Enterprise Channels MEA September 2018

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EDITORIAL

Let there be Transformation!

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

I hope everybody had a refreshing Eid break.

The Eid breaks, in this sphere, are often considered as a pull back before the industry shoots off for the busiest time of the year, especially with GITEX around the corner. Soon, organizations would be coming back a full circle, as the year closes in the next three months, and tallying the goals set and achieved for each quarter.

As part of our endeavor to keep our flagship group GEC Media in sync with the regional requirements of business and technology, I am pleased to inform you that we have launched a new media title called Business Transformation. Headed by ICT veteran journalist Arun Shankar, Business Transformation – The Change to Futuristic Business is an online, print, and event hosting brand, that presents transformation in business driven by technology life cycles. It also presents transformation across the wider ecosystem of sales models, new revenue streams and untapped customer segments. The online version of Business Transformation and its digital edition are available at https://www.biznesstransform.com/ In this issue of Enterprise Channels MEA, we have put together varied solutions and varied solution providers in a palette (from cabling to BI, from VR to Digital workplace, and VAD dynamics to vendor co-existence) with a thematic glimpse into the roadmap that each of them have and how far have they come in their 2018 goals.

Our cover story this issue is extremely special. The GEC Security Symposium and CISO Awards 2018, to be held on 5th September at the V Hotel in Dubai will take a closer look into the enterprise readiness and CISO preparedness in seeing security in a new light, especially at a time when the region is abuzz with various debutants and emerging security buzzwords. The story is a prelude to the action-packed event, wherein we have covered a few quotes and inputs from the CISOs and Security heads who are playing a detrimental role in securing their enterprise perimeters.

And before you ask this question in your mind, let me answer it for you…. Yes, you would also get a chance to meet them face-to-face at the event for detailed networking.

Beyond that, as every year, Enterprise Channels MEA is the technology media partner for the GITEX 2018 and we are gearing up to bring some very focused, relevant, targeted and upbeat issues this October.

Let the tech festivities begin! ë

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W W W. E C - M E A . C O M SEPTEMBER 2018 | VOLUME 06 | ISSUE 02

CONTENTS 22

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NEW APPOINMENT

LEVERAGING THE

COVER STORY

FORCE JULIEN BERTIN, MANAGING DIRECTOR - UAE & OMAN, SAP

30 INTERVIEW

COMPETING TO CO-EXIST ERCAN AYDIN, REGIONAL VP EMERGING MARKETS, PALO ALTO NETWORKS

GEC SECURITY SYMPOSIUM 2018 PRELUDE

Are we looking at Enterprise security and the threat landscape as we should be looking at it? Going against the traditional beliefs, the grass we are standing on today is greener and the other side is not.

ADVERTISER INDEX: GEC OPEN 2018 02,

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INTERVIEW

ON BEING THE MEMORY SPECIAIST HOUSSAM MOBEID, CEO, MTC

04 EDITORIAL

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ONTAP AI - NETAPP & NVIDIA’S AI ARCHITECTURE

CHANNEL STREET

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SPECIAL STORY

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TOSHIBA 03, GEC AWARDS 07, SECURITY

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INNOVATIONS

GUEST ARTICLE

SYMPOSIUM 09, SAI GLOBAL 11, GITEX INHOUSE AD 13, VALUEMENTOR 15,

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ENT ADVISOR 17, GITEX DWTC 19, FINESSE 21, MIMECAST 23,

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GARTNER SECURITY 35, RITTAL 51, BT 52

FEATURE STORY

2020 IS COMING! ARE YOU ABLE TO CABLE?

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FOCUS STORY

LATEST TECH FOR GREATEST WEALTH

CHANNEL

STREET Takaful Emarat adopts Device-as-a-Service solution for Apple Takaful Emarat, is the first insurance company in the Middle East to use Device-as-a-Service solution for Apple devices through MDS. Takaful Emarat has deployed Apple devices for their sales force as well as back-office operations, leveraging cutting-edge technologies. The Device-as-a-Service solution for Apple device speeds product sales, service and delivery through paperless processing and

ultimately improves efficiencies by reducing costs of using and maintaining enterprise devices.

Mohammed Al Hawari, Managing Director, Takaful Emarat said, “The insurance industry of tomorrow will look entirely different to what it is today. At Takaful Emarat, we are always looking to stay ahead of the curve and sell our products in a seamless way that is flexible to the needs of each and

every individual customer. Using Device-as-a-Service model in our customer service centre is one of the steps we have taken towards being a truly agile business.”

Fadi Hindi, CEO, Takaful Emarat said, “We are pleased to announce that we are the first insurance company in the Middle East to invest in a new technology pioneered by Apple iOS devices.

With the help of MDS, we have

reduced our IT department’s work load so that they can focus on strategic initiatives to grow our business. MDS has also helped us reduce overall IT costs, increase productivity, strengthen data security and most importantly – improve the customer experience.

Our customers can now walk into the Takaful Emarat service centre buy or renew a policy with minimum paperwork required.”

UAE GOVERNMENT ENFORCES NEW LAW FOR CYBER CRIMINALS UAE government is making the life of hackers much difficult by revising the penalties for cyber crime.

According to the new and revised law, the criminals can be jailed for 25 years and charged upto AED 4 million for breaking the UAE’s cyber crime laws.

The federal decree to amend the

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law was issues by President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan. As per this law, anyone who establishes, manages or runs a website that promotes or assists terrorist groups will face between 10 to 25 years in jail and will receive a fine between AED 2 million to AED 4 million.

S E P T E M B E R 2018

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Another statement states that those who have websites or publish information with the aim to incite hate will face upto 5 years in jail and receive a fine of AED 500,000 to AED 1 million. But, on the other hand, first time offenders will be only placed under electronic probation and monitoring and prevent

from using IT. The new rule also gives a temporary imprisonment and a fine up to AED 1 million for those who transmits “information, news or cartoon drawings or any other pictures” which may endanger national security. It is also said that if the culprit is an expat, then he/she will be subject to deportation.

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EIPA promotes adoption of best global IP practices in UAE The Emirates Intellectual Property Association (EIPA), continues to lead in the ongoing unified efforts to promote the adoption of global best practices in intellectual property (IP). EIPA’s global best practices includes activities and initiatives that can help increase awareness, including training programs that can further qualify and certify UAE nationals on IP legislative matters. These programs help in achieving the goals and objectives set forth in UAE Vision 2021, especially in creating a globally competitive economy that is based on knowledge and innovation.

To date, EIPA has made major contributions dedicated to reinforcing the synergy between senior government officials and creative and bright minds–successfully raising key awareness on

important IP-related issues like violations, counterfeiting and piracy. The association has also helped concerned entities with essential legal support, providing legal advice and assisting in the creation of IP legislation. EIPA has also expressed the need to be constantly at pace with the rapid developments happening all over the world and has strategically supported the UAE’s move to continuously update its IP laws and legislation in compliance with set international standards and guidelines. His Excellency (H.E.) Dr. Abdul Quddoos A.R. Al Obaidli, Assistant Commander for Excellence & Pioneering, Chairman of EIPA, has emphasized on the need for both the public and private sectors to work closely together, especially in the implementation and adoption of IP protection guidelines.

TURKISH TURMOIL AFFECTS GCC MARKET The diplomatic and economic spat between United States and Turkey has taken a huge toll on the GCC market. The investors are staying clear from assets perceived as risky. This led to the drop in the Gulf stocks. This worsening dispute between the two reverberated through the global economy, hastening a road flight of money from emerging markets and leaving instability throughout the Middle East market.

After the U S President, Donald Trump doubled tariffs on the Turkish Steel and Aluminium imports, the Turkish lira fell on a record low of 18%. Over this, the diplomatic dispute between Saudi Arabia and Canada was an added pressure. Lira, which traded at 4.7 to the dollar a month ago, fell down to 6.4. It was the first time ever more than 6 lira was needed to buy a dollar.

The Turkish crisis impacted the most in the Qatar market with the index being was down by 2.6%. in Dubai, the index fell down by one percent and in Saudi Arabia it fell down by 1.4%.

Emirates NBD had agreed to buy Turkey’s Denizbank from Russia’s state-owned Sberbank for $3.2 billion. It is said that this turmoil will lead to a renegotiation of the deal.

ADGM COURTS TO BE FULLY DIGITAL Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) Courts embarked on an end-to-end transformation to deliver fully digital courts for the first time in the judicial and legal system. The authority used Azure, Dynamics 365 and Office 365 to build an innovative new legal platform to fully digitize dispute resolution and other legal proceedings. ADGM Courts aims to make the legal system more simple, efficient and accessible for clients and legal professionals.

Established in 2015, Abu Dhabi Global Market is Abu Dhabi’s international financial center. It has three independent authorities, one of them being ADGM Courts. ADGM Courts is a progressive Middle Eastern judicial framework, and has undertaken remarkable journey of innovation. Its technological advances support the digital transformation of Abu Dhabi’s economy, serving one of the region’s most strategic business centers and its global investors.

Traditional courts rely heavily on paper-based systems, which can be costly and inefficient. This is not the case for the now fully digital ADGM Courts.

AUDI AND ERICSSON TO PIONEER 5G FOR AUTOMOTIVE MANUFACTURING Audi and 5G Ericsson revealed plans to pioneer the use of 5G technology for automotive production.

At Audi’s headquarters in Ingolstadt, Germany, the two companies agreed on a range of activities exploring the potential of 5G as a futureproof communication technology that can meet the

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high demands of automotive production. Audi and Ericsson have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and in the coming months, experts from both companies will run field tests in a technical center of the “Audi Production Lab” in Gaimersheim, Germany.

Frank Loydl, Chief

S E P T E M B E R 2018

MEA

Information Officer at AUDI AG, says: “The fully networked factory will have a significant impact on the production of the future. A powerful network architecture that can respond in real time is of decisive importance for us.

As part of the project with our partner Ericsson, we are

testing the opportunities offered by 5G technology for industrial applications in the smart factory.” In addition to the Ingolstadt plant, Audi and Ericsson are exploring whether 5G can be used in other Audi Group factories.

Erik Ekudden, Group CTO at Ericsson, says: “Ericsson is already running 5G

industry programs all over the world to help manufacturers boost productivity and create new business opportunities. This project is a great opportunity to see what is possible when we bring 5G into an automobile production environment to truly enable smart wireless manufacturing.”

GEC

SECUR TY SYMPOSIUM AND CISO AWARDS 2018

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SPECTRAMI sets up Turkey based Operations

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SECONDS

EXAGRID EXPANDS INTO MIDDLE EAST MARKET

Building on the plan to achieve $100 million, SPECTRAMI has setup an extended base of operations in Turkey. The company is already working to on-board new vendor partners that will provide the momentum towards this target to achieve 80% growth in 2018. Leading their operations in Turkey is Gokhan Bas, Territory Manager. He has a great track record of experience in IT and Cyber Security product sales with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry.

“Cyber awareness in Turkey has increased dramatically in the past 10 years. SPECTRAMI will help organizations plan and execute an integrated cyber approach to harness the power of information networks to enhance business operations, increase mission performance, and improve customer support, without compromising security or privacy,” said Anand Choudha, CEO SPECTRAMI.

ANAND CHOUDHA, CEO, SPECTRAMI

ExaGrid expanded its Middle Eastern coverage with the appointment of Rami Nasser as regional sales director for the MEA & India. ExaGrid will be adding sales offices in Dubai, Turkey, India, and South Africa. ExaGrid has simultaneously partnered with VAD Technologies to strengthen its channel footprint by providing VAD’s resellers with backup storage product offering to their enterprise customers.

FINESSE PARTNERS WITH UIPATH Finesse partnered with UiPath to offer RPA solutions for businesses to automate their processes for increased efficiency and cost optimization. This partnership will benefit Finesse’s existing client base and will be extended to various verticals in the Gulf area and beyond. By delegating these processes to a virtual digital workforce of software robots, company employees will be able to focus on more strategic, creative and customer-facing initiatives.

DXC TECHNOLOGY AND AWS COLLABORATE DXC Technology and Amazon Web Services collaborated for a multi-year, global agreement to build a new multi-billion dollar DXC – AWS Integrated Practice that will deliver IT migration, application transformation, and business innovation to global Fortune 1000 clients. The

MENA DATA CENTER SPEND TO REACH $ 5 BILLION BY 2020

DXC – AWS Integrated Practice will offer clients secure, cloud-first solutions that combine the breadth and depth of cloud services offered through AWS with DXC enterprise services to

As the Middle East accelerates its digital transformation and Smart Cities growth, regional data center spend will reach a record-high of USD 5 billion by 2020, said the industry experts.

MENA data center spend to reach a record high of USD 5.1 billion by 2020, increasing by 8.5 percent from 2017, according to a recent report by Statista. Much of this spend will go towards enabling Smart Cities, aligned with the GITEX Technology Week theme of “Experience Future Urbanism”.

Data center modernization ranks as one of the top digital business priorities for regional CEOs in the next two years, with technology infrastructure modernization enabling new digital business models, argues Condo Protego, the UAE-based IT infrastructure and information management consultancy and solutions provider. “Record-high Middle East data center spend shows that regional CEOs understand that modernizing IT infrastructure can deliver a competitive advantage and enable Smart Cities,” said Savitha Bhaskar, COO, Condo Protego. “GITEX is an ideal platform to showcase how modernized IT can lead to real-time insights for better customer and citizen engagement, new revenue streams, and greater efficiency and data protection.”

enable them to innovate in their industries, be more agile.

AGS SELECTS IFS Arabian Gulf Switchgear (AGS), has selected IFS Applications 10 to support its engineer-toorder operations. To cope with the tremendous construction activities in the Gulf region, AGS has quickly scaled its operations to manage production and storage. The company had outgrown its legacy system that was operational for the past 25 years and required a single, integrated enterprise solution that could modernize all core business processes including finance, supply chain management, customer relationship management, projects, manufacturing, document management, HR and payroll.

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Data Breaches Will Continue & Intensify Safeguarding your data requires a solution you can trust IT RISK SOLUTIONS MONITOR, TRACK & REPORT ON: IT Risk and Compliance Cybersecurity GDPR IT Vendor Risk Digital Incident Management Business Continuity Security Threat and Vulnerability

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Oman Data Park partners with Cisco for MSS

Oman Data Park (ODP) has deployed Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) as part of its ODP Managed Security Services for end point protection. Oman Data Park is the first managed service provider in Oman, offering managed cloud services, public cloud, co-location and managed security services to both large and small organizations in Oman.

In February 2018, ODP launched their 3rd data center in Oman at Duqm. ODP Duqm Data Center complements the other two active

data centers: Knowledge Oasis Muscat and Wattayah.

At the Duqm Data Center Oman Data Park partnered with Cisco to offer managed security services. “Since the start of ODP, partnering with Cisco has been a strategic decision in line with our vision to provide stable, reliable and highly available Data Center services. Cisco continues to be our key technology provider for Oman Data Park as we expand and roll out our third data center. Based on the early success of Knowledge Oasis Muscat and Wattayah Data Centers, we were confident that Cisco would give us the same benefits with our third data center. Using Cisco Data Center Networking, Compute, Collaboration, Security and many other solutions, we are able to control our total cost of ownership, avoid complexity while building resiliency, and significantly differentiate our services. From our Duqm data center, we intend to offer cloud services to government and commercial entities, with a strong focus on the banking and financial industry,” said Maqbool Al Wahaibi, CEO, Oman Data Park.

“Cisco is looking forward to work with Oman Data Park and provide multiple new solutions, including Application & Business Performance, Cloud Managed Infrastructure and Software Defined Networking (SDN) platforms, with a scalable network performance of 40Gbps,” said Ali AL-Lawati, General Manager Cisco Oman.

DUBAI LEAPS TO BE “SMARTEST CITY” The emirate of Dubai is ranked as the ‘Most Innovative City’ and is now taking its leap to be the smartest city.

This came out after the publishing of 2thinknow’s 2018 report which published the annual ranking of the most innovative cities.

With the deployment of smart solutions and technologies, the emirate is on track to be the smartest city. The Smart Dubai has saved Dubai government around Dh4.3 million in the past 13 years. This feat was achieved through shared infrastructure and smart services for over 60 government entities. Today, the government is saving Dh5.6 for every one dirham spent by Smart Dubai.

With more than 100 smart initiative and 1,000 smart services in the past three years, the government is wanting private sectors also to benefit from the Smart City development. The plan is for all the city infrastructure to be connected through IoT. With connected devices, directly contributing to improve decision making, is based on real-time data and increased operational efficiencies.

KHALIFA FUND SUCCESSFULLY HOLDS WORKSHOP ON ONLINE MARKETPLACE The Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development (KFED) successfully organized a workshop aimed at increasing more awareness on the significant role being played by today’s online marketplace and the benefits and advantages to be gained from it. The event, which was held in

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collaboration with the Expo 2020 Dubai Team at the Khalifa Innovation Centre in Khalifa University, covered key discussions on the unique features of Expo 2020 online market portal and the many business development opportunities it brings. The workshop,

S E P T E M B E R 2018

MEA

which was attended by local entrepreneurs and KFED strategic partners, threw the spotlight on how local companies, including SMEs, can leverage and showcase their products and services across a wider global audience.

During the sessions, the Expo 2020 Dubai

Team talked about the importance of the online marketplace and the advantages being brought in by having key access to local and international suppliers. Representatives from the team shared how e-marketplaces help in facilitating product searches and purchases,

which saves time as opposed to buying done via traditional means. The lecturers also went through the objectives of the online marketplace, the registration procedures for the coming event and shared some contract opportunities that can benefit SMEs in Expo 2020 Dubai.

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Bitcoin’s future: Bear or Bull market?

Over the past one year, Bitcoin has fallen about 70% from its peak. The drop is expected to be deeper down. In the past one month alone, the market capitalization of cryptocurrency dropped by 30% from $300 billion to $208.4 billion.

This latest breakdown has put bitcoin in the bear market territory. The last time Bitcoin was in $5,800 range was on June 29 when it hit low of $5,835.75. The last time Bitcoin had a five figure value was when it closed in March 7, 2018 at $10,803.90.

The sudden reversal of Bitcoin’s came after

WEB CLIPS HI3G SELECTS ERICSSON

the U S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) postponed its decision on a proposed bitcoin ETF filed jointly by VanEck and SolidX. This move alone wiped out $9 billion off of the cryptocurrency’s value. A document published on SEC website said that the agency receive more than 1,300 comments on the proposal.

According to CoinMarketCap, to date, nine of the top 10 cryptocurrencies are down in the past few days by an average of 18.2%. Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and Bitcoin cash are the only ones who have a market cap of $10 billion.

Ericsson has been selected by Hi3G, operating as 3 in Denmark, to modernize its transport network with 5G-ready routers over the next three years. The new IP Mobile Backhaul transformation project will see the implementation of Router 6000 hardware, software and customer support (part of Ericsson Radio System). This will prepare Hi3G’s network for future 5G requirements, and support the significant increase in the number of connected devices on the network.

EASTNETS APPOINTS NEW CTO EastNets appointed Luay Gadallah as the company’s new Chief Technology Officer.

Luay will be responsible for overseeing the

EMERSON NAMED “IIOT CORPORATE LEADER OF THE YEAR”

strategic direction of EastNets technology organization, as well as upholding the company’s technology position at the forefront of

Emerson has been named “IIoT Corporate Leader of the Year” by McRock Capital. The award recognizes Emerson’s unique and successful deployment of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) solutions. Emerson’s IIoT solutions have been deployed extensively across the globe helping manufacturing industries including oil and gas, life sciences, chemical, power, food and beverage, and more to improve efficiency, performance, and safety.

Modern manufacturing organizations are continually challenged to do more with less to meet the rapid pace of the global marketplace. Emerson has helped companies navigate these challenges by developing and implementing the Plantweb digital ecosystem: a scalable portfolio of standards-based hardware, software, intelligent devices and services for securely enabling IIoT to strengthen decision making and improve operations.

the industry. Based in Amman, Luay will lead a global team of enterprise architects, software engineers, security experts and technology professionals and will also be identifying key growth opportunities and innovative technologies for EastNets’s suite of offerings.

TURKEY TO BOYCOTT US ELECTRONICS Immediately after the Turkish turmoil, the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatens to boycott all of American electron-

ADAB SOLUTIONS LAUNCH FICE ADAB Solutions company is launching the First Islamic Crypto Exchange (FICE), which is the only Shariah compliant crypto exchange at this moment. This project gives access to the technologically innovative financial sector for 1.8 billion Muslims living on the planet. FICE will create a reliable crypto trading platform, which will become a universal solution for the involvement of Muslims and users of Islamic finance in the crypto market. This will be the first project, which allows crypto transactions to be performed in accordance with the principles of Islamic finance and will be open to all users, regardless of religion. The multitudes of contradictions in this market, and the ambiguous position of the Islamic community regarding the admissibility of investments in this market, have led to the distancing and wait-and-see attitude of Muslim investors.

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ics including Apple Inc.’s iPhone. This came

NUMBER GAME

as a result of Donald Trump isolating the Turkish economy. Even though no government actions were taken on the boycotting

56.05

$

bn

Infrastructure as a Service Market worth 56.05 Billion USD by 2020: MarketsandMarkets

process, he asked his citizens to buy local or Korean mobile phones, instead of American iPhones.This decision was taken after US imposed a double tariff on Turkish steel and aluminium imports.

VERITAS UNVEILS NETBACKUP 8.1.2 DATA PROTECTION Veritas Technologies unveiled its NetBackup 8.1.2with a radically improved user interface that simplifies how employees across an organization can effortlessly protect data and modern workloads. With an intuitive interface that enables authorized employees to easily protect and monitor their own data, on premises or in multi-cloud environments, Veritas NetBackup simplifies day-to-day operations.

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T-Mobile and Nokia to accelerate nationwide 5G network T-Mobile and Nokia made a landmark $3.5 billion agreement to accelerate the deployment of a nationwide 5G network. Nokia will provide T-Mobile with its complete end-to-end 5G technology, software and services portfolio, assisting the Un-carrier in its efforts to bring its 5G network to market for customers in the critical first years of the 5G cycle.

“We are all in on 5G,” said Neville Ray, Chief Technology Officer at T-Mobile. “Every dollar we spend is a 5G dollar, and our agreement with Nokia underscores the kind of investment we’re making to bring customers a mobile, nationwide 5G network. And together with Sprint, we’ll be able to do So. Much. More.”

As part of the agreement, Nokia will help build T-Mobile’s nationwide 5G network with 600 MHz and 28 GHz millimeter wave 5G capabilities compliant with 3GPP 5G New Radio (NR) standards.

“Nokia and T-Mobile will advance the large-scale deployment of 5G services throughout the United States,” said Ashish Chowdhary, Chief Customer Operations Officer, Nokia. “This is a testament to our companies’ strong and productive working relationship, one which has produced several important technological milestones in recent months, and which now allows us to make 5G a commercial reality.”

FIORANO EXPANDS FOOTPRINT IN BANKING SECTOR WITH ITSS Fiorano Software tied-up in a strategic partnership with Information Technologies Solutions & Services (ITSS). The partnership will be aimed to deliver digital transformation solutions to the banking sector. “We are excited joining forces with Fiorano; it enables us to offer more value to customers as well as increase our revenue opportunities. Fiorano’s agile responsiveness to customer needs aligns perfectly with our long-term vision,” said Peter Redelinghuys, VP Sales-Africa, ITSS. Fiorano Software has over the years helped banks integrate core banking systems with applications to boost operational efficiency and productivity across processes, customers and partners. ITSS offers specialized services for core banking systems like T24 (Temenos), Finacle, Avaloq and Flexcube. With ITSS, Fiorano plans to meet evolving digital needs of the banking industry with an emphasis on addressing modern technology challenges and mitigating productivity hindrances faced by banks. According to S.S. Tarak, Business Development Director, Fiorano Software, “Fiorano has been actively promoting its banking solutions’ portfolio of Core Banking Integration, SWIFT Integration, APIM and PSD2 in the market.

With a team of consultants carrying strong banking expertise, ITSS brings necessary edge to provide digital transformation solutions to banking sector and expand our foothold.”

STORAGECRAFT LAUNCHES SHADOWXAFE System downtime can cost businesses a tremendous amount of money in lost productivity and revenue. According to Gartner, “By 2022, 40% of organizations will augment or replace their backup applications from what they deployed at the beginning of 2018.”

To solve this dilemma, StorageCraft, whose mission is to protect all data and ensure its constant availability, launches ShadowXafe, an advanced next-generation data-protection solution.

Adds Michael Linton, EVP and general manager at VLCM, a StorageCraft partner: “VLCM is excited about the release of ShadowXafe! We think this is a game changer because it carries forward the proven and tested dataprotection technology of ShadowProtect and expands significantly on its functionality and ease of use.”

Designed specifically for SMBs, ShadowXafe is simple to deploy, easy to manage and reliable even under the most demanding circumstances.

It ensures SLA-driven data protection and delivers powerful recovery for physical and virtual machines (VMs).

Tightly integrated with StorageCraft cloud-based Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), ShadowXafe provides total business continuity.

ADSSSA IDENTIFIES FIVE NEW JOURNEYS TO ENHANCE CUSTOMERS’ EXPERIENCE Abu Dhabi Smart Solutions and Services Authority (ADSSSA) plans to launch five new customer journeys by end of 2018, following the launch of its pioneering initiative TAMM, the Abu Dhabi government services solutions through an integrated journey focused approach and deliver

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integrated and personalized customer experiences. The plans were discussed during a workshop held recently in the presence of Director Generals and Executives of 10 government entities.

Representatives from the Department of Health, General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners

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Affairs in Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority showcased their successful experiences in using the TAMM system.

They highlighted the benefits of the unique experience for customers based on innovative and effective services.

The move aims to further

position Abu Dhabi as a leading destination for smart transformation.

The five new journeys are expected to follow the success of the ‘New Medical Journey’ which promote business and investment in Abu Dhabi by simplifying investor procedures through a single digital channel and

one document. ‘Moving to New Home’ journey continues to provide an ideal platform to offer a healthy and equitable social environment for the community, while upgrading government services to meet the needs of Abu Dhabi’s sustainable development efforts.

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First Hajj Hackathon award to all-female team

The first Hajj Hackathon award was won by an all-female team of Saudi computer developers and programmers. The event with thousands of techies participated to compete for the best solution to make the life of Hajj pilgrims easier.

The Hajj Hackathon, three day event, held in Jeddah is an initiative that brought together thousands of programmers from 51 countries to innovate on making the annual Hajj services smoother in all areas. Some of the major areas covered were food, sanitation, transportation, accommodation, communication, crowd management and navigation.

The team of all-women named ‘Turjuman’ was named the winner after they came out with

the solution to accommodate the arrival of 2 million pilgrims for Hajj and millions of others in Umrah throughout the year. These young women developed an instant translation app named ‘Turjuman’ which will facilitate communication by pilgrims from all around the world.

The first prize was SAR 1,000,000 (approx. Dh 1 million). There was an eight member jury which included Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Inc. The second place was grabbed by an Egyptian team of three developers for their fintech solution called ‘Hajj Wallet’. The third place was won by an Algerian team for their social network product called ‘Roaa’.

BITOASIS SUPPORTS REGULATION OF DIGITAL ASSETS Commenting on recent announcements on digital asset trading in Saudi Arabia, Ola Doudin, CEO of BitOasis, said: “Digital assets and blockchain technology are a reality and are here to stay. They are the future of money. This fast growing industry is at its early stage and regulations are currently being discussed and developed in every part of the world, including this region.

“Regulations are absolutely fundamental. They are essential to grow and formalise the industry, while minimising risks on customers. This is why, as a pioneer in the industry, we are working closely with regulators in a number of our key markets across the GCC to develop and comply with the necessary regulatory framework. “As a whole, our region is progressive and quick to adapt to new technologies that can create more efficient, competitive, and smarter economies. Regulatory frameworks will affirm digital assets’ status as a reality in today’s world.”

USB ENABLED DRIVERS FOR NEUROSHIELD NOW AVAILABLE NeuroMem Technologies makes their new drivers for the NeuroShield board available.

Developed by its ecosystem partner, Nepes, NeuroShield is a shield board featuring the NeuroMem NM500 neuromorphic chip with 576 neurons ready to learn and recognize stimuli extracted from any type of sensors including IMU, audio, environmental sensors, bio-signal, video and more.

Pierre Brunswick, CEO at NeuroMem Technologies, said, “The new drivers, available worldwide, including the introduction of the USB interface, is a step forward and will help our developer ecosystem leverage our technology to create more applications easily and in very short time. Our unique pattern-learning technology needs input and parameters so that the devices learn continuously.”

NeuroShield is compatible with Arduino, Mbed, Raspberry PI, Pyboard and any microcontrollers which can support SPI communication. Neuromem, with its ecosystem partners and developers, has created a full range of support tools and packages to help hardware vendors develop a complete workflow, allowing for the training of the neurons either in real-time on a board mounted on a microcontroller or off-line connected to a PC, or even a combination of both, since the knowledge built by the neurons is easily traceable and portable.

MALABAR GOLD & DIAMONDS TAPS CAPILLARY’S BIG DATA SOLUTIONS Malabar Gold & Diamonds partnered with Capillary Technologies to achieve digital transformation using its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Powered technology platform. Capillary Technologies will help Malabar Gold & Diamonds upscale

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its Omni-channel customer engagement initiatives.

With big data gaining momentum, Malabar Gold & Diamonds has tapped a range of AI powered solutions by Capillary Technologies to analyze data resulting in better

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and seamless customer experience with personalization. Commenting on the partnership, Shamlal Ahamed, Managing Director – International Operations of Malabar Gold & Diamonds, said, “We have been operating

outside of India for the last 10 years. During this period, we have continued to acquire and increase our customer base. Over time, the data has grown to over 3.5 million verified customers. We understand that we have not been utilizing

this strength, possibly due to lack of technology and expertise in this space. We are happy to partner with Capillary Technologies in helping us make sense of our big data and use it to give better service value to our customers.”

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GUEST ARTICLE

CYBERSECURITY THREATS ARE EVOLVING IS YOUR IT INFRASTRUCTURE READY? THE DIGITAL AGE OPENS UP A WEALTH OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR HACKERS TO PENETRATE SECURITY DEFENCES.

breaches, cybercriminals are shifting their approach to more targeted cyber attacks involving different types of data and threats to availability and integrity as well as confidentiality so businesses need to take action.

The importance of protection data is recognised word wide and the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) across the EU will further change the way business will manage data privacy and respond to cyber security incidents.

Without proper planning and a defined roadmap, organisations can end up with a mishmash of technologies from different vendors that donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t integrate well, offer poor visibility, and leave systems and infrastructure vulnerable to hackers.

SIMON WILKES,

SENIOR IT RISK MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT, SAI GLOBAL

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he rapid spread of digital technology is enabling organisations to quickly roll out new products and services to meet customer demands.

Although digital technology offers vast possibilities for efficiencies and growth, it comes with its own set of challenges and risks. Digital platforms generate a huge amount of valuable, confidential, personal data that must be secured.

While many corporations are investing in security prevention and detection to prevent traditional data

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How can I protect my business?

Threats can come in many forms. Are your vendors secure? Are your systems protected from malware and ransomware? Are your staff acting in accordance with the GDPR? An integrated approach is essential to achieving a strong cybersecurity posture.

Are your vendors secure?

Behind successful businesses is a complex network of third-party vendors providing backups, data storage and software applications. Managing the risks from third- and even fourth-party vendors and supply chains is critical.

Extending your risk management ractices to your network of vendor and performing vendor risk assessments is essential to demonstrate to your customers that you are working with a secure network of vendors.

If your vendor suffers a breach, customers

will blame you, and your business will be liable for the associated prosecutions and fines and your reputation will bear the brunt of the damage.

Are your systems protected? l Endpoint monitoring solutions should be used to efficiently monitor network activity and identify anomalies so you can shut them down before they become a full-blown breach. l Ensure you have an automated process in place to deploy the latest vulnerability patching. Implement advanced authentication to prevent hackers from accessing multiple systems. Employ encryption to prevent hackers transferring data. Apply application controls and use internal and external penetrating testing. l Bolster your firewall protection to detect intrusion attempts, stop malware from penetrating the network, identify unauthorised access and apply application-specific and user- specific security policies. l Monitor log files to safeguard against gaps in application and perimeter defences so preventive actions can be taken before any serious damage occurs. Implement an automated process to analyse and monitor logs regularly.

Do your staff present a risk?

Create a culture of security with staff training and awareness initiatives.

The key to a strong cybersecurity posture is to have a strategy that includes people, processes, and technology to spot problems, respond effectively, and minimise impact.

With the right mix of technology, internal processes and an embedded security culture, higher performance and better security are possible. ĂŤ

NEW APPOINTMENT

Leveraging the Force

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND THE VISION OF THE UAE GOVERNMENT MAKES THE NEWLY APPOINTED MANAGING DIRECTOR OF SAP, JULIEN BERTIN TO SET HIS PRIORITY AND PLANS TO FOCUS ON THEM.

JULIEN BERTIN, MANAGING DIRECTOR UAE & OMAN, SAP

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 >

T

echnology has transformed every aspect of life in the UAE. With the pace that digital transformation is driven by the government and all the advanced projects, Julien Bertin, the newly appointed Managing Director for UAE & Oman strongly believes that SAP is the best equipped company in the tech world today to address those challenges. “The comprehensive innovation portfolio makes SAP a global leader. Moving from a hardware company to the cloud innovation company was indeed the right move for me,” he says.

Joining as a new comer, Julien has appreciated the open communication policy at SAP. And as a part of the culture, even the ecosystem is made such that they are productive and successful and think in a creative manner. The partner ecosystem is extremely important for SAP – be it for the solutions they are proposing or working with the customers. “We have system integrators and resellers as part of our partner ecosystem, which we work with and engage with them to drive projects for a successful future. The partners are key in that as they help us either from the integration standpoint or providing support with networking with the customer or combining all

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the solutions into the mix of both.”

Based in Dubai, with more than 18 years of experience, Julien previously served as Managing Director for the Middle East at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. He has a strong record of leading successful teams across diverse territories and business cultures. “As the Managing Director for UAE & Oman, I am responsible for the country’s end to end business. My primary job is to manage customer engagement, partner engagement and represent SAP, ” he adds.

THE TOP PRIORITIES Being also the legal representative of the company, Julien has already set his top three priorities and plans to focus on them. There is a pool of talent in the region and supporting them to grow tops his list. “The youth are the driving force of UAE for the future and the country is already taking a lot of initiatives for this. Personally, and also as a company, makes me capitalize and leverage on this.”

SAP recently announced a five-year US $200 million investment in the UAE, underpinning objectives outlined by the UAE Vision 2021 pan to create economic diversity and jobs for the

youth. “As the core member of the technology landscape, it is very important to support the vision. We nurture the talent through various programs like SAP academy. We also extensively invest a lot and send people on training to US.” The second priority is innovation and cloud.

The company recently at their annual conference SAPPHIRE NOW introduced SAP C/4 HANA cloud platform which brings together customer data, machine learning and microservices technology to power real-time customer experiences across sales, service, marketing, and commerce and beyond. Julien says – “From the business point, cloud always remains our priority.

We drive most of our innovation strategies from cloud. We are keen into bringing SAP C/4 HANA into this market and working with the team successfully. This is the human interface where we interact not with the company but with the human being.”

Working very closely with the government and supporting their vision is third priority of Julien.

SAP recently launched the Co-Innovation Lab (COIL) in the UAE facilitating project-based co-innovation with customers and partners. SAP Co-Innovation Labs, located in high-tech clusters around the globe, provide opportunities to foster innovations with local ecosystems. “With announcements from the Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum on Blockchain, AI in core part of the government, digital transformation, UAE is all set for the future. We want to strategize with the government and the co-innovation lab complements it.”

EXPO 2020 DUBAI PREMIER PARTNER According to Julien, smart cities, connected mega-events such as Expo 2020 Dubai, and the growth of “intelligent enterprises”, will drive the UAE’s IT market to top AED 20 billion in 2018.

“EXPO is kind of the center-point for the digital transformation. The return that EXPO will bring to the country or the region, will definitely be tremendous. SAP being an EXPO partner, we have an opportunity to co-innovate with them to transform visitor experiences.” ë

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COVER STORY

GEC

SECURITY SYMPOSIUM PRELUDE

BEYOND THE HORIZONS, ABOVE THE PERIPHERY Are we looking at Enterprise security and the threat landscape as we should be looking at it? Going against the traditional beliefs, the grass we are standing on today is greener and the other side is not.

Security tomorrow will not be everyone’s cup of tea. A recent report from Frost & Sullivan and (ISC)2 found that the global cyber security workforce will have more than 1.5 million unfilled positions by 2020— reason, the unaddressed skill gap and the inability to cope up with the ever-changing security requirements.

Through our inaugural GEC Security Symposium, hosted by GEC Media Group, in association with The Cyber Sentinels— This September, we are taking Enterprise and Cyber security to a new periphery.

Ahead of the event, we are putting together the thoughts of the leading CISOs in the region and their take on modern enterprise security. We have structured the story on the base of the key themes or aspects of security that we would be discussing at the event through our interactive speaking and panel discussion.

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COVER STORY

BLOCKCHAIN SECURITY

Nascent yet niche. How organizations can reap the benefits of the distributed ledger, yet have it secure?

Presently Blockchain is considered to be the most secure technology for boxing up critical data.

But, Bitcoin and Etherium, for example, have both experienced significant hacks that have emphasized on the loopholes that exist in blockchain that need not be overlooked. According to a CCN report,“ An offline peer-to-peer exchange of bitcoin to fiat turned sour for a South Korean businessman after it emerged that the euros he had swapped for his cryptocurrency holdings were fake.”

AMIT BHATIA, HEAD OF INFORMATION SECURITY, LEADING FINANCIAL INSTITUTION

The block chain industry is also evolving on the same pace and could potentially help to improve security posture of the organizations as the platform can secure, prevent fraudulent activities and detects data tampering. Block chain’s decentralized and distributed network will help businesses to avoid a single point of failure, making it difficult for malicious parties to steal or tamper with business data.

Innovate use of block chain, definitely has the potential to reduce the ability of the criminals to execute attacks, to lower the cost for businesses to mitigate against such attacks should they occur, therefore it becomes pivotal in the future to incorporate block chain in the overall cyber security strategy of the organization.

DIGITAL FORENSICS

A road quite less taken yet gaining momentum. Cloning techniques and highly structured incident responses rise as the new mandate for quick resolution of high-end crimes.

DR. MOHAMMAD KHALED, GOVERNMENT EXPERT, CYBER SERVICES

Whether talking about digital forensics conducted by law enforcement or a corporate security department, the simple fact is that forensics is difficult -- especially at the endpoint.

Challenges in either case include accessibility of systems and data on them (e.g. cellphones), latency when pulling data from a system remotely, erroneously tipping off a user that their system is being accessed, myriad formats and devices, languages, and synthesizing data from multiple sources -- to name just a few. T his is where corporate security departments enjoy the benefits of decades of laborious work by law enforcement and vendors that supply them with tools: no matter how challenging a scenario may be, law enforcement has seen and handled it before, often with a higher degree of difficulty.

The criticality of rock-solid forensic tool sets becomes even more important when looking at the velocity, volume, and variety of data corporate security departments must sift through on a daily basis.

GEORGE EAPEN, CISO, GE OIL & GAS

Digital Forensic skills and expertise are considered as niche and normally outsourced to external vendors but we can find in-house capabilities in bigger organizations. The decision to outsource or in source this skill set depends on the volume of work as Digital Forensics is normally used in investigations and we need scale to really justify the investment. Digital forensic experts will certainly play a major role but there is a huge gap in awareness between customers and service providers. Also In recent years, an increasing number of more sophisticated process models have been proposed to speed up the entire investigative process or solve various of problems commonly encountered in the forensic investigation. In the field of digital forensic investigation, moving to a cloud-based evidence processing model and Digital Forensics as a Service model would not only expedite the investigative process, but can also result in significant cost savings – freeing up digital forensic experts and law enforcement personnel to progress their caseload.

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COVER STORY

CYBER SECURITY

Now-a-days, it is a not so shocking news to wake up to security breaches.

Equifax, Wannacry, Petya, Careem, Uber and many more. Recently, a cyberattack hit the news aggregator and discussion site Reddit. A hacker reportedly broke into a few of the company’s systems, lifting email addresses and a 2007 database holding old salted and hashed passwords. In an announcement on its site, the company noted that the attacker did not gain write access to Reddit systems, instead capturing read-only access to systems with backup data, source code and other logs. The statement reads that Reddit learned of the attack – which took place between June 14- 18 – just a day later, June 19. It said an attacker compromised employee accounts with its cloud and source code hosting providers. With such breaches taking place on a day to day basis, how do organizations keep up with the pace of innovation and protect their critical assets?

ABUBAKAR ARSHAD, CYBER SECURITY ADVISOR, TRA BAHRAIN.

“It is increasingly difficult for organizations to continue to keep up their capabilities in line with the change in cyber security landscape and increasing complexity of cyber threats.

Cyber Security as a service addresses this challenge by enabling organizations to source the required cyber security services as and when required instead of having to invest in building and maintaining such specialized services in house. As a result, organizations are able to address their security needs in the most efficient and effective manner possible

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SHAILESH MANI, GM – INFORMATION SYSTEMS, FLEMINGO INTERNATIONAL

It is no doubt that digital transformation is the need of the hour for most of the organizations which gives operational efficiency, better reach and enables faster decisions making. At the same time, knowingly or unknowingly you are entering in to a world where your data is always at risk. “To tackle this situation the information security awareness and implementation is very much important. None of the digital strategy can be a successful journey without considering Information security as its integral part. But it will be an expensive affair for anybody to build a fullfledged information security infrastructure within the premise and considering this security as a service can be considered as another option to achieve this. The reduction of CAPEX also a reason for the acceptance of the emerging concept “information security as a service”.”

COVER STORY

NETWORK SECURITY

Now-a-days, enterprises that used anti-malware are re-inventing security with the use of sensors for multi layered, centralized security systems.

Organizations across the globe are also transforming their networks with intelligent automation, programmable optics and advanced software analytics capabilities to create networks that can easily adapt and respond to changing market demands. Undoubtedly, technology is the backbone of today’s businesses but it also increases the exposure to sophisticated threats not only from external entities but internal as well. Therefore, it is necessary to continuously evolve, augment and bolster the cyber defenses to address these challenges.

VARUN VIJ, HEAD OF INFORMATION SECURITY, SERCO

“Sophisticated attackers are executing targeted attacks that bypass the cornerstone of perimeter defense: firewalls, intrusion prevention systems (IPS), web application firewalls (WAF), secure web gateways (SWG) and secure email gateways (SEG).

These traditional security components are still necessary, but are no longer sufficient in today’s environment.

It is impractical to expect to build perimeter defenses that will block every attack and prevent every security breach. Instead, of adopting new products and/or services, we will enable the network to be an integral part of a strategy that focuses on detecting and responding to security incidents.To achieve the desired state of security we want, our prime objectives is to focus on Network and Gateway Security, Threat Vulnerability Management, Endpoint and Mobile Security

SAFDAR ZAMAN, IT DIRECTOR, NAKHEEL PJSC

Network Security has undergone a dramatic shift beyond legacy and traditional approach of Anti-virus and firewalls.

The mandatory components in the next generation network security must be based on Software Defined Networks and Artificial Intelligence. SDNs are transforming the network due to improved performance and lower costs.

SDNs provides a highly flexible and dynamic network, thanks to the ever evolving API (s) which are transforming the integration of the network resources and the end points flexible and highly innovative thus connecting to huge number of terminals, machines, smart things.

REHAN SIDDIKI, ASSOCIATE GENERAL MANAGER, INFORMATION SECURITY, VFS TASHEEL

Leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning, as they are of paramount importance for deep learning of events, performing advanced behavioral analytics of an adversary to predict attacks and dynamically building preventive measures.Tactically deploy deception technology, which serves as a decoy to trace the adversary’s activities in a contained environment. Learnings from these events are beneficial in identifying the extent of damage that could be incurred in case the adversary penetrates the core defenses, without compromising the critical systems.

Employ next-generation email security to protect against phishing, spoofing, zero-days, ransomware and advanced threats. Cloud-based sandboxingcould help detect advanced threats by performing a deep scan of the attachments, content filtering and analyze them on a multi-engine sandbox to ensure swift remediation

IRSHAD MOHAMMAD, INFORMATION SECURITY MANAGER, VPS HEALTHCARE

The business required connectivity with all possible resources to get data and do the analytics. The network must have a live monitoring and automated system [Both on incoming and outgoing traffics] ,In these solutions we must consider the advance technics like AI and machine learning’s.

Companies first line of defense is network security, since the access landscape has increased we must build the security from all access areas as well as from the end users.

The most important is that the business must follow a proper security culture and create awareness in the end users to protect the assets.

Security must align to the business requirements.

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COVER STORY

EMAIL SECURITY

What is the one place where most of your sensitive business data can be found? Without a doubt, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s your email. Its security is important for safeguarding sensitive information from unauthorised access, loss or compromise.

Phishing emails can also be used to trick recipients into sharing sensitive information, often by posing as a legitimate business or trusted contacts.

These emails aimed at stealing information asks its recipients to confirm their login information, passwords, social security number, bank account numbers, and even credit card information.

As we say, security is a never-ending checklist. As the threat landscape becomes increasingly vulnerable with each passing day, there is no end to innovation and no limit to betterment when it comes to enterprise security solutions.

This September, get the answers to your security queries by the experts.

Doors are open to the GEC Security Symposium 2018. Step into a new dawn in security!

PARVEZ AHMED, CISO, EMIRATES NET SYSTEM

We have adopted Defense-in-Depth approach (DID) for our business email communication Email based encryption and other technical controls are in the pipeline. We are testing the effectiveness of these controls on monthly basis since control degrades over time and getting obsoleted due to dynamically changing threat landscape.

Cyber attackers are using web, email, and USB as an entry point for any organization to deliver the payload; which is one of the step of cyber kill chain.

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ANKIT SATSANGI, HEAD OF CYBER SECURITY, AZIZI DEVELOPMENTS

Email encryption is critical as by default emails are transmitted over clear text. An attacker can easily intercept the emails and read through the sensitive content, apply social engineering to construct a genuine looking email with phishing techniques which would result in a business email compromise.

A combination of good reconnaissance and social engineering can result in an effective business email compromise. The most common type of BEC is when hackerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s target the senior management i.e. CEO & CFO and compromise their email accounts using phishing and social engineering techniques.

COVER STORY

RANSOMWARE

Through various advancement information technology ransomware has attained a significant position of its own. Cyber criminals are finding ways to successfully compromise and make more money from advanced information system. Ransomware with the sole motive of financial gain, denies victims access to the computer data or browser and offers release of captured resource after a payment or ransom. This malware became stronger and stronger with the Inception of cryptolocker. With the destruction rate being high, as the assets involved were of educational documents, bank details, hospital documents, and even government related data, the ransom and the ransomware were on a rise.

SHIJIN PRASAD, ICT HEAD, CURE MEDICAL CENTER

MUHAMED NOUFEL, IT MANAGER, ROYAL CONTINENTAL HOTEL

As this Shadow Brokers are equipped with a set of exploits and hacking tools against routers or Firewalls, the devices that direct data throughout computer networks, It is always a challenge to detect or scan; even your infrastructure secured with new generation cyber security systems. The technical challenges presented with those threats are vast.

To be in safer side, we can suggest to have a backup solution in place such as keeping your important files in a 3rd party data storage or system images to evade cyber attacks.

The most important step that can take to secure your system against cyber attack is to regularly perform a system backup with the help of Industry leading Backup solutions.

Also important to run the patches, updates on application and devices on well-timed to keep the system up to date. Detaching from network on suspicious activity if device, won’t get a chance to complete the encryption process in some scenario

Ransomwares can’t be handled by using a Single Software. It requires a Holistic view of approach with network insight. The apt way to prevent from becoming a ransomware victim, organizations need to protect their network now and prioritize resources. These attacks will only continue to grow, and no organization wants to be displayed by the media as being forced to pay a ransom. If you are forced to pay, customers can lose trust in your organization’s ability to secure their personal data which is more critical in case of medical related data and the provider will see decreases in revenue and profit.

HASAN NASER ISAM MUHI, INFORMATION SECURITY ASSISTANT MANAGER, KUWAIT FINANCE HOUSE BAHRAIN

Most of the time, cyber security attacks are used to create a diversion, the real purpose is to steal private date or cause damage to companies. security experts should be aware about the concept of combined risk, this will help them focus on the root cause of the issue and not focus on repairing the problem for a short term solution.

Ransomware attacking business users have a small impact compared to critical business servers having critical business data or credit cards data. the best way to avoid it is segregation of networks and it infrastructure systems and devices.

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INTERVIEW

COMPETING TO CO-EXIST

DISRUPTION’ IS DEFINED BY MANY COMPANIES IN MANY WAYS. FOR PALO ALTO NETWORK’S, THE TERM DISRUPTION STEMS FROM THE ESSENCE OF PROVIDING THE COMPANIES WITH THE ABILITY TO FOCUS ON THEIR CORE COMPETENCIES BY SIMPLIFYING THE SECURITY LANDSCAPE.

ERCAN AYDIN, REGIONAL VP - EMERGING MARKETS, PALO ALTO NETWORKS

“Simplicity is our greatest technology. Our ability to simplify the security environment has been one of the strongest reasons why customers and partners are keen to work with us..”

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ccording to Ercan Aydin, Regional VP of Emerging Markets at Palo Alto Networks, today, security solutions are available over the counter and you can buy them on an hourly, monthly or yearly model. The consumption model has changed to cloud and today business with the cloud and on the cloud is a different ball game altogether. “Today business is heavily IT oriented but the infrastructure is still old school.”

Cost cutting and budget restraints have not affected the investment in security solutions in the region, according to Ercan. On the contrary, the region has been significantly investing in newer security solutions and Palo Alto Network’s has been boosting its offerings to meet the increasing demand.

“Simplicity is our greatest technology” says Ercan. “Our ability to simplify the security environment has been one of the strongest reasons why customers and partners are keen to work with us. Instead of focusing on the problem,

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we focus on the objective and the objective is to prevent cyber-attacks. The first step towards mitigating attacks is the realization that security cannot exist in isolation, nor can a single solution prevent a cyber-attack. As a mighty step towards this, last year we announced an initiative of opening up our platform to all the industry including our competitors in order to prevent successful cyber-attacks. Any company in the IT industry right now, including some of the customers that are using custom based applications, they can integrate their technology into our platform and take actions. And this has been resonating very strongly with our customers. We are providing this as a consumption-based model or pay-asyou-use. This is very disruptive to the market and is a game changer.”

THE MARKET AND THE MARKETPLACE As the VP for emerging markets, Ercan would be focusing heavily on markets like Turkey, Ukraine,

Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, North-East and West Africa (new Africa) including all French speaking Africa. “We have our presence in the Dubai market for the past 5 years. In these five years, it has been the fastest growing market for us for two key reasons. Firstly, the culture of this country itself is very receptive of any latest technology and people embrace it. The other reason is, as I said above, our ability to simplify the entire security architecture.”

Talking about Palo Alto Network’s approach in various markets, Ercan says that every market responds differently. “For Palo Alto Network’s, the predominant focus has been protecting the mission critical information and we generally work closer with sectors such as Police, BFSI, Telcoms etc. that have strict regulations and contains highly discreet and secure information.

However, we see that cloud adoption in Dubai is significantly high compared to other countries.

Here, the primary focus of any organization is to be agile and cloud has been satiating this demand well. On the other hand, we see a very big shift from OT to IT OT.” “To enhance our cloud offerings, we have partnered with Ingram Micro and Reddington in this region. On the channel side, we work with two types of partners – traditional partners and born-in-the-cloud partners.” ë

INTERVIEW

Providing ‘Right Sized’ Services

THE MARKET HAS DEFINITELY BEEN A CHALLENGE ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST REGION BUT FORTUNATELY FOR F5 NETWORKS, THE COMPANY WITNESSED A DOUBLE-DIGIT GROWTH THIS YEAR SPECIALLY IN THE GULF, LEVANT AND TURKEY. THE COMPANY’S MAJOR FOCUS IS ON CLOUD AND SECURITY AS THEY ARE THE STRATEGIC PILLARS OF GROWTH.

TABREZ SURVE, REGIONAL DIRECTOR – GULF, LEVANT AND TURKEY, F5 NETWORKS

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ith more than 20 years of application service experience, F5 Networks provides a broad set of services and security for enterprise grade applications whether on premise or across any multi-cloud environment.

Enterprise Channels MEA had an opportunity to sit down with Tabrez Surve, Regional Director – Gulf, Levant and Turkey, F5 Networks, who shared with us the various plans of the organization and its roadmap ahead.

“F5’s profile is growing significantly in the region as we ramp up our focus on security and cloud-related solutions, and we are consistently achieving double digit growth,” Surve explains.

“In particular, demand is growing for technologies that can help organisations safeguard their applications and fully tap into the speed and flexibility afforded by cloud technology in all its forms.”

STRATEGY IN TERMS OF GROWTH For any organization, going cloud-based removes many risks in terms of hardware and system

redundancy and failover. Also, it’s very easy to scale up in terms of storage space, server availability, or performance. For F5, by default, their major focus has been on cloud and security.

“We are making sure that we are present with each and every cloud,” says Surve.

“For F5, our evolution is very much towards becoming a multi-cloud application services company. Our next phase is to reach every application, anywhere. We will also extend our role and the breadth of services we offer.”

Recent F5 launches to support its multi-cloud strategy include BIG-IP Cloud Edition, which is offered as a per-app virtual Application Delivery Controller (ADC) that can apply and automate policy-based services at each step in the development and production pipeline. BIG-IP Cloud Edition combines F5’s broad portfolio of application services with the dramatically enhanced management, visibility, and analytics capabilities of BIG-IQ. F5’s software-based solution lets customers easily add ‘right-sized’ services tailored for individual applications, multiple cloud environments, and user demands.

Another recent F5 product is its Advanced

WAF (AWAF) solution, which means companies can adapt their security for web and mobile apps, whether on-premises or in the cloud whilst defending against malicious bots and exploits.

In a recent report, The Forrester Wave: Web Application Firewalls Q2 2018, F5 Networks was named a leader for their comprehensive suite of WAF offerings. F5 believes this diversity of WAF services enables its customers to ensure all web applications have application security options available.

“Cloud-based applications and mobility have changed the game,” says Surve.

“Data is accessible from devices over which application providers have no control and from locations and networks that are out of their reach.

Perimeter-based security is no longer adequate against sophisticated cybercriminals. Today, the prize is the app, where all the critical data resides.

Security needs to follow the app, wherever it resides.”

F5’s multi-cloud positioning comes at time of growing cloud receptivity in the region. Earlier this year, the company commissioned a research agency, Think Positive, to conduct one of the GCC’s most in-depth cloud-related study involving board-level decision-makers. Almost all GCC businesses (99%) believed the cloud can have a positive impact on market share and help to displace competitors. 90% also stated that it can improve brand perception, and 89% praised its capacity to improve innovation. A clear consensus was also reached on the cloud’s potential to enhance the overall customer experience (90%).

GITEX FOCUS In addition to showcasing new solutions like AWAF and BIG-IP Cloud Edition, F5 Networks will present original research on how multi-cloud business and consumer realities will evolve over the next five years.

“We expect to highlight our most compelling vision yet on how new digital realities will unfold in the region and, against this transformational backdrop, how to best deploy, secure and optimise applications in a multi-cloud context,” says Surve. ë

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FEATURE STORY

The need for advanced communication technique has been increasing in the Middle East and Africa region. The rise in internet penetration and increasing internet communication and also the convergence of data centres are responsible for the growth of structured cabling market.

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ast year, I mentioned cloud computing and IoT driving the use of internet is driving the fibre optics market which acts as a backbone of data transmission. I also mentioned how Plug and Play pre-terminated solutions have offered remarkable value to the data centre sector; the majority of global data traffic being transferred though submarine cables, etc. So, what changes or trends has the cabling industry seen in the last one year?

Before starting with the present, lets go back to the days when cabling was invented. For people who do not know, a man called Samuel Morse sent a message 37 miles from Washington DC to Baltimore using his invention ‘The Telegraph’ in 1844. By 1866, a telegraph line had been laid across the Atlantic Ocean from the US to Europe. Later it was replaced by telephone, fax machine and Internet. Last year was all about submarine cables.

It is interesting to witness how the need to communicate at ever increasing speeds drives the development of faster networking and higher specification cabling.

Digitalization is advancing relentlessly and the signs can be seen in offices, besides laptops and smartphones, IP convergence is extending to cameras, access control, etc. As a result, we are seeing unprecedented increases in the number of connected IP devices as well as the amount of IP traffic to and from every device. What all this leads to is a sharp increase in the amount of bandwidth that enterprises now require to smoothly run their operations.

THE MIDDLE EAST STORY As the region moves to a post oil economy, it is investing in fibre and wireless technologies for better network coverage. The investment in upcoming projects like Mohammed Bin Rashid City, Barakah Nuclear Power Plant, high rise skyscrapers would increase the demands for cables in the country. The UAE Vision 2021, Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030, Sharjah Tourism Vision 2021 – these government initiatives would also trigger the

“Demand for wireless access points in office buildings and public facilities is already rising rapidly today, and will explode in the near future” -TAREK HELMY, REGIONAL DIRECTOR GULF AND MIDDLE EAST, SOUTH & EAST AFRICA, NEXANS CABLING SOLUTIONS

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“The constant demand for sustainable, intelligent buildings in the region is expected to continue with many newer end-users embracing PoE, IoT and the convergence of IP-based devices,” -NARENDER VASANDANI, RCDD, TECHNICAL MANAGER MIDDLE EAST AND INDIA, SIEMON

“As it delivers both the energy supply and the data, PoE could become a key technology for the Internet of Things (IoT), which will be the foundation of the digital transformation,” -NABIL KHALIL, EXECUTIVE VICE-PRESIDENT, R&M MIDDLE EAST, TURKEY AND AFRICA

intelligent buildings in the region is expected to continue with many newer end-users embracing power over Ethernet, the IoT and the convergence of IP-based devices. These applications and the overall objective to achieve a smart building via converged devices and integrated systems demands a high performing network cabling infrastructure.”

According to Tarek Helmy, Regional Director Gulf and Middle East, South & East Africa of Nexans Cabling Solutions, the increasing use of wireless and other types of IP devices means bandwidth needs are increasing exponentially.

“There’s also a requirement for more devices to be powered with PoE technology. Demand for wireless access points in office buildings and public facilities is already rising rapidly today, and will explode in the near future.”

POE – THE SMART OPTION

“Wireless networks need a lot of ‘wired’ assets to effectively deliver fibre backhaul to the core and edge,” -EHAB KANARY, VICE PRESIDENT OF ENTERPRISE - MEA, COMMSCOPE

requirement in the coming years.

Narender Vasandani, RCDD – Technical Manager – Middle East and India at Siemon said – “The constant demand for sustainable,

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Power over Ethernet (PoE) is not new. It is regulated under the standards that go all the way back to 2003 (IEEE 802.af-2003). Over the past decade, the number of devices powered via the LAN using PoE has increased. The enterprise workspace has continued to evolve with increasing number of building devices and workloads converging onto the IP network which in turn has fuelled the increased demand for PoE to support newer devices as well as devices with higher requirements.

R&M believes that PoE eliminates the need for separate power and expensive electrical components such as outlets while also simplifying logistics as less cabling needs to be transported, stored and handled. According to Nabil Khalil, Executive VP of R&M META – “As it delivers both the energy supply and the data, PoE could become a key technology for the IoT, which will be the foundation of the digital transformation.

Many small sensors and control systems could be run from remote locations in buildings without additional power cabling.”

Now-a-days, PoE can supply power for the LED lighting of shopping malls, IP cameras, access control systems and even building sensors.

It is very clear that the future of PoE looks bright.

WILL 5G ABANDON FIBRE? Of Course Not! The 5G will not only affect the wireless side but the wireline side of global network infrastructure as well. In fact, 5G’s network performance goals are heavily built on the availability of fibre. The fifth-generation networks will enable a much higher number of connected devices which means greater volumes of data generation. For the data centres to handle this, will require even higher speeds and density which can be only supported by fibre optic cabling.

“Wireless networks need a lot of ‘wired’ assets to effectively deliver fibre backhaul to the core and edge. The densification of cell sites, adding more cell sites to increase the amount of available capacity, will be required to enable 5G, and we’ll also see a number of different types of powering solution come to market, offering operators a cost-efficient way of powering up many devices at the edge of the network,” said Ehab Kanary, VP of Enterprise for MEA, CommScope.

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD? As I mentioned last year as well, Structured Cabling shall not perish. The advancement in technology has made the communication systems power hungry which means it needs higher speed connections. These demands can be catered only by structured cabling systems and enterprises should emphasize on the need of switching over to it. ë

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INTERVIEW

BUILDING A COMPETENT MARKETPLACE WHILE INNOVATION IS KEY FOR FVC IN ANY OF ITS OFFERINGS, THE VAD ALSO STRONGLY BELIEVES THAT IT IS EQUALLY IMPORTANT TO RECRUIT THE RIGHT KIND OF CHANNEL AND MAKE THEM COMPETENT IN THE SERVICE THEY ARE OFFERING

conjunction with goals and objectives. From a pure channel perspective, we bifurcate value by identifying the right kind of channel and recruiting them and make sure that they are certified in all our products and services.

How have you been filling the vendor-channel gap as FVC? As we spoke before, we are trying to fill this gap by recruiting the right kind of channel partners and ensuring that they are certified and have the same competency level. FVC has been a true enabler here. We help the partners till they get a perfect hold on the solutions. From being a solutions architect to pre-sales person who helps with PoCs, there are various areas where we have been the extended arms for the vendor. We have also been strong in providing support services. Our services are completely aligned with the partner.

K.S. PARAG, MANAGING DIRECTOR, FVC

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As a VAD, how do you satiate the never-ending quest for Value in the term Value Added Distribution?

Value is dynamic. In IT, value is about two things – Be ready to adopt the change and adopt faster; Make sure that you have the required level of competency and expertise to derive the right value. As a value- added distributor, we have strived our best to ensure that our customers get maximum value from our vendors and we give maximum value to our vendors whilst providing them the ability to grow bigger and better in the larger vertical, have bigger channel, domains and exponential market reach. We have actually gone one step ahead in terms of working in

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How have you seen the customer or end-user demand changing over the past two to three years?

Priority, from a customer perspective, has always been on the cyber security side. Middle East has been prone to various attacks; hence security of the network has been pivotal.

Second is cloud migration. Companies have started looking at cloud as a part of their business.

The adoption is still slacking but if we look outside MEA, the adoption of cloud in US or Europe is much higher in terms of companies who have moved to the cloud versus the companies who have moved to the cloud here.

The third part is the way customers are looking at skill sets and competency level with the partner or integrator.

A big challenge that the region faces today is that, the customer has been shouting out loud about their pain areas and no one is there to resolve the problem. We, as a company, started as a unified collaboration and unified communication solution provider. Steadily, we pushed more into the Audio-Visual and infrastructure space.

Listening to the customer is the first step. The

channel plays a key role here in coming back and telling the solution provider what the customer wants. From a vendor perspective, it has been more of a drill down and go to market strategy. It is more about sitting down with the vendor and understanding what he wants to do in this region how the company can align.

A few years back, there existed an evident gap in the private and public sector in technology adoption.

How do you see that area now?

Earlier the cloud adoption and digital transformation were only undertaken by the private sectors. Cloud adoption was much bigger and evident in the private sectors with various use cases. Skill gap was the biggest challenge.

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

Tell us about your recent and major partnerships.

FVC recently onboarded SMART Technologies.

FVC can utilize the growing opportunity in the education and enterprise market across the region by offering a complete classroom technology solution and SMART’s award-winning meeting room technologies.

We also signed up with Prysm, SonicWall and Sony.

As Parag, what are your top 3 priorities for FVC in 2018 and 2019?

1.To build a world class team working strongly with the channel community and addressing the customer pain areas in the area of collaboration and cyber security.

2.To build a strong service team to back this up.

3.Build a company which becomes a consultant to both the partner community and the customer community for bringing world class IT products. ë

INTERVIEW

ON BEING THE ‘MEMORY SPECIALIST’ WITH THE DETERMINATION TO BRING THE BEST TO THEIR CUSTOMERS AND END USERS, MEMORY TECHNOLOGIES GO AN EXTRA MILE TO SATISFY THEIR CUSTOMER NEEDS. HOUSSAM MOBEID, CEO OF THE COMPANY SHARES HIS VISION AND ROADMAP FOR THE YEAR.

in the IT technology. So, we didn’t only bring it to life, but also worked hard to provide the region’s industry with total memory solutions, or in another word become “The Memory Company of the Region.” From that point, we diversified to bring all the memory big players to the region, keeping in mind that memory is part of the semiconductor industry. This started with Micron in 1998, Hynix in 2002, Samsung, Kingstone and finally Toshiba memory in 2013. With such a strategy, we became able to serve the market from A-Z in the areas of memory and storage. The ultimate role here was that we, closely, worked hand in hand with industry players to change our approach to the market based on the changing needs of end users.

I would emphasise here that Dubai is the place in the region for such a successful story to exist.

This was true in the past and I strongly believe it will remain true in the future.

HOUSSAM MOBEID, CEO, MEMORY TECHNOLOGY MIDDLE EAST (MTC)

Since its establishment in 1998, MTC has progressed towards the goal of becoming a diversified leading IT distributor in the region.

How has the journey been so far?

In fact, the question itself includes the very specific terms that made the journey an amazing one. By the year 2000, our market share expanded from 0% to 60 % according to TAM numbers at that time. At a time when the memory business was underestimated, we envisioned its potential

What is you go to market strategy for the year?

Let’s start with the fact that there is a shortage in the memory market for the last seven quarters, which creates an increase in ASP (Average Sale Price). As the industry reports indicate, the global shortage of memory chips has produced new challenges for resellers and resifted the market gravely. This means that memory shortage has changed the landscape significantly. Now, this is a challenge from the one side. However, it’s our moto to try and convert the challenge into opportunity from the other side. In fact, I predict that the shortage will continue until the end of 2018, which will keep us alerted and motivated to fill the gap.

The key here is this fact, although market consolidation, technological barrier, and demand paradigm shift are the new reality, it resulted in what can be considered as new dynamics that are evolving to a more stable and predictable market.

To be more specific, demand paradigms are

shifting from (CCD) Consumer Centric Devices towards what some call “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” Just as examples, look to new industries such as: wireless and 5G networks, Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous cars, data centres, robots and machine learning. This revolution is focused on companies and national infrastructure where demand volatility is low and predictable. Previously, people, and even some manufacturers, thought that memories are merely for phones and computers. However, we may remember what the Nobel Prize winner, Elie Wiesel, said one day: Without memory there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilisation, no society, no future. Obviously, the great thinker was not talking specifically about “memory chips”. However, it’s obvious that it’s existence will contribute in making what he said more truthful in this day and age.

MTC has been nicknamed the ‘Memory Specialist’. With increased competition in the market, how do you see that this name stays for the years to come?

In fact, we are proud to have this nickname and I thank you for bringing it up in this interview.

After all, we hope that reality demonstrates that the nickname fits us, but also that it will remain a true description of our position in the market now and in the future as the memory specialist of the region. We have been in this business for the last two decades and we will keep striving to earn that reputation in the memory industry, which is part of the much bigger semiconductors industry. As mentioned elsewhere in the interview, our strategy is evolving with regard to the SDD market, along with all other significant changes in the memory industry with the goal of keeping that unique position in the market for a long time.

Read more about MTC’s roadmap and major partnerships online only on www.ec-mea.com ë

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COMFY

EMPLOYEE, RELAXED

EMPLOYER

What is called a win-win situation? When your investment pays off and employees are also happy. Well, this is the whole idea behind digitizing the workplace and let’s have a quick look into it.

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ost of us spend the majority of our woken time in office and would be working. When the professional life gets hard, it tends to impact the personal life as well. This is something the millennials understand well and looks forth for digital

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workplace and enforcing on it.

Digital workplaces have become common in almost all of the industries. Looking forward, it is seen that digitizing of workplace is important and critical to the success of the company as well.

Contradicting? No. I do not think so. When the employees are comfortable, employee productiv-

ity increases and in turn will benefit the company as well.

This change is commonly termed as, “The death of the workplace”, but it is “the birth of workplace, the digital workplace.” The positive impact that this digitization of workplace can bring to the company is extra ordinary. It helps to pull more profits for the brands by saving time and training more efficient. It also helps reduce the revenue spend on wages and training materials. Business services company, Experts says that they enjoy 6% revenue growth and 5% organic growth over the last fiscal year from the digital transformation in the workplace.

“Employees have become increasingly hungry to do more with the technology available to them, and as businesses have started to introduce business applications – defined as user-friendly apps that working professional use as part of their job, our report with Forbes Insights, showed the profound impact these applications, and the culture that allows these applications to be used across the organisation, started to affect company performance.” says Rasheed Al Omari, Principal Business Solutions Strategist at VMware It is said that in four years’ time, millennials will be making up for almost half of the global workforce. It will not be a news for many who work with HR department but this shift in generation has bought changes in workplace.

This generation is looking for new and digitized workplace.

Canon conducted an inter-office employee survey last year and as a result started the trans-

SPECIAL STORY

“Our report with Forbes Insights, showed the profound impact these applications, and the culture that allows these applications to be used across the organisation, started to affect company performance,” -RASHEED AL OMARI, PRINCIPAL BUSINESS SOLUTIONS STRATEGIST, VMWARE

formation journey which was meant to be led by example. “Based on the feedback we received from our employees, the first part of our transformation journey included complete renovation of our workplace,” says Anurag Agrawal, Managing Director, Canon Middle East. “We realized employees are looking for a digitally advanced workplace with interactive communication, for which we deployed several digital internal communication platforms including digital screens to share news, video conferencing facilities, VoIP services to facilitate work flexibility, IoT and meeting controls for ease of connectivity,” added Mr Agrawal.

The foundation principle of Digital Workplace is integration and collaboration. In this, data

“We believe that while consumer technology is changing very fast, younger members of the workforce would expect the workplace to digitally transform,” -PUI-CHI LI, HEAD OF MARKETING, XEROX, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

from all software like ERP, CRM, BI etc are brought together on a central platform. This makes information and applications available and promotes cross-location collaboration and knowledge exchange.

One example of a digital workplace initiative is the paperless office. In this system, replacing of paper process is done with digital workflows.

It allows greater efficiency for disseminating information, either via email or cloud file sharing, this is in turn of saving money and time.

More important, the shift from paper to digital offers the potential for labor-saving automation and other innovations. Companies are being increasingly challenged to harness data to drive productivity and competitive advantage. Maybe this is the driving force for the millennials to go crazy on digitizing their workplace.

“We believe that while consumer technology is changing very fast, younger members of the workforce (mainly Millennials who make up 75 percent of the global labor market) would expect the workplace to digitally transform,” says Pui-Chi Li, Head of Marketing, Xerox, Middle East. “Industry trends show that these are the features that really matter to customers and they are actively seeking for their work environment. Xerox’s ConnectKey portfolio transforms traditional printing devices into smart, connected workplace assistants that reflect the evolving needs of today’s businesses,” she added.

Keeping in mind today’s business, companies are not changing workplace overnight. It is a stepby-step process and even those workplace which do not call themselves as digitized, has atleast one block for a digital workplace in place. It may being able to access work emails on the mobile devices, using voice over IP for business calls or tracking company news on social media.

Having a look into the future, one of the major factor that will dominate the in a digital workplace is voice-activated search operations.

In a place where we call content is King, we need

“Based on the feedback we received from our employees, the first part of our transformation journey included complete renovation of our Workplace,” -ANURAG AGRAWAL, MANAGING DIRECTOR, CANON MIDDLE EAST

optimized voice search for easier and better options. It is expected that by 2020, 50% of all searches will be done by voice. It is also said that 30% of all search queries will be completed without a device or a screen. Organisations will turn to be more effective in customizing and accessibility of apps for managing contents.

The whole concept of remote work will also change will the process of digitization. People may even stop using the term ‘remote worker’.

When a person is going to work in a full, high definition 3D holograms, he/she will feel like the person projected in workplace in present there as there would be no difference in normal interaction method.

And something you have been anticipating.

What is future of technology without AI. Right?

The role of AI in digital workplace will become so ingrained in the system that it will be hard to even notice. AI will not be something with which to proactively interact and manage, but will be so fully integrated throughout every aspect of our lives (including the workplace) that the boundary between artificial intelligence and human intelligence will become indistinguishable.

People get excited when they see their office being renovated or being digitized one step at a time. This is a continuing process and the explosion of change is immense. With increased in productivity and cutting down cost, it is a Win-Win situation for the employer and the employee. ë

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FOCUS STORY

Latest Tech For Greatest Wealth

Phones that track your fitness, chips that gives out your medical history and devices that make diagnosis easier. What is more to come that looks after our greatest wealth?

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t is said that “Access to good healthcare shouldn’t depend on when you live.” Time has proven that it has. Okay, let’s not get overboard and blame anyone, healthcare industry has seen some major changes with latest and greatest technologies leading to big impact on the way healthcare is received. When the topic of healthcare comes out, we tend to constrain ourselves to just the clinics or hospitals. In this new era, healthcare is much more. Whether it be fitness apps or healthcare publishers, this industry has seen some major changes.

The healthcare industry and technology has seen some major mergers and acquisitions over the past year. There has been around 43 acquisitions in this industry alone in 2017.

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The major talked about one would be Internet Brands acquiring WebMD for $2.8 billion. Let us attribute this to development of technologies and its influence in the industry.

KEEP TRACK There is no doubt that technological development in healthcare have saved lives and improved quality of life. Whether it be experiences for patients, quick guides or tips for at home treatment, or keeping track of the health and routine of a person, technology has impacted the medical process.

“The advent of emerging technologies - robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, virtual and augmented reality – is

further reshaping the ways in which medical information is shared, diseases are treated, and new therapies are discovered. By 2019, 60% of healthcare devices and applications will collect real-time location data, device data, and start to uncover patterns,” said Fady Richmany, Senior Director and General Manager, Dell EMC, UAE. The first and the most basic change came with the introduction of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) which replaced paper records. With these implementations, let’s say all the medical staffs and patients were impacted in giving and receiving best treatment while keeping an eye on the past diagnosis.

These central digitized system held keep track of vital signs from diagnosis department to updat-

FOCUS STORY

address all their inquiries and complaints,” says Georges Chidiac, Senior Vice President/UAE Country Manager, SAICOHEALTH. A survey by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society shows that 59% said they were using/planning to use the cloud for data analysis. In the survey it was also seen that more than 75% were using for health information exchange.

TELE YOUR HEALTH

“By 2019, 60% of healthcare devices and applications will collect real-time location data, device data, and start to uncover patterns,” -FADY RICHMANY, SENIOR DIRECTOR AND GENERAL MANAGER, DELL EMC, UAE.

ing appointments from admin department. It also enhances patients care by alerting the doctor regarding allergies, medicines, hereditary diseases and result of past diagnosis.

BUZZZZ WORDS Now let’s jump right into the buzzwords of the year, Cloud and Big Data. Healthcare as an industry that deals with public, deals with enormous amount of data collected and stored. This is Big data and with the shift to EHRs, healthcare facilities is looking for expandable, cost effective and safe storage solutions. Look who comes in here,

our very own, ‘Cloud’.

Cloud computing technology lets masses of information to be stored at a low cost, without the limitations or expense of additional hardware or servers. With an increased reliance on EHR systems, Cloud storage protects against the loss of sensitive data with strong backup and recovery services. It is an invaluable tool for medical research, and for sharing of medical information. “Cloud-based CRMs have become a must have for every healthcare insurer to track all the relevant activities and promptly take action when needed. End users expect a single service point to

Let’s have a look around to see if there is someone who doesn’t own a mobile phone. Most of the people have a mobile phone and majority of them are connected to the internet as well. At a time when hospitality, retail and many more verticals are connected to people via communication processes, healthcare is not far behind on it.

Information and communication technology (ICT) links healthcare professionals as well as those with patients. Telemedicine and tele-monitoring systems are being used to share information from diagnosis to management. The video consultations is a beneficial for those staying in places which in places which is not an easily accessible area. Terms like ‘telemedicine’ and ‘telehealth’ are used to refer to such consultations.

Tele-monitoring technology can also be used in scenarios where vital signs and systems can be monitored remotely. Next step is to develop remote ultrasound technology which will be beneficial for cardiovascular healthcare.

You and I both know that most hectic thing about visit a hospital is the crowded waiting rooms and the front desk teams. Implementation of these telemedicine technology is the best option to get rid of these headaches. Mobile technology or ‘mhealth’ is yet another technology which is used by around 80% of physicians. It is healthcare and medical information supported by mobile technology.

ROBOTS FOR HUMAN AI and it’s potential benefits is to help people stay health. AI and Robotics is trying to eradicate out the need for a doctor. We have heard a lot of IoT and IIoT, and here is Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) to help reach this goal. These technologies, encourages and indirectly enforces people to follow a healthy lifestyle and behavior.

It is not something that we haven’t yet seen in the industry. AI is being used at its early stages to detect diseases like cancer. Issue mainly faced by oncologists is that there is a high proportion of mammograms that give out a false result. The American Cancer Society says that this leads to one in two women being told that they have cancer. Here is where AI comes into guide. It

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FOCUS STORY

“The introduction of electronic medical and health records (EMRs and EHRs) have made a huge impact in the healthcare industry,” -FADI KANAFANI, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, NETAPP, MEA.

“Cloud-based CRMs have become a must have for every healthcare insurer to track all the relevant activities and promptly take action when needed,”

“I imagine that AI will be helping to augment and automate human tasks and functions where appropriate, and we’re hoping sooner rather than later it can offer advice, with a goal of allowing caregivers to focus entirely on patient care,”

-GEORGES CHIDIAC, SENIOR VP, UAE COUNTRY MANAGER, SAICOHEALTH.

-JONATHAN WOOD, GENERAL MANAGER, INFOR, IMEA.

“The technology (AI) offers great benefits for patients in Dubai and the wider region,” -MARWAN ABDULAZIZ JANAHI, MD OF DUBAI SCIENCE PARK AND CHAIRING MEMBER OF THE PHARMACEUTICALS AND MEDICAL EQUIPMENT TASKFORCE.

enables review and translation of mammograms 30 times faster with 99% accuracy which will reduce the need for unnecessary biopsies.

The Dubai government is also taking initiatives to promote AI in healthcare. The detection of diabetic retinopathy, which offers a more cost effective way with systems detecting abnormalities faster and more efficient, which will then be flagged to an ophthalmologist is one of the key example.

“Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) has received much attention by the local government. The establishment of the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and the appointment of His Excellency Omar bin Sultan Al Olama as the Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence are testimony to the government’s commitment. The technology offers great benefits for patients in Dubai and the wider region,” says Marwan Abdulaziz Janahi, Managing Director of Dubai Science Park and Chairing Member of the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Equipment Taskforce.

DUBAI STEPS IN Dubai government is also encashing on this technology in healthcare sector with the big roadmap of EXPO 2020. The government aims to attract more than 500,000 health tourist to Dubai by

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2020. This is a Strategy for health Tourism 20172021. “To cope with the growth of the sector, the healthcare market is one of the industries that are currently leading in terms of the transformation of IT operations. The introduction of electronic medical and health records (EMRs and EHRs) have made a huge impact in the healthcare industry by standardizing the delivery of medical records, enhancing patient care and lowering costs, while significantly reducing medical errors and generating large amounts of healthcare data,” says Fadi Kanafani, Regional Director, NetApp, MEA. I did mention at first itself that many will say that the growth is not as much as anticipated.

There is tremendous progress but structurally, not much has changed. “I imagine that AI will be helping to augment and automate human tasks and functions where appropriate, and we’re hoping sooner rather than later it can offer advice, with a goal of allowing caregivers to focus entirely on patient care,” says Jonathan Wood, General Manager, Infor, IMEA. With the benefit of being able to focus entirely on patient and giving them the best available treatment, technology is doing much to the most important wealth that we own. Health is the best way to enjoy your wealth, let’s treasure it. ë

GUEST ARTICLE

The IT department must regain control over their data Do you know who stores your business critical information? Are you sure that important data will not get lost or disappear if the cloud would turn into a black hole? In short: Do you trust the ‘cloud’? These are the questions many companies should ask themselves now-a-days.

In-house server solutions are replaced by cloud services and HyperScale architectures, which means that the organisation’s data is physically far away from the business. Unfortunately, in many cases this also applies to the control of the data.

Historically, IT departments have ruled the development of corporate IT solutions. The management has ordered a function and IT has delivered its solution, with full control over the entire architecture. Today, decisions about which applications to use are often made by management, while the IT department is asked to implement decisions already made.

The trend is clear: More and more services and functions are being added to the cloud.

Office 365, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform are just a few examples. But even “as-a-service solutions” from different consulting companies are becoming more common.

Many decentralised solutions are introduced for economic reasons. Not rarely, companies are prepared to accept lower functionality to achieve the economic benefits.

HyperScale, multicloud and service solutions provide unambiguous benefits, not least the

n JOHAN SCHEEPERS, TECHNICAL SERVICES DIRECTOR M E S AT, C O M M VA U LT

ability to quickly adapt systems to changing conditions and make data available regardless of time and location. But it’s important not to starve blind to the opportunities and forget the responsibility.

We see many examples of ignorance about, or at least lack of understanding of, the effect of managing the data at a distance. Regardless of whether the information is stored on your own laptop’s hard drive or on a cloud server in the US or India, responsibility for controlling one’s own business data is still – at 100 per cent – lying within the organization.

One might assume that cloud and service providers are responsible for managing the data with maximum security, and that it is sufficient to delegate responsibility for backup to them.

To assume they are able to quickly recover all information if the worst happens. But reality shows that many people do not have a clue of what they actually bought.

Because, what happens when a service provider unexpectedly goes bankrupt when the company is suffering from a crypto ransomware attack or when the internet connection to the

cloud service simply goes down for a long time?

It’s easy to migrate to the cloud. But it’s harder to stay there over time. And it’s a big challenge to restore or take home your own data again, if needed.

This is why IT departments need to re-think about their own role in order to handle this new reality. Decisions on new solutions must be taken by management. However, the responsibility for the day-to-day IT operations will always be required by the IT department, regardless of whether the data is in the cloud, at a service provider, on its own file server or at a single workstation.

The introduction of GDPR is just one example that demonstrates the necessity of controlling the data. And it becomes even more important in the future, when block chains, artificial intelligence and machine learning get a greater impact even in everyday systems.

The new technology contains endless possibilities. But those who have not secured control over their own data, no matter where it exists, is putting the entire survival of the business at risk. ë

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SPECIAL STORY

UNLEASH THE INTELLIGENCE WITHIN Business Intelligence (BI) has grown is the recent years and transformed completely the way we make business decisions and this is no secret.

According to a study, the number of organizations embracing Business Intelligence platforms continue to grow but more focus is being placed on business analytics and self-service features. 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 P H O T O : S H U T T E R S T O C K

T

he growth of Business Intelligence has made working with data easier than before.

BI platforms are straightforward so that any employee can use them to gather and apply insights independently. And with data so easily assembled and displayed, it has changed the way enterprises reach their customers. The insights derived from data analysis become more meaningful across the board as the tools for presenting complex data stories continue to develop.

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SPECIAL STORY

“HAVING THE RIGHT BI & ANALYTICS STRATEGY IS CRITICAL FOR ANY BUSINESS, FOR EFFECTIVE DECISION MAKING AND TO STAY AHEAD IN TODAY’S COMPETITIVE WORLD,” -SUNIL PAUL, CO-FOUNDER & COO, FINESSE

TOP

BENEFITS OF INCORPORATING BI l

Increasing Operational Efficiency

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Reduced Costs & Drives Revenue

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Spotting business problems that need to be addressed

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Improves Sales & Reveals Opportunities

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Gains Competitive Advantage

Gartner predicted that the value of BI market would increase 7.3% to be worth $138 billion this year alone, led by growth in demand for modern business analytical tools. Organizations do recognise that BI tools are important when it comes to informing high-level decision making, by providing the means to gain an accurate insight into complex data.

For instance, DEB group, a major manufacturer of skin care products for many types of workplaces and public environments, based in the UK, holds a wide variety of products including soap, dispensers and sanitizers. In Australia and New Zealand alone, these products are sold through a network of around 200 distributors.

For this group, it is necessary to understand sales track and where they can improve. BI was a vital tool for them and other such companies to keep a record of their business and stay ahead of the competition.

“In such a rapidly changing environment, it is important for a business to discover insight from their data to equip their decision-makers with the right information at the right time in the right context to significantly improve the quality of decision-making. Only when organizations

interact at the speed of how they think, insights can be achieved. Having the right BI & Analytics strategy is critical for any business, for effective decision making and to stay ahead in today’s competitive world,” commented Sunil Paul, Co-Founder & COO, Finesse.

SELF -SERVICE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE In the need for modernizing business report analysis, a transition from complicated business intelligence tools to Self-Service Business Intelligence (SSBI) took place.

SSBI is a new trend in BI where software and tools are simpler than before. The prime goal is to make BI accessible to everyone including people with limited to no technical knowledge.

It involves simplification of current systems and process to deliver more direct and actionable insights. SSBI market is witnessing an increasing demand for the businesses for its ability to transform enterprises into an efficient data-driven organization. According to MarketsandMarkets, the Self-Service BI market size is estimated to grow from US $3.61 Billion in 2016 to US $7.31 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 15.2%.

SSBI market serves as a boon to the non-technical business users for analysing data insights by funnelling down the business data. However, deploying SSBI tools demand a detailed data governance and integrated monitoring.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN BI Today, enterprises are entering into a new era ruled by data. Artificial Intelligence is evolving gradually and shaping the day to day business processes and decision makings in BI. According to cloudworks the digital era has presented organizations access to more data than ever before, a positive development given that data provides the essential building blocks for business strategy.

“AS AI AUTOMATES CRITICAL ANALYSIS, IT ALSO MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR NON-TECHNICAL STAKEHOLDERS TO GET INVOLVED IN THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS, THEREBY BROADENING THE SCOPE OF BI,” -SOUPHIEN AKHRIF, MD, CLOUDWORKS

And yet it is this very volume of data that overwhelms current generation BI tools, degrading the quality of their insights. Organizations have thus far addressed this challenge by hiring data scientists and business analysts, but exponentially growing data volumes will soon inundate these professional too.

But fortunately for enterprises, the Artificial Intelligence is stepping in to address these challenges. AI solutions can rapidly analyze large quantities of diversified data, and automate the steps involved in BI and analytics to drive faster delivery of accurate insights. “Not just this, rapid advances in the field mean that the technology can now not only meet the current BI demands of interpreting reports, presenting dashboards, and data visualization, it can go a step further and deliver actionable intelligence. As AI automates critical analysis, it also makes it possible for non-technical stakeholders to get involved in the decision-making process, thereby broadening the scope of BI,” says Souphien Akhrif, Managing Director, cloudworks.

It is very clear that Artificial Intelligence powered BI systems can transform the business data into simple, accurate, real-time reports. Although the future remains uncertain, enterprises should embrace AI based BI tools that will keep them competitive in the tech market. ë

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INTERVIEW

SURREAL FOR REAL

WHILE THERE IS A MASSIVE MARKET FOR SURREALISM IN VR, IT WOULD BE THE APPLICATIONS GROUNDED IN THE REALITY THAT WILL REALLY DRIVE THE SCALABILITY BELIEVES SHALAJ LAWANIA, PROJECT ENGINEER, SPIDERFROGS.

has now reached the scalable threshold where the cost of development is on par, and even an immense bargain in comparison with the return on investment for SMEs and big MNCs. VR design, modelling, training, safety inductions, sales tools and holographic meetings are few use cases that would greatly benefit corporations and enterprises in enhancing their product offerings, improving efficiency in management and enhancing their general workflow..

SHALAJ LAWANIA, PROJECT ENGINEER, SPIDERFROGS

Virtual reality as a concept and technology has tasted a decent amount of success in industry like gaming, education and retail. How do you see the flow of VR in the enterprise space and other sectors?

Virtual reality, like most forms of emerging technology, is bound not by potential but by imagination. For the longest time, the gaming industry was the only one benefitting from the incredible experiences offered in virtual reality.

While it was slow and confined, the growth of VR

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Holographic meetings are considered to be one of the greatest benefits that AR/VR will give to enterprises. Are we ready in the back-end for such a step?

To be honest, the back-end is waiting for VR to catch up. Current conference and meeting room solutions provide an incredible array of features including wireless screen share, collaborative digital workspaces across multiple platforms and devices, document management systems, infra-red tracking, ultra-sonic tracking, voicerecognition, virtual assistants, data analytics and visualisation dashboards.

When it comes to the future of conference and meeting rooms, VR will actually just be a spoke on a much bigger, incredibly exciting wheel.

From trial rooms in shopping malls to meeting rooms in offices, VR will somewhat eradicate the existence of those very soon. Will it impact the physical/ brick and mortar models?

Not really - VR serves as a prelude to your prospective clients. The idea, currently anyway, is not to replace tangible elements with digital offerings, but rather use it to drive interest, spark curiosity and increase conversions from leads to proposals.

For example, instead of shoppers trying 10 different clothes to find the best colours that go together, they would now plan their outfit in

VR and then try out the one outfit to check the fitting. Not only you invite shoppers to spend less time deliberating, as a corollary effect you increase sales and conversions and reduce overheads incurred from multiple trials.

Often technology is viewed as at the pinpoint of one extreme. It is not necessary to completely replace brick-and-mortar systems, but rather we should all explore the possibilities of integrating the two to create solutions that would be convenient for people with diverse proclivities.

‘Standalone’ virtual reality is the buzzword of 2018. How can this enhance the flavor the experience and how enterprises can benefit of a headset sans any other device?

A fantastic development in the sphere, and definitely the impetus VR required. Earlier, you either needed a mobile to run the headset which compromised on the quality of the experience and created problems of longevity, battery, processor congestion and memory storage. The high-end headsets needed a gaming PC and area-tracking sensors.

These were huge obstacles in creating use cases and scalability of this technology. With standalone headsets, you now have an independent device capable of delivering premium content with limited dependencies. This has driven down the cost, driven up the quality and also driven up the amount of use cases.

Real or surreal? How do you see the future of VR? We’ve already had our infatuation with surrealism in VR - that’s how it exploded onto the scene.

In present times, I think VR is coming more in terms with reality - the applications are now being developed for actual use cases that would benefit independent users or corporations.

While there is a massive market for surrealism in VR, it would be the applications grounded in the reality that will really drive the scalability. ë

BT LAUNCH

GEC MEDIA BRIDGES THE BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY CHASM

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n August, the region’s leading publishing, events, and digital marketing diversified business, GEC Media Group, launched yet another innovative and well positioned brand - BT, Business Transformation.

Business Transformation is a content portal, publication, and event organiser, launched with the objective of partnering with businesses, consultants and technology vendors to enable the process of digital transformation and business restructuring for the digital age.

The primary focus of BT is to showcase how business success can be enabled when organisations are ready to rebuild themselves using new technology platforms. The scope of coverage extends across the GCC, Rest of Middle East, Turkey, and African countries.

Commenting at the agency briefing session, Arun Shankar, Founding Editor of Business Transformation, pointed out that the gap between business excellence and technology integration is narrowing at an exponential rate. “The returns

from some of the latest IT technology innovation cycles are so compelling, that it is only a matter of time before businesses self-transform themselves or become relics of the past. Technology platforms such as cloud, mobile, analytics, social media, have been globally responsible for the consumerisation of technology. Today they remain enablers of the acceleration that we call business transformation.”

The primary sections of BT are as follows.

Deep dive: A look into what lies ahead, future scaping, new customer experiences, new business revenue, productivity improvement, business intelligence, analytics, workflow and collaboration.

Landscape: Nuts and bolts of how to do it, workshops, methodologies, best practices, road maps, takeaways, transforming business model, transforming organisation, transforming department, transforming job roles, change management.

Markets: Real life use cases and experiences, hands on descriptions, government and citizen,

smart cities, energy, oil and gas, homeland security, critical national infrastructure, urban infrastructure, utilities, banking and finance, service providers, communication, telecom, manufacturing, healthcare, transportation, logistics, retail, hospitality, education, green, sustainability.

Flavors: The working environment, look and feel, changing work life, changing ways of working, mission critical solutions, platforms and frameworks, market focused applications, business productivity applications.

Tools: What we use, the enablers, drivers of innovation, artificial Intelligence, 3D printing, blockchain, augmented and virtual reality, Internet of Things, Industrial Internet of Things, big data, analytics, cybersecurity, devices, mob ile.

Business Transformation is now functioning as an online portal, digital edition, and printed version, as well. GEC Media Group looks forward to providing a high value experience for all its readers, partners and stake holders across the region and globally. ë

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INTERVIEW

A SYMBIOTIC MODEL

THE PROMISE OF INNOVATIVE THINKING AND PRIDE IN SUPPLYING HIGH PERFORMANCE IS WHAT GLISTEN SALIX AS A COMPANY DOES. AN INTERVIEW WITH MR YASIR GANAI, THE MANAGING DIRECTOR OF THE FIRM GIVES MORE INSIGHTS INTO THE SAME.

What is the major vision of Glisten Salix as an IT solution and service provider?

We provide an insanely great experience to everyone that we come into contact with and focus on developing both our team and their relationships with customers and suppliers. Glisten Salix is committed to a cooperative symbiotic model of working with others. Over its years of successful activities, it has developed solid partnerships with both suppliers and reseller. We supply best of breed technology solutions for our customers. We are consistently looking to improve our offering to the customers by providing them best mix of latest and reliable products from the leading manufacturers.

YASIR GANAI, MANAGING DIRECTOR, GLISTEN SALIX

How has the business year been so far for Glisten Salix?

Despite economic downturn, Glisten Salix has been successful in increasing customers through referrals. It’s going great. Adopting philosophy of provide satisfactory solutions and services to clients we maintain constant business ties with our clients and increased numbers gradually.

What does your structured cabling portfolio look like?

Glisten Salix expertise in the design and implementation of structured cabling has helped our clients to gain significant impact on their constructions costs and their ability to make painless organizational and technology changes in the future. We are engaged in the design, installation and support of communications structured cabling and networking systems. We strive to produce a cost-effective approach for large and complex communications networks, with a primary focus on the customer. We are a “one stop shop” for all your organization network infrastructure needs. We will help evaluate, design

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and install the optimum integrated system for your business.

According to reports, IT & telecommunication have dominated this market. In such case, what kind of an opportunity are you looking at to extend your reach?

Development ratio of innovation and inventions in IT & Telecom sector is on its peak. We always keep our self-updated with latest technology innovation. So along with our market experience and latest technology we offer state of the art technology with cost effective solution. Service level agreements and out of hours support will differentiate us an appropriate organization for our clients.

What is your take on the saturation of infrastructure implementation?

In UAE, Expo 2020 brings a lot of opportunities and economy is expected to grow 23bn Dollars, that is mainly in hospitality and construction sector, that means, market has potential.

What is your take on cloud services replacing on premise datacenters?

There are many reasons cloud services can’t replace data centers, some of them including data protection, confidentiality and cloud services aren’t cost effective for all businesses. We realized this fact when we started SAAS (Software as a Service) for Microsoft products in 2007 What are the new arenas that you are entering into?

We are interested to get into enterprise level industry like hospitality; health care etc. from SME’s offering biometric, security, and people management solutions. ë

INNOVATIONS

KEY CAPABILITIES n Workplace Transformation Initiatives (WTI) n Enhance individual and collaborative work experiences for local and remote users n Efficient Conference Room Meetings n Easy to deploy and simple to manage n Can make any space a Skype for Business meeting place n Featuring Dolby Audio Premium sound experience n 360-degree array microphones n Touch display to control the meeting and large external displays n Ideal conference companion for huddle and mediumsized meeting rooms

THINKSMART HUB 500

Lenovo launched a new device to tackle conference room complexities and help companies embrace the digital transformation of modern workspaces. The Lenovo ThinkSmart Hub 500 is a Skype Room Systems device that manages collaboration within modern meeting rooms. With the ability to simply connect remote and local participants to Skype for Business meetings and shared content, it eliminates the hassle of sharing personal laptop screens and messing about with cables. Developed in cooperation with Microsoft, the Smart Hub 500 is an all-in-one device, with a 360-degree rotatable 11.6-inch display and runs Microsoft Windows 10 IoT Enterprise.

ONTAP AI - NETAPP & NVIDIA’S AI ARCHITECTURE NetApp ONTAP AI proven architecture, powered by NVIDIA DGX supercomputers and NetApp AFF A800 cloud-connected all-flash storage simplifies, accelerates, and scale the data pipeline across edge, core and cloud for deep learning deployments and help customers achieve real business impact with AI. Although many organizations are adopting new AI platforms, tools, and practices, most don’t have enough control over their distributed data stores to ensure that complete, current, and accessible data is available for their AI projects. Success with AI depends on a business’s approach to data. To be effective in today’s AI use cases and future-proof a business for new AI applications, organizations must achieve visibility into and control of their data, from edge to core to cloud.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Deploy easily n AI eliminated design complexity and guesswork n Scale without limits n Organizations can begin with a 1:1 configuration n Can scale out as data grows, to 1:5 configuration and beyond. n High-availability solution design n Redundant storage and network and server connections n AI removes performance bottlenecks n Enables secure, nondisruptive access to data from multiple sources and data formats

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PLEASE SEND YOUR FEEDBACK AT INFO@ GECMEDIAGROUP.COM

INNOVATIONS

Ocularis 5.6 VMS OnSSI enhanced its Video Management Software (VMS) platform with the release of Ocularis 5.6. This latest release enhances overall VMS performance and operator functionality, delivers heightened system security with fortified dual authentication measures, and provides enhanced mobile and web access capabilities. These latest improvements included in Ocularis 5.6 combine to further empower users with a best-in-class VMS solution and experience.

Ocularis 5.6 bolsters system security by allowing administrators to require dual operator authentication when logging-in, along with the ability to specify system permissions for Ocularis Client or Ocularis Web/Mobile. Every login activity into Ocularis Client is also logged and auditable for documentation and compliance where applicable. With the heightened security measures in place, Ocularis 5.6 also improves operator functionality.

Operators can now create, edit, save and delete views directly from Ocularis Client, giving them the control and flexibility to create the specific views they need to best perform their roles and meet their security objectives while maximizing effectiveness and efficiency.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Dual operator authentication when logging-in n Ability to specify system permissions n Logged and auditable for documentation n Operators can create, edit, save and delete views directly from Ocularis Client n Control and flexibility to create the specific views for operators n Ability to view camera names n Larger views can be downscaled n Improved bandwidth efficiency

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Watts Miners’ Cryptocurrency Mining Technologies Watts Miners launched a line of mining rigs for BTC, ETH, LTC, DASH and XMR with unprecedented hash rates as a result of advanced ASIC chip technology.

The rigs are equipped with industrial power for mining farms as well as retail household consumers and are currently priced below market alongside Watts Miners Grand Opening offers.

Each miner has been thoroughly evaluated, prototyped, and pressure tested under extreme conditions, prior to the launch. They are also designed for home use in that they are quiet, equipped with noiseless fans, anti-vibration pads and improved aerodynamic bladeswith effective cooling measures and can withstand over 70,000 hours of use.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Watts Mini: 120 TH/s for Bitcoin 30 GH/s for Litecoin 4 GH/s for Ethereum 1.1 TH/s for Dash 200 KH/s for Monero Power consumption of 800W±10% n Watts Miner: 250 TH/s for Bitcoin 50 GH/s for Litecoin 7 GH/s for Ethereum 1.7 TH/s for Dash 300 KH/s for Monero Power consumption of 1200W±10% n Watts Rack: 1000 TH/s for Bitcoin 200 GH/s for Litecoin 28 GH/s for Ethereum 6.8 TH/s for Dash 1200 KH/s for Monero Power consumption of 1200W±10% x 4

Discover it – the new world of IT solutions.

Discover it – the new world of IT solutions.

The digital transformation in business, trade and industry offers a whole host of opportunities but also throws up new challenges for IT infrastructures. Dealing with complex tasks and huge volumes of data calls for increasingly fast, flexible and efficient IT solutions.

The digital transformation in business, trade and industry offers a whole host of opportunities but also throws up new challenges for IT infrastructures.

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