelerate will showcase the ways Pure Storage enables customer innovation and business transformation through a host of comprehensive new hardware and software updates. Pure1 META, is Pure Storage’s Artificial Intelligence platform for delivering on the vision of self-driving storage. Pure1 META delivers global predictive intelligence by collecting and analyzing over 1 trillion array telemetry data points per day and enables effortless management, analytics and support. “With hybrid cloud environments expected to be the future for most enterprises, IT is entering what many are calling the ‘Cloud Era’,” said Eric Burgener, Research Director Storage, at IDC.
PRIME HEALTHCARE GROUP DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION POWERED BY ETISALAT Etisalat signed an agreement with Prime Healthcare Group to provide an end-to-end managed services solution for their entire network infrastructure. The project will provide faster, secure and reliable communication enabling Prime Healthcare Group to improve their business efficiency
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and enhance their security across its countrywide operations. Salvador Anglada, Chief Business Officer said: “Prime Healthcare Group’s key objective to put in place a robust, reliable network and security infrastructure as the foundation to their Digital transformation will help them acceler-
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ate in the healthcare business. Etisalat has proficient experience with multiple government and leading enterprises in implementing end-to-end managed services solutions to help them meet their long-term business objectives.” Dr. Jamil Ahmed, Managing Director, Prime Healthcare
Group said “We have to continuously innovate and implement technologies to help accelerate our healthcare practice and secure our business. Etisalat, our partner in this digital transformation has a diversified portfolio that was an ideal choice for us to accomplish our vision”.
CHANNEL STREET
Mimecast introduces app to it E-mail archiving service Mimecast introduced the Mimecast Case Review App to its Email Archiving service. The app offers fast, accurate first-pass review for email in response to audits, compliance reviews, legal claims, and other investigations. The Mimecast Case Review App provides Early Case Assessment search tools that allow e-discovery administrators and compliance professionals to collect, identify, review, cull and preserve relevant emails and attachments quickly and effectively. “With the impending GDPR deadline quickly approaching, admins will require a process that can quickly and accurately scan through archive data. Email first-pass review is a vital component of eDiscovery, but often admins are competing against tight deadlines and other priorities. Casting too wide a net for searches leads to massive amounts of data that is often redundant or obsolete,” said Neil Murray, CTO at Mimecast. The Case Review App also offers reviewers an intuitive workspace for marking messages for relevance, privilege, and other criteria.
ATTIVO NETWORKS LAUNCHES THREAT DEFEND PLATFORM The new platform takes deception-based threat detection to a new level, addressing growing marketing demand and technology advancements to outmaneuver modern-day attackers that are anticipating detection technology as a security control. Additionally, the solution has further expanded its integration partnerships and forensic attack analysis automations to deliver streamlined playbooks to better arm incident responders with an actionable defense against in-network threats. “The Platform easily scales to match the needs of the customer in the Middle East, as it retains the element of surprise while adding features based on advanced deception techniques, predictive vulnerability assessment, adaptations for the environment and automations that simplify isolation and elimination of threats within the network” said Ray Kafity, Vice President, Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Attivo Networks.
SENDQUICK INTEGRATES WITH SOCIAL MESSENGERS FOR OMNICHANNEL COMMUNICATION TalariaX is the first Singapore-based company using an appliance gateway to integrate its flagship solution – ‘sendQuick’ with the various social messenger platforms in the market that include LINE, Viber, Facebook, WeChat, and Slack. TalariaX has expanded its messaging capabilities for companies to connect with their customers and staff through hybrid messaging options including SMS, email, and instant messaging apps. With over 3 billion daily users and growing, instant messenger apps are rapidly evolving into the preferred communication method for companies. sendQuick provides two service options to companies: 1) integrating with the instant messaging platforms via a ‘chatbot’. Users subscribe to the bot after which companies can send automated service messages and support to customers through the bot 2) direct message delivery through the sendQuick server. Companies can integrate sendQuick with their own servers to push alerts & notifications, to customers and streamline processes within the organisation. “As the instant messaging apps become a dominant mode of communication, more companies are looking at quick and easy ways to communicate with their staff and customers. It will benefit companies looking to minimize the disruption caused by downtime or send out alerts for various business activities, as they will now receive alerts on SMS, email and on instant messengers. said JS Wong, CEO of TalariaX.
SECUREWORKS UNCOVERS DETAILS OF CHINESE CYBER ESPIONAGE CAMPAIGN SecureWorks released new research on a long-running cyber espionage threat group named Bronze Union, believed to be located in and operating from the People’s Republic of China. The SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit comes to this conclusion based on analysis of Bronze Union’s espionage operations,
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targeting, and tools – outlined in the newest report. More recently, in November 2016, Bronze Union specifically targeted high-profile Turkish organizations. During the targeting period of eight days, seventeen Turkish government IP addresses, five Turkish banks and two Turkish
academic networks downloaded the threat group’s malware. SecureWorks notes that Bronze Union’s abrupt and concerted effort to compromise Turkish networks represents a notable shift in the group’s targeting behavior and highlights the breadth of this threat group’s intent towards organiza-
tions in Turkey. The new SecureWorks report offers several explanations for the increased interest in Turkish targets. Regarding the tool used, Bronze Union is known to use strategic web compromises, and continues to use this infection vector in campaigns
GUEST SPEAK
l IT M&A: Technology-related synergies are key to successful mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and separations, but too often they are overlooked early in the deal. We help companies plan and managethe changes in their systems to accommodate changes in businessstructure. l IT Project Effectiveness: We help clients maximize the business results from major technology initiatives, including turnaround programs and help executives to evaluate the case for investment, set up projectsfor success or place current projects on the right track to ensure they capture value when implementing new systems andprograms. l Rebooting IT: Many companies face a mismatch when it comes to the ability of their IT to fulfill increasing customer expectations. Our experts help companies transform legacy IT to win in a digital environmentusing proprietary benchmarks, diagnostics and a detailed and tested approach that helps to transform the existing IT operating model to best fit theirneeds.
AHMED ALBALOOSHI,
MANAGING DIRECTOR, FINTECH DIGITAL SOLUTIONS & CONSULTATIONS
Approaching FinTech in Innovative Ways What are the niche consultancy services that FinTech Digital solutions offer? l IT Strategy: Help clients that are boarding on major growth that is heavily technologydependent toidentify the optimal future state of IT, aligned with business needs, and then jointly
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develop an implementation blueprint. l IT Performance Improvement: Underperforming IT negatively affects business performance and workswith companies seeking to address their IT efficiency problems to not only reduce costs, but to improve and develop capabilities that enable innovation andagility.
What all solutions does your portfolio entail? l Payments l Retail l e-Commerce that includes digital marketing, POS,ERP and CRM l Business Intelligence and Data Analytics l Digital Marketing l Document Archiving l IT Infrastructure, DB Technologies and Services l Security technology and services l Project and process management services Being one of the pioneering organizations in Fintech solutions and services, what would be the key factors and values driving your vision? The primary objective our firm is to maintain and follow the compliance with laws and enhance our contribution to society. Collaboration & mutual cooperation with partners would be other aspect that we would be driving our focus on. Other key pillars areInformation management and disclosure; Commitment to greater customer satisfaction; Commitment to achieve agreed deliverables; Commitment to continuous improvement; andCommitment to investigate and introduce new technology as it becomes applicable to client needs. ë
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05.10.2016 18:54:21
COVER STORY
ADDING FUEL TO SIMPLIFIED
INFRASTRUCTURE
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The rise of next generation technologies in Oil and Gas is definitely a positive sign for the entire economy and aptly reflects that the industry is no more bound to legacies; neither in infrastructure, nor in technology. It is a high RoI sector for investors and service providers alike. Its time to dig deeper.
n B Y: A N U S H R E E D I X I T < A N U S H R E E @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M > n PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
T
he 2014-effects of Oil and Gas slump still has a hanging and haunting effect on the industry, especially when the conversation is on introducing more OPEX models. One of a bright example of this is the way in which conventional ropes and manned scaffoldings are slowly diminishing from the Oil and Gas’ online and offshore operations, giving way to drones to come as the next most-talked about topic and technology in the oil and gas industry. They are redefining the ways of inspection techniques and bringing in more convenient and cost effective models of operation. Automated pipelines are yet another models that are becoming a mandate in infusing the much needed safety, reliability and sheer cost effectiveness in transporting gas. Since Middle East is the heart of the Oil and Gas industry, automated pipelines are a key model in going ahead in OPEX.
UNDERSTANDING AND BRIDGING THE GENERATION GAP One of the predominant issues that dominate the automation technology is the associated fear of reducing the human intervention or putting the jobs in danger. But as several reports agree, the more sophisticated the automation technology is, more is the need for skilled workers to monitor those. “We are seeing an emerging maintenance gap, particularly in the offshore environment. Older engineers are either being kept on for their experience or let go because of their relatively high cost. There is also a lack of younger engineers coming through to bridge this gap, but who traditionally adapt more easily to new technology,” says Hege Wroldsen, Director of the Oil and Gas Center of Excellence at global enterprise applications provider IFS.
INTRODUCING SIMPLICITY IN COMPLEXITY With the presence of intense data to be monitored and the existence of multiple complex networks, it is necessary to have an end-to-end visibility of the entire environment. Veeam emphasizes on the need for Availability here. “Without proper visibility of the entire environment, it’s incredibly hard to protect valuable IP, such as exploration data, drilling technologies and refinery processes. It’s also very difficult to ensure continuous Availability of the data and services the enterprise relies on. Oil and gas companies should consider deploying solutions that offer real-time, app-to-metal visibility of complex physical and virtual environments,” says Gregg Petersen, Regional Director,
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COVER STORY
“Oil and gas companies should consider deploying solutions that offer real-time, app-to-metal visibility of complex physical and virtual environments.” -GREGG PETERSEN, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, MEA AND SAARC, VEEAM SOFTWARE
“Oil and gas CIOs need to adopt secure, end-to-end solutions where data from the edge is captured and secured through a technology platform.” -HICHEM MAYA, HEAD OF INDUSTRIES, SAP MENA
“Oil and gas automation and control systems often operate round the clock and the time between maintenance projects is generally longer than in other industries.” -RAY KAFITY,
VICE PRESIDENT - MIDDLE EAST TURKEY AND AFRICA (META), ATTIVO NETWORKS
HOW CIOS NEED TO RISE UP IN THE GAME? n Share threat intelligence with other organizations, so everyone gets a heads-up on emerging threats before they have a serious impact n Adopt the latest cloud, sensor, and mobile technology to stay ahead of the game n Understand that cyber security is an enterprise-wide issue threatening the existence of the organization n Apply an adaptive defense, which combines prevention, detection, and response solutions together for defense in depth security n Balance budget cuts and reduced headcounts with increasing pressure to realize value faster than ever before n Make the C-suite executives and the board understand that they need an investment plan that matches the overall security strategy n Talk about the possibilities and have a disaster plan in place
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WHAT SAYS THE CIO?
“Organizations must balance budget cuts and reduced headcounts with increasing pressure to realize value faster than ever before, and exploit new opportunities.” -HEGE WROLDSEN,
“Many CIOs can attest to the challenge of getting the senior executives to free up their calendars and make time for a cyber-security reality check.” -STUART DAVIS,
MIDDLE EAST & EUROPE DIRECTOR, MANDIANT SERVICES
DIRECTOR OF THE OIL AND GAS CENTER OF EXCELLENCE AT GLOBAL ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS PROVIDER IFS
While the oil economy in the GCC is heavily affected by the current geopolitical situation in the northern and southern borders of the Gulf countries, significant investments are being made to introduce advanced technology. Digital business transformation is rapidly evolving as well.
-DR. ALAEDDIN AL-BADAWNA, INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT OFFICE ADVISOR - ABU DHABI MARINE OPERATING COMPANY (ADMA-OPCO)
MEA and SAARC, Veeam Software. Security is, without any second opinion, one of the most crucial element in such a highly complex environment. With cyber crimes like WannaCry and Petya hitting the critical infrastructures, the need for a upheavel from traditional IT infrastructure has risen like never before. “ICS infrastructure is fragile when it comes to implementing security controls as well as advanced security technology. Hardening these environments can be a challenge since design for function was the primary mind set of component manufacturers, not security. As a result, older ICS devices are often less resistant to cyber-attacks,” says Ray Kafity - Vice President - Middle East Turkey and Africa (META), Attivo Networks. “Conversations about business risk simply have to include discussions about cyber risk. They’re not separate entities, and enterprises can no longer afford to treat them that way. The executive team needs to be involved in decision-making, and they have to understand enough about their organization’s security to get the Board’s buy in. Ultimately, both groups are responsible for protecting the shareholders. One sure fire way to do that is to talk about the possibilities and have a disaster plan in place – for hurricanes, tornadoes and breaches alike.”
GOING INTO THE DIGITAL
CORE Living up to the buzzword of digitization, the oil and gas industry has definitely seen some major adoptions in artificial intelligence, machine learning, business intelligence and analytics. There is a mounting pressure on the CIOs to introduce more cloud based and sensor based technology to stay ahead of the competition. “Oil and gas CIOs face three key challenges in the Digital Economy and Internet of Things era: how to build a digital energy network for upstream and downstream operations, how to combine compliance with visibility, and how to optimize logistics to create a flexible enterprise,” says Hichem Maya, Head of Industries, SAP MENA. “Augmented reality technology delivered via a wearables or mobile device enables remote, oneto-many, ‘over the shoulder coaching’. Engineers on the ground can be guided by augmented hands and tools by specialists in another location, thousands of miles away. I anticipate that this will accelerate as companies look to maximize maintenance efficiency in difficult to reach environments, and get the most of the resources they have available,” says Hege.
FINALLY
Unified communication/collaboration platforms
l
l Cloud computing virtualized environment l
Real-time data transfer / Digital oil fields l
Big data analytics
l
Virtual Reality – Smart training
l
Information and data security
Are the next wave of IT efficiency. End-user computing solutions to help realizing the benefits of workplace transformation through mobile, desktop and cloud technologies.
Very simply put- Agility has to drive the complexity. ë
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MY VIEWS
legacy, hardware-bound infrastructure designed for the pre-cloud age.
ELIE DIB,
SENIOR MANAGING DIRECTOR, METNA AT RIVERBED
At the Center of Digital Transformation
How does your flagship solution SteelCentral situate itself as a catalyst for the digital journey? Riverbed SteelCentral fits in to address this major hurdle to successful digital transformation by delivering unified visibility across the entire hybrid enterprise. It combines user experience, application, network, and infrastructure monitoring for holistic, cross-domain visibility into and control over application performance. This unified visibility, enables organisations to more clearly understand and audit what they have throughout their IT infrastructure today. This foundation of insight provides a solid base on which to build a plan for navigating along the digital journey, reducing the risk of migration projects falling foul of unforeseen or previously undetected issues. This in turn avoids delay in project completion or at worst, if there is a problem, provides a rapid path to resolution thereby allowing the project to get back on track as soon as possible. Once completed, any digital migration projects can continue to be monitored and reported on by SteelCentral ensuring that both users and the applications they interact with, are getting the best out of the new environment. This also provides a way for project managers and IT leaders to demonstrate the success and benefits of digital transformation projects back to their organisation.
“THREE YEARS AGO, WHEN I TOOK CHARGE OF RIVERBED’S CHANNEL IN THE REGION, OUR FOCUS WAS ON THE VALUE-ADD DISTRIBUTORS, AS WE BELIEVE THEY ARE THE EXTENDED ARM FOR OUR BUSINESS. THIS HAS BEEN VERY SUCCESSFUL OVER A NUMBER OF YEARS AS WE HAVE ONBOARDED NEW DISTRIBUTORS AND DEEPENED OUR ENGAGEMENT WITH THEM VERY HEAVILY ON THE GROUND.”
Digitization has been the buzzword for quite some time now. What does Digital transformation mean to Riverbed? The next decade will see the next wave of new Dx technologies – including Internet of Things (IoT), cognitive systems, robotics, 3D printing, and next-generation security – piled on top of the first wave. This will bring more technical complexities and infrastructure challenges along with the promise of exciting new business capabilities. This next wave of technologies will be orders of magnitude larger – and more complex – than
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the first. For example, it’s been recently noted that, across all industry sectors, less than 14% of assets with an IP address are connected to the enterprise network. Not only will all of these assets be connected over the next few years, but the number of assets that become networked, data-generating components of the IoT will expand exponentially too. The challenge for each enterprise, as we’ve noted, is to absorb all these technologies and create an infrastructure that can deliver amazing digital services. But there’s a fundamental mismatch between digital innovation and the
What are the latest trends in Network performance management and what can CIOs expect from you in the coming months? With our latest SteelCentral upgrade, we have provided businesses with the tools they need to determine just what the quality of user experience is. With this latest iteration, we deliver integration between NetProfiler, our network performance monitoring tool, and NetIM, our network device management tool, to provide more visibility into how network infrastructure impacts network performance. The new SteelCentral also introduces application migration planning and prediction. This enables network planning and architecture teams to simulate and predict traffic behavior and impact on the network prior to application migrations – from data center to data center, from data center to cloud, and between cloud providers. As a result, companies are able to leverage data, not hunches, when planning cloud migrations for applications. ë
GUEST TALK
Higher Investments, Bigger Footprint As a part of its global expansion plans, OMA Emirates had set its foot in North Africa with its investment in Morocco based Business Rules Solutions (BRS). As a company that has developed many home grown solutions for the government and BFSI Sectors, the OMA Emirates-BRS partnership has been going strong in winning some big customers in the region. A glimpse into the journey so far.
n N I R A N J S A N G A L , G R O U P C E O , O M A E M I R AT E S G R O U P
BRS is an IT consulting firm founded in 2005, specializing in software developments in advanced technology fields for the banking and payment industry. The investment lends to OMA Emirates’ objective of creating higher investments in RnD where BRS will provide a special set-up for SWITCH development and Card Management Systems. This will also give OMA Emirates geographical business growth with a strong reach in the North African countries and other French speaking countries. “OMA Emirates has been steadily expanding its business into multiple markets. The business opportunities that are available in North Africa within the payments solutions are immense. While we have a long history of providing these
services in the Middle East, BRS has been at the forefront of developing specific payment system products in Morocco. The synergy that we have with BRS is one of the prime reasons for our investment in the company. It will be a catalyst for our reach into North Africa as well as strengthen our overall suite of payments solutions,” said, Niranj Sangal, Group CEO, OMA Emirates – Solutions Gulf. BRS has developed its own solutions which include the pioneering EasyATM, an advanced ATM monitoring solution based on the XFS technology along with a latest ATM controller application that monitors all XFS based ATM terminals. It collects information from all XFS based peripherals which are used for diagnosing
and troubleshooting. It increases ATM uptime in a proactive manner by accelerating problem resolution and predictive maintenance. XFS monitoring ensures support for multi-vendor environment with real time monitoring and remote management features. BRS also brings to the table it’s EasyReconcile which is a strong reconciliation application that gives the financial institution easy recon with different payment providers, schemes etc with a click of a button, as the process is now automated rather than collated manually and makes financial audits much easier. The G-Inv from BRS is a inventory and asset management solution that can be helpful in tagging company assets that a company requires in the current business environment. Yet another solution is the E-Voucher system is a comprehensive solution targeting the distribution of value –added electronic payment solutions for multi-channel prepaid services creating and managing electronic vouchers for services such as telephone, internet, transportation, events, etc. the E-Voucher can be printed via POS systems in online or offline mode and are securely stored in encrypted format to be printed upon demand. “BRS has expertise in the technology domain and is known for its specialization in developing well researched payments system products and solutions at lower costs. This has enabled our business growth and provided us opportunities to address the needs of the banking as well as government sectors. The association with OMA Emirates now as a business investor provides us greater prospects to larger markets as well as financial backing to continue our efforts in our RnD department,” said, El Habib Alouah, Managing Director, North Africa. ë
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GUEST ARTICLE
Reframe Your Core Mindset Beliefs to Meet Digital-Era Demands It’s 2020. A CIO walks into a meeting and announces the company is going out of business. What happened? Now, imagine if the CIO had asked what could go wrong in 2016, instead of what went wrong in 2020. Mindsets that are not in tune with the changing market realities can derail even high digital acuity leaders.
Your mind may be wired with deeply entrenched beliefs, but they are just in your mind. And you can change your mind. All leaders should regularly challenge and invite challenge from others to evolve their mindset assumptions, beliefs and paradigms to ensure they remain matched to their particular marketplace reality. Challenge your existing mindset with pre-mortems Imagine scenarios where well-funded digital companies enter the market or specific trends become digital business must-haves and the best way to respond. During this process, apply the same concept specifically to the IT organization to ensure it remains relevant, vibrant and valued. Truly challenging core beliefs requires the injection of external and brutally honest perspectives. Find digitally savvy mentors or “‘challenge partners” and give them unbridled permission to challenge your thinking and whether it is attuned to future market realities. Be open to them making you feel uncomfortable and not “letting you off the hook,” as we can all be seduced by what we know. What has served us well in the past can lead to an unconscious bias to repeat
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past behaviors and find others that agree with us, known as confirmation bias. A challenge partner should be someone who is not an obvious choice, so be aware of biases in selecting this partner. Reframe your perspective and adopt proven digital leaders traits By changing the conceptual and/or emotional viewpoint with which you view a situation and placing it in a new frame of reference that fits the “facts” of your future market reality, you can create the new context for the needed change. One CIO changed his perspective on shadow IT based on the new reality of digital disruption, which blurred tradition boundaries and market demands for greater innovation and speed. He reframed shadow IT from something to stamp out to a viewpoint of seeing a business partner with ideas to drive the business forward with technology, backed by a willingness to invest both money and talent. Finally, reserve two hours per week to read or study how successful leaders digitally disrupt, with the intent of applying that thought process to your own situation. Once a month, meet with venture capitalists or entrepreneurial leaders and
n G R A H A M W A L L E R , R E S E A R C H V P, G A R T N E R
use these opportunities to understand genuine new customer value, enduring business models and economic architecture underpinnings. Adopt key mindset traits as a way of evolving your own thinking to have a higher quotient of digital acuity — a sharpness or keenness of thought, vision and understanding in relation to digital technologies as a source of competitive advantage. Reinforce digital acuity mindset with daily routines and rituals Routines strengthen the brain’s underlying neural networks, which in turn form connections with new experiences and thoughts. Develop, introduce and eventually ingrain in the culture a series of digital beliefs and design principles that reinforce key concepts. Repeated use will enable these concepts to become subconsciously ingrained as a new mindset. This can be as simple as experiencing a new technology each week, such as PokemonGo, a new virtual personal assistant application or virtual reality headset, or model key targeted digital behaviors such as blogging or communicating via video. ë
MY OPINION
The Middle Eastern tech boom: why there has never been a better time to sell flash. Flash presents a significant revenue opportunity to resellers if distributors can articulate its value in close alliance with vendors. Reputable vendors can provide channel partners with the tools and knowledge to capitalise on the productâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s popularity by offering extensive access to training materials that reinforce the value proposition of the solution.
n C L A U D I O P O L L A , R E G I O N A L M A N A G E R M I D D L E E A S T, A F R I C A & T U R K E Y AT T I N T R I
The Middle Eastern tech market is thriving: in fact Gartner predicts IT spending in the region will reach as much as $155.8 billion in 2017. The area is in the midst of a digital transformation, with spending growth predicted in data centre systems and enterprise application software. IoT and the Internet of Eveything (IoE) are generating a huge upsurge in data, providing further impetus for organisations to shift from traditional IT infrastructure to virtualised models. Separate research by Future Market Insights notes that flash is gaining momentum in the Middle Eastern enterprise storage market with
organisations increasingly looking to cloud as data volumes increase. Those preparing to begin their cloud journeys are starting to recognise the potential benefits of an all-flash data centre, aided by factors such as high capacity, downward pricing and software add-ons. With this in mind, what benefits are there for channel resellers and distributors in selling flash right now? What tools are available to help articulate its value and create healthy profit margins? Thanks to reduced data access time, as well as greater performance and agility, all-flash arrays (AFAs) are providing enterprise cloud customers
with tangible benefits, such as greater ability to scale, high availability and built-in operational efficiencies. Software add-ons that provide extended capabilities, such as disaster recovery, automation and remote access, are also driving the adoption of flash by providing the agility that customers in the Middle East require to build cloud inside their own data centres. Flash presents a significant revenue opportunity to resellers if distributors can articulate its value in close alliance with vendors. Reputable vendors can provide channel partners with the tools and knowledge to capitalise on the productâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s popularity by offering extensive access to training materials that reinforce the value proposition of the solution. Some vendors offer partners enhanced technical certifications and market development funds to help increase their opportunity to generate growth. Coupled with incentives that reward resellers for hard work and successful market reach, these initiatives signify a vendor is committed to working with partners, and not just to making profits. Acceptance of flash as a high performance storage solution is starting to take hold in the Middle East and distributors and resellers in the region are well-placed to take advantage of this demand. Resellers can establish a market leading position and boost profitability by working with vendors that provide differentiated products, along with a clearly defined approach to customers and the third parties that support them. ĂŤ
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COVER FEATURE
DR. JASSIM HAJI, DIRECTOR OF IT, GULF AIR
FINESSE GULF AIR
The ‘Trust’ Manifesto The delivery of enterprise wide BI & Analytics to Gulf Air comes as one of the strongest cases for Finesse, who are geared up to ink their name in the books of history as the first technology company to create a human logo in the region— standing catalysts for Trust, Teamwork and Passion for Technology.
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COVER FEATURE
ing use of cloud, mobility, social and virtualization,” he adds.
THE BI TAKE-OFF AT GULF AIR As of one of the SI’s stand out project, Finesse has been selected by Gulf Air as a strategic partner to define a robust Business Intelligence platform to be used across the airline and to implement enterprise-level dashboards and reports. Such platform will also perform complex scenariobased analysis, to create visualization of data and view reports and dashboards in all forms across devices. This initiative comes as a part of Gulf Air’s IT strategy and roadmap to use Business Intelligence platform to provide better and enhanced visibility and insights on the airline’s operations, and Finesse with their long and successful experience in this regard will constitute a valuable input in this direction. Talking about Gulf Air’s vision for Business Intelligence and Analytics, Dr. Jassim Haji, Director of IT, Gulf Air said, “Modern airlines depend a lot on newer technologies for faster decision making and enhanced data sharing among the employees. Today, the management does not want to wait for days and months to generate a report. There is a need for real time data generation and the adoption of technology like Business Intelligence proves fruitful for that.” He adds, “Gulf Air is one of the pioneering airlines in the world to have adopted various niche technologies and we are proud to be an airline that is number one in customer connectivity.”
THE IMPLEMENTATION SUNIL PAUL, COO AND CO-FOUNDER OF FINESSE
T
he Communist Manifesto is a literature known to all. The preamble was released at a time when the society’s infrastructure (which I would like to lightly abbreviate as SI)was up for a major upheaval. Yes, our title is definitely inspired by that. This is also a period in time when yet another SI market is witnessing a major upheaval. Comprehensive transformation is the need of the hour! Customers are in the lookout for solution providerswho can not only provide them with an end-to-end solution but can also understand the
complexity of the business by setting a collaborative approach to the entire environment. “Finesse is no longer considered just as a system Integrator but an enabler of Digital Transformation. This comes from the gradual shift from being a typical technology-driven entity that ensured complex systems work together towards the one who understands the dynamics of today’s business demands,” says Sunil Paul, COO and Co-Founder of Finesse. “In the changing business environment, most of our clients today, expect us to be a trusted partner in their digital transformation journey. We also had to cater to the ever increas-
Understanding the complex environment of Gulf Air and to meet its requirement, Finesse brought Qlik Sense to the table. “Qlik is one of the leading providers of BI Solutions and they have been recognized by Gartner as a leader as well. The platform has been very beneficial for us in streaming our data and getting visual analytics on a real time basis allowing us to enhance the way we approach and enhance our customer experience,” commented Dr. Haji. “Gulf Air is very selective when it comes to partners and we have been working with Finesse for quite a few years now. The team’s expertise, effectiveness in implementing solutions and deeply driven experience in the region makes them one of our preferred and major partners whom we work very closely with to adopt such complex technologies as BI.” Speaking on the benefits derived from the project, Dr. Haji says, “BI would definitely help Gulf Air to be an analytics driven organization. We have already started seeing results from the BI implementation, such as profitability, by looking
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in technology. Block-chain, Robotic Process Automation, Big data, Internet of Things, Cloud solutions, Mobility and Converged Infrastructure are some of the new focus areas for Finesse,” said Ramesh Raju, CEO and Co-Founder of Finesse.
CREATING HISTORY WITH TRUST RAMESH RAJU, CEO AND COFOUNDER OF FINESSE.
at various aspects of the business. We are able to manage information and make quicker decisions. The dynamism of the aviation industry forces you to adopt such technologies and we have plans to grow with it and implement it in a wider scale. This makes us stand apart from the competitors who react slowly to these newer technologies.” Adding to that, Sunil Paul, said, “Our team has the proven experience and expertise to undertake enterprise wide business intelligence implementation projects that translate complex requirements into business solutions. We believe our services can bring forth significant benefits to the end users at Gulf Air. And we would like to thank Gulf Air for providing us this opportunity.”
CROSSING THE MAJOR MILESTONES Finesse continues to acquire one new enterprise
FINESSE UAE TEAM 2017
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client every month from their inception and has delivered some of the technologically complex projects in the region in the past year. Other than Gulf Air, another standout project is the first ever Open Data Portal in the GCC that was built for DOF using the Qlik Analytics Platform (QAP). Others include Cloud services and Disaster Recovery at Al Masah, BI & Analytics solution at Byrne Rentals, Kofax implementation at a leading local bank and a Real-time Fraud Solution at a global financial institution. “The entire IT Systems Integration market in the Middle East is undergoing a huge change with respect to its current models and execution strategies. “Finesse understands the need to identify areas of businesses where innovative technology solutions and services could solve the challenges of our customers. This adaptability helps Finesse in keeping up with the ever evolving trends
Finesse today is a 350+ strong cross cultural team from 20 different nationalities working out of 10 global locations catering to 200+ enterprise clients. One vision drives all—Trust! Finesse became the first IT organization in the region to create a human logo. The logo was launched during the company’s Iftar gathering in June. The logo stands for sheer team work, collaborative culture and the passion for technology that the organization and the team embodies. “Finesse is one of the few privately owned firms that encourages employee stake holding, fostering a sense of ownership that has been instrumental in the phenomenal growth of the company - a consistent 30 – 40 %+ year on year growth. We also have a unique Millionaire Leadership program under which we aim to create multiple millionaire leaders by 2022. We provide for an open work culture and environment, which bring in multi-fold empowerment to all stakeholders. Developing human capital and building collaborative teams through knowledge sharing, investing in research and development that leads to technological innovations and empower our teams to wholeheartedly participate in our vision for the future,” said Sunil. ë
MY VIEWS
to help or prepare them for the next digital platform. Talking about the digital cohesion which is another word we usually use at Juniper; the digital cohesion will have a great potential to transform the education industry and the healthcare industry as well. It will make our life more rewarding. Juniper Networks defines Digital Cohesion as an era in which multiple applications self-assemble to deliver new, predictive services that continuously adapt to your behaviour, enabling better decision-making and enriching our personal and business lives. The idea behind Digital Cohesion is that disparate applications and point services will coalesce around ‘mega-services’. These mega-services will be built around deep and connected knowledge about our lives. Collating information from various apps, devices and sensors, these services will understand our preferences and habits, anticipate our needs, adapt to changing conditions, and provide seamless experiences that make our lives simpler and more pleasant.
HATEM HARIRI,
GENERAL MANAGER, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA, JUNIPER NETWORKS
Rethinking Security on the Platform of Digital Cohesion JUNIPER RECENTLY CONDUCTED A 16-COUNTRY SURVEY THAT SAW THE RISE OF DIGITAL COHESION AS AN INEVITABLE POSITIVE SOCIETAL DEVELOPMENT. SHEDDING FURTHER LIGHT ON THIS, HATEM HARIRI, GENERAL MANAGER, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA, JUNIPER NETWORKS, TALKS ABOUT HOW THIS
Since human are considered are the weakest link in security chain, how important is customer awareness for you and what steps are you taking for that? The biggest issues wherever we go is the human error. Some problem with the configuration can lead to an attack. Self-driven network is our history and our vision and innovation at Juniper helped us a lot in going into self-driven network specially with SDN. At Juniper, we have introduced the SDSN, that is Software defined security network. SDSN platform and its ecosystem help organizations unify security for these heterogeneous networks, giving customers a streamlined way to integrate products and manage their security operations, regardless of the vendors they choose. It is helping us to go into automation which is helping us to reduce the error and at the same time increase the security on the network.
COHESION WOULD BRING A DIFFERENT ANGLE TO SECURITY ALTOGETHER AND HOW JUNIPER IS SIMPLIFYING THE IT BURDEN.
How has the journey been for you in Juniper so far? The journey has been fantastic and rewarding. What I am really excited about is the company going in the right direction in terms of technology adoption and also aligning itself to the amaz-
ing stuffs happening in the technology world. What is the Digital Cohesion all about? How is it forcing to rethink security? As one of the leading players in this digital world, Juniper is working very closely with the customer
What would be your key advice to CIOs in this time? In security, the biggest challenge facing enterprises today is the evolving nature of attacks. The companies are struggling to keep up with the solution that can defend them from the attacks. Juniper offers them latest technologies, for threat intelligence, firewalls, where it can help them to protect themselves on all levels of the network and not only edge of the network. I would advise the CIO’s in the region to work closely with us, our security vendors and our partners in order to identify the threat areas and we will give them the right solution which we already have. ë
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Smart devices to
Smart World
The Internet of Things was in question for a long time but now in terms of technology and adoption, it is coming to the forefront. The organizations in the Middle East and Africa market are increasingly becoming competitive and are aiming at transforming business operations with innovative digital solutions. So, what more can the organizations expect in the coming years from the IoT market?
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WAYS TO SECURE INTERNET OF THINGS Protect your device and accounts with a password Anything connected to the internet is an opportunity to breach network defences for a hacker. So, all devices and applications must be run with a secured password.
Change default device settings Replace the default password with a strong one
Keep your software updated Be sure to keep the software updated to reduce risks on your IoT device.
Avoid using insecure internet connections Do not use any Wi-Fi connection which is not protected. Insecure connection can make devices vulnerable to hacking.
Install a firewall The firewall helps viruses or cyber criminals from reaching the connected devices. It would be good to add an extra layer of security.
n B Y: D I V S H A B H AT < D I V S H A @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M >â&#x20AC;&#x192;
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mong the countries in the Middle East, the GCC countries will see high adoption of IoT. The United Arab Emirates is on the forefront in adopting latest smart technologies across all sectors. There is already an example of integration of driverless buses in Dubai which
will be operational by 2019. Also, the healthcare sector holds robust potential for the internet of things as the hospitals in the country compete to be most innovative in the region. In 2016, there were over 100 projects related to improvement of existing hospitals as well as construction of new hospitals.
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“IoT, when combined with the Cognitive/AI and machine learning capabilities, will help enterprises acquire predictive and prescriptive capabilities in their operations” -RAJAGOPAL NAIR, DIRECTOR, IBM HYBRID CLOUD AND IOT SOLUTIONS, GBM.
THE IOT GROWTH CONTINUES The Internet of Things has already connected more than 10 billion devices worldwide and over the next 5 years, this number is expected to grow to 100 billion. According to IHS, in 2015, there were about 15.4 billion devices connected and this number will grow to 30.7 billion in 2020 and 75.4 billion by 2025. As the IoT is evolving, a majority of organizations in the Middle East are trying to understand its role in their growth. “IoT is creating many new job opportunities—from data scientists, to remote operators, to application developers. As the IoT-based economy drives trillions of dollars in economic growth, some industries merge and new ones are created, there will be a worldwide scramble for the same IoT-capable workers. Developing an IoT-enabled workforce is not an option—it is a must. You could implement IoT solutions and integrate them with your business processes, but if your workforce is not ready, your IoT transformation will fail” said Fady Younes, Deputy Managing Director and Operations Director – East Region, Cisco Middle East
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“The main challenge is to be able to instantly capture the real market ‘signals’ that will help derive intelligent from the whole ‘noise’ coming from all the data captured” -SI MOHAMED SAID,
“You can expect fast payback of your IoT investments generated by reduced labor costs, lower production costs, increased productivity, improved quality, and better, faster decision making” -FADY YOUNES,
The IDC believes that in the Middle East, the usage and adoption of Internet of Things will have a profound impact on sectors such as transport, defense, healthcare. Connected devices in these sectors can provide real time updates for situational awareness that can help monitor the status and support sensor driven analytics. 2017 IoT Predictions l Internet of Things will influence the Omnichannel l Adoption of IoT to grow and more cities to become ‘SMART’ l IoT and wearables create a higher level of personalization l IoT market will continue to grow despite security risks l Internet of Things will get accountable
on the investment by lowering production cost, reduced labour or increased productivity. “Having applications that leverage IoT for analytics will be a way organisations can benefit their overall mission. Whether it is more accurate forecasting, more detailed analysis or better insight to things like traffic patterns in places and spaces; IoT technologies used in conjunction with application and data analysis will be the route to ROI and competitive advantage” commented Rick Vanover, Director of Technical Product Marketing & Evangelism for Veeam Software. The Internet of Things provides rich opportunities across different sectors. For instance, real monitoring capabilities can provide in home diagnostics and remind patients to take their medication in the healthcare sector. In the retail sector, consumers can access information that influence their purchase and also buy anything with the click of a button. These reflect the endless possibilities and the ROI organizations achieve by adopting IoT in their business.
ECEMEA APPLICATIONS MARKETING SENIOR DIRECTOR, ORACLE.
IOT SPENDING UP BUT ROI? The return on investment of IoT is a priority concern. For organizations looking to adopt any solution for business transformation or cost reduction, the Internet of Things delivers a strong ROI. Any organization can expect a fast pay back
DEPUTY MANAGING DIRECTOR AND OPERATIONS DIRECTOR – EAST REGION, CISCO MIDDLE EAST.
CHALLENGES FACED BY REAL TIME DATA
FEATURE STORY
2017 IOT PREDICTIONS Internet of Things will influence the Omnichannel
“Organisations will have to proceed cautiously down the IoT path when mixing scores of new systems with the potential explosion of smaller devices” -RICK VANOVER, DIRECTOR OF TECHNICAL PRODUCT MARKETING & EVANGELISM FOR VEEAM SOFTWARE.
MONITORING By the year 2020, there will be billions of devices connected. “The applications are expected to process a stream of data pouring out of these devices which represents the past, the present and can also help predict the future of the devices. The applications should have analytical abilities to receive and run continuous queries to understand the system behavior and current state. It should also be able to predict the future state, based on existing models of such devices. One way to avoid this deluge of data is to bring edge analytics capabilities, where some of the analysis and actions are executed by the gateway and the devices, rather than being done completely by the central analytics application” said Rajagopal Nair, Director, IBM Hybrid Cloud and IoT Solutions, GBM “The main challenge is to be able to instantly capture the real market ‘signals’ that will help derive intelligent from the whole ‘noise’ coming from all the data captured. This means that companies will need to be able to quickly – faster than their competition – process, automate, analyse and share insight across not only their organization but their entire digital business network – all
“As technology continues to evolve, so will consumer behaviour. This can be seen through the rapid change in consumer behaviour borne by the emergence of Smartphone’s and non-stop connectivity” -DIRK RAEMDONCK,
Adoption of IoT to grow and more cities to become ‘SMART’
IoT and wearables create a higher level of personalization
MARKETING & RETAIL DEVELOPMENT - MANAGER, E-CITY.
IoT market will continue to grow despite security risks Internet of Things will get accountable
in a secured environment” said Si Mohamed Said, ECEMEA Applications Marketing Senior Director, Oracle
THIRD PLATFORM TECHNOLOGIES CO-EXISTING WITH IOT According to reports, third platform technologies will encompass nearly 75% of all IT spending at twice the rate of total IT market. “The emergence of the smartphone and enterprise mobile computing is a key impetus for the emergence of big data solutions and an explosion of innovative storage technologies. The modern mobile platform, with all its rich applications, device sensors, and access to social networks, is almost single-handedly responsible for the explosion of data and the resulting rush to provide solutions to analyse and act on the insight contained in the vast ocean of personalized information. In turn, this phenomenon has created a big data market ecosystem based on the premise that open data is the new natural resource. We have certainly seen the beginnings of this already: Uber disrupting the local taxi
market, Airbnb restructuring the hotel market and Facebook’s WhatsApp dislocating the telecommunications industry messaging market” said Dirk Raemdonck, Marketing & Retail Development - Manager, E-City.
FINALLY Behind all the limelight of the IoT, is a stark reality. There must be highly secure infrastructure for them to be useful. The biggest challenge of the future will be the security of the connected devices. The world will witness a massive shift in expenditure on security devices to help secure their businesses as well as homes. As the Internet of Things grow, security challenges will arise. However, the overall growth of IoT will mean more access to opportunity for more hackers. The best way to respond to it would be to plan ahead, secure yourself and be ready to tackle them. ë
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Petya Offshoot: Aiming at the ‘GoldenEye’ Lightly termed by a report as a ‘merry mayhem’, the Petya ransomware is predicted to hover around in the cyber crime world for long. Unlike WannaCry, the iteration of the codes are reported to be stronger, but is it ransom that the attacker is aiming for? Or is there more than the technical eye meets? As the internet and the cyber world started bustling with the news of Petya (or NotPetya or GoldenEye as some reports state), here is our opinion on the same with some deep insights from industry leaders. n B Y: A N U S H R E E D I X I T < A N U S H R E E @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M >
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he world once again woke up to a security reality check as Petya hit some major companies in Ukraine and Europe, slowly spreading to some parts of US and Asia that left the organizations to ponder over their security protocols once again. It was only a few weeks back when organizations around the world fought against the WannaCry attack. Where is the loophole now? The latest ransomware, which is being dubbed as NotPetya, has surfaced as a serious mayhem that is not able to provide the decryption keys to the victims, even after they paid the ransom. Though experts are of the opinion that the NotPetya attackers have not repeated the mistakes that the WannaCry gang did, the situation has become very chaotic owing to the inability of the attackers in handling the payments. The attack that is claimed to be seeded from a software update that was done in the Ukranian government systems, has encrypted the critical information existing in the systems, leaving the entire infrastructure crippled. According to Ukraine’s cyber-cops, as well as phishing emails booby-trapped with malware-laden attachments, financial software firm MeDoc was used to infect computers in the ex-Soviet nation. Once inside the network, the ransomware steals administrative credentials, giving it control over powerful system management tools like Windows PsExec and Windows Management Instrumentation.
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nected devices, with every element focusing on the application, the digital attack surface area will continue to grow. This gives the attackers more opportunities to infiltrate data. More focus needs to be put on the application and data security. In addition, more cyber security education should be integral in everybody’s daily lives.”
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TAJ EL KHAYAT, DIRECTOR FOR THE GULF, LEVANT & NORTH AFRICA REGION AT F5 NETWORKS
This latest wave of what looks to be ransomware is just another example of the real-world threats encountered by organisations, governments and countries all over the world. These attacks are upping the ante, as they hit services that affect people’s day-to-day activity; such as healthcare, postal services, and transport services. While the reported ransom demands of $300 to release the encrypted data seems low, this will scale up very quickly. The more concerning issue is how national infrastructure is being impacted. There is no easy solution to eradicate ransomware, but when the dust settles, the source of the compromises needs to be determined and remediated. “Going into the new world of IoT and con-
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STEVEN MALONE, DIRECTOR OF SECURITY PRODUCT MANAGEMENT AT MIMECAST
DON’T TAKE THIS TORTOISE LIGHTLY- ITS SLOW, BUT STEADY WannaCry had a far reaching effect within a few hours of its launch. In contradiction to that, Petya has so far affected 2,000 targets. Reports suggest that Petya or NotPetya has a more targeted
REPORT
approach to the infection. Security experts have warned not to take this as a setback in any way. Though the traits are similar to WannaCry, reports from across the world are saying that the victims have not received any decryption key against the $300 equivalent bitcoin that they paid. The email address to which the victims have to send the wallet id has also been reportedly shut. Steven Malone, director of security product management at Mimecast, says “Mimecast advises organizations never to succumb to the pressure to pay the ransom to regain access to their applications and data. There is no guarantee this will unlock files and further motivates and finances attackers to expand their ransomware campaigns.”
the catch or where is the catch? Was this attack launched just to get ransom or there is any hidden agenda behind this? Will patching the vulnerabilities work? Will latching other critical grids work? To prepare for the next generation of ransomware attacks, it is imperative that organizations patch all systems aggressively against known vulnerabilities, establish a secure architecture that utilizes advanced cyber security defense technologies and execute a comprehensive data back-up plan for their organization,” says Steve Grobman, CTO, McAfee LLC.
OOPS! THERE IS NO ‘KILL SWITCH’ Security experts had decoded a kill switch in the WannaCry attack that allowed them to control the spread of the same to some extent. No report of any such switch has surfaced so far, extending the horizons of vulnerability to greater extents. NOTPETYA TRAITS n Infects machines through the networks n Extracts network administrator’s credentials n Uses a modified version of EternalBlue n Infects other systems using Windows PsExec and WMIC by using malicious codes n The malware encrypts files on the host using 2048-bit RSA encryption n Files are taken as hostage and locked n A message pops up saying the files are encrypted and victims have to pay a ransom for the decryption key
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NIGEL TOZER, SOLUTIONS MARKETING DIRECTOR, COMMVAULT
“The best option, to insure against data-mincing malware, is an in-house centrally managed backup solution. Whilst reverting to the backup prior to the infection might mean losing a limited amount of data, it is nominal compared to the impact of losing all your data permanently.”
three ways to spread automatically around a network, one of which is the known Eternal Blue vulnerability, similar to how last month’s WannaCry attack unfolded. What’s clear from this, and recent attacks, is that organisations must prioritise patching systems to lower their risk profile. We have to patch as quickly as we can. In addition, making back-ups of key data is a fundamental of any security program,” Harish Chib, Vice President Middle East & Africa suggests the following measures to stay safe: n Ensure systems have the latest patches, including the one in Microsoft MS17-010 bulletin n Consider blocking the Microsoft PsExec tool from running on users’ computers. You can block it using a product such as Sophos Endpoint Protection. A version of this tool is used as part of another technique used by the Petya variant to spread automatically n Back up regularly and keep a recent backup copy off-site. There are dozens of ways other than ransomware that files can suddenly vanish, such as fire, flood, theft, a dropped laptop or even an accidental delete. Encrypt your backup and you won’t have to worry about the backup device falling into the wrong hands n Avoid opening attachments in emails from recipients you don’t know, even if you work in HR or accounts and you use attachments a lot in your job
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LEE FISHER EMEA SECURITY SPECIALIST, JUNIPER NETWORKS
-STEVE GROBMAN, CTO, MCAFEE LLC.
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HARISH CHIB VICE PRESIDENT MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA, SOPHOS
PATCH OR LATCH…. WHERE IS THE CATCH?
BE SAFE
Since paying the ransom has not yielded any results so far, the question that arises is, what is
“Cisco Talos analysis points out that, once this ransomware enters your system, it uses
Juniper Networks is aware of a new variant of the Petya malware family. The malware combines a number of existing techniques to spread across vulnerable clients. We have begun the process of analyzing today’s samples of Petya in the lab and can report that we are able to detect and prevent infection using our SkyATP and IDP technologies. Juniper will continue to update this blog as additional information becomes available.” ë
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FOCUS TURKEY
Turkish (ICT)
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According to reports, IT spending on hardware, software, IT services and telecommunication services in Turkey are expected to increase to $30 billion by 2017 while increasing the ICT sector’s size to $160 billion, with a market growth of around 15 percent each year until 2023. The country’s rapid economic growth has made it a model for other countries to develop everything from a robust banking system to healthcare reform.
n B Y: D I V S H A B H AT < D I V S H A @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M > n PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
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urkey is a growing economy with the potential of becoming a regional hub for the ICT sector. Many analysts believe that this country has shown a keen acceptance towards embracing newer technologies and adapting to current trends. Organizations are adopting solutions like mobility and big data and have also started deploying cloud based applications. IDC expects Turkey’s IT market to total $10.9 billion by this year, matching the 1.9% year on year growth rate seen in 2016. The need for greater cost optimization will drive spending around IT services and it will be the fastest growing segments of the Turkish IT market this year.
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TURKISH TOURISM
“IT consumer in Turkey is rapidly getting knowledgeable with usage and adoption of IT tools viz., Apps, Hardware, Mobile devices, GPS, convergence solutions etc.,” -SHAHNAWAZ SHEIKH, SALES AND CHANNEL DIRECTOR, META, SONICWALL
“Turkey also has a younger and better-educated work force when compared with other countries in the region and Europe as well” -METE TURKYILMAZ, IT DIRECTOR, ANADOLU GROUP.
FINDINGS OF THE STUDY CONDUCTED BY TURKEY INFORMATICS ASSOCIATION(TBV) FOR SMART CITIES Innovative Approach - The institutions need to follow technological developments in smart cities, internalize them in order to adapt them quickly to the needs.
Lack of collaboration – The collaboration between NGO’s, universities and other municipalities are in need of improvement.
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Experience in information and communication technologies – Combined with the lack of skills and information in smart cities, the importance of skilled human resources become very evident.
The year 2016 was a loss for tourism in Turkey, a key sector which brings robust income to the country. After a series of terror attacks, the tourism sector in Turkey is expected to recover by 2018. The arrival of tourists in Turkey already rose to 18% from a year ago to 2 million in April 2017, study says. This sector brings wealth to the country equivalent to oil to other Middle Eastern countries. The Turkish government has made huge investments in transport infrastructure like modernization of airports and terminals. The efficiency of transport services and advanced communication network system meet all the requirements of tourism.
ECONOMIC OUTLOOK OF TURKEY Turkey has a strong economy which has performed remarkably well in its financial crisis period. Turkey’s economy is evolving at an amazing rate due to the adoption of new technologies. It has performed a 5.6 percent growth according to GDP figures in 2016 and it is the 17th largest economy in the world and the 6th largest economy when compared with the EU countries. OECD states that Turkey is expected to be one of the fastest growing economies among OECD members during 2015-2025, with an annual average growth rate of 4.9 percent. In the recent “The Global Information Technology Report 2016” of World Economic Forum, Turkey is listed as 48 among 139 countries in The Network Readiness Index 2016. The country aims to make 80% of its population computer literate by 2023 and has integrated e-platforms to enable citizen transactions. Along with the stable economic growth, Turkey also has a younger and better-educated work force when compared with other countries in the region. Eventually, this nation can be a regional hub for neighboring markets.
WHY INVEST IN TURKEY? Turkey is a growing economy. The country has an investor friendly government which has established an agency just to serve this purpose. The Republic of Turkey Prime Ministry Investment Support and Promotion Agency (ISPAT) is their official organization. ISPAT’s investment promotion strategy aims to attract more technologyintensive investments in order to ensure the transfer of technology to Turkey. The government supports IT sector with various incentives. Turkey offers investment friendly environment for the ICT sector with the focused support from the government.
l
FEATURE
3%
Boost Turkish exports to $500 billion annually.
Increase “national R&D intensity” from 0.85% to 3%, while increasing private sector R&D expenditure to 2% of GDP
$ 500 bn $ 2 tn
Increasing Turkish GDP to $2 trillion, positioning Turkey as one of world’s 10 largest economies.
$ 160 bn
Increase the ICT sector’s share of economy from 2.9% to 8%, increasing the sector’s output to $160 billion.
120 m
Reach 120M mobile subscribers/ connect 14M households @1GB.
TURKEY 2023 VISION Turkey offers high quality business resources and infrastructure for the ICT sector. l Turkey has the competitive edge in various ICT sub sectors like the software and hardware market, communication and IT services. There are huge investments opportunities in telecom and real estate and construction sectors. Turkey is one of the promising markets when it comes to construction. It offers great opportunities for investors by combining construction sector with growing commercial and industrial output. The Turkish construction companies have finalized huge projects in Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries. When the GebzeOrhangazi-Izmir Highway opens in 2018, the 269-mile-long road will reduce travel times between Istanbul and Izmir from 8 to about 3.5 hours. Istanbul Grand Airport is planned to be the biggest airport of the world when it will be completely functional by 2028. l
ON ITS WAY TO SMART CITY Istanbul is a pioneering city in which R&D and innovation is supported and invested. The city has ambitions to be a technology hub of Turkey. “Smart city is a new but promising technology in Turkey. There are vast infrastructure and construction projects in whole country. I think these projects will be followed by smart city projects. Recently Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality hosted the World Cities Expo 2017 in Istanbul, which mainly focused on smart cities concept” said Mete Turkyilmaz, IT Director, Anadolu Group, Turkey.
In order to facilitate smart cities, there are many initiatives taken by the Turkish government – Smart energy – Turkey will spend over $5 billion on n over the next 5 years for the implementation of smart grids, smart metering and intelligent street lighting. Smart Infrastructure - Preventing water losses is a priority for the Turkish government. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems have been implemented by water authorities of some large and industrialized cities in Turkey to identify water losses and network failures. Smart Mobility – The Ministry of Transportation has stated in their Action Plan 2013 – 2023, all cities will implement smart traffic light systems working according to the traffic density, green wave system where cars after encountering one red light will pass through green lights if they maintain a specific speed, digital traffic signs, solar powered bus stops with digital arrival time boards.
FINDINGS OF THE STUDY CONDUCTED BY TURKEY INFORMATICS ASSOCIATION(TBV) FOR SMART CITIES Lack of collaboration – The collaboration between NGO’s, universities and other municipalities are in need of improvement. l Innovative Approach - The institutions need to follow technological developments in smart cities, internalize them in order to adapt them quickly to the needs. l Experience in information and coml
munication technologies – Combined with the lack of skills and information in smart cities, the importance of skilled human resources become very evident.
THE BOOMING TELECOM SECTOR With its young population and rapidly modernizing economy Turkey has become a target of investment. In the Telecommunications market, according to reports, mobile phone users in Turkey are 72 million with an approximate penetration rate of 91.51%. The amount of smart phone users in this is 19%. “Mobile adoption is very high in Turkey. Consumers mostly prefer to spend their money on mobile devices rather than other consumer goods. That means the rapid increase of Social Media too. Turkey is the 4th largest country in terms of number of Facebook accounts with 30 Million accounts. Mobile gaming is huge in Turkey as well. Maybe as a result of that, Peak Games, a mobile gaming company based in Istanbul, is one of the 5 biggest online gaming companies of the World” commented Shahnawaz Sheikh- Sales and Channel Director, META, SonicWall. As the young population increases and online market expands, the total number of mobile phone subscribers is expected to reach 75 million by the end of this year.
TURKEY 2023 VISION Increasing Turkish GDP to $2 trillion, positioning Turkey as one of world’s 10 largest economies. l Boost Turkish exports to $500 billion annually. l Increase the ICT sector’s share of economy from 2.9% to 8%, increasing the sector’s output to $160 billion. l Reach 120M mobile subscribers/connect 14M households @1GB. l Increase “national R&D intensity” from 0.85% to 3%, while increasing private sector R&D expenditure to 2% of GDP Source: ITIF l
FINALLY Turkey aims to be one of the 10 biggest countries in the world by 2023. Despite all the noise, Turkey has still much to offer. The government has taken several measures to mitigate fear. Based on its geographic location between Middle East, Europe and Asia, it makes the country a hub for trade and tourism. The economy of the country has remained strong and the country is perfectly suited to further climb the ranks of the world’s largest economies. ë
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vendors to provide the best UC and collaboration suite that is essentially the life-blood of an organisation. We help manage these solutions for our customers, which reduces their investment in administration costs. There is no one-size fits all solutions, which is where AGC Networks help control information management while empowering businesses to make informed decisions.
SANJAY AHUJA,
VICE PRESIDENT – MEA, AGC NETWORKS
Empowering a Seamless Workplace THERE IS NO ONE-SIZE FITS ALL SOLUTIONS, WHICH IS WHERE AGC NETWORKS HELP CONTROL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT WHILE EMPOWERING BUSINESSES TO MAKE INFORMED DECISIONS.
What are the various challenges which exist in the enterprise applications market within the Middle East? How do you tackle these challenges? With the high penetration of mobile devices in the region now coupled with high demand for improving customer experience, enterprises are evaluating new applications to meet them. To improve productivity and reduce cost, enterprises
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are evaluating AI and VR based technologies. This is creating a big demand in the market place. Customers are looking for readymade solutions which provide ease of usage and guarantee high levels of security. How are you meeting this demand of the customers in this age of digitalization? AGC Network’s works with market leading
How do you ensure the security of your enterprise applications offering? There are a growing number of enterprise applications each day as businesses start to transact more online. Smartphones are also being used to access business services and therefore there are apps linked to enable them to function seamlessly. Poorly secured apps are as much a threat to the business as it is to its success. Developmentlevel security is the the first place to start. Voice recognition, password protection, fingerprint security, regular software updates are some measures that help ensure the security of these apps. In addition the device itself should have built in security management. App wrapping also helps segment the app from the rest of the device by encapsulating it in a miniature, managed environment. Cloud based applications are the future of the market. How do you incorporate this into your enterprise applications offering? We work with with industry leading vendors to provide EA solutions to our customers. For example we provide the highest grade components for optimised and seamless user experience, for faster outcomes, greater capacity, and more coverage. Though this, we are able to provide customers with cloud-based network architecture, which helps them reduce network and management costs. Large organizations and the government remain reluctant to shift their crucial information on a software platform managed by service providers. How do you tackle this challenge and offer your enterprise applications offering to this vertical? AGC Networks business applications and customer experience applications are changing the face of enterprise technology across all verticals. We offer tailor made customized offerings which allow customer to shift at their own pace by taking small steps towards this migration. Its all about confidence building and allowing the CIO to demonstrate this shift to his business. ë
GUEST TALK
What’s Inside the Connected Workplace of Tomorrow? The modern enterprise workforce is changing and enterprises need to evolve to attract, retain and challenge the new generation of employees to be more productive. Employees desire a simpler individualized work experience that fosters productivity while meeting the demands of anytime, anywhere resources access within a protected environment.
The conceptof pervasive identity has been around for a while but organizations have struggled with technology and privacy implications. As the workforce evolves the workplace needs to be more ‘connected’ and offer employees the best work experience. THE TECHNOLOGY BEHIND A CONNECTED WORKPLACE The best practice approach to make enterprise systems identity aware is leveraging existing identity credentials and authentication mechanisms that utilize infrastructure that is already in place. Streamlining the end-user experience is much more desirable, so using a single, more universal credential that can be validated by different enterprise systems is preferable to carrying multiple tokens connected to disparate systems. Secure identity can be programmed either at issuance or when another system is brought inline and made identity aware. In the case of a lost or stolen credential, the compromised identity can be quickly and seamlessly revoked across an enterprise. Enterprise systems can be made identity aware by embedding a credential reader within the system, which communicate to the host system(s) over standardized protocols like USB and do not require a complete revamp of the systems. This article will examine a few use cases for pervasive identity and how technology can be
used to support a more connected workplace and improve end-user experience. The basis for the development of Internet Protocol applications till now has been growing availability of large computing power and significant memory capacity to manage complexity of the Internet Protocol based applications. And all this within localised high cost nodes like desktops, notebooks, smartphones, tablets, amongst others. This is the exact antithesis of the IoT environment as it exists today, which is low cost, low power consuming, low computing capacity, and distributed computing nodes. PHYSICAL ACCESS CONTROL AND PROOF OF PRESENCE As users approach the door to enter the building, the same credential can unlock the door and record entry/exit times via an integrated time and attendance (workforce management) system. The same identity and access control credential can also be used to establish proof of presence or to deliver relevant, location-based emergency messages to people in the building. Areas that require stricter access control can add a layer of biometric verification where needed. ACCESS TO NETWORKED SERVICES AND APPLICATIONS In a connected workplace, users can perform
n A S H I S H M A L PA N I , D I R E C T O R P R O D U C T M A R K E TING, HID EMBEDDED SOLUTIONS
daily tasks in any available space through a pooled virtualized desktop environment (VDI). VDI not only delivers a convenient, seamless experience but also improves IT support, security and availability. Current VDI implementations still require users to authenticate to the network using username/password to gain access to applications and services. This friction can be eliminated with identity aware VDI clients. UNIFIED COLLABORATION An identity aware collaboration system can synchronize with the meeting management applicationand individuals’ calendars. It results in seamlessly setting up meetings with zero touch and helps eliminate connection issues on both ends. EMPLOYEE WELLNESS APPLICATIONS The distributed workplace relies on agility. Designed to enable higher productivity, better collaboration and more co-creation, the focus on employee well-being is best enabled by a more universal approach to identity. A secure embedded reader can help these disparate systems become identity aware without the need to access a common identity data base. This design delivers a better end-user experience, centralized management and increased cost savings for the employers. ë
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MY VIEWS
Redefining Managed Services As a next generation managed digital service provider, ixtel has been very proactive and adaptive to the changing market demands. As the digital service provider gears up for major investments in its Innovation Lab and Big data company, we have a candid rendezvous with Mr. Mehdi Quraishi, CEO of ixtel on his plans to carve a niche in the services market and expanding in the region.
MR. MEHDI QURAISHI,
T
he market, presently, is ruled by emerging technologies like robotics, AI, machine learning etc. that are steadily redefining the ways in which business is operated and executed. As a leading digital service provider ixtel has understood the pulse of the market and has been inclining its services in line with the direction of the market and thereby projecting a steady growth trajectory. “The market has been very positive for us. We are looking to grow outside UAE and we already have our footprint in Muscat and Bahrain. By the end of Q4 we will have our full-fledged office in Saudi Arabia as well,” says Mehdi Quraishi, CEO of ixtel.. One of the major investments in pipeline is the inauguration of their Big Data practice in Europe. ixtel has a proven skilled team and deep driven expertise in Big Data as a part of their CoE back in India and UAE and they are looking forward to expand in the European market and establish operations across multiple platforms. “We would be working with a close network of partners, but the data scientists are all ixtel core expertise. Big data is no more a hype, it is about value creation. The data scientists that we have acquired and training are one of the best in the region.” adds Quraishi. Cyber security is yet another key area of growth and investment for ixtel. Quraishi says
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that ixtel was predictive of the global ransomware that struck a week ago and had warned its customers a week prior about the mishaps that the attack can lead to. “We have launched our cyber security operation center here and that has been our highest growth area in the past 18 months. It is a unique next generation SOC that we have built for some large government organizations here and have been successfully operational. These kind of skill sets are very rare in the market and we are bringing those to the market with our SOC.”
THE RISING MANAGED SERVICE MARKET Talking about the reception of the MSS market in the region, Quraishi says, “The market is more mature now and people are now more interested in out-tasking and outsourcing. We also provide hybrid service models to the customers and we have seen a great interest in the government organizations here for the hybrid model. Today, employees are not able to keep pace with the pace of technology, hence it is very difficult to retain and train the skilled people. Hence managed services have ideally emerged as the preferred choice for the customer looking for cost effective models.”
AUTOMATION AS A SERVICE The rise of AI and robotics is an evident example
CEO OF IXTEL
“Big Data is no more a hype. It is about value creation.” in the region. Ixtel has a very unique approach to this service model. “If we look at the robotics, we have brought a number of new platforms in this area. We are the first one to introduce the ‘Human guided automation and Robotics platform in the region’ which empower the customers tot roubleshoot issues without having to reach out to tech supportor skilled person so that you can resolve 80-90% of the issue in the first instance. One of the platforms that we have introduced in this market is called the ‘Resolve systems’wherein the application is able to identify the issue or problem specifically and resolve it automatically with minimal human intervention. Some of the customer who are using these systems have automated number of processes and reduced the time of resolution by almost 80% thereby enabling them to bring customer experience to the forefront.” One of the most beautiful things about the Resolve system is that, we are not selling it as a platform but as a service. Customers can buy the service and need to pay only for the problem resolved by the system.” ë
INNOVATIONS
KEY CAPABILITIES n Creates a sensory network that provides added value to organizations with existing Aruba wireless infrastructure n Cost-effective BLE â&#x20AC;&#x201C; enabled tags are ideal for items that range in size from IV pumps in a healthcare setting to pallets of goods in a warehouse. n Assets can be designated with names, photos and optional IDs so that like assets can be searched for easily. n Changes can be performed quickly, near the assets, and all data is automatically saved in a central cloud database. n Organizations can now create their own asset tracking app for iOS or Android with the Meridian AppMaker.
Aruba 320 Series Access Points Aruba introduced a new addition to its location-based services portfolio that helps organizations easily track valued assets, resulting in improved organizational efficiency and lower capital and operational costs associated with misplaced assets. The Aruba asset tracking solution is fully integrated into the Aruba wireless infrastructure, enabling simplified, fully integrated deployments at dra-
matically reduced costs. Aruba asset tracking addresses these challenges with a solution that is integrated into the Aruba Wi-Fi infrastructure, eliminating the need for a separate network. Organizations also gain the benefits of accurate tracking of important items using either an intuitive, map-based mobile app or by integrating with organizationsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; existing tracking solutions.
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ASW120 IN-WALL WIRELESS ACCESS POINT AXILSPOT unveiled the availability of its ASW120 In-wall wireless access point in Middle East and Africa to help businesses manage their growing indoor workload congestions, using a secure and reliable network and Internet connectivity device. The ASW120 is a dual-radio Access Point,with data rate up to 867Mbps on the 5GHz radio and 300Mbps on the 2.4GHz radio. Itsupportsmulti-user MIMO (MU-MIMO)to provide
simultaneous connectivity for multiple devices, maximizing wireless throughput and improving efficiency. ASW120 features four Gigabit Ethernet ports and USB port, supports Standard PoEoutput, VoIP, IPTV, Telephone, Internet access and USB charging. It can be deployed into any standard electrical outlet box, creating a low profile, secure design and front port access fitting in unobtrusively with in-room furniture replacement.
KEY CAPABILITIES n ASW120 support Auto RF channeland power adjustment, high quality QoS, interference immune management, traffic sharping, and others. n Prevents too many users or traffic overload from reducing the quality of service,offering users seamless wireless services. n The VLAN and SSID tagging offers flexibility in access policy and user grouping. n Portal authentication and blacklist features isolate staff and guest network enhancing network security. n The plug-and-play features of ASW120improves operational efficiency and cuts down maintenance costs.
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INNOVATIONS
Polycom Pano Polycom introduced Polycom Pano, the easiest way to share content at work. Now anyone in a business meeting can share up to four streams of simultaneous content side-by-side, from any device, without the hassle of juggling cables, pucks or dongles. Everyone has experienced the struggle of sharing presentations or spreadsheets quickly and easily in a meeting. Now customers can simply connect Polycom Pano to any display to enable wireless content sharing from PCs, Macs, tablets, and smartphones â&#x20AC;&#x201C; even live video.
KEY CAPABILITIES n Includes built-in security safeguards that limit sharing to the target monitor and protect content once a meeting is concluded n High-resolution 4K monitor will enhance the content sharing experience n Pano works with any existing video equipment, making it easy to add on to existing conference room technology n Eliminates common frustrations of sharing content and instead allows teams to focus on mission critical tasks
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SkinnyPatch 6A S/FTP Modular Patch Cords Siemon introduced the addition of fully shielded SkinnyPatch category 6A modular patch cords to its comprehensive line of highperformance copper cabling solutions in the Middle East. The new cords deliver superior category 6A shielded performance and feature a reduced diameter for improved pathway fill, airflow and increased flexibility in high density data center environments.
KEY CAPABILITIES n Offer a significantly tighter bend radius for easier cable routing and enhanced cable management n Provides pathway savings in racks and cabinets whilst maximizing airflow for improved equipment reliability. n Delivers superior transmission and enhanced alien crosstalk performance over unshielded cords n Exceeds ANSI/TIA-568-C.2 and ISO/IEC 11801:2002 performance standards
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