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DATA CENTRE IN THE CLOUD ERA

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EDITORIAL

Remain Relevant

ANUSHREE DIXIT EDITOR A N U S H R E E @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M

“The need for performance advancement remains relevant, driven by the world around us,” said H.E. Majed Sultan Al Mesmar, Deputy Director General of the UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority in his closing remarks at the recently concluded ITU’s 20th Plenipotentiary Conference.

The statement appeals and resonates phenomenally in an era that is driven by innovation first and necessity second. Today, necessity is not the mother of inventions (innovations), but it is all about how your foresee what the necessity would be tomorrow and innovate it today. As cliched as it may sound, change is the only constant. Those who fail to change fail to thrive. This was also very evident at The GEC Awards 2018, where the winners testified the cultural change that their organization has gone through in order to process the innovation coming through. Read about the event and winners on page ( Though change is evident, in our cover story on Data center modernization, we dive deep into some reports that have stated high spending on premise IT systems and pushing Data centers back to traditional borders. In our special story on Retail Reformation, we look into how brick and mortar stores are striving hard to stand neck to neck with the e-commerce giants and pulling the customers back to the stores.

Well, this has been a market-trotting quarter for GEC Media with The CIO 200 expanding its footprint across the MEA region with some key editions concluded. Building on the success, the biggest CIO roadshow in the region, presented by the Global CIO Forum, is stretching its arms to the Asian continent. The Indian edition of the CIO 200 will be held in Mumbai on 5th December 2018 under the aegis of over 400+ CIOs. We shall be releasing the CIO 200 – Annual Coffee Book that will feature 200 CIOs and their projects. These CIOs will be picked from the over 1000 CIOs who have been felicitated during the roadshow.

Its time to pick what’s relevant.

Stay tuned for the updates! ë

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W W W. E C - M E A . C O M NOVEMBER 2018 | VOLUME 06 | ISSUE 04

CONTENTS 22 INTERVIEW

A FABRIC FOR THE FUTURE LAURENT MARCHAND, CEO OF KALOOM

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GUEST ARTICLE

GARTNER TOP 10 STRATEGIC TECHNOLOGY TRENDS FOR 2019

COVER STORY

DAVID CEARLEY, VP AND GARTNER FELLOW, GARTNER

DATA CENTRE IN THE CLOUD ERA No doubt that the cloud is here to stay. But according to reports, analysts expect hardware sales for on premise IT systems to rise significantly.

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INTERVIEW

WELL-CRAFTED SOLUTIONS JOSE THOMAS MENACHERRY, MD, BULWARK

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ADVERTISER INDEX:

TOSHIBA 02, FITS 2019 03, REDINGTON 07, CATALYST AWARDS 09, FINESSE 13, ASBIS 15, MISTUMI -DELL 17, EMERGENTEL 19 SOPHOS 21, PURESTORAGE 23, JUNIPER 37, STORIT 41, VALTO 43, NUTANIX 49, MBUZZ 53, RITTAL 55, CIO 200 59, DELL EMC 60,

EDITORIAL

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INNOVATIONS

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GUEST ARTICLE F5 Networks

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50 FEATURE STORY

THE RETAIL REFORM

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GEC AWARD

GEC AWARDS 2018 GALLOPS A BAR HIGHER!

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STREET DEWA Completes Second Phase of its Green Charger Initiative Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) revealed the completion of the second phase of its ‘Green Charger’ initiative, which included the installation of an additional 100 EV Green Charger stations across Dubai. The announcement was made on the sidelines of the 20th Water, Energy, Technology, and Environment Exhibition (WETEX 2018) in Dubai. With the completion of the project, the total number of charging stations in Dubai has doubled from 100 to 200. The initiative contributes to DEWA’s efforts to encourage environmentallyfriendly electric vehicles to reduce carbon emissions and to support sustainable modes of transport in Dubai. The EV Green Charger Initiative was launched by DEWA in 2015 in support of the vision of HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to make the Emirate the smartest and happiest city in the world.

H.E Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA, and Founder and Chairman of WETEX, said: “WETEX is an ideal opportunity for us to announce our latest achievements and given its global position as one of the world’s largest energy, water, environment and technology events, over the past two decades.

Through this unique platform, we are pleased to double the EV Green Charger stations from 100 to 200. This is in continuation of our efforts to support the Smart Dubai initiative, which aims to make Dubai the smartest and happiest city in the world, ensuring a bright future for all Dubai residents by strengthening the foundations of environmental sustainability. It also supports the achievement of the UAE Vision 2021 and the Dubai Plan 2021 to make Dubai a smart, integrated and sustainable city with clean, healthy and sustainable environmental elements.”

SCTDA THROWS SPOTLIGHT ON SHARJAH TOURISM The Sharjah Commerce and Tourism Development Authority (SCTDA) particiapted at GITEX Technology Week 2018. The SCTDA hosted a Sharjah Pavilion featuring 36 government entities– all highlighting the latest digital innovations utilized to help bolster the emirate’s thriving tourism industry. During the exciting five-

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day show, the Authority showcased various innovative projects at the Sharjah Pavilion, which included ‘Fantasy Doors’, ‘360 Sharjah Activities’, ‘Interactive Screen’ and ‘Safari Vehicle Permit System.’ The programs meet the objectives of the Sharjah Tourism Vision 2021 to enhance the tourism sector in the emirate by developing a wide

range of services for tourists, travel and tours establishments and other stakeholders in the emirate.

H.E. Khalid Jasim Al Midfa, Chairman, SCTDA, said: “Our presence at GITEX also signifies our continuing interest in keeping the Authority and the sector abreast of the latest technological developments.”

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IBM to Acquire Red Hat for $34 Billion Cisco signed a Memorandum of Understanding (IBM is acquiring Red Hat in a deal valued around $34 billion, the companies revealed.

IBM will pay $190 per share for the software company, a more than 60% premium to Red Hat’s closing stock price of $116.68 on Friday.

The transaction is by far IBM’s biggest acquisition. It underscores IBM Chief Executive Ginni Rometty’s efforts to expand the company’s subscription-based software offerings, as it faces slowing software sales and waning demand for mainframe servers.

Founded 25 years ago, Red Hat specializes in Linux operating systems, the most popular type of open-source software, which was developed as an alternative to proprietary software made by Microsoft Corp.

For IBM, Red Hat’s Linux and other software assets represent an opportunity to sell products to corporate software developers who are building complex applications that can run on both cloud-computing platforms such as Amazon and Microsoft as well as in-house data centers.

ADNEC LAUNCHES FIRST ONLINE INTERACTIVE CHATBOT PLATFORM Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company (ADNEC) launched an online chatbot platform ‘Jawab,’ which has been designed and developed to effectively respond directly and automatically to enquiries from exhibitors, organizers and visitors on all event-related aspects, including the diverse range of services provided by ADNEC. With this launch, ADNEC becomes the first venue within the exhibitions and conferences sector in the MENA region to launch a customer interactive machine learning chatbot, and among the top companies globally to adopt this new technology, which contributes to facilitating and accelerating the process of providing information to public and private sector customers. Humaid Matar Al Dhaheri, Group CEO of ADNEC said: “It is our constant endeavor to integrate the latest technological advancements seamlessly into our products and service offerings, as part of our mission to foster a culture of innovation and excellence, which effectively contributes to enhancing our competitiveness and capabilities to emphasize Abu Dhabi’s position as the regional capital for business tourism.”

OMA GROUP MOVES HEAD OFFICE OMA Group recently moved to their new office building premises which is just behind King Faisal Mosque in Sharjah, UAE occupying an area of 60,000 sq ft. As part of the Al Owais Group of Companies, OMA Emirates along with other subsidiaries of the group would now work under one roof.

This move was a part of their expansion strategy due to the success in growth of the company. The move has also helped in strategising better working growth amongst employees creating a healthier atmosphere in the office. “This move represents our continuous expansion in the Global Market as we plan to have our expansion to 25 countries by 2020”, said Niranj Sangal, Group CEO, OMA Emirates Group.

The company has planned to use its own home grown solutions in the office thus implementing new technology and making the Head Office a high tech and cashless one.

Employees will be able to link their staff identification with the Digital Wallet and can also be used for Attendance Management and Payment Transactions.

ELM CONCLUDES SUCCESSFUL PARTICIPATION IN GITEX Elm has concluded its successful participation in GITEX Technology Week 2018 amid wide acclaim for its innovative electronic services, followed by several international agreements and memorandum of understanding in Dubai.

Elm’s stand at the event

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welcomed the visit of key decision-makers, government officials, as well as regional and international ICT experts which have shown keen interest in the company’s portfolio of creative solutions designed to address current and emerging challenges and

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keep pace with the rapid digital transformation at the local and international levels.

Majid Bin Saad Al Arifi, Vice President of Marketing at Elm, said: “Our participation in GITEX Technology Week 2018 was very successful following the demonstra-

tion of innovative services and solutions that meet international standards and usher towards digital transformation while bringing happiness and satisfaction to our customers from the public and private sectors. The ‘Eshara’ service is one of the our most successful

stories which has attracted the attention of regional and international visitors, further boosting our confidence of its strong capability to support the development of service sectors aimed at facilitating the lives of people in line with the objectives of Saudi Vision 2030.

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‘AI Could Eradicate Tuberculosis,’ says UAE Minister of State for AI

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SMART DUBAI COLLABORATES WITH IBM Smart Dubai has signed a MoU with IBM with the aim of setting up a Data Science Lab and

H.E. OMAR BIN SULTAN AL OLAMA, MINISTER OF STATE FOR AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) could be the key to eradicating tuberculosis (TB), the world’s deadliest disease, according to His Excellency Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence.

H.E. Al Olama told the audience on the first day of the UN World Data Forum 2018 – organised by the Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Authority (FCSA) at Dubai’s Madinat Jumeirah on October 22-24 – that although AI is quite controversial, it can have many positive outcomes

for millions of people across the world.

The technology could be used to prevent, cure and diagnose specific diseases, H.E. asserted, focusing specifically on TB, which kills more people than any other disease across the world.

TB affects more than 10 million people, killing around 2 million every year, he said. “It’s a big weight on our shoulders, we need to cure the disease and can deploy technology to do so.”

“We, in the office of the Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence in the UAE Government are working on an algorithmic solution that can be used in the detection and diagnosis of TB from chest X-rays,” H.E. Al Olama said. “You can upload any image of a chest X-ray and the system will identify if a person has the disease.

The algorithm determines the probability of Pulmonary TB infection.”

“The disease is preventable and curable and there is no excuse for not tackling it,” H.E. asserted, noting that the biggest challenge was that a lot pf people did not know they had the disease or did not show any symptoms of having it.

“If AI is deployed, the detection process becomes a lot simpler. A team goes to an area thought to have TB and use an AI-powered tool to screen people en masse. X-rays are put into an algorithm and it identifies who has TB and who does not.”

collaborating on organising the Chief Data Officer (CDO) Summit in Dubai in 2019. The MoU was signed at the UN World Data Forum 2018. Smart Dubai has set plans to launch a Data Science Lab, which seeks to develop data science skills in Dubai and foster collaboration among the data science community in the emirate to identify and explore opportunities that will boost the creation of a data ecosystem.

DHA PARTNERS WITH HEALTHIG Dubai Health Authority partnered with Healthigo in organising the Dubai Pink Ride 2018. The Pink Ride Initiative, in aid of breast cancer awareness was held on Friday, 26th October. The 13.5 km bicycle route started behind the Sunset Mall, going to Burj Al Arab and ended back at the starting point. The 32.5 km bike route also started behind the Sunset Mall, going to Burj Al Arab and further to the Etihad Museum and ended back at the starting point.

ALJAMMAZ DISTRIBUTION PARTNERS WITH PIVOT3 Al Jammaz has partnered with Pivot3 to distribute intelligent hybrid cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in GCC. Through this partnership, AlJammaz will provide the channel with Pivot3’s smarter infrastructure

DELL EMC RECOGNIZES REGIONAL TALENT IN ‘ENVISION THE FUTURE’ Dell EMC revealed the winners of ‘Envision the Future’, the annual graduation project competition for Turkey, Middle East and Africa region. The competition in its third year witnessed significant growth from the previous editions with over 329 project submissions by more than 1,450 senior undergraduate students, representing more than 70 universities in 18 countries in the region. In its third edition, ‘Envision the Future’, sponsored by the Egyptian Centre of Excellence (COE), aims to inspire and support technological innovations among youth in the region. Aligned with the Dell 2020 Legacy of Good goal to apply the expertise and technology of Dell EMC to drive human progress in underserved communities, the annual competition provides the opportunity for students to propose creative solutions to urban challenges with advanced technologies. The competition also saw the participation of seven new countries including Oman, from where the German University of Technology in Oman (GUtech) proceeded to feature among the winners in addition to Princess Noura University from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

solutions that bring security, resilience and manageability at scale for mission-critical environments.

LENOVO AND EMITAC PARTNER Lenovo and EMITAC Enterprise Solutions (EES) revealed a strategic partnership for the UAE market. As a part of this partnership, EES has been officially been appointed as a tier-one partner and will leverage Lenovo’s data centre portfolio to drive intelligent transformation through software defined solutions for enterprise customers in the UAE. Lenovo’s data centre portfolio spans servers, storage, converged and hyperconverged, networking, hyperscale, software and services. This includes its ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile products.

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INNOVATORS IN

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Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Certified for SAP HANA Deployment

SUNIL POTTI, CHIEF PRODUCT & DEVELOPMENT OFFICER, NUTANIX

Nutanix revealed that its AHV hypervisor and Enterprise Cloud OS platform hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution, has met SAP’s criteria for running production SAP HANA® deployments. This will allow businesses that use SAP solutions to benefit from the simplicity and agility of leading HCI technology to deliver a modern IT architecture for SAP’s in-memory relational database platform.

SAP has certified the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS platform with AHV virtualization for SAP HANA as part of SAP’s new HCI certification program. SAP HANA is revolutionizing the speed of data processing for reporting, analytics and computational tasks. Nutanix has proven the performance and scalability required for successful SAP HANA enterprise deployments, along with simple Day-2 operations of SAP environments. This includes the ability to deliver superior throughput rates with minimal latency, as well as ensure high availability during periods of heavy database usage.

“We are delighted to announce this achievement. As customers increasingly re-platform their portfolio of enterprise workloads on Nutanix, our certification will enable them to use a single platform for all their workloads,” said Sunil Potti, Chief Product and Development Officer, Nutanix.

AZIZI DEVELOPMENTS SIGNS CONTRACT WITH BIOSME Azizi Developments has joined forces with BIOS Middle East (BIOSME) to enhance its IT infrastructure.

BIOSME will leverage cloud solutions to offer Azizi Developments a suite of fully managed services that includes hosting their ERP and critical workloads with a BCP strategy.

Hashim Saeed, Head of Information Technology for Azizi Developments commented, “We’re very proud to be working alongside BIOS Middle East to make our digital transformation strategy a reality.

This exciting development marks the next stage in our journey to become a forward-thinking real estate developer of the future – enabling us to implement our digital ambitions and improve our services. Azizi has seen significant growth over the years and with BIOS Middle East, we will have the flexibility needed to develop and innovate our services, giving us the agility we need to meet the challenges facing the real estate sector both now and in the future.”

BATELCO AND HUAWEI SIGN PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT Based on the company’s vision towards digital transformation and expansion in new growth areas, and as part of its of its strategy to provide smart digital solutions to the public and private sectors through a coherent and integrated system, that includes infrastructure for storing

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and managing data, Batelco signed a partnership agreement with Huawei, who will build an Uptime Institute Certified Tier III Data Centre for Batelco.

The agreement, a significant development in the field of data management technology and cloud computing, was

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signed by Batelco Bahrain CEO Mohamed Bubashait and An Jian, President of Carrier Business Group, Huawei Middle East Region, in the presence of members of the Executive Management from both companies on Wednesday 17th of October 2018 during GITEX 2018, held

at the World Trade Centre, Dubai.

With power capacity of 1.3 MegaWatt, the Tier III data centre will offer customers the most reliable and scalable facility in the Kingdom and contribute significantly to the Kingdom’s digital infrastructure.

Customers will also

benefit from continuous support from the Company’s 24-hour Network Operations Centre and business-continuity management facilities for both the public and private sectors, enabling customers to benefit from a high degree of quality, safety and reliability.

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Cisco and Abu Dhabi Airports Sign Agreement Cisco and Abu Dhabi Airports, signed an agreement that will give Abu Dhabi Airports commercial benefits on Cisco solutions in support of Abu Dhabi Airport’s digital transformation strategy.

This agreement highlights Cisco’s commitment to collaborate with ADAC on its vision to build the airport of the future by delivering world class airport services and infrastructure.

This collaboration will help Abu Dhabi Airports to enhance the digital capacity, operational efficiency and customer experience of the Capital’s airport. Additionally, Cisco’s solutions and IoT portfolio will help Abu Dhabi

Airports to securely connect devices, analyze data, and deliver business value to its customers and partners.

Bryan Thompson, CEO of Abu Dhabi Airports commented: “As we continue our journey of innovation and digitization it will allow us to remain at the forefront of creating targeted improvements to our business and customer experience. Through this, both Cisco and Abu Dhabi Airports’ teams have raised the bar in how partners work together in a fast paced industry, we look forward to many innovative solutions being made available from our collective teams.”

WEB CLIPS MIMECAST LAUNCHES GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP PROGRAM Mimecast launched Global Citizenship program that aims to support charitable organizations that are building resilience in communities. Global Citizenship formalizes the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts and encourages all Mimecast employees to actively participate in initiatives that provide security and empowerment opportunities in their surrounding populations and environments.

EPICOR REVEALS LATEST VERSION OF ITS ERP Epicor introduced its Dealer Network Portal

ETIHAD ESCO SIGNS SERVICE AGREEMENT WITH TALISEN TECHNOLOGIES In line with the expansion of its retrofitting services to drive sustainable development efforts in the UAE, Etihad Energy Services Company (Etihad ESCO) a service agreement with the Talisen Technologies Inc. to jointly develop a Measurement and Verification (M&V) Centre at its office in the DEWA Sustainable Building in Dubai. The collaborative agreement, an extension of an already existing partnership between the companies, was signed on the second day of the ongoing 20th Water, Energy, Technology, and Environment Exhibition (WETEX 2018) in Dubai, by Ali Al Jassim, CEO of Etihad ESCO and George Brill, CEO of Talisen Technologies Inc. in the presence of officials from both sides.

as part of its upcoming release of Epicor ERP 10.2.300. In an increasingly digital world, dealers face the same rising customer expectations as retailers, driven by technology innovations and modern eCommerce. Sales and service dealers are under new pressure to meet higher customer expectations for easy self-service, personalized offers, rapid and convenient delivery, high quality, and transparency throughout the buying process.

AMD AND ORACLE COLLABORATE At Oracle OpenWorld 2018, AMD made available its first EPYC processor-based instance on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. With this announcement, Oracle becomes the

MOVEMENTS

NUMBER GAME

largest public cloud provider to have a Bare Metal version of AMD EPYCTM processors.

The AMD EPYC processor “E” series will lead with the bare metal, Standard “E2”, available

AVINASH ADVANI becomes new CEO of Spire Solutions

Leviton Middle East Appoints SHADY YOUSSEF as Managing Director

Riverbed promoted MENA MIGALLY as Regional Director Territory & Telco - METNA

$2.3

bn

immediately as the first instance type within the Series. At $0.03/Core hour, the AMD EPYC instance is up to 66 percent less on average per core than general purpose instances offered by the competition and is the most cost-effective instance available on any public cloud.

DED AJMAN ADOPTS USE OF EMIR-

The MEA smart cities market set to grow to USD 2.3 billion by 2021:IDC

ATES ID FOR TRANSACTIONS The DED Ajman has started adopting the use of an individual’s Emirates ID for transactions and processes made at its customer happiness centres located across the emirate. The move is aimed towards enhancing efficiency as the use of the Emirates ID, which is needed in updating a customer’s profile and data, ensures maximum accuracy.

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Emirates NBD to launch Chat Banking via WhatsApp Emirates NBD will soon launch customized banking services via WhatsApp in the UAE. The bank is the first in the region to integrate its core systems with the WhatsApp Business solution, which will allow customers to seamlessly carry out their daily banking activities such as checking account balances and temporarily blocking or unblocking an existing card, enhancing its suite of digital channels. The initial phase of services are being piloted currently for the bank’s employees and will be rolled out to customers shortly following successful trials.

Abdulla Qassem, Group Chief Operating Officer, Emirates NBD said: “Following the launch of the initial phase, we look forward to

progressively expanding our range of WhatsApp based services to deliver a unified, digital experience for our customers. In doing so, the new offering will complement our existing digital and social media channels in a secure and convenient way.”

Suvo Sarkar, Senior EVP & Group Head, Retail Banking and Wealth Management at Emirates NBD said: “Our integration with the WhatsApp Business solution builds on our commitment to make banking easy and intuitive. WhatsApp is a simple, reliable and private way to talk to anyone in the world, which will lend further simplicity and ease to banking with Emirates NBD.”

EMERSON HOSTS FIRST TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION IN KSA Emerson successfully hosted the Emerson Technology Conference & Exhibition at the Emerson facility in Dhahran Techno Valley (DTV) in Saudi Arabia. This first-of-its kind event in the region was designed to help customers achieve Top Quartile performance in the areas of safety, reliability, production and energy management. The Technology Conference & Exhibition focused on helping attendees in improving their businesses across a wide range of functions, including capital projects, plant operations around energy usage, process control, safety systems, rotating machinery, combustion and steam, asset reliability, and lifecycle services. The event showcased strategies towards implementing digital transformation by harnessing the capabilities of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and provided a unique platform to network, identify, design, and plan the adoption of these technological advancements. All these innovations are designed to help address key challenges around company operations, ultimately driving towards efficiencies and growth in corporate performance metrics such as Operational profitability and return of investment around Capital Projects.

DREAMWORKS IS DATA-DRIVEN WITH NETAPP NetApp has partnered with DreamWorks to develop and oversee the studio’s customized Data Fabric approach, designed to enable expanded capabilities and future growth for the Glendale-based leader in family entertainment.

Through the partnership, NetApp’s engineers are working closely with DreamWorks’ IT team to optimize the Data Fabric and meet the studio’s unique, rapidly expanding data storage and management needs. The incredibly detailed and immersive graphics that DreamWorks artists create represent enormous volumes of data and add the challenge of complexity to the Dreamworks IT environment. The NetApp® and DreamWorks partnership represents an innovative approach to this challenge, focused on predictive analytics and other new capabilities to power real-time access to large datasets. The approach also simplifies the overall integration and orchestration of data across a hybrid IT infrastructure.

“Having used NetApp solutions on all of our CG animated feature films, DreamWorks trusts NetApp to deliver the data services our filmmakers rely on to innovate today and tomorrow, as they unleash creativity and dream new realities,” said Kate Swanborg, SVP of Technology Communications and Strategic Alliances at DreamWorks.

SMART DUBAI, CENTER OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY SIGN PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT Smart Dubai has signed a partnership agreement with the Centre for Technology and Global Affairs at the University of Oxford at GITEX Technology Week 2018. The agreement signed between the

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two entities will see them exchanging expertise and experience in the fields of technology such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, big data, IOT, drones and more.

“Smart Dubai is using

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the world’s most disruptive and innovative technologies to transform city experiences for Dubai’s resident and visitors. The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking

world and the world’s second-oldest university in continuous operation.

The University of Oxford’s Centre for Technology and Global Affairs harnesses the creative power of the industry’s best

minds – we are delighted to be able to partner with such an esteemed academic institution” said Smart Dubai Office Director General, Her Excellency Dr. Aisha Bint Butti Bin Bishr.

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Dubai Government Workshop signs MoU with RIT Dubai

Dubai Government Workshop has revealed the signing of a strategic new MOU with the Rochester Institute of Technology – Dubai (RIT Dubai), to help reinforce academic and educational cooperation across the efforts to develop highly qualified and skilled human resources for the future. The agreement was signed by H.E. Humaid Sultan Al Mutaiwee, DGW, CEO and

Dr. Yousif Al Assaf, President, RIT Dubai. during the signing, both parties agreed on the need to work closely together to provide academic education and executive development for employees, as well as practical training for students based on the highest standards of professionalism and excellence.

H.E. Al Mutaiwee said, “Our collaboration with RIT Dubai demonstrates our continued commitment towards strengthening effective cooperative frameworks with the private sector, especially in our move to provide the highest functional, professional and technological skills for human resources, which supports our vision to help manage vehicle fleets with quality and efficiency to achieve customer satisfaction and happiness. We are committed to provide the practical training for these university students within an environment that is conducive to creativity and innovation to graduate generations capable of pioneering in various fields.” H.E added.

BT LAUNCHES DIRECT CONNECTIVITY TO GOOGLE CLOUD BT launched a new service to provide organisations with simple, direct and fast access to Google Cloud Platform. BT Cloud Connect for Google Cloud gives customers direct connectivity with interface speeds varying from 50 Mb/s to 2Gb/s. A resilient pair of high-performance connections means access to Google Cloud Platform services comes with more security, higher availability and with better consistency compared to connecting over the open internet.

The service is currently available at Google Cloud’s Ashburn and Chicago points of presence in the US, as well as in Frankfurt, Germany and London, helping organisations based in those regions optimise performance and meet compliance requirements. The new service complements Google Cloud’s Partner Interconnect, a service which offers enterprises access to Google Cloud Platform from anywhere in the world.

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC TO SUPPORT MEA’S USD 7 BILLION IOT MARKET Schneider Electric, at GITEX Technology Week, showcased the latest innovations that will support the Middle East and Africa’s USD 7 billion Internet of Things (IoT) market and enable Smart Cities. From Dubai’s Smart City initiatives to smart airports and trains regionally, Middle East countries and organizations are accelerating investment in the IoT to drive sustainable performance, optimize costs and operations, and enhance safety and security. As a result, the Middle East and Africa IoT spend is set to grow by 80 percent from USD 7 billion in 2018 to USD 12.6 billion by 2021, according to IDC. Supporting the region’s digital transformation, at GITEX Technology Week, Schneider Electric’s solar-powered Innovation Hub on Wheels highlighted 17 use cases for the Schneider Electric EcoStruxure architecture. Visitors experienced demos of energy digitization across six key segments: Data Center, Buildings, Transportation, Water and Waste Water Management, Oil and Gas, and Utilities.

CANON PARTNERS WITH AL SAYER GROUP AND THE KUWAIT TEACHERS SOCIETY

Under its ‘Education For Life’ campaign, Canon Middle East partnered with Al Sayer group and the Kuwait Teachers Society to demonstrate its suite of solutions that address challenges brought about by the

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changing needs of key education sector stakeholders – students, teachers, and administration.

The technology leader showcased its commitment towards enabling the digital transformation of the education experi-

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ence in Kuwait at an event held at the Kuwait Teachers Society in Kuwait City. The speakers at the event CEO and board member of Al Sayer Group Mubarak Al Sayer, founder of Kashcool Faisal Alghadhouri, Board

Member of the Kuwait Teachers Society and First Advisor of Computer Curriculum at the Ministry of Education, Mr. Ali Ahmed Al Kandari, and Business Unit Director, B2B, Canon Middle East Shadi Bakhour. The

Kuwait Vision 2035 lays the framework to achieving sustainable development in the country and highlights the significant role played by education in enabling economic diversification, growth and social progress.

CHANNEL STREET

Espeo Blockchain Recognizes Dubai as Its New Hub Espeo Blockchain has just unveiled its new office location – Dubai, citing the MENA region’s potential in growth and interest in blockchain technologies as the reason for starting local operations.

Dubai joins Zug, Poznań, San Francisco and Helsinki as another hub of activity for Espeo Blockchain. Unsurprisingly, Dubai has already become one of the top spots for blockchain entrepreneurship, with its friendly attitude towards cryptocurrencies and its government personally invested in bringing new technologies to its citizens.

However, there are very few blockchain professionals in the region who can advise on

blockchain or develop blockchain solutions.

Companies and government agencies in the region are either left to seek talent elsewhere or turn to the very few local providers in the space.

“We’re planning to change that, giving the public access to not only blockchain developers, but advisors helping to make the right decisions for a particular use case,” says Mickael Costache, MENA Regional Director.

Espeo Blockchain is no newcomer, with a solid track record for both ICOs and complex blockchain products, as well as numerous initiatives – including blockchain meetups and an in-progress open source oracles project.

MICROSOFT HIGHLIGHTS INTELLIGENT CLOUD SOLUTIONS AT 7TH RCS Microsoft marked its presence as the Cloud Security Partner at the 7th Regional Cybersecurity (RCS) Summit in Kuwait, a key event hosted by the Communications and information Technology Regulatory Authority (CITRA). Organized by ITU Arab Regional Cybersecurity, in collaboration with White Paper Summits (WPS), the RCS Summit took place on 21-22 October at the Jumeirah Messilah Beach Hotel in Kuwait City, and focused on a vast range of key topics to highlight current trends and future security issues that affect the virtual security of organizations, and interfere in business efficiency. The Summit hosted 250+ key attendees from across the Middle East to discuss partner and form new ideas, policies and present the latest technological advancements that can help in battling cyber coercions. “The fourth industrial revolution is upon us and is transforming the way we work and live”, said Eng. Salim Al Ozainah, Chairman and CEO, Communication and Information Technology Regulatory Authority (CITRA). This calls for a significant need of cybersecurity to be on the agenda of every organization in the country and the wider region. The RCS Summit is a cornerstone of our effort to create shared learning and dialogue regarding cybersecurity challenges and facilitate the exchange of information, ideas, solutions, and emerging practices that could improve security posture in the region.

FUTURE OF TRAVEL TECH UNVEILED BY AMADEUS AT GITEX As the Middle East’s travel and tourism industry continues to move into the digital age, Amadeus is bringing to life new solutions to help businesses improve the travel experience for customers anywhere in the world.

During GITEX Technology Week, running from October 14-18 at the Dubai World Trade Centre, visitors can explore how Amadeus is supporting airlines and airports, hotels, search engines, travel agencies, and tour operators to capture the value of digital transformation The adoption of emerging technologies within the Middle East’s travel sector is anticipated to rise in the coming years, especially as Dubai Expo 2020 draws nearer. Connecting different travel services in faster, easier ways to work towards shared goals is a major priority for the industry. Travelers in the region are also migrating towards digital retail platforms. Amadeus predicts that online travel bookings in the Middle East will reach around 40% of total gross bookings by 2021, with gross bookings for air, hotel, car and tour services growing at an average of around 8% over the coming years.

KAIZEN AMS REVEALED THE LATEST IN ASSET AND PROPERTY TECHNOLOGY Kaizen Asset Management Services (Kaizen AMS) is spearheading a number of tech initiatives that will revolutionize the property and asset management industry.

These initiatives were revealed at the first ever

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Dubai held, PROPTECH conference which took place at the Sofitel The Palm on 29th and 30th of October 2018.

As an avid supporter of the advancements in property and asset technology, the CEO of

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Kaizen AMS, Fadi Nwilati led a panel discussion entitled: The Next Chapter in Real Estate Portfolio Management covering the Mapping of technology and empowering the modern landlord, Data Opportunity Zones for

property developers and trends shaping the future of asset management – which took place on 29th of October 2018. During the panel discussion, Nwilati spoke to industry experts including Sylvain Vieujot, CEO of

Equitativa, Samer Zabian, Head of Residential and Commercial Real Estate, Al Futtaim Real Estate, Mahmoud El Burai, Dubai Land Department and Marwan Daloul, CEO, American Properties.

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INTERVIEW

A Fabric for the future KALOOM DELIVERS INDUSTRY’S FIRST FULLY AUTOMATED, PROGRAMMABLE DATA CENTER FABRIC. THE COMPANY ALSO ANNOUNCED THE GENERAL AVAILABILITY OF ITS SOFTWARE-DEFINED FABRIC

LAURENT MARCHAND, CEO OF KALOOM

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t GITEX 2018, Kaloom, an emerging leader in the fully automated datacenter networking software market, announced the general availability of its Software Defined Fabric (SDF) product family.

Kaloom was founded with the vision of providing the most automated and programmable data center networking fabric, one that will disrupt how data centers are built and managed by cloud providers, telcos and enterprises. Beta customers have turned to Kaloom, rather than to competing products, for increased automation and feature velocity while reducing network latency, costs and time to introduce new services and features.

Kaloom’s SDF leverages open networking white boxes in order to reduce CAPEX while its automation features reduce OPEX and minimize time to deployment and configuration errors. The P4-based programming capabilities of the fabric future-proofs network investments compared to slower, more costly merchant silicon product cycles. By offloading data plane functions from virtual machines and containers, Kaloom’s SDF delivers an increase of up to 2x in throughput with a 7x reduction in latency, improving overall networking efficiency by a factor of 5-10x.

“The general availability of the SDF is a great achievement by our team. Our product has been tested by several beta customers, which require lower-latency solutions, and it was very well received,” said Laurent Marchand, CEO of

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Kaloom. “Since founding Kaloom, our goal has been to deliver the most automated, programmable and scalable data center networking fabric at the lowest cost in the industry and we’re proud to say that we’ve exceeded that goal.”

Kaloom offers interfaces to leading industry standard orchestration systems and SDN controllers such as Openstack (ML2), Kubernetes (CNI) and OpenDaylight (NETCONF). Kaloom’s SDF offers a pre-tested and certified software solution for white boxes from Accton, Delta and Foxconn that is designed for hyperscale and distributed data center environments.

KALOOM DRIVES INNOVATION, ENABLES ALLLAYER DATA CENTER AUTOMATION The SDF’s programmable fabric enables developers to drive innovation; and customers can rapidly and easily add new services and features to the Kaloom SDF. The flexible architecture provides an adaptable, high-performance, low-latency multi-data center fabric specifically designed to satisfy the current and future challenges of increasing network workload demands at scale. The SDF is a fully containerized networking fabric that improves scale and the overall performance of container networking.

SDF is integrated into well-known orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes using Container

Networking Interface (CNI), and OpenStack using Neutron modular layer 2 (ML2) plugins.

The days of managing complex and error-prone configuration files and scripts are finally over as Kaloom brings true all-layer automation to the data center networking space. The Kaloom SDF has advanced self-forming and self-discovery capabilities, as well as zero-touch provisioning of the virtual network and virtual components with automated software upgrades. As a result, human intervention is minimized, thus saving time, effort and errors. Network provisioning time is reduced from several days to minutes, and the network is automatically updated during runtime.

The Kaloom SDF has been designed to virtualize the data center. A physical data center can be partitioned into multiple independent and fully isolated virtual data centers (vDCs). Each vDC operates with its own Virtual Fabric (vFabric), which can host millions of IPv4 or IPv6 based tenant networks. Additional compute and storage resources can be dynamically assigned or removed from a vDC through the associated vFabric, thus creating a flexible and elastic pool of network resources suitable for network slicing.

Kaloom has also revolutionized the business model for data center owners, offering a “pay-asyou-grow” subscription license. Customers pay only for the active number of customer-facing ports, thereby simplifying deployments, decreasing costs and improving forecasting. In the network, the solution leverages low-cost open networking white boxes, thus eliminating the need for expensive physical appliances.

“Software-defined and virtual architectures are key enablers for organizations looking to transform their network and are driving the next wave of network investment,” said Bob Laliberte, practice director and senior analyst for networking at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Organizations will require higher levels of network automation and programmability to meet the rigorous demands of highly dynamic environments. Additionally, telcos, hyperscalers and multi-data center enterprises are looking to deploy modern, containerbased solutions to optimize networking and computing resources. Kaloom’s SDF is focused on, and takes advantage of, these key emerging trends.” ë

WE HELP YOU BUILD A DATA-CENTRIC STRATEGY We’re in a new world: data is now a strategic asset, and enterprises will need data-centric strategies to succeed and thrive. So it’s time to re-think IT infrastructure from the bottom-up.

purestorage.com

COVER STORY

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COVER STORY

DATA CENTRE IN THE CLOUD ERA No doubt that the cloud is here to stay. But according to reports, analysts expect hardware sales for on premise IT systems to rise significantly. Enterprises are moving back to a more traditional data centre.

Is the enterprise data centre and by extension, colocation, about to put up a fight against the cloud? 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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espite the rapid growth and adoption of cloud, organizations still need on premise systems. Though cloud-based services have been transforming the businesses, investments in on premise data centre infrastructures are increasing according to IHS Markit. In the past year, we have witnessed expansion of existing data centre facilities with additional space and power in the region. Few examples are Batelco, Ooredoo, ITC, etc. Recently Facebook announced its plans of opening a 11-story data centre in Singapore. In Frankfurt, Etix Everywhere and Data Centre Group have teamed to build a 15MVA facility. Over a month ago, Rajasthan in India launched the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest data centre Bhamashah State Data Centre (BCDC).

Globally, data centre is making a huge noise. How is the race going in the Middle East? Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s read.

RACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST While the Middle East organizations develop an increasing appetite to run their businesses on cloud platforms, some of the big tech companies have lined up to reveal when and where they will build their data centres. In the Middle East, UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are the two of the most important countries who host the

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COVER STORY

Source: go4hosting

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COVER STORY

“IN THE PAST FEW YEARS, WE HAVE NOTICED A MAJOR SHIFT IN THE DATA CENTRE. DATA CENTRE IS COMPARATIVELY LESS EXPENSIVE THAN CLOUD AND FULLY AUTOMATED,” SUNIL KUMAR, CTO, INTELLITEK IT SOLUTIONS.

“OUR EXPERIENCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST MARKETS SHOWS US THAT BESIDES THE USE OF DATA CENTRES IN THE ENTERPRISE SECTOR, THERE IS A VERY HIGH DEMAND FOR THE SERVICES BY THE SMB SECTOR,” YASSER ZEINELDIN, CEO, EHDF.

majority of the enterprises in the region and are also supported by the government with regards to adoption of new technologies. They are also centrally-located to access most of the submarine and terrestrial networks in the region. Recently, Oman also made huge investments in submarine infrastructure.

The software maker, Microsoft is all set to open its first data centres in the Middle East (Dubai & Abu Dhabi) in 2019. Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that it will be building three data centres in Bahrain. Alibaba Cloud is set to open its second data centre in Dubai. SAP has also aimed to expand its presence in the Middle East region by opening a new data centre in Dubai.

BIGGEST SHIFT IN DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY Data that was once considered sensitive and not allowed to leave the organization boundaries is now being hosted either locally or with international service providers. The rising cost of

business requirements.”

DATA CENTRE SERVICES – TRENDS owning large data centres have in turn provided significant boost to the colocation market.

According to ResearhandMarkets, data centre colocation market is estimated to reach a total market size of $55.31 billion by the end of 2021.

The enterprise now a days have more options when it comes to taking care of their IT needs and colocation is one of the them. When they collocate their servers, organizations can cut down on their operating expenses, thereby focusing more on the core business. Colocation also provides businesses with multiple layers of security against unauthorized access or natural disasters. The other benefits of colocation services include diverse cooling systems, round the clock monitoring, etc.

Yasser Zeineldin, CEO of eHDF says “The modern data centre has raised floring which ensures robust performance. Also, the fire suppression systems have improved in the last few years and they are now able to raise an alert with the onset of smoke. Data centre operators of today are also focusing on Dynamic CCU configuration, which is the self-regulation of pumping air where automatic detection is possible. This helps in the uniform distribution of supply & return air, thereby making an efficient cooling system.”

Sunil Kumar, CTO, IntelliTek IT Solutions says “In the past few years, we have noticed a major shift in the data centre. Data centre is comparatively less expensive than cloud and fully automated. Whether your ICT need is for an ‘On Premise’ solution or a ‘Hosted/Cloud’ solution IntelliTek are here to help, allowing you to make an informed choice as to the best fit for your

The Data Centre Services Market growth within the GCC states is set to expand from USD 1,073 million in 2012 to USD 3,112 million by this year says reports. Faced with the need to reduce operating expenses and increase operational efficiency, organizations in the Middle East are now looking at Managed Services as an alternative to manage and expand their IT infrastructures.

Digital disruption is also forcing enterprises to shift their businesses from a centralized system to a distributed network as today’s centralized and siloed architectures cannot support a digitized, customer-centric model that is needed for driving new business.

There are also several challenges faced by the service providers. Data centre providers, many of whom were pioneers in building security into their services, are starting to reassess how to deliver secure services as demand increases exponentially. Furthermore, these services are now woven into information and physical supply chains, underpinning public cloud, mobile, smart cities and IoT revolution driving dynamic changes across business and society today.

FINAL THOUGHTS & LOOKING AHEAD The data centre shall continue to be a critical part of the business and colocation shall also gain popularity as it poses major advantages. We shall witness new demands and business requirements which will impact the entire data centre model.

Colocation is the way to go for businesses that want quality and flexibility. So, regardless of what evolutions occur in the technology sector, IT leaders must evolve as well. ë

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GITEX 2018

WEBNMS

IOT IN A NEW LIGHT For WebNMS, 2018 was a year of clarity. Karen Ravindranath, Director – WebNMS says that they saw significant clarity in terms of comprehending the concept of IoT in partners as well as customers. WebNMS showcased the latest version of its core, edge and analytics platform and a spectrum of readymade enterprise IoT solutions under the theme #ImagineDeliverIoT. Demos focused on Single Line Diagram Views and Industrial Floor Plans that offer accurate visualiza-

tion for IIOT, Energy Management and Utilities verticals. Logistics focused features like schedule and automatic route optimizations and driver behaviour scoring analytics will be another highlight at the WebNMS booth. IoT deployments with WebNMS can be hosted on premise, on cloud as well as on hybrid server, making it one of the most flexible enterprise IoT software for planning turnkey IoT projects.

IoT has moved past connecting things and devices, to now

connecting the various aspects of enterprise to run unified and holistic business operations, with data fuelling further growth. “We at WebNMS are committed to creating products and solutions that make lives of our customers easy, improve bottom line of their business and help them stay ahead of competition.

The platform and solutions can be customized to address the challenges of our customers, from granular level operations to strategic business decisions,” said Karen.

SOFTWARE AG

FOR SMARTER DECISIONS At GITEX 2018, Software AG showcased its smarter, connected and agile technologies with Digital Business Platform and Cumulocity IoT under the theme #EXPERIENCEEVERYTHING. As businesses in the region continue to navigate digital transformation, Software AG’s booth at GITEX featured interactive showcases and relevant use cases that harness the power of Internet of Things (IoT). The demos from Software AG at the event will include BPMs, Digital Twin, Integration & API, Agile Process Digitization and Service Visibility Platform.

In addition, highlighting its focus on Cumulocity IoT

and smart industries, the company also displayed real time information providing advanced analytics and dashboards that rely on important KPIs. Specifically, the Smart Goods demo will throw light on supply chain visibility and help elucidate how Cumulocity is enhancing traceability of sensitive goods, by resolving challenges involved in the movement of sensitive and expensive goods from manufacturer to customer over various terrains. Sensors in the goods will monitor conditions such as rapid accelerations, loading, delivery, temperature and humidity and transmit this data in real-time back to the IoT Platform for analysis.

VMWARE

ALL ABOUT THE MULTI CLOUD Ossama Eldeeb, Director of Partner organizations METNA at VMware says that we are in one of the most fastest moving era today— The mobile cloud era. The key driver for this era is the user experience.

Ossama says that at VMWare, they are driving this revolution with four key pillars including Data center modernization, Multicloud, digital workplace technologies. VMware also displayed its latest achievements across its VMware NSX networking and security portfolio, to help regional customers implement a more 28

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secure, end-to-end software-based network architecture through a virtual cloud network. Ossama says, “Multicloud is the gamechanger. According to our latest survey reports, 90% of the companies using cloud are using two clouds out of which 75% are using three or more clouds to get the best of all worlds.” VMWare addressed the challenges of multi-cloud environments head-on, announcing new and enhanced VMware Cloud Services that will enable cloud operations, DevOps, and security and compliance teams to better manage cloud

costs, operations, security, and compliance across clouds. In line with GITEX’s theme of ‘Experience Future Urbanism’, VMware helped customers and partners understand how its compute, networking, storage, and management capabilities can help optimize workload performance and capacity across hybrid cloud environments. This applies to all sectors, with a particular focus on public and private-sector organisations that are looking for ways to manage monitor, and secure their IoT infrastructures.

GITEX 2018

PFU

‘SCANNING’ THE FUTURE According to Paul Brown, Regional Manager - Middle East, PFU, PFU is an undisputed leader in their category serving sectors like SMB, Government, Healthcare and Education. Against a backdrop of lower government spending and a tightening Gulf economy, PFU helps these entities to focus on productivity and cost reduction in the workplace. With the introduction of VAT, PFU is helping businesses to become more compliant through digitizing their data amidst an increase in paperwork and VAT reporting.

The work PFU does with governments in particular helps them to meet their ambitions for e-services and achieving paperless administration systems (e.g.

Dubai Paperless Strategy).

PFU is now accelerating its Middle East investments. For example, the region is the first market outside Europe to see the introduction of the PaperStream Capture Pro Qualified Reseller Programme.

“2018 has been a very encouraging year for us as we saw many projects materializing that have been planned for long. We have launched some new products this year which has been very exciting from a market perspective. We released two different products in October, targeting two different markets. We have observed that the average user is becoming more technology-savvy and want to do more with whatever IT products that they purchase.

Talking about the transformation in the workplace, Paul says that PFU is catering to the demands of the modern flexible workplace. “We are providing futureproof solutions to organizations that are centrally managed by cloud or server infrastructure and providing them various integration options.”

“Fujitsu has been very successful in the Middle East market for the past twenty years and we have also established very strong relations with distribution partners. We are heavily focused on our tier 2 partners,” adds Paul.

CENTRIFY

VERIFY ALL, TRUST NONE For Kamel Heus, Regional Manager of Centrify, 2018 has been a year of realization for the security market. “The year 2018 proved that whatever we have been doing for the last ten to fifteen years is wrong. The edge that the bad guys had over the good guys in various cyber battles was an eye opener for the market. In spite of huge spending and investment in security, data breaches were an everyday affair in 2018.”

At GITEX 2018, Centirfy emphasized on its Zero Trust security model and showcased why it is a perfect fir and concept for the modern enterprises. “The threat landscape is changing rapidly with a frightening sophistication and pace of data breaches. Compromised credentials are a leading cause of these security breaches. According to Verizon’s 2017 Data Breach Investigation Report (DBIR), 81% of hacking-related breaches leveraged either stolen and/or weak passwords, which was up from 63% in the previous year. This alarming trend clearly shows that today’s security isn’t working. Centrify’s mandate is to ensure that the breach stops here by providing a single platform to secure each user’s access to apps and infrastructure in today’s boundaryless hybrid enterprise,” said Kamel Heus, Regional Sales Manager MEA, Centrify.

The company’s core competence is helping organisations manage security based on Identity. Centrify redefines security from a legacy static perimeter-based approach to protecting millions of scattered connections in a boundaryless hybrid enterprise.

RIVERBED

RETHINKING POSSIBILITY Rethinking digital possibilities and revisiting digital experience was at the core of Riverbed showcase in GITEX this year.

Elie Dib, Regional Vice President, Middle East, Turkey and North Africa (METNA) at Riverbed said that they wanted their customers to rethink digital experience with their market leading solution.

Under the theme ‘Maximize Digital Performance: #RETHINKPOSSIBLE’, Riverbed showcased platforms for Digital Experience Management and Next-Generation Infrastructure, including demonstrating the power of Riverbed SteelCentral, the market-leading digital experience visibility solution for end-to-end network, application and end-user experience monitoring. Riverbed aims to help organizations maximize digital performance, enabling them to fully measure and monitor the digital experience and address the most critical network infrastructure requirements of the Government, Oil & Gas, Financial Services, and Retail sectors.

Riverbed’s unified and integrated Digital Performance Platform, brings together a powerful combination of Digital Experience Management and Next-Generation Infrastructure – from the edge, data center to the cloud – solutions that provides a modern IT architecture for the digital enterprise, delivering new levels of operational agility and dramatically accelerating business performance and outcomes. The Platform also includes world-class support and professional services from Riverbed. In addition, Riverbed partners with leading technology companies such as Microsoft, AWS, Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, and ServiceNow, which drives integration and further value for customers.

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NEXANS

SMART CHOICES FOR DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE Nexans has been participating in GITEX for more than two decades now. Tarek Helmy, Regional Director Gulf and Middle East, South & East Africa at Nexans Cabling Solutions says that every year the event gives them a platform to reinforce their commitment to the industry and their customers and showcase their world class solutions. This year, Nexans grabbed the spotlight with its FTTO (Fibre-to-the-Office) solutions.

According to Tarek, a huge study commissioned by Nexans showcased how

FTTP could save 35% of Capex. FTTO is an advanced technology that proved to have lower OPEX & CAPEX compared to standard LAN infrastructure networks. LANactive is an ideal solution to serve large areas like hospitals, airports, universities, and any facility requires lot of Floor Distribution racks or Telecom Rooms, in addition to refurbishments of old buildings in which putting standard LAN cabling is not an option due to space constraints and old infrastructure,” Mr. Helmy explained.

The vendor is also focusing heavily on data center solutions. “Increasing bandwidth demands have overwhelmed the existing networks that are in no way equipped to support users’ requirements arising from increasing adoption of Internet of Things (IoT), BYOD,

Cloud, video etc. Convergence of networking technologies, new expectations including availability, reliability, scale-out, always-on, are driving data centres to be redesigned and rearchitected. With such customer demands in mind, Nexans will demonstrate how our data centre and enterprise innovations, ‘Smart Choices for Digital Infrastructure’, will help managers support flexible, cost-effective bandwidth architectures, optimized space usage and faster modular deployment,” Mr. Helmy added.

‘Smart Choices for Digital Infrastructure’ includes different data centre infrastructure technologies that are flexible and scalable to adapt to future requirements and support several consecutive generations of active equipment.

ALIBABA CLOUD

SMART SOLUTIONS FOR A SMARTER CITY At the GITEX Technology Week, Alibaba Cloud demonstrated the capabilities of ET City Brain which is the company’s ultra-intelligent AI platform for solving complex business and social problems. Dr. Wanli Min, Chief Machine Intelligence Scientist at Alibaba Cloud says – “The word smartness in a smart city originated with a combination of data, computation and algorithm. At GITEX, we showcased City Brain which offers urban planners the tools to upgrade their city governance like improving real time traffic management. Eleven cities around the world have implemented ET City Brain.”

Dr. Min was at the GITEX keynote panel and discussed on how Artificial Intelligence is transforming in the major verticals and also highlighted the company’s digital transformation journey.

Alibaba Cloud not just showcased the theoretical results at GITEX but actual field tests in industries with their solutions. “We are planning to take a deeper dive in the verticals, specially in the Middle East region. We also aim to be a part of the Dubai Expo 2020 and believe that we can contribute our solutions to the vision of the government,” added Dr Min.

PURE STORAGE

TRANSFORMING DATA INTO ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS

Pure Storage participated at GITEX this year to showcase data centric solutions. Visitors got the opportunity to see how Pure is enabling customers to leverage their most important asset, their data, by providing solutions that are effective and efficient.

Patrick Smith, EMEA Field CTO at Pure Storage

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said that the company has had an exciting year and launched new products. “In May, we had our Accelerate conference in San Francisco where we launched new products which reinforced our position as leaders in flash storage. At GITEX, we showcased NVME all flash storage. These bring the latest NVME technology to the market.

NVME technology delivers lower latency than our previous models.”

The all-NVMe FlashArray//X family makes everything faster—databases, virtualized environments, test/dev initiatives and web-scale

applications—at no additional cost. “The solution is based on our technology that we have been delivering for the last five years. But now, it includes the technology across our whole range rather than just high end,” said Patrick.

Next year, the company plans on building their own enhancement in data analytics using their FlashBlade technology and also riding the wave of Artificial Intelligence with their AI ready infrastructure that provides out of the box capability for data scientist to deliver significant enhancements through AI.

GITEX 2018

PROMETTEUR SOLUTIONS

FULFILLING IT NEEDS WITH EXCELLENCE

Prometteur Solutions was started five years ago with an aim to provide software and development services. Making a debut at GITEX Technology Week this year, Pradip Thakar, Managing Director, Prometteur Solutions says – “Prometteur Solutions is big enough to address our client needs and cares for client satisfaction by providing quality service. Our focus is on mobile and web application developments. In mobile, we work in hybrid technology as well as iOS and Android technologies. We have solutions for all IT development needs across all industry verticals. At GITEX, we focused on mobile applications.”

Recently, the company has also started focusing on Blockchain and other trending technologies.

Prometteur’s go to market strategy is very simple – lowest price and high market.

“Currently we have more than 90% clients in Europe. So, we want to explore the Middle East market specially UAE. We have some investments plans in Dubai and expect 10x returns in the next five years,” added Pradip.

ZECURION

GUARDING YOUR DATA Debuting at GITEX, Zecurion provides IT security solutions helping companies to protect against insider threats. Alexey Raevsky, CEO of Zecurion feels that the day started great with several contacts and prospective leads. He says – “The size of the show is huge with many exhibitors and technologies. We are here to showcase our information security solutions for internal protection which is protection from inside threats – Data Loss Prevention, Privileged Access Management and Secure Web Gateway.”

Calling Data Loss Protection, the most technologically advanced DLP system, Alexey says more than 10 technologies are used together to minimize errors and false positives. Zecurion Privileged Access Management controls all popular remote access controls and monitors thousands of enterprise systems and devices.

Recently, Zecurion bagged the position among the top seven DLP vendors of the world in analytical report “IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Data Loss Protection 2018 Vendor Assessment. In their report, IDC analysts have highlighted Zecurion Device Control solution that monitors and prevents information leakage through USB ports and other local connectors.

Talking about the company’s roadmap for the year ahead he says - “We have two new products in line for 2019. We also have plan to become an international company but our major focus shall be on the Middle East and Africa region because of the huge growth here.

MIMECAST

REDUCING HUMAN ERROR IN THE WORKPLACE Mimecast is demonstrating its cybersecurity awareness capabilities at GITEX. The company’s newest offering is the Mimecast Awareness Training. The service is designed to offer great training content, risk scoring and real-world simulation attack scenarios. “Organizations are still struggling to educate their employees. 95% of the threats are still through email and comes from lack of awareness – like people clicking malicious links or opening attachments.

All these need to be addressed by training the employees.

Mimecast Awareness Training is designed to reduce human error in the workplace and help enable organisations to become more secure by changing the security culture of their employees,” said Jeff Ogden, GM of Mimecast Middle East.

“Our experts are also performing a series of live hacks that demonstrate the importance of user awareness and show why organisations need to implement adequate protection against advanced cyberattacks. We are combining our live hack with our analyst feedback. Mimecast’s threat intelligence analyst, Kirsty Kelly will explain the importance of embracing a cyber resilience strategy.

Talking about the year 2019, Jeff said - “Data integration is taking place and in the next couple of quarters, we shall make that integration tighter and more interesting for customers. And then there are lot of things coming along in term of intelligence aspects that we are looking at – how we can make sure we are getting a better sense of the way malware is changing overtime.”

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GITEX 2018

SPECTRAMI

SPECIALIZED IN END-TO-END SOLUTIONS ACROSS INFORMATION SECURITY

How has GITEX been this year?

GITEX has been amazing as always.

This platform is about networking, gaining visibility to the future and having the knowledge to current

trends. It’s a great platform to network and connect with people and bring new ideas. It also gives a pulse of what is happening in the market. GITEX for us is still about cybersecurity and niche technologies. Threat intelligence is gaining popularity as well.

have always stayed on top like LogRhythm, Tenable, and new vendors like Flashpoint who bring in threat intelligence. Crowdstrike is one more vendor that we are bullish about this year because of the EDR platform that they bring on the cloud.

Tell us about your major partnerships.We have our traditional vendors who

How is Spectrami aligning with the GITEX tagline – ‘Experience Future

Urbanism’?

‘Future Urbanism’ is a very interesting term. Urbanism for me is more about getting connected and getting things automated and that’s where big data comes into picture. Platforms like IoT are a part of the urbanization platform and that’s where we are playing a very important role in ensuring that every small bit of cybersecurity that we do, can add to the urbanization.

EMERGENT TELECOMMUNICATIONS & SOLGARI

FOCUSED PARTNERSHIP

Emergent Telecommunications have partnered with Solgari to bring in Solgari services to local corporates & SMEs. Solgari provides our customers in 34 countries to date all the digital communication channels – including voice, video, chat, SMS, etc – in the cloud, while automatically addressing local and international compliance requirements through a per user per month SaaS model. Edward Grant, Chief Financial Officer for Solgari says – “We deliver to our customers all the different communication channels such as voice, video, SMS, etc. The corporates can run all communications on single cloud instead of using multiple solutions. At least 50% of the cost savings with a per user per month SaaS model vs the alternative of using multiple vendors.”

Emergent Telecommunications is witnessing significant business demand for cloud-based communications. Hasan Bokhari, Group Chairman of HB International (holding group of Emergent Telecommunications) commented – “Partnering with Solgari for cloud OTT services will provide an enhanced user experience. Countries like Pakistan are experiencing a major leap forward to some of the technologies.”

NETAPP

ALIGNING WITH AI

In response to the growing market demand for advanced AI solutions, NetApp is showcasing their AI offering which also comes in-line with the theme of GITEX – ‘Experience Future Urbanism’. “With AI initiatives and focus from Dubai in general, we are privileged to take our AI offering to the market today,” says Maya Zakhour, Head of Distribution

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& Alliances – MEA, NetApp. Talking about their channel strategy, Maya explains how their distributors are fully fledged in supporting their strategy. “This year, we worked very closely with our distributors. Our distributors are also fully fledged and helping our strategy. So mainly, it is to have our partners enabled of our latest technology and it is very important to understand how they can do business with NetApp by aligning with our 3 big pillars which is – we are no more only a storage vendor; we have our HCI offering and as well as our cloud volumes. So, our channel

strategy would be to align their business with one of these or all the 3 big pillars. We also have our unified partner program which puts the partners into different levels of partnerships. Depending on the level of partnership, our partners would enjoy support and benefit from our side. We have cloudfirst program which is to align with our cloud offering and IGP or Innovation for Growth Program.” At GITEX, NetApp signed PNY. The company is doing excellent and has lot of initiatives and innovations to bring to the market with partners and customers.

GITEX 2018

ARUBA HPE

ARUBA DEMONSTRATES SOLUTIONS FOR SMART DIGITAL WORKPLACE

Returning to GITEX after 20 years, Adrian Hurel, VP of Global Field Operations for Aruba says that the show has grown huge in volume of people not only from Gulf but also the rest of the world. Aruba is exhibiting at GITEX under the theme ‘Delivering better experiences through digital transformation’ and demonstrating its Mobile First Architecture which is a next generation networking architecture for the software defined enterprise, designed to be mobile first and deliver a network that is open, secure, and autonomous.

“We have our latest generation of networking products. We also are showcasing our SD – Branch solution. Our SD-Branch solution goes beyond the WAN edge and provides intelligent routing and dynamic path selection right down to the individual user, application and device,” says Adrian.

“I don’t think our competition can provide the same integrated solution. We have the Noble First Architecture. We always look at access to network and services through the lens of the user. And the user today is absolutely 100% noble,” he adds.

Aruba also has a strong hold on its security portfolio. “Once you are in our network, we have the solutions to secure the devices and then also securely manage or monitor the behaviour of users. We can alert the network administrator if there is some unusual activity. We can manage the threats within,” he adds. In terms of focus for the year ahead, Aruba believes to continue to grow their security portfolio.

STC

HOLISTIC SECURITY STC participated at GITEX to showcase its newest technological solutions that shed light on its specialized services in the fields of cloud computing, cybersecurity, blockchain applications, Internet of Things, etc. STC showcased their 2 pillars in security – Managed Security Operation Centre and Email Security as a Service. “Globally, there is a shortage of cybersecurity skills which has become a challenge for organizations to deploy resources. According to (ISC)2, there is a gap of 2.3million resources worldwide. We created a centralized centre that works 24/7 with the highest calibre available to monitor customers network for any suspicious activities happening within their enterprise. Based on that, they would be responding or alerting through email, SMS and phone calls about any activities with recommendations to mitigate them,” said Abdulrahman Abdullah AlManea, Managed Security Services Director, STC. With regards to email-security-as-a-service, Abdulrahman said “A lot of organizations have their own email gateway. We see many attacks taking place in the region through email gateway like phishing/ spear phishing, etc. The email platform that we are providing inspects all attachments and URLs and blocks the malicious content or attachment and notifies the customer that they are being targeted for such attacks.”

“The weakest link is the human element. For this, we have another service which is an awareness campaign for organizations. We do it in multiple layers. We do test emails like winning an award or salary increase,” he concluded

TP - LINK

GOING THE ‘SMART WAY’ TP-Link has always been a part of GITEX and this year, the company showcased many new solutions. Lucas Jiang, General Manager, TP – Link is happy to have not only met existing customers but also new customers from all over the region. “The new customers showed strong interest in our products,” he said.

TP-Link makes sure to participate in GITEX because it is such an excellent opportunity for them to display & highlight their complete range of five different Business Unit as SOHO, high-end business series division (SMB), neffos (Smartphone), Accessories and Service Provider (SP) solutions with our new technologies and latest products to the thousands of visitors. “Compared to last several years, we had many new things to showcase this year. This is the first time we showcased products from all our Business Unit (BU). We have the networking BU, Smart home BU, smart accessory, smart home and the service provider BU,” said Lucas.

“The product line this year contained some specialised products, such as Deco M9 Plus Smart Home Mesh WIFI System, etc. From next year, all our routers and other products will be encrypted with mesh technology,” he concluded.

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GITEX 2018

SWIMLANE

FOCUS: SECURING OPERATIONS WITH ‘SOAR’

Exhibiting for the first time at GITEX with SPECTRAMI, Swimlane was excited to be a part of the show. Entering the market as

a new technology leader, Graham Howton, Sales Director – EMEA, Swimlane says “Swimlane is new to Europe, Middle East & Africa.

When I was looking for distribution partner in the Middle East, my first choice was Spectrami.”

Swimlane is a SOAR vendor – Security Orchestration, Automation and Response. “Swimlane maximizes the incident response capabilities

of over burdened and understaffed security operations,” said Howton.

“We integrate into every single enterprise – secure operation system, secure operation centre.

We are at the forefront of this technology and seen as the leader.

Currently, only one percent of employees have SOAR solution in place. In terms of the future, this is the way organizations shall handle

all the incidents and events that threaten their environment,” he added.

The year 2019 for Swimlane will be the adoption of the SOAR technology. “Automation processes will begin to be embedded into all of the top organizations. SPECTRAMI are here in the Middle East to assist us. We want to work with them and grow our market,” he concluded.

COMMVAULT

COMPREHENSIVE SOLUTIONS Commvault offers converged data management solutions that allow progressive enterprises to protect, manage, and utilize their data. Through a global ecosystem of trusted partners, Commvault brings together comprehensive solutions including storage infrastructure, service delivery orchestration and data governance.

At GITEX this year, Commvault discussed its four new simplified product offerings for complete, scalable backup and recovery and modern data management solutions, as well as its broad partner program enhancements, which helps partners simplify, streamline and scale their offerings to customers. Mark Jow, Vice President – EMEA Technical Services, Commvault said – “We have seen phenomenal growth in the Middle East for our solutions and GITEX has been an exceptional platform. We introduced two additional sizes and scales of our appliance footprint. We also announced a major step forward in our strategic alliance with NetApp. The nature of the relationship has evolved and grown whereby NetApp are now able to fully transact and sell and offer the full broad range of Commvault products and services to their market effectively as a as a hardware alliance reseller.”

When asked how are they different from their competition, Johan Scheepers – Director – Systems Engineering, Commvault commented – “We have a broad set of integrated capability from Core Data Protection right through to orchestration to scale our solutions, like solutions using hyperscale right through to helping customers create a platform from which they can utilize and put that data to work our active portfolio means there are lots of different competitors that you see with different parts of our portfolio.

WESTERN DIGITAL

BEYOND SURVEILLANCE Western Digital portfolio has grown dramatically over the last few years.

The company showcased their storage solutions at GITEX Technology Week this year. Nigel Edwards, Vice President – EMEAI Sales, Western

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Digital believes there are huge opportunities now in the enterprise space. “From an enterprise perspective, the enterprise storage is growing by 50% year on year which means HDD will continue to be a key form of storage at least for the next 15 to 20 years. But we also see mass adoption and growth in the flash storage as well. We are proud to say that our portfolio covers end to end solutions,” he said.

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A lot of WD’s focus at this GITEX was ‘Beyond Surveillance’. With WD Purple drives, capturing, storing and analysing data has become easier says Nigel. “We have launched the 12 TB purple drive here as well so you know these are all our core products that enable us to develop and grow our share in that space,” he added.

WD witnesses good growth across the Middle East region

predominantly in Dubai. For the year 2019, the company plans to continue to grow and develop their shares. Talking about competition, Nigel says - “The key difference from the storage perspective as a daily technology company we have all size, right! We have, and we develop it all and we are perfectly integrated.

So, we physically build all of the components ourselves, which is very different to our competition.”

GITEX 2018

NETSCOUT

ITQAN

PERFORMING WITH QUALITY ENHANCED SOLUTIONS FOR SECURITY

Netscout assures digital business services against disruptions in availability, performance, and security. They provide real-time, pervasive visibility, and insights customers need to accelerate, and secure their digital transformation. Harshawardhan Lele, SE Director – India & South Asia, Netscout says – “GITEX definitely helps us get visibility for our products/ partners in the GCC region.”

This year, the company focused on Hybrid network monitoring. “As the networks are evolving, we have got mix of legacy networks and cloud. We showcased how our customers can monitor the hybrid networks. We have solutions which can cater to both the part of networks and which gives visibility in infrastructure.

We are also showcased our core security solutions,” said Harshawardhan.

In a world of competition, Netscout is different from the rest says Lele. He explains – “Security and visibility both go hand in hand. The time it takes to resolve an issue is very important. With network being complex, it is very difficult to find the valuable data. And where’s our service monitoring part plays a key role.”

For 2019, we can more enhanced solution for cyber security and network monitoring from the company.

ITQAN is known for providing enterprise clients with the best solutions addressing their local business needs. Their solutions portfolio covers applications, infrastructure, integrated Security.

At the GITEX Technology Week this year, the company showcased solutions for data centre, infrastructure, network server, and some of the application solutions.

The application implementation service business unit of ITQAN provides solutions in terms of enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and learning management systems.

“Security is one of the key aspects of every customer. We are here to address the pain points of the customer and deliver solutions accordingly,” said Walid Ayoub El Saikali, VP Operations & AGM, ITQAN. The company’s go to market strategy has been very simple. “We focus on delivering the best solutions as the best price which can be both a win win situation for us as well as the customers,” says Walid.

“We are trying to align ourselves with the newest technologies like cloud solutions, Artificial Intelligence to have the best breed and deliver things accordingly to the market,” adds Walid.

OSIRIUM

HELPING ORGANIZATIONS DRIVE DOWN BUSINESS RISKS

Osirium has been helping organizations to protect and transform their IT services. The company has combined the latest generation of cyber security and automation technology to create a built the privileged account protection and task automation solution for the hybrid cloud world. “Task automation is a critically important feature,” says Kev Pearce, CTO, Osirium. “Task automation significantly reduces cost as it speeds the whole process and also reduces the security risk,” he said.

“We witness growing demand for our

solutions in the Middle East region,” said Duncan Fisken, Business Development Director – MENA, Osirium. “We are working with a number of partners (technology companies) and looking at some of the newest technologies,” added Fisken.

Working with SPECTRAMI for the last two years, Osirium has witnessed high growth in the region. “SPECTRAMI is our sole Value-Added Distributor in the region (MENA). SPECTRAMI is also expanding their geographical presence. We have invested a lot of time and effort in SPECTRAMI to make sure they have the technical skills necessary.

We have a fast-growing healthy pipeline,” said Fisken.

For the year 2019, Osirium aims to educate their customers on Privilege Access Management. “We want to educate our customers on PAM and how it differs from the IAM space.

We are also looking to drive our technology associations with our partners,” added Pearce.

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GITEX 2018

SONICWALL

CO-CREATING A WINNING STRATEGY

GITEX 2018 was a very different experience for Sonicwall this year, according to Shahnawaz Sheikh, sales director, SonicWall Middle East and Turkey. Having presence in multiple stands with different partners helped Sonicwall leverage its messaging through multiple and extended interactions with visitors and partners alike. ““We’re excited to be partnering

with our key distributors Ingram Micro and Redington Value at this year’s event and look forward to talking to attendees about our return to the Dubai Airport Free Zone (DAFZA) as a independent company,” said Shahnawaz. “The restructuring of our operations will allow us to introduce more benefits to the channel, and we look forward to enabling them to better deliver more value, security and service to end users within the region. We have renewed our goto-market strategy to improve our reach to partners. The approach is branched into four different areas; Distribution managers who run

our run-rate business; Our silver, gold and platinum partners who co-create a strong growth opportunity for us with new products being introduced; Renewals and upgrades which has a dedicated team; And the fourth side is our focus on Telocos and MSP business which is shaping up well and we already have a strong relationship with the local telcos and we have plans to expand in the region.”

During GITEX, SonicWall also introduced the RTDMI technology that allows to detect threats like spectre, meltdown etc and claims that presently they are the only ones in the market to possesses this

capability. RTDMI stands for Real Time Deep Memory Inspection and it examines each and every CPU instructions during the run time which allows to not only to identify malware which is living in the memory. “This is unique and sets us apart from the other vendors in the market.”

The company has also recently enhanced the capabilities of its Capture Cloud Platform to include Zero-Touch Deployment and Secure SD-WAN (software-defined WAN) designed for distributed enterprises and organizations with hybrid cloud environments.

RITTAL

CHALLENGE TODAY, STANDARD TOMORROW Rittal’s showcase this year with IT solutions for all Edge Scenarios is created interest and appeal among the visitors and partners,” says Mr. Joseph Najjar, Managing Director - Rittal Middle East.

The company also launched its Global Rittal Partner program at GITEX 2018 “We are glad to Launch the Successful, Global Rittal Partner Program in the Middle East region at GITEX 2018 platform. We are confident that our Partners will embrace and appreciate the rich benefits of the partner program.” says Mr. Joseph Najjar. “Today’s challenges are tomorrow’s standards. The path to these standards can be long and hard. Your clients expect their current challenges but also protect them from future problems.

Your role in your client’s business becomes critical as the IT market requirements become more ,ie demanding, dynamic and flexible. It’s a race; and we want you, our Partners, to finish first. Whether it be the quick supply of IT components to any destination in the world, or the supply of a turnkey solution, Rittal provides you with a program that will facilitate your business objectives. Our program represents our endeavours and actions to work together with you so that you are always one step ahead of your competitors. “We understand that your business is not all about products. In our Partner Program we need to enable you so that you are faster, better, more efficient and more competitive across the total solution compared to your respective competitors. Gaining access to the Rittal Partner Program will ensure that you gain direct access to Rittal on a local, regional and global scale. The Rittal Partner Program will allow you to access and utilise our sales resources, sales and technical tools, training platforms, Partner Managers, Product Managers, Design Specialists, marketing resources, networking events, etc., so that you always have the competitive edge.”

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GEC AWARDS

GEC AWARDS 2018

GALLOPS A BAR HIGHER!

T

he GEC Awards 2018 presented

by Dell EMC held on 9th October at The V Hotel – A Habtoor City, Dubai ended on a high note witnessing the gathering of the C – Level Executives and top IT professionals. GEC Awards celebrated its 5th year honouring excellence in the IT industry.

Going with the Derby theme this year, the horse race presented a perfect example of the market.

The horses (vendors) who run like a wind are taken to the end goal by the perfect jockey (channel partners). The ultimate goal of it is to satisfy the bidders (customers ofcourse) who put in their money and trust on the race. The race is a steeplechase in the present market condition with lots and lots of obstacles in the race.

Ms. Anushree Dixit, Editor of Enterprise Channels MEA commented – “GEC Awards, that was established in 2014, has organically grown into one of the benchmark events in the IT industry in recognizing solutions and services that have

stood the test of time. Like every year, in 2018 also we received an overwhelming number of nominations in each of the categories. One of the significant determining parameters that the nominations went through this time was what we call ‘Cultural Change’. Technology has been there for the past 100 years and it has been evolving at its own pace, but until and unless a company changes its culture to be adaptive to changes, no change is possible.”

The deserving winners were chosen out of the 300+ nominations in Top Vendors, Top Distributors, Top Resellers, Top SI’s, Top Project Execution.

The debut of Business Transformation Awards was a huge success with 17 niche winners. Mr. Arun Shankar, Editor of Business Transformation explained – “The first GEC BT Awards recognizes vendors, channels partners, end users who are adopting fundamentals of digital transformation as a part of their new business outlook. In the short span, since the launch of BT from GEC Media, 18 winners were recognized across 3 award

categories, an indication of the activity within the regional ICT industry. The GEC BT Awards is focused on recognizing exemplary performance in the area of business transformation enabled by technology.”

The evening was fun-filled with various games and activities and was truly appreciated by the sportive attendees. The best dressed King and Queen was crowned to Mr. George Gordon, Director, Africa Master Blockchain Company and Nadia Jawad, Manager – Alliances & Marketing, AGC Networks.

The sponsors for the GEC Awards 2018 were Title Sponsor – Dell EMC, Platinum Partner – Redington Value, Gold Partners – Toshiba & Rittal Middle East, Strategic Partner – Finesse, Supporting Partners – Valto Technologies, Strategy International, Aruba HPE, MBUZZ, Pivot3, TalariaX, SapphireIMS, Spire Solutions, Quest Software, BITS Secure IT Infrastructure, Commerce Connect and Cornerstone. ë

THE WINNERS Storage

Top VAD Infrastructure

Arrow ECS Networking

VAD Technologies

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StarLink

Security (VEM)

Security Services

Spectrami

Spire Solutions

Cyber Security

Digital Signage

Exclusive Networks

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Security VAD of the Year

StorIT,

Maxxcom FZE

emt Distribution

Networking Security Juniper Networks

Emerging VAD of the Year

Cyber Security

Training & Support Services

Strategy International FZE

Sophos

Startup VAD of the Year

SDN Security

Mbuzz

Noviflow

Top VAD of the Year

DNS Security

Redington

Top SI Infrastructure

Real Estate & Construction

Azizi Development BFSI

Africa Master Blockchain Company

Infoblox Cloud Security

Palo Alto Secure Identity Solutions

GEC BT AWARDS 2018 Best Business Transformation Solution Logistics

Honeywell Energy

Fujisoft Technologies

Centrify

CLOUD MIGRATION

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Cloud Solutions

Pivot3

SECURITY

DTS Solutions

IoT Huawei

Oil & Gas

MANAGED SERVICES

Storage

Utilities

AGC Networks MANAGED SERVICES Sports management Solution

Golflan Technology Solutions Unified Communication

BITS Secure IT Infrastructure

Pure Storage Surveillance Storage

Toshiba Gulf FZE Hybrid Storage

Commvault Structured Cabling

Top Reseller Security

RNS Technology Services DMCC Virtualization

SET International General Trading Microsoft

Business Experts Gulf

Top Vendor

Nexans Cloud Data Management

Rubrik Managed Print Services

Konica Minolta AI & Robotics

DigiRobotics Surveillance

WatchNet

Infrastructure

Rittal Middle East Networking

Riverbed Availability

Data Center

Kaloom Digital Transformation Vendor of the Year

Epicor Enterprise Automation

Sapphire IMS

Cloud Service Provider

VMWare Enterprise Communications

Talariax Pte LTD Endpoint Security

Quest Email Security Mimecast

Seidor

Fortinet

ForeScout Education

Aruba HPE Telecom

NetApp Construction & Real Estate

Centra Hub Hospitality

Schneider Electric Manufacturing

SAP Healthcare

Nutanix Government

Red Hat BFSI

ServiceNow

Best Business Transformation Initiative

Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Choice Award

Real Estate & Construction

Security

Valto Technologies Top PR Agency 2018

Procre8

Enterprise Solution

Zebra Technologies

Retail

Dell EMC

Veeam Enterprise Application

Tech Mahindra

Meraas Holding Champion

AL Masah Capital Management Country

TRA Bahrain

TOP Project Execution

Organization

Government

Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority

Dubai Municipality Government

Ministry of Economy Healthcare

Telephony Retail

Oma Emirates

Best Futuristic BT Solution IoT

Cisco Blockchain

Avaya

GARTNER SECURITY SYMPOSIUM

BRIDGING THE SECURITY GAP

RAM NARAYANAN, REGIONAL SALES MANAGER, CHECK POINT

According to Gartner, in the Middle East region, it takes 260 days to detect the threat, whereas in Europe it takes 130 days. How can your solutions bridge the gap here?

Last year was a global wake up call to get serious about addressing the cyber-attacks. We realized that the available technology solutions were not strong enough to prevent the targeted mega attacks. Organizations cannot survive Gen V attacks while they have a Gen III architecture.

To remain operationally secure, organizations needed a new generation of security solution which is when we unveiled Gen V Security theme this year. Checkpoint precisely provides the visibility with Checkpoint Infinity architecture.

With Infinity as an architecture, we cover all aspects and give them a consolidated view.

Security is all about visibility and once customers see the visibility, they know that this will help

them to secure the enterprise.

But as per Gartner CISOs are now focusing more on adopting future technologies but they are not going through the basic checks, so what do you have to say about that?

As per the Security Report by Check Point, around 90% of the organizations are not prepared for the fifth generation of cyber-attacks. There is a huge gap and this is where the technology has to move and where we are able to help. Also, the service providers are able to assist the customers in implementing the technology that we have, so that we know the basics are done right. Unless the basics are done correctly, you can’t scale upto the next level of security. Today, in the age of digital transformation and data being on the cloud, customers need to have that level of integration and security.

ADDRESSING THE ‘ABDCE’ OF CYBER SECURITY

GARETH HAWKINS, SYSTEMS ENGINEER MANAGER, SYMANTEC

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What did you showcase at Gartner’s Security Symposium this year?

At the Gartner Security Symposium this year, Gareth Hawkins, SE at Symantec addressed ‘The ABCDE of Cyber Security’ emphasizing the importance of transforming organizations’ security measures. As companies shift resources to the cloud, they must still protect users, data, devices, messages and networks from the ever-present threat of cyber-attack. And while the cloud is improving productivity, the sprawl behind it is proving to be chaotic – making life more complex for security teams.

Gareth highlighted the fact that the cloud transformation will require substantial shifts in operational models and a change in processes that will force organizations to rethink and adapt their execution while requiring them to consolidate, standardize and partner with a smaller set of more able-bodied technology companies that have deep portfolios, and more advantageous enterprise license structures leveraging hybrid models, shared intelligence and common policy infrastructure.

As per Gartner, it takes 260 days to detect threats in the Middle East. How are you helping the organizations?

260 or nearly eight months is a significant amount of time to allow threat actors to carry out attacks.

The longer an organization allows attackers to remain on their networks undetected, the greater the potential damage of any attack and therefore the greater the risk to the organization. Improving detection and response capabilities with the right technologies and expertise is the best way to mitigate this risk.

Customers implementing Symantec’s advanced endpoint, web, email, and cloud security solutions have an array of sophisticated technologies like advanced machine learning, behavioral and threat analytics, as well as contextual and correlation analysis that are able to detect and respond to even the most deceptive advanced threats and attacks in a proven, shorter timeframe. Symantec’s Advanced Threat Analytics is a newly released offering that provides organizations with insight into the behaviors leading to major attacks around the world and ensuring that they are protected against them.

FOUNDED IN 2009, VALTO HAS EXCELLED IN INCORPORATING THE LATEST TECHNOLOGIES AT THE WORKPLACE TO HELP OUR CLIENTS SCALE TO LARGER HEIGHTS.

Document Scanning and Indexing

-500,000,000 documents scanned till date -200,000 documents scanned daily.

-100+ happy customers across 7 countries.

Document Management Systems

-Easy access to your information using simple yet

advanced documents tracking.

-Reduce paper clutter and thereby improve your workplace efficiency.

Records Management Services

-We protect your important records from dust,

insects, fires and other hazards -Team with 20+ years on experience in Document storage and retrieval

SOFTWARE AND MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT

Team specialized in designing softwaretailored to your business needs.

IOS and Android applications.

Cloud Develoopment- Amazon AWS Bluetooth Hardware integration Analytics and Tracking Performance expertise Augmented and Mixed Reality development experience.

OUR SERVICES

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Products

-Access your data anywhere, at any time.

- Employ the highest security protocols to stay safe from hackers and malware.

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- Consolidated storage of data within the company server, allowing you to access and review the work as it happens.

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M-10, Al Wadi Building, Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai, UAE

Testimonials

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Website: www.valtotechnologies.com Tel. no:+971 4 323 5700 Fax no: +971 4 223 3080 Mob. No: +971 55 475 7208

VALTO INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LLC

GARTNER SECURITY SYMPOSIUM

DEEPER DETECTION, FASTER RESPONSE

AMIT ROY, EXECUTIVE VP & REGIONAL HEAD EMEA, PALADION

What did you showcase at the Gartner’s Security Summit?

Primarily, showcased our AI driven MDR platform services. This is the next generation managed security services and showcased our platform which does deeper detection and faster response using our security orchestration. And the platform works on big data as well as AI. It is also in the same limelight of the vision of Dubai becoming an AI driven hub. With the same vision, we have also started our AI driven MDR command centre which is one of the command centres of all the various hubs that we have. We are showcasing that and our expert services.

As per Gartner, it takes 260 days to detect threats in the Middle

East. How are you helping the organizations?

We are trying to uncover the same challenge which Gartner and other analysts have said. So, there are two industry challenges – how to detect a completely unknown vector/ threat and how to respond fast. The time organizations take to know about the attack and by the time they respond, the damage has been done. In order to detect threats faster, AI and machine learning come to help along with human intelligence. Paladion’s platform has built in algorithms, built in statistical models on AI which can help in detecting the complete unknown. Once the unknown is known, the entire response mechanism is automated with the human intelligence to respond much faster to a particular attack.

PROVIDES UNIQUE INSIGHT INTO THREATS Tell us about Group IB Group-IB prevents and investigates high-tech crimes and online fraud. The company has been active in the field of computer forensics and information security, protecting the largest international companies against financial losses and reputation risks. Currently we are based in Moscow, Russia. We are very strong in that country, Europe, APEC and now approaching Middle East region as well. We believe that the Middle East and APEC region has been targeted lately.

CAMILL CEBULLA, INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, GROUP - IB

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Tell us about you threat intelligence platform.

We have been pioneering incident response and cybercrime investigation practices. Our experience and understanding of threat actors’ behaviours have evolved from our own investigation tools to an intelligence gathering network that now feeds Group-IB Threat Intelligence.

What is your go to market strategy?

Partners are an important part of our go to market strategy. We are headquartered in Moscow and therefore we cannot be everywhere local. We go to market through our partners which has been proved very helpful for us.

GUEST ARTICLE

Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2019

Blockchain, quantum computing, augmented analytics and artificial intelligence will drive disruption and new business models.

The Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology trends highlight changing or not yet widely recognized trends that will impact and transform industries through 2023.

TREND NO. 1: AUTONOMOUS THINGS Whether it’s cars, robots or agriculture, autonomous things use AI to perform tasks traditionally done by humans. The sophistication of the intelligence varies, but all autonomous things use AI to interact more naturally with their environments.

TREND NO. 2: AUGMENTED ANALYTICS Data science and machine learning platforms have transformed how businesses generate analytics insight. Augmented analytics identify hidden patterns while removing the personal bias.

Although businesses run the risk of unintentionally inserting bias into the algorithms, augmented analytics and automated insights will eventually be embedded into enterprise applications.

TREND NO. 3: AI-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT AI-driven development looks at tools, technologies and best practices for embedding AI into applications and using AI to create AI-powered tools for the development process. The market will shift from a focus on data scientists partnered with developers to developers operating independently using predefined models delivered as a service. This enables more developers to utilize the services, and increases efficiency. These trends are also leading to more mainstream usage of virtual software developers and nonprofessional “citizen application developers.”

TREND NO. 4: DIGITAL TWINS The focus today is on digital twins in the IoT, which could improve enterprise decision making by providing information on maintenance and reliability, insight into how a product could perform more effectively, data about new products and increased efficiency. Digital twins of an organization are emerging to create models of organizational process to enable real time monitoring and drive improved process efficiencies.

TREND NO. 5: EMPOWERED EDGE Edge computing is a topology where information processing and content collection and delivery are placed closer to the sources of the information, with the idea that keeping traffic local will reduce latency. Currently, much of the focus of this technology is a result of the need for IoT systems to deliver disconnected or distributed capabilities into the embedded IoT world. This type of topology will address challenges ranging from high WAN costs and unacceptable levels of latency. Further, it will enable the specifics of digital business and IT solutions.

TREND NO. 6: IMMERSIVE TECHNOLOGIES The future of conversational platforms, which range from virtual personal assistants to chatbots, will incorporate expanded sensory channels that will allow the platform to detect emotions based on facial expressions, and they will become more conversational in interactions.

TREND NO. 7: BLOCKCHAIN Blockchain could potentially lower costs, reduce transaction settlement times and improve cash flow. The technology has also given way to a host

n D AV I D C E A R L E Y, V P A N D G A R T N E R F E L L O W , GARTNER

of blockchain-inspired solutions that utilize some of the benefits and parts of blockchain.

TREND NO. 8: SMART SPACES As technology becomes a more integrated part of daily life, smart spaces will enter a period of accelerated delivery. Further, other trends such as AI-driven technology, edge computing, blockchain and digital twins are driving toward this trend as individual solutions become smart spaces.

TREND NO. 9: DIGITAL ETHICS AND PRIVACY Conversations regarding privacy must be grounded in ethics and trust. The conversation should move from “Are we compliant?” toward “Are we doing the right thing?” Governments are increasingly planning or passing regulations with which companies must be compliant, and consumers are carefully guarding or removing information about themselves. Companies must gain and maintain trust with the customer to succeed, and they must also follow internal values to ensure customers view them as trustworthy.

TREND NO. 10: QUANTUM COMPUTING A way to imagine the difference between traditional and quantum computers is to imagine a giant library of books. This technology is still in an emerging state, which means it is a good time for businesses to increase their understanding of potential applications and consider any security implications. Aside from a select group of businesses where specific quantum algorithms would provide a major advantage, most enterprises should remain in exploration phase through 2023 and begin exploiting the technology later. ë

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ENTERPRISE ADVISOR

SURVEILLANCE AND 0 STORAGE 360 REDEFINING PRODUCT AND CHANNEL INNOVATION

I

It is the year of Zayed— the year of innovation. When StarLink announced the opening of its ‘Innovation Centre’ in the country, the leadership of the company were silently beckoning an era of change in traditional distribution. When the discussion on security took a step out of the boardroom a few years back, traditional distributors were seen losing the edge over the customers and eventually fell into the chasm of providing security that was

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wanted vs security that was needed.

The third edition of the Storage and Surveillance 360 roundtable, organized by Enterprise Channels MEA and powered by Toshiba, held in Muscat, Oman on 22nd October 2018 at the Crowne Plaza touched upon some key aspects of the Sultanate’s storage and surveillance market.

Attended by a right mixture of SIs, VADs, Resellers, and end-users, the roundtable was highly successful in putting forward the regional

appetite of Oman’s in embracing innovative storage models.

The roundtable that kicked-off with an insightful presentation by Santosh Varghese, Vice President of Toshiba Gulf FZE delved into the significance of Enterprise HDDs, mission-critical drives and Surveillance storage in an era of data explosion and showcased some of Toshiba’s latest offerings in that domain.

“Storage and surveillance 360 was a good

ENTERPRISE ADVISOR

22 OCT 2018 OMAN, MUSCAT

forum to connect with the SI’s, VAR and CIO in Muscat. We received a good feedback on the storage category in Oman. We were very impressed with the adaption of latest IT technology in terms of cloud storage, Disaster recovery, in memory, storage, edge computing, and AL-ML technologies,” said Santosh.

The roadshow shall next take place in Qatar and Kuwait on 19th November and February 2019 respectively. ë

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INTERVIEW

WELL-CRAFTED SOLUTIONS “OUR BUSINESS OBJECTIVE AND FUTURE FOCUS IS TO CONSTANTLY ENHANCE OUR PORTFOLIO BY ADDING NEW TECHNOLOGY VENDORS TO MEET THE SECURITY CHALLENGES AND ADDRESSING EMERGING BUSINESS ENABLERS”

SendQuick : Appliance Based Gateways for Enterprise Mobility l EnGenius : Networking Access Points/ Switches/Routers l Other solutions include Anti Malware / APT, PIM/PAM solution, IT Auditing, Web Application vulnerability scanning, NextGen UTM / Endpoint Security, Multi-factor authentication, Enterprise Mobile File sharing, Secure Automated / Managed File Transfer, WAF, DDoS etc. l

JOSE THOMAS MENACHERRY, MD, BULWARK

Bulwark has been participating at GITEX for over a decade. What were the best in class products/ solutions that you showcased this year?

Yes, this is our 16th year of participation in Gitex.

Bulwark, the leading & Cyber Security Specialized Value-Added Distributor has demonstrated their following ‘Best in Class’ products and solutions in the recently held GITEX mega-event: l Email Security/Archival : Mimecast l Secure Encrypted Flash Drives/Hard Discs :iStorage l MailStore : Email Archival l 42Gears Mobility Systems : Enterprise Mobile Management

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Can you elaborate on your collaborations with vendors to act as their extended arms in the Middle East region?

Bulwark will continue to expand in the region, adding more strategic partners. Being a cyber security specialized Value-Added Distributor, we have been regularly scanning the technology space for latest products addressing the new threats. Focus will be on security for Cloud, Mobility and IoT space. In the recent past, we have made some major partnerships with security vendors - Mimecast, Radware & 42Gears and has demonstrated their ‘Best in Class’ products and solutions at GITEX 2018. There will be more vendor signing and onboarding to be announced in the coming weeks.

How do you think the security market has evolved this year?

There is a greater demand for emerging technologies as new frontiers of technologies like Social media, cloud, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, mobility & Internet of Things are evolving in the market. As a security focused vendor, we know the battle is continuous and ongoing as new security breaches/discoveries emerge every moment and we are prepared to meet such challenges with latest technologies. We have been empowering our channel community, which has significantly contributed to our growth & development as a

value-added distributor in the region. We are also seeing more vendors approaching us to take up their products through our established channels utilizing our experience gained over many years of operation in the region.

Tell us more about Bulwark’s expansion plans.

Bulwark Technologies, the leading Security specialized Value-Added Distributor in the Middle East region, has expanded our operation to the Indian sub-continent region. The expansion plans are in response to the company’s growing business, robust partner network and strong demand for IT Security Solutions in India. In terms of growth, we have also strengthened our team with onsite presence in some of the countries like Oman, Kuwait & KSA among others.

Our business objective and future focus is to constantly enhance our portfolio by adding new technology vendors to meet the security challenges & addressing emerging business enablers.

We are involved in enabling our channel partners by creating & executing well-crafted channel programs. We are also focused on adding more Networking and Security Solutions vendors to our current product portfolio.

What were the key take-aways from GITEX? Bulwark, represented by its team of local experts and key vendors, achieved a high level of brand and product awareness by showcasing an integrated range of innovative and specialized security solutions and services for the IT Security industry including details of its track record of successful projects across the Middle East region.

The leading Value-Added Distributor also spotlighted and demonstrated it’s ‘Best in Class’ products and solutions and elaborated on their collaboration with key vendors in the Middle East Region. ë

FEATURE STORY

THE RETAIL REFORM Are the brick-and-mortar stores ready to stay competitive with the digital natives?

n B Y: A N U S H R E E D I X I T n P H O T O : S H U T T E R S T O C K

I

am yet to fall in love with online shopping. Though it has become a yardstick for e-commerce worldwide, trying out a brand new dress, holding a piece of artifact, smelling fresh basil leaves or the mere fun of putting up your sports shoes and going on a shopping spree still appeals to me.

So digitization in retail and the article that follows is not about how everything has gone â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;click & buyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

Based on PricewaterhouseCoopersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; latest Global Consumer Insights Survey, there remains a consistent desire for shoppers to have that physi-

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cal store experience with 44% of the respondents saying they shop at a brick-and-mortar store on a weekly basis. The study, which assesses the shopping behavior, habits and expectations of over 22,000 consumers in over 27 locations across the globe, reports that the percentage of shoppers who frequent physical stores has grown consistently for the past four years indicating that traditional retailing can survive and thrive in the digital era.

So, what is driving the entire theory of digital retail here?

Competition in the market is immense and there is no other option, but to disrupt. The rise of omni channels and ease of payment has eradicated traditional retail operation methods and given rise to a revolution in retail. Retailers are experimenting and fearlessly testing new waters with technologies like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality and digital wallets.

Customer or consumer disconnect is one of the greatest worries that is forcing the physical stores to lose a point or two against the online

FEATURE STORY

“To keep up to date with the lifestyle of Generation Z, AI is increasing and overpowering the most passionate one, ‘The Retail Industry’. It can provide data analysis faster than human intervention leading to generating deeper insights than before and avoiding any errors.”

NIRANJ SANGAL, GROUP CEO, OMA EMIRATES GROUP

counterparts. According to Brian Solis, a principal analyst at Altimeter Group’s research, ‘A good customer experience is vital to the success of any retailer. Yet, only 35 percent of companies undergoing digital transformations have studied customer evolution as a result of technology’s impact on their shopping behaviors – down from 56 percent the year before.’

According to Niranj Sangal, Group CEO, OMA Emirates Group, Retailers are also looking at ways of saving space and cost cutting. “They have shown a profound interest towards Digital

Retail Stores that moves away from the traditional methods of display & checkout and use technologies like QR Codes, NFC, Tap & Go, RFID, Facial Recognition and Computer Vision Technologies providing a seamless shopping experience for consumers. Several Chains are trying myriad ways to see how consumers are interacting with the proposed technologies before releasing them in stores. The Retail industry is one of the most affected by digital transformation due to the continuous change in shopping and retail behavior amongst consumers.”

According to various 2018 is the year that “artificial Intelligence will have its breakthrough moment. More and more retailers will start using it to power various parts of the retail and ecommerce experience. Replicating the same engagement and interaction that a friendly neighborhood store manager has with you through online tool is the responsibility laded on AI. Beacons and sensors will soon replace promoters standing outside the store and ushering you inside for promotions and offers; Big

“Sage’s products can help streamline the multichannel payments portal, and encrypt the data to ensure security. In addition, the insights captured from customers purchasing and payment habits can inform future decision-making for the retail outlet.”

SAM TAYAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF SAGE MIDDLE EAST

data will replace experienced sales managers who know your taste and show you what you would like to see; touch payments and digital wallets will replace traditional cash counters and also reduce the queue time apres shopping.

Smart Stores Expo, which was held on September 4 – 6 at the Dubai International Exhibition and Convention Centre, showcased the latest trends and technologies shaping the future of retail. The exhibition featured four key verticals – Build, Operate, Manage and Retail Leasing Pavilion – covering the entire breadth of the retail industry. From talking robots to smart mirrors to the latest in RFID technology, Smart Stores Expo exhibitors have something new to draw crowds. A new feature in this year’s event is the Retail Leasing, which offers upcoming retail real estate projects for top brands to open shop.

The show saw top retailers from leading brands visiting to get a feel of what Smart Stores has to offer. Among them are representatives from Union Coop, Al Tayer, Landmark and Majid Al Futtaim.

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FEATURE STORY

Jayaraman Nair, Chairman of VIS Exhibition, which is organising the show, said, “The retail market has become increasingly fast-paced, thanks to breakthrough innovations and advancements in digital technology. This all the more puts pressure on retailers to adopt new strategies that would allow them to efficiently respond to the evolving business landscape. Customers’ expectations from retailers are increasing and we have designed Smart Stores Expo 2018 to be the venue for retail brands – whether in-store or online – to gain smart and forward-thinking tactics and solutions, thus ensuring that they succeed the new retail reality.” The Exhibit boasts many new elements supporting the ‘Smart’ retail sector with technology as core focus. Offering unrivalled opportunities to connect directly with global manufacturers and service providers, the show is the ideal place to understand the emerging trends taking place in the market and network with experts from leading international retail chains. It highlights, through vibrant showcase and interactive demonstrations, the current and future innovations retailers can explore as they draw their roadmaps for facing the future.

According to Sam Tayan, Managing Director at Sage Middle East, Emerging technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) has also added to the enhancement of retail companies’ supply chain and operational efficiencies such as inventory visibility and delivery transparency, among others. It also allows customers to interact digitally within the physical stores, and connects shops to the online experience. IoT and the data connected from IoT devices can also help retail brands develop smarter and more targeted campaigns.

“An important factor for an improved customer experience is the ease of payments. The process can at times be bothersome. In addition, there is the issue of personal data privacy. Sage’s products can help streamline the multichannel payments portal, and encrypt the data to ensure security. In addition, the insights captured from customers purchasing and payment habits can inform future decision-making for the retail outlet,” says Sam.

FINALLY Voice search and Lifestyle marketing are some of the emerging trends that retailers expect to bring on board to increase customer engagement and experience. Data has become important like never before for retailers and it has been paving way for the retailers to rethink the solutions or the technology that they are embracing.

Its time to create a perfect remix of digital and reality. There are innumerable sellers out there, but not everybody can sell unmatched experience. ë

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WHAT SAYS THE CIO?

-

MOHAMMED YOUNES, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, UNITED AL SAQER GROUP

The United Al Saqer Group has recently implemented a group-wide ERP solution based on Oracle’s Fusion Cloud.

The implementation included 17 legal entities covering HR, Payroll, Self Service, Procurement, Financials, Business Intelligence and mobility. Al Saqer Group is one of the few companies which has an end to end ERP solution leveraging the latest in public cloud offerings. The focus in 2019 would be on data through analytics, machine learning and Artificial Intelligence Expectation from Vendors: Ability to demonstrate how AI, machine learning can add value to customers and the bottom line.

-

KUMAR PRASOON, GROUP CIO, AL SAFEER GROUP

we have the complete end to end digital transformation suite with VAT deployed at Al Safeer which has made it possible to have all sorts of analytics just at the click of the button. This adoption has made the complete end-to-end Digital Transformation from Supply Chain to Warehousing to Food Processing Unit Accounting to Distribution based on Customer Centricity and made us discover the latest innovations in Government, Utilities, Industries, and Financial Services with technology revolutions such as Mobile, Biometrics and Digital Identity.

The Enterprise Mobility driven Retail Enterprise Digital Transformation is possible by harmonic integration of retail business infrastructure, retail stakeholders and administration of the overall retail environment with Big Data Modeling, IoT, Heuristics, Quantum Mechanics, Predictive Modeling with Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Analytics which are cornerstones of the Smart Digital – Smart Business Transformation Project to “Enhance Customer Value”.

gitex mbuzz 31X22 magazine V1

INTERVIEW

THE ‘ARISTA WAY’ WITH BUSINESSES BECOMING MORE DATA DRIVEN, UPTIME IS OF MAXIMUM IMPORTANCE AND RELIABILITY MUST IMPROVE TO ENSURE CONTINUOUS AVAILABILITY OF ALL THESE SERVICES SAYS JOHN PEACH, EMEA TECHNICAL DIRECTOR, ARISTA. THE COMPANY ADDRESSES THE FACTORS WITH NICHE TENETS. READ ON…

Quality - Products must hit the ground running, customers cannot be ‘beta testers’ when the network is the heart of the business l Engineering Excellence - Providing the best advice through deep knowledge of both product and use case and providing the right product for a use case. l Innovation - Delivering shortest time to market for innovative products that provide performance increase, price decrease or new functionality that enables customers l Evolution not revolution - Each product generation should be instantly accessible and not require a complete paradigm shift. This is the only way that customers can take advantage of innovation l Openness - Nothing should explicitly prevent interoperability or the ability of customers to operate mixed environments or move between generations of platforms.

Arista Networks was founded to pioneer and deliver software-driven cloud networking solutions for large data centre storage and computing environments, as well as next-generation campus networks.

Arista’s difference is our software. Arista has built a network operating system, Arista EOS® (Extensible Operating System), which is open and standards based and built on a stable, Linux core.

EOS provides a platform for customers to automate their IT workflows, while integrating with third parties to implement solutions in multi-vendor networks. l

JOHN PEACH, EMEA TECHNICAL DIRECTOR, ARISTA

Tell us more about Arista. Also, Arista was founded on the principle of doing things the ‘Arista Way’. What is the Arista Way? Businesses are becoming more data-driven and data-dependent, and they reach their customers increasingly through technology. IT and Network infrastructure decisions are becoming more important and strategic to the success of the organisation. There is also significant growth for applications to become more distributed and provide more services to more consumers over increasingly fast (and multiple) connections - all of this creates increased load and higher demands on performance. Finally, uptime is of maximum importance - reliability must improve to ensure continuous availability of all these services.

Arista addresses these factors with the following tenets:

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What is your go to market strategy? Share with us your major partnerships of the year 2018.

Arista designs software driven cloud networking platforms and delivers them worldwide through distribution partners, systems integrators and resellers with a strong dedication to partner and customer success. In EMEA, Arista operates an indirect sales strategy, working with channel partners in the region.

How is Arista different from its competition?

Arista’s market focus, product architecture, industry experience and proven track record provides a compelling and differentiated proposition. Building a modern data centre to run critical business applications requires a different approach to that of a traditional enterprise computing network model. Next generation data centres require an agile and scalable network infrastructure that can enable an expedited time to market for emerging business applications without the challenges and complexity of legacy solutions.

Arista focusses on Capital Cost Reductions, Operational Cost Reductions, Business Agility and Reduction of Risk.

Arista’s approach is founded on five focus areas, Software, Platforms, Architecture, Intelligent Automation and Quality Arista recently participated at GITEX 2018. What were the key takeaways from the show?

Arista’s key takeaways from GITEX 2018 are: l An opportunity to build our brand recognition and visibility l Arista now has a legal entity in the Middle East, highlighting our commitment to the region. l We met with many key customers during GITEX and arranged follow up meetings to discuss Arista and our capabilities. l Strategic partners alliance; GITEX gives Arista an opportunity to work with our local strategic technology partners and collaborate together on joint initiatives.

What new can our readers witness from Arista in 2019?

Arista have recently announced our Cognitive WiFi strategy and also our 400G platforms.

Arista Cognitive WiFi eliminates legacy WiFi controller bottlenecks to reduce operational costs with higher reliability through a cloud-based, cognitive model.

The new 400G fixed systems deliver the performance that hyperscale cloud networks and datacenters need for the growth of applications such as AI (artificial intelligence), machine learning, and serverless compute.ë

Discover the Edge.

Smart Solutions. Real Business.

Rittal solutions for the technology of the future.

Edge computing enables enormous amounts of data to be processed directly at the place where they arise. Securely and in real time. Rittal prepares you and your IT infrastructure for new challenges - ďŹ&#x201A;exibly, economically, and globally.

Visit us at

Sheikh Rashid Hall Stand SR-E2

For Enquiries:

Rittal Middle East FZE Tel: +971-4-3416855 I Email: info-it@rittal-middle-east.com I www.rittal.com/uae-en

GUEST ARTICLE

The rise and rise of the decentralised web

F5 examines why there’s a growing appetite for decentralised networks and greater personal data empowerment.

While the internet isn’t technically centralised, it is monolithic and monopolised in practice.

A handful of companies currently control most of the world’s personal data and, in most cases, we are ostensibly fine with this situation… or are we?

Driven largely by data privacy concerns, there is a growing chorus of entrepreneurs, experts, activists, and consumers starting to call for major changes.

Everywhere you look, trust in the Internet’s string-pulling behemoths is taking a hit due to a constant storm of hacks, technical mishaps, and operational intractability. People are getting disillusioned and consequently, an aspirational exodus toward more protected, transparent, and decentralised web options is gathering pace.

In many ways, decentralisation is already trundling into the mainstream, largely thanks to the fervour surrounding Bitcoin and a clutch of its lesser known cryptocurrencies.

NEW TECH ON THE BLOCK Blockchain is a global database functioning as an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions. It can be programmed to record not just financial transactions, but virtually anything of value. Intriguing use-cases are popping up all over, from food supply chain traceability to micropayments for media content. Many of the emerging concepts propose a dramatic shift in traditional approaches to transactions and businesses processes. It will simplify the Internet of Things (IoT), prompt a decentralised app design boom and, crucially, reinforce identity management capabilities.

Tech boffins, investors, and top-level decisionmakers of every ilk are duly and intently monitor-

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ing the situation.

The father of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, is one such observer and a firm believer that change is both necessary and on its way. Ultimately, he wants his creation to go back to what he originally intended – a decentralised platform with unfettered user freedom and watertight personal data controls. To help turn the tide, he recently founded SOLID, an open source project aiming to decentralise web applications, foster true data ownership, and improve privacy.

CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM? Beyond the headlines, however, there are still plenty of obstacles on the road to decentralised nirvana.

Firstly, mass adoption requires mass buy-in.

It can be a slow process to get behind something new, particularly if it stems from a field prone to technical opacity. Having said that, consumers are tech-savvy and data conscious than ever before.

Incidents like Cambridge Analytica illegally mining Facebook data for 2016 US presidential election advertising are already prompting many to explode the status quo.

Another potential impediment to user enthusiasm is speed, which is an enduring and well-known issue for decentralised apps. Without high-powered servers to keep latency at bay, there is always a looming buffer dread. Switching to a slower network is undoubtedly a tough sell but decentralisation acolytes believe the problem will be resolved soon. As the sentiment goes, lag is temporary. Disruption is permanent.

In the long-term, it is important to note that a thriving blockchain-driven B2B marketplace or platform will require all stakeholders to

n R A L F S Y D E K U M , T E C H N I C A L M A N A G E R , F5 NETWORKS,

develop and deliver applications and services that integrate in a safe, scalable, and reliable manner.

In addition, it will necessitate the technical wherewithal to coordinate massive data flows and business processes, as well establish sustainable infrastructures for applications and a distributed network of connected things. Automation and orchestration tools and frameworks – most often associated with DevOps and open application programming interface (APIs) ecosystems – will be in high demand.

As ever, security remains a major concern.

It isn’t the blockchain that’s getting hacked – it’s the things that surround it: payment systems, databases, and user credentials. Today’s cryptocurrency exchanges may be tomorrow’s banks, and you can bet somebody will try to rob them.

Industry-wide, we must get better at boosting developers’ abilities to self-service provision and automate the network. We also need to ensure that security services are intimately integrated into the software development cycle.

THE ROAD AHEAD Soaring demand for data security and transparency, combined with emerging business models built on blockchain technology, will only continue to cast all things decentralised in a positive light. Meanwhile, existing technical hitches will diminish over time due to inevitably improved processing technologies and the step changes required to comprehensively leverage the IoT. All businesses operating in the tech and data arena need to know the score, and carefully consider which investments can both meet, and pre-empt, shifting customer demands. ë

INNOVATIONS

FI-7300NX

KEY CAPABILITIES n Scan without the computer n Scan from your smart device to any business platform n Flexible range of software solutions - Offers users three software options designed to meet the needs of teams and businesses of all sizes. Paperstream IP NET, Paperstream NX Manager, Paperstream NX Manager API’s n Secure document capture n Reduced operating costs with centralised management n Manage jobs and process images with PaperStream NX Manager n Monitor scanner operations with Scanner Central Admin n Advanced technology and intuitive design n 4.3-inch touch screen - enables users to intuitively perform operations n Comes with the flexibility of multiple set-up options using a conventional USB or network connection n Scans at a speed of 60 ppm/120 ipm for A4 size documents. n Documents folded in half and carbon-copy sales slips can also be easily scanned with Manual Feed Mode

PFU (EMEA) Limited, a subsidiary of Fujitsu Ltd. launched the fi-7300NX, a new image scanner that provides flexible, cost-effective network capture for organisations with distributed user groups and scanning needs. The latest model in the fi Series line-up includes PaperStream NX Manager, brand new server-side software designed to centralise management and reduce operation costs.

PLEASE SEND YOUR FEEDBACK AT INFO@ GECMEDIAGROUP.COM

MGI JETVARNISH 3DS Konica Minolta Business Solutions Middle East has launched JETVARNISH 3DS featuring unmatched Spot UV 3D varnishing capabilities and foil. This machine will allow users to gain new customers and venture into new markets. The MGI JETVARNISH 3DS is a unique technology that takes printing to the next level by adding more value to printed documents, featuring increased output for flat Spot UV jobs and elegant 3D raised effects in a single pass. The MGI’s JETVARNISH 3DS has the ability to convert a regular printed output into high-margin spot UV printed sheets, or even higher margin 3D embossed jobs in excess of 200 microns of varnish.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Offers users the flexibility for two powerful and highly sought-after digital finishing capabilities n Accommodates sheets from 8×11.8-inch up to 14.33×40-inch and substrate thicknesses from 135 to 450gsm n Uses no plates or screens n An environmentally friendly solution

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n Also features solvent-free coatings and a closed-circuit system that eliminates waste n Fast machine complementing both offset and digital presses n In 3D mode, it can apply digital effects up to 200 microns in thickness n Allows for full personalization capabilities resulting in maximum marketing impact

INNOVATIONS

SSD Enclosure Kit

Transcend Information introdcued SSD Enclosure Kit options in different form factors to cover all possibilities and enhance data mobility. Available in M.2 and 2.5-inch variants, these portable storage enclosures are equipped with USB 3.1 Gen 1 interface and UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol) support to deliver fast and efficient data transfers compared to traditional USB 3.0. Unlike conventional USB 3.0 and BOT (Bulk Only Transport) protocol, which only allow for a single, unidirectional command at a given time, UASP allows for simultaneous; bidirectional commands that, when used with a UASP-enabled host computer, results in accelerated read and write speeds at peak performance. UASP also demonstrates up to 80% reduction in required processor resources.

KEY CAPABILITIES

n Allows for simultaneous; bidirectional commands that, when used with a UASP-enabled host computer n CM42 and CM80 are enclosures in different form factors designed specifically for M.2 SATA SSDs n M.2 SSD enclosure uses the USB 3.1 Gen 1 interface incorporated with UASP that makes transfer speeds faster n M.2 SSD enclosure features a lightweight aluminum construction, making it both portable and durable while you are on the move n Can transform an M.2 SATA SSD into a portable USB 3.1 Gen 1 external drive, maximizing utilization n StoreJet 25S3 features a stylish, yet compact aluminum case, n StoreJet 25CK3 protects your drive against shock and vibration with an outer rubber case and inner rubber shock absorber. n Comes with all the tools you need to reuse the 2.5-inch hard drive removed from your notebook n The ESD220C external SSD features fast data transfer rates and solid data integrity n Storage 25MC portable storage for PC comes with USB Type-C ports and advanced 3-stage shock protection system

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APC LC BladePatch jumper Siemon has enhanced its comprehensive line of LightHouseâ&#x201E;˘ advanced fibre cabling solutions with a new APC BladePatchÂŽ Uni-boot duplex singlemode fibre jumper. The new jumper has been developed in response to increasing fibre densities and the growing demand for APC (angled physical contact) connectivity that offers improved return loss performance for high-speed fibre links.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Low profile boot design optimizes side-stackability n Designed specifically for high density data center applications and high density blade servers n Features patented push-pull design of popular LC BladePatch n Utilises ITU-T G.657.A1 bend-insensitive single mode fibre and a smaller-diameter uni-tube cable design, n Reduces cable pathway congestion n Improves airflow and energy efficiency n Simplifies cable management n The fibre end face of an APC connector features an 8-degree angle that provides better reflection performance versus UPC (ultra-physical contact) connectors n Includes fibre patch cords, fibre pigtails, pre-terminated fibre trunks and connectivity.

PRESENTS

TECHTALK AND META CIO AWARDS

25.AUG.2018

07.SEP.2018

VENUE: GHANA

12.NOV.2018 VENUE: KSA

VENUE: KENYA

07.NOV.2018 VENUE: BAHRAIN

27.OCT.2018

20.NOV.2018 VENUE: QATAR

VENUE: EGYPT

27.NOV.2018 VENUE: KUWAIT

GET READY FOR A ‘NEVER-SEEN-BEFORE’ CIO ROADSHOW IN THE META REGION

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