EC-MEA April 2021

CHANNEL TRANSFORMATION: AVEVA, SPECTRAMI

PA G E S 5 6 VOLUME O8 | ISSUE 07 APRIL 2021 WWW.EC-MEA.COM

STEADY ADOPTION, GOOD RETURNS ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION

Robotic process automation is creating repeatable and reliable services for both external and internal customers, growing use cases, and impressive returns.

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EDITORIAL

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NOBODY SAID RPA WAS EASY

ARUN SHANKAR, EDITOR A R U N @ G E C M E D I A G R O U P. C O M

Today’s screen-based technologies allow keystroke processes to be automated. While manual tasks can be mapped, the real return comes from revisiting processes, relooking at them and then optimisation. It is not just about replacement of human workers; it is also about organisational processes and roles.

While the technology part sometimes appears to be straightforward, and the most repetitive tasks are the ones to begin with, often there is more to it than just solution implementation.

Red Hat’s Ali Al Shami points out that business processes and decision modeling, are enhanced, while analytics come to the forefront of importance as dashboards and reports can be generated. On the flip side, business processes are a management practice used to automate tasks that are repeatable and have a common pattern.

TSME works with multiple vendor partners to deliver a customised solution. Says Firas Saifan, TSME works with automation solution providers such as Software AG, Automation Anywhere, MongoDB, COGNIGY, Outsystems, APQC and provides customised solutions.

Automation has also entered industrial plant operations. Many industrial ecosystems are not open and interoperable by design. And new technology often is not compatible and cannot be implemented easily into such systems.

Georges El Mir at Schneider Electric points out manufacturers should embrace open standards and interoperability, much as IT and technology industries have in recent years. Agile manufacturing enterprises have a certain boldness not seen in traditional manufacturing.

Industrial strategy should be founded on three pillars: universal automation, sustainable efficiency, software-centric automation Stephen Gill at Heriot-Watt University Dubai reflects that modern day work satisfaction is also driving the interest in automation. For the digitally savvy worker, business process automation is a means of achieving efficiency, productivity and increasingly important, job satisfaction.

To build an automated process, customisation is imperative says Wissam Youssef at CME. It is impossible to have ready-made products that tailor to every enterprise requirement, and creating customised solutions will drive partnerships. Whichever OEM solutions are interoperable will drive the feasibility of product partnerships.

Any business which places customer and employee engagement and communications at the heart of its operation, benefits from automation, points out Sanjukta Ray at Dubai Leading Technologies. Best of breed solutions need to be integrated to meet customer needs. Offerings do not exist in silos, with focus on customer proposition and integrated solutions, through projects involving several software vendors.

Also, in this edition we look at how digital technologies are impacting legacy production printing plants, partner programmes of industrial software vendors, and the distribution model of IT security solutions. GEC Media Group in this month’s flagship event, FITS 2021, recognises top CIO executives and top IT workplaces. Turn these pages for more.

Wishing you Ramadan Kareem for the holy month ahead. ë

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e

CONTENTS 31-37/ COVER STORY

AUTOMATING

BUSINESS PROCESSES Red Hat: Integrating business and IT through process automation n

TSME: Leveraging vendor platforms to deliver customised solutions

n

Schneider Electric: Rolling out automation in industrial plant operations n

Heriot-Watt University Dubai: Modern day work satisfaction also driving automation n

CME: Ease of customisation driving automation partnerships n

Dubai Leading Technologies: Best of breed integrated solutions to meet customer needs

n

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38-39

48-49

07-09

AVEVA: Building cloud competency in industrial channel partners

How digital printing is disrupting traditional printers in UAE

EDITOR’S PAGE

VIEWPOINT 11-21

CHANNEL STREET

23-28

40-41 Spectrami: Digital innovation in valueadded distribution

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43-44

EVENTS

REAL LIFE

50-53

GUEST COLUMN 54

PEOPLE

CHANNEL SECURITY

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VIEWPOINT

WHY SMALL ORGANISATIONS NEED TO HIRE A VIRTUAL CISO

Organisations which cannot afford a traditional CISO should consider virtual options in this post-pandemic world, writes Jeffrey Wheatman of Gartner.

H

iring a Chief Information Security Officer, CISO, may not be in the budget for small or midsize organisations as their total cash compensation can range between from $208,000 to $337,000. However, at the same time, these organisations recognise the growing importance of being more strategic and the necessity of having a leader responsible for programme creation and guidance.

The good news for such organisations is that Gartner has seen an uptick in what we are calling virtual CISO offerings. For organisations that need to fill the need for leadership but are not in a position to bring in a full-time and often very costly qualified CISO, the virtual CISO, a combination of staff augmentation, consultant, advisor and strategist, might be an option. Virtual CISO offerings are a hybrid of: #1 Traditional staff augmentation involving an on-site or virtual presence in meetings, events, operations, and strategy planning. #2 Consultative engagement and management to drive creation and implementation of security and risk programme artifacts, such as strategic and tactical roadmaps, architecture, and policy, and to run risk management and risk assessment processes. #3 Project management of architecting and deploying security and risk solutions. #4 Coaching or advisory services to train full-time staff on how to leverage created artifacts, develop communicating plans and train the next generation of security and risk leaders.

That is not to say there are not organisations that seek to defend their lack of a leader with some short-sighted rationalisations. It is useful to look at the most common rationalisations to help show the reasons why smaller enterprises should seriously consider bringing in a virtual CISO role.

The first one is that we are not regulated, so we do not need a CISO. Not being regulated may not obligate an organisation to staff a CISO position; however, that does not mean it does not have risks to manage as part of achieving its business goals. Having a programme leader, and the associated governance and strategic vision, also provides defensibility.

Maybe, but you are not an island either. The dramatic increase in broad ransomware attacks such as WannaCry and Petya - NotPetya mean that nobody is

Virtual CISOs can provide vision and guidance to drive a more programmatic approach

JEFFREY WHEATMAN, VP Advisor, Gartner.

Having a programme leader, and the associated governance and strategic vision, also provides defensibility immune from attack. Also, the increasing connectedness of digital business ecosystems expands and extends enterprise risks, so while your organisation may not be a target, your partners may be.

The second is we do not have anything anybody would want.

This outlook may be accurate if you have no customers, no employees, no intellectual property, no business processes, and no shareholders or stakeholders but that would also mean that you do not have a business.

The third common rationalisation is we cannot afford to hire a CISO, so we will put the engineer in charge of security. This is at best a band-aid fix. In theory, this tactical approach might work in the short term, but as a long-term approach, there will be an overemphasis on tools and tactics and not enough on people and process.

In practice, you need a dedicated, focused role to guide the programme and ensure, over time, a shift to a more strategic approach that can be communicated to business leadership with the appropriate level of business context.

Virtual CISOs can help by sitting outside the tactical day-today activities. From there, they can provide vision and guidance to drive a more programmatic approach, which clarifies the scope of the programme. This then begins the shift toward a more proactive approach to security and risk management. ë

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VIEWPOINT

INTEGRATION AND APIs TOP THE LIST IN DIGITAL STRATEGY

Anne Marie Bond of Software AG writes about integration and API management predictions for this year.

ANNE MARIE BOND,

T

he year 2020 showed that organisations which had invested in digital transformation were the ones that were resilient enough to pivot and survive.

Integration and APIs are two sides of the same coin, and digital transformation cannot happen without them. Without them, all you have is a collection of systems and silos of data.

Therefore, integration and APIs have suddenly become the most important elements in digital strategy plans for 2021. Here are predictions for integration in 2021: According to Gartner, by 2023, over 50% of medium to large enterprises will have adopted an LCAP, low-code application platform, as one of their strategic application platforms. Instead of high-end developers writing applications from scratch, less technical users will be composing them. Citizen developers will have model-driven solutions for orchestrating app integrations and composing applications.

B2B, an unseen but critical part of business, was reborn in the cloud in 2020.

New ecosystems and marketplaces using technologies like APIs brought new life to traditional partner interactions. Now managed file transfer, MFT, is ready for its own transformation. The ugly truth is that on-premises file transfers are still part of critical business transactions for many. But MFT is ready to move to the cloud with B2B as businesses rethink the way they communicate and share data.

Data integration and application integration will come together with analytics more closely tied to integration. Traditionally data integration which is integration for the purpose of driving analytics has been kept separate from application integration since the former is more batch oriented while the latter is real time. A modern integration strategy brings both needs together within a cloud data hub, an iPaaS that serves as the point of collection and distribution of data for analysis and reporting within cloud data warehouses and data lakes.

This turns data into business value faster. The proliferation of SaaS applications in the cloud has made it more difficult to create a coherent view of distributed customer data, but the Open Data Initiative, ODI, will step up with a common standard.

With the rise of microservices, IT leaders are looking at service mesh technol-

Now managed file transfer is ready for its own transformation

Senior Manager, Product Marketing, Software AG.

While the balance of enterprise systems tips further into the cloud, hybrid remains the optimal operating model ogy to manage network-level communication. And with dozens of services mesh on the market, a new standard has emerged as a vendor-agnostic interface; the Service Mesh Interface, SMI. At the same time, businesses are implementing multiple API gateways for different use cases, and there is a need for a single API control plane to serve as the master for all gateways.

API management will take on APIs, microservices, and service meshes, providing a single platform for full control of all the elements of cloud-native applications.

While the balance of enterprise systems tips further into the cloud, hybrid remains the optimal operating model in the future. Instead of losing momentum, the hybrid integration house getting larger. It needs to accommodate: l More types of users, ranging from highly technical to business oriented l More domains, extending from application integration to B2B integration, event-based integration, and of course API and data integration l More endpoints, with mobile and IoT increasing at a dramatic rate l More deployment models, including multi-cloud integration and embedded as well as the more traditional on-premises or cloud hybrid These hybrid integrations will be able to be developed anywhere and deployed anywhere. ë

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EVENTS

GEC Security Symposium and CISO Awards to be held on May 26 The fourth edition of GEC Security Symposium 2021 presented by Cyber Sentinels will be held in Dubai on May 26, 2021. The much-awaited yearly mega event will continue its tradition of recognising outstanding individuals and companies in the security field through CISO 2021 Awards and Future Security Leaders Awards. Security industry’s leading players, solution providers and key CISOs from the UAE will get an opportunity to network as well as exchange critical knowledge on the modern-day vulnerability landscape.

The event is an ultimate platform for collaboration between those working in the IT security industry and those who provide the latest solutions and services in this sector.

In 2020, GECSS saw participation of over 500 attendees with 15+ global and regional speakers. This year, it will be bigger than ever.

GECSS 2021 is all set to welcome CISOs, CIOs, CTOs, Head of IT Security, Risk and Compliance Managers, Security Managers, Security Vendors, VADs, SIS and Resellers from various sectors.

The year 2020 was disruptive not only in terms of health crisis but it also changed the IT landscape with the rise in remote work culture. The year also saw a massive surge in cyberattacks across the world where the UAE alone witnessed a 250% rise. As a result,

cybersecurity is now even higher on every IT decision-makers’ agenda.

2021 will see more complex security challenges and to mitigate security risks, companies must implement clear and comprehensive policies. GECSS 2021 will throw spotlight on the best practices to manage and administer security and how the leadership roles of Chief Risk Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, CISO have evolved. Other key topics of discussion at GECSS 2021 are below: l MSSPs and outsourcing security services: Are channel partners ready to deliver? l Is cloud and digital transformation making the enterprise vulnerable? l Building and setting up enterprise SOC l Detecting threats and remediation in your wireless and wired network l Mapping your network activity and detecting anomalies l Securing and accelerating digital applications l Building your IoT world, best practices, and guidelines l Jumping from industrial to digital, how to build your gateway, and how to prepare the team l GECSS 2021 will also have other attractions like Secret Briefings where a group of 8 to 10 CISOs will get together in the Dark

Room to determine the hidden risks, threats, and vulnerabilities for 2021. Another unique feature at GECSS 2021 will be Hack the Day. This will involve real-life hacking and will test how safe your mobile, laptop, or smart watch is!

CISO 2021 AWARDS

The Cyber Sentinels CISO Awards will recognise the hard taskmasters of security in the digital enterprises and felicitate their unwavering commitment towards their organization’s security infrastructure. The award recognises the top CISOs who are using technology to secure critical business information assets and minimize risk while delivering business value. The award ceremony is a platform to showcase their achievements, share their expertise and knowledge.

FUTURE SECURITY LEADERS AWARDS

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. The Cyber Sentinels Security Awards 2021 recognises the security vendors, VADs, System Integrators and Resellers who have walked the extra mile in innovating their solutions and services for the customers and redefined the term value in security offerings.

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CATALYST AWARDS

7th MEA edition of FITS 2021 and Catalyst Awards see phenomenal success The seventh edition of the Future IT Summit held on March 22 at Sharjah Research Technology and Innovation Park, SRTIP, concluded with a remarkable success. The event was attended by over 200+ key dignitaries including CIOs, IT managers, IT heads, VP and directors of IT, CEOs, CTOs, CDO and CHRO from Middle East, Africa, SEA, Europe, and US markets.

The theme of the seventh edition of FITS was #StrongerTogether. It was in-line with the new normal which emerged in 2020 and saw the convergence of humans and machines in a way which had never happened before. Attendees could also attend the event virtually via GCF Convention Centre.

The event was inaugurated by keynote speaker, HE Hussain Al Mahmoudi, CEO of SRTIP and Ronak Samantaray, CEO of GEC Media Group and Co-Founder of Global CIO Forum along with other key dignitaries from the government and private sectors in the UAE. Below are the key highlights of the event: HE Hussain Al Mahmoudi, CEO of SRTIP delivered keynote address at FITS MEA 2021 and highlighted the efforts on technology transformation and innovation. He also highlighted the steps taken by SRTIP in cutting-edge technologies to propel UAE in digital transformation initiatives.

Mansoor Hanif started the concept keynote with a powerful statement that NEOM will have a red carpet for investors and not red-tapeism. Hanif highlighted how The Line will have a positive impact on lifestyle, economy, and environment.

He also spoke about three key pillars namely Connect, Compute and Contextualise which

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SPEAKERS AT FITS MEA 2021 MANSOOR HANIF, Executive Director of Engineering in Technology and Digital sector at NEOM AHMAD ALMULLA, Digital Transformation Advisor SAMER SEMAAN, Channel and Alliance Manager, ME, Pure Storage SAURABH JAIN, Channel, Solutions Director, Huawei Enterprise Business Group, Huawei TIM CHEN, Senior Channel Business Development Manager, Alibaba Cloud VENKATESH MAHADEVAN, CIO of Dubai Investments ANSHUL SRIVASTAV, CIO, Emirates Post

CATALYST AWARDS

are integral to NEOM. Hanif highlighted how human and machine interface can converge at NEOM and the cognitive city will accelerate machine intelligence. Hanif stressed that human and machine relationship needs to evolve to trust from mistrust.

In the next session titled, Future IT Landscape – CIO Outlook, Ahmad Almulla talked about the reasons behind failure of digital transformation initiatives. Almulla highlighted the differences between digitisation, digitalisation and digital transformation and how knowing these nuances helps businesses.

He also spoke about the changing IT landscape due to Covid-19. He added that IT is at the frontline of businesses. According to Almulla, learnings from the pandemic include cybersecurity focus, website becoming brand, redefining of risk management, just enough strategy, agile technology and importance of skills.

In the session titled, Data in the Post Pandemic Workplace – Managing, Storing and Orchestrating, Samer Semaan discussed re-inventing data with simplicity, flash efficiency and evergreen business model.

In the next session, Post Pandemic and Post Vaccination Era Through a CIO’s Looking Glass, Venkatesh Mahadevan gave a very candid overview of changing times. Mahadevan said that the business model has changed post pandemic because the customer has changed. He talked about the capabilities to manage anywhere organisation and the paradigm shift in technology. Mahadevan also spoke how technology has taken precedence over marketing as the first investment in today’s world.

In the next session, The Post Pandemic Era Through a CIO’s Looking Glass, Anshul Srivastav talked about the transformation of businesses. He said that if you are not part of the change, you will get changed.

FITS MEA 2021 progressed with a very engaging panel discussion.

Arun Shankar, Editor of GEC Media Group moderated Futuristic Panel – Digital transformation and achievement of the objectives of UAE’s national vision. The panel included Nithin Thomas, Head of Information

Technology at Amity University Dubai; Aliasgar Bohari, Director of IT at Zulekha Hospitals; Abdul Rahman Jaroudi, Head Distribution Channels and e-Channels at Aafaq Islamic Finance and Nikhil Sanghavi, Director and Head of ME Region at Arcon and Cuneyt Mert Baki, Partners Technical Manager at Pure Storage.

The panellists concurred that customer experience will drive choice of technology going forward.

Nithin Thomas said adoption of technology was before the pandemic, but adaptation of technology is being done now. Aliasgar Bohari talked about robotic pharmacy and integration of artificial intelligence in healthcare sector. Abdul Rahman Jaroudi of Aafaq Islamic Finance said they face a big challenge in preparing customers to deal with the digital world. Nikhil Sanghavi talked about importance of IT security for business continuity. Cuneyt Mert Baki said efficient use of digital transformation led to new revenue streams for companies.

In the session titled, 5G & Next Gen Data Communication Paving the Road for AI and Cloud, Saurabh Jain said that AI strategy for UAE is the baseline for more efficient governance. Jain highlighted how AI is reshaping industries and Huawei enables intelligent connectivity using the AI. In the session, Accelerate Digitalisation From Alibaba Cloud, Tim Chen said data must be used in the right way and it is important for sustainability. He highlighted Alibaba Cloud Portfolio and cloud trend in coming ten years.

FITS 2021 was not just about knowledge-sharing and networking but also about recognising each individual’s efforts through Catalysts Awards 2021. The glittering award ceremony honoured trailblazers and trendsetters of the industry through two categories, Catalyst Marketing and Catalyst CIO. Happy companies create happy employees and FITS MEA 2021 honoured this practice through Top 10 Happy IT Companies To Work For award.

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EVENTS

Global CIO Forum,

RosettaNet Singapore GS1

announce winners of Catalyst Asia Awards

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EVENTS

ASIA EDITION

BY: MANALI MISRA

The first Asia edition of Future IT Summit and Catalyst Awards 2021 was held by Global CIO Forum in collaboration with RosettaNet Singapore GS1.

The Catalysts Awards recognised and honoured the trailblazers in the industry for project management, HR, sales, finance, marketing, and technology, who have been uplifting the brand and reputation of their respective organisations in these difficult times.

The awards also recognised companies showcasing various cutting-edge initiatives, platforms and market-penetration which are truly acting as catalysts in the ever-changing market landscape. The two categories of the awards were Catalyst Asia 2021: Individual Awards and Catalyst Company Awards 2021.

FITS Asia and Catalyst Awards were held in partnership with C2FO, TechnePlus, PSA, SealNet, SEEBURGER, Intelizest and GeTS. Winners of Catalyst Asia 2021: Individual Awards were Pradeep Kumar Sharma of AS Watson Group, Anand Sinha of OCS Group India, Tejas Shah of SVKM, Chandran R of Bahwan Cybertek, Subhashish Roy of EXL Service, Srabanti Kundu of Hindalco, Setiaji of West Java Provincial Government, Dheerendar Srivastav of Magma Fincorp, Viren Italiya o fGSC Bank, Arivuvel Ramu of TONIK Bank, Sumanyu Vashistha of Deekshaa Infosystems, Srinivasan Mahalingam of Matrimony.com, Ashutosh Singh of Cloud24x7 Solutions, Anuroop Sundd of Siemens Industry Software India, Biswajit Mohapatra of IBM, Neena Reddy of Fint Solutions, Sajith Chakkingal of TMF Group, Anthony Raj Muthu of SEEBURGER Asia Pacific, Juliana Chua of Essilor, Dr Michael Harrison of Amazon Web Services, Harmit Singh Malhotra of Enter10 Television, Nikhil Kumar Nigam of Amity Education Group, Anil Menon of Lulu Group India, Abhishek Agarwal of Energy Efficiency Services, Zoey Lim of Elite Digital Logistics and Subhash Shelke of Essar.

Winners of Catalyst Company Awards 2021 were OCS Group India, Ccat, Everise, CIMB Berhad, TONIK Bank, Elite Digital Logistics, GeTS Asia, SEEBURGER Singapore, InterGlobe Aviation (IndiGo), EXPANZS, SealNet and C2FO.

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EVENTS

CIOs attend sports clinic and golf session at Reboot Unite CIO Meet Global CIO Forum held Reboot Unite CIO Meet where leading CIOs from the UAE attended a session on neck pain and the mystery behind this common problem. The session was held by Kurt Micallef of Eupepsia Sports Science & Wellness.

In these challenging times, it is imperative to pay special attention to health especially for people in high-demanding jobs like that of CIOs. Kurt Micallef explained some lessknown facts about the very common problem of neck pain. In an interactive session, Micallef engaged with the audience in demonstrating how to address the problem in an integrated manner while tapping into other wellness disciplines.

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Eupepsia’s progressive health and wellness programmes help you in achieving your wellbeing goals and boost your performance. The Unite CIO Meet provided a platform to connect with new people including peers and IT decision-makers to share a common perspective. It also gave an opportunity to unwind and at the same time learn from each other.

GCF Reboot focuses on striking an equilibrium between four pillars: Wellness, Fitness, Nutrition & Engage. It aims to provide CIO community members an opportunity to interact with the experts from these four pillars which can help them imbibe the benefits of an all-round wellbeing.

The following CIOs attended the meet:

l Krishan Kant Srivastava, Landmark Hospitality l Samit Jha, Laticrete International l Umesh Moolchandani, Bin Dasmal Group l Robert Araneigo, Emrill Services l Ahmed Shawky, Millennium Hotels l Ashraf Salah, Hilton Worldwide l Manish Bindra, Galadari Brothers l Roger Tabbal, Accor Hotel l Ahmad Almulla, Emirates Global Aluminium l Mamoun Alhommsey, ADIB l Ajay Rathi, DAMAC l Tamal Chakraborty, Landmark Group The session was concluded by a relaxing evening where CIOs could unwind by playing golf.

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EVENTS

Chris Veldad, Infrastructure and Pre-Sales Manager of FDC International

Jennifer Lin, Synology Regional Manager

Tony Chu, Synology Regional Manager

VirtualSummit on Backup, Your Last Line of Defence Against Ransomware Global CIO Forum in association with Synology hosted Backup, Your Last Line of Defence Against Ransomware VirtualSummit.

An increasing number of organisations, big or small, are witnessing a rapid increase in ransomware attacks. The rise in remote work due to the Covid-19 pandemic has also increased the risk of ransomware attacks.

Protecting your organisation against ransomware attacks is integral to security strategy but backups come as the last line of defence in recovering your data. Synology’s backup solutions help keep your data safe and secure across multiple platforms in your IT infrastructure.

SPEAKERS l l l

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Jennifer Lin, Regional Manager, Synology Tony Chu, Regional Manager, Synology Chris Veldad, Infrastructure and Pre-Sales Manager of FDC International During the first session, Lin highlighted

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the rising cyberattacks in the Middle East. Lin also spoke about the reports pointing out that Middle East has higher cost per data breach than global average. Lin focused on three steps to ransomware protection which include Prevention, Response and Recovery. She also shared a case study of Shiseido Taiwan where Synology Active Backup for Business solution is successfully deployed.

In the session titled, Protect Your Business Against Encryption-Based Ransomware, Chu spoke about the five functions of NIST’s cybersecurity framework namely Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond and Recover. Chu further highlighted Synology’s 3-2-1 backup strategy: Create three copies of data, one primary, two backups; Keep data on at least two types of storage media; Store one of these offsite.

The VirtualSummit progressed with an insightful panel discussion. Arun Shankar, Editor of GEC Media Group moderated the

discussion with Jennifer Lin, Regional Manager Synology and Chris Veldad, Infrastructure and Pre-Sales Manager of FDC International.

Veldad started by highlighting the decadelong relationship of FDC and Synology. He also spoke about the challenges in managing data and keeping it safe. Veldad dispelled popular misconception and said that Synology NAS keeps working even in case of malware and ransomware attack.

During the panel discussion, Lin described Synology’s go-to-market strategy and highlighted flexibility of Synology’s products. She also spoke about Synology’s hardware and software solutions to tackle IT challenges all at once.

Synology team was on standby throughout the event to answer all questions via chatbox.

The VirtualSummit was concluded by attendees filling up a survey and one lucky draw winner received free NAS DS220+ solution.

EVENTS

GCF, F5 and Exclusive Networks hold event on advanced application defence Global CIO Forum in association with F5 and Exclusive Networks successfully hosted a virtual event on App Security: Why Advanced Threats Require Advanced Application Defence.

Attackers target applications by exploiting vulnerabilities to gain access to sensitive data and inflicting large-scale fraud that causes serious business disruption. The VirtualSummit discussed about protecting apps and APIs across architectures, clouds, and third-party

integrations to reduce risk and speed up the digital transformation.

Yazeed Almaso, Regional Sales Manager META-NGINX, F5 opened the session along with Prashant Jani, Solutions Engineer, NGINX, F5. We live in a digital world where so many of our experiences are based on applications. Almaso highlighted that application security challenges include complex app portfolios, security exposure and inadequate visibility into apps.

GCF, Spire Solutions, Rapid7 host event on detection and response Global CIO Forum in association with Spire Solutions and Rapid7 held a VirtualSummit on Detection and Response: outsource or not to outsource. Developing and maturing an effective detection and response programme is not an easy task. It requires a dedicated SOC, staffed with highly skilled and specialised

security experts, and round the clock vigilance with the best technology to keep away the stealthy attackers.

Creating such a programme is not cheap and it might be not fool proof. A lot of questions about how the attacks happen despite the detection and response in place remain

During the session, Jani pointed out how NGINX helps in simplifying architecture and cutting costs. NGINX Controller offers centralised visibility manager for app modernisation environment. Jani also gave a short demo of NGINX Controller.

The next session was on Automated Attacks: Threats and Mitigation by Fouad Tawk, Regional Sales Manager, Shape Security, F5.

Tawk discussed the different types of automated attacks like credential stuffing, carding, scraping, cracking and aggregator attack.

During the VirtualSummit, Tawk explained how Shape Enterprise Defence protects enterprises from unwanted automation. He elaborated on how Shape AI Engine reduces fraud risk and Shape Recognise reduces friction for good users.

The last session on Why Advanced Threats Require Advanced Application Defence was delivered by Dale Fairbrother, Senior Product Management Engineer, F5 Silverline. F5 Silverline provides security as a service for application protection.

Fairbrother discussed how the mix of cybersecurity skills shortage and rising attacks are putting immense pressure on security teams.

He added that denial of service attacks are becoming more sophisticated and complex.

unanswered, and this event provided insight to some of those important questions.

Khalil Farhat, Security Solutions Engineer, Rapid7 delivered the introductory session.

Farhat discussed the changing nature of businesses due to digitisation. He pointed out that technology is evolving on a fast pace and security plans need to match that evolution.

Farhat highlighted that there is a huge gap between managed and unmanaged risks.

Farhat spoke about how security teams are facing complexity more than ever. Some of the challenges faced by the security teams are the lack of visibility, noisy alerts, and long investigations.

Matthieu Rider, Director of Sales Engineering, Rapid7 and Richard Harris, Director of MDR-EMEA, Rapid7 held an interesting discussion on Detection and Response, whether to outsource or not. Rider highlighted challenges in Detection and Response, D&R, and pointed that there is a shortage of cybersecurity talent globally. Harris said that having 24/7 vigilance is one thing but keeping people engaged while on duty is another task.

Retention of security team is also a key part of security strategy.

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EVENTS

Global CIO Forum hosts Rise with NetApp and Ingram Micro VirtualSummit Global CIO Forum hosted a VirtualSummit titled Rise With NetApp and Ingram Micro.

The event featured keynote sessions, technical education, innovation hour, strategic partnerships, and partner awards. The VirtualSummit also focused on NetApp and Ingram Micro relationship in the Middle East.

Maya Zakhour, Director Channel Sales MEA, Italy and Spain, NetApp introduced the VirtualSummit. Zakhour praised and highlighted the contribution of NetApp partners especially during the tough year of pandemic.

Ingram Micro has played a strategic role in the development of the NetApp channel partner strategy and the ecosystem.

The virtual summit progressed with keynote sessions by Dr Ali Baghdadi, SVP Chief Country Executive META, Ingram Micro; Marc Montiel, VP of Enterprise Focused Countries, NetApp and Kristian Kerr, VP EMEA Partner Organisation, NetApp. Covid-19 accelerated digital transformation across all verticals but 2020 also saw a big spike in cyberattacks across the globe. Dr Baghdadi started the keynote session by highlighting the importance of safeguarding individuals working from home and protecting enterprise data. Resellers need to be ready to provide customers what they need today and tomorrow. Covid-19 also impacted the budget in a severe manner and enterprises now tend to spend only on the best solutions which address today’s challenges, he added.

Marc Montiel of NetApp delivered the

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second keynote session. Montiel spoke about strong technology trends like artificial intelligence and cloud in the Middle East. Montiel elaborated on NetApp and Cisco partnership for AI and cloud. He also highlighted how Flexpod AI can help in digital transformation.

NetApp and Cisco partnership also helps enterprises in moving their data into the cloud in a secure way.

Kristian Kerr of NetApp took the VirtualSummit forward by applauding the partners who have been able to adapt to the changing times to capture the market. Kerr remarked that cloud is the platform and data is the currency. He added that DevOps is another key area of opportunity for partners to upscale and support organisations.

Kerr said that the accelerated adoption of technology is also causing a cloud maturity skills gap. Hence, partners can also tap into this opportunity by offering professional services, migration services and consultancy to support enterprises in building skills related to cloud.

The next session was the Innovation Hour

by Matt Watts, Chief Technology Evangelist, WW Enterprise and Commercial Field Organisation, NetApp. Watts discussed the industry trends, IT evolution and rise of data fabrics. Watts also gave a very engaging demo of NetApp Cloud Manager.

Arun Shankar, Editor, GEC Media moderated a panel discussion titled Building Scale and Agility in Datacentres to Manage Transformation Challenges. The panel included Fadi

Kanafani, Middle East Managing Director and GM-Enterprise Business, NetApp; Tambi Baik, Country Manager, NetApp and Eng Alfaisal Babaeer, Director-Information Technology, BUPA. The discussion with Babaeer focused on the business activities of BUPA in Saudi Arabia and the main driver of the growth in business.

Babaeer also highlighted the principal services in demand.

Over the last 12 months there has been tremendous disruption to businesses in the region. Prior to that Saudi Arabia has also embarked on an aggressive journey of digital transformation of businesses towards Vision 2030. Babaeer summarised the expectations of the internal business heads and the external customers, as well as the bottlenecks from legacy IT infrastructure.

Kanafi also spoke about the expectations of regional enterprises in terms of the solutions and performance in demand and what they expect from leading global digital transformation vendors such as NetApp. In another round of the panel discussion, Babaeer described the solutions implemented

by NetApp and how internal processes at BUPA and customer facing services have improved with these solutions. Baik took the interesting topic forward by explaining how NetApp assessed the solutions required by BUPA and how the implementation was done at the datacentre and DR sites. He also spoke about the implementation completed for such solutions, when the customer is moving from legacy to digital, agile, and scalable solutions.

Babaeer and Kanafi concluded by highlighting how they innovate to meet the expectations of digitally savvy end customers.

The last and most interesting session was the award ceremony for partners in Saudi Arabia and Gulf region. In Saudi Arabia, Al Moammar Information Systems, MIS, won the prestigious award of The Value Creator. The Difference Maker award went to Baud Telecom Company, BTC. Solutions by STC was named the Technology Partner of the year while MDS for Computer Systems won the Best Coverage Partner award. National Computer Systems NATCOM bagged the Growth Driver recognition.

In the gulf region, Mannai won the Value Creator award. Technology Partner of the Year award was given to CNS. Best Coverage Partner of the year for Gulf was given to OCS Oman and for UAE the award went to EBM, part of Midis Group. INTERTEC won the Growth Driver award.

EVENTS

GCF holds Thales Luna Network HSM and F5 Big-IP VirtualSummit Global CIO Forum successfully hosted Secure your Network Traffic with Thales Luna Network HSM and F5 Big-IP VirtualSummit.

Thales Luna HSM and Thales Luna Cloud HSM services integrate with BIG-IP’s Local Traffic Manager, LTM, to secure the network over which BIG-IP delivers applications.

SPEAKERS: l

Lakhwinder Singh, Presales Manager,

Middle East, Turkey & Africa, Thales Muaz Hawari, Senior Solutions Engineer – Gulf & Levant at F5 Networks l Blair Canavan, Digital Identity & Security Team, Thales Singh started by highlighting why implementing data security is a complex problem.

He discussed explosive data growth, evolving compliance requirements, operational complexity and rapidly increasingly data breaches l

GCF and Exclusive Networks hold summit on Advanced WAF Global CIO Forum in association with Exclusive Networks hosted VirtualSummit on Think App Security First: Advanced threats require an advanced WAF. In times of rising cyberattacks, organisations need to protect their applications with behavioural analytics, proactive bot defence, and application-layer encryption of sensitive

data. F5 helps in protecting business with Advanced Web Application Firewall, WAF, that can improve security posture and save costs.

Not all WAF solutions are the same. While many can help an organisation protect their apps from common and known threats, most are inadequate against the myriad of attacks across the evolving risk landscape. The virtual

are making data security difficult.

Thales’ Unified data protection approach helps in key pillars, Discover, Protect, Control for data protection with a data-centric security approach, he added. Data has to be protected not only on-premise but also on the move. Singh elaborated on Thales portfolio which helps customers achieve flexible and scalable encryption.

Attackers leverage all the blind spots in encryption. Hawari highlighted how F5 helps in protecting customers and shared some use cases of inbound SSL orchestration. Canavan highlighted why customers should use Thales’ Luna Network HSMs. He spoke about integration with BIG-IP’s platform modules for securing the network over which BIG-IP delivers applications.

Canavan elaborated that Luna Network HSM stores BIG-IP’s certificates and encryption keys in FIPS-validated hardware, ensuing high-assurance crypto protection.

The speaker presentations were followed by an engaging Q&A session where the unique proposition of Thales and F5 was highlighted along with some use cases.

summit focused on how F5 AWAF introduces unique capabilities to the WAF market.

Speakers at event were Faris AbuJoudeh, Vendor Manager, Exclusive Networks and Serge Ghanem, Technical Solutions Manager, Exclusive Networks ME. AbuJoudeh spoke about how digital experience is about delivering a mix of traditional and modern services. Customers demand a high-quality digital experience, but it is full of challenges to deliver such services, he added.

AbuJoudeh highlighted that complex environment, vulnerabilities and limited resources are the challenges in providing digital experience but F5 has come up with a solution that bridges gap between multiple environments.

Ghanem highlighted that exploitation of APIs and vulnerability of sensitive data are the top challenges for organisations moving to digital transformation. Ghanem covered the key capabilities of Advanced WAF which include threat campaign protection, advanced bot protection, L7 and behaviour-based DoS protection, credential stuffing protection, Client-side credential protections and API protection.

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marketing@asbisme.ae

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CHANNEL

Spire Solutions to distribute Nemesysco’s voice analytics solutions

SANJEEV WALIA, Founder and President of Spire Solutions.

Nemesysco, a provider of voice analytics technologies and solutions for genuine emotion detection, and Spire Solutions, a value added distributor in Middle East and Africa, have signed a partnership agreement. Spire Solutions will distribute Nemesysco’s voice analytics technologies and solutions across the Gulf Region.

Spire Solutions will initially be focusing on promoting the human resources application of Nemesysco’s Layered Voice Analysis, LVA, technology in the UAE. Nemesysco’s LVA technology is designed to reveal the genuine emotional state of a person. LVA detects and measures uncontrolled psychophysiological changes to a person’s voice during open conversations. The technology is indifferent to language or the content of speech and can detect and measure a range of emotions, including excitement, enthusiasm, assertiveness, aggression, stress, frustration, fatigue and more.

Spire Solutions is offering a voice analytics service based on Nemesysco’s LVA technology to the human resource departments of enterprises and government organisations.

This service allows managers and HR profes-

VIVEK GUPTA, Co-Founder and COO at CyberKnight.

CyberKnight becomes sole distributor for Netwrix, Stealthbits in ME CyberKnight has extended its relationship with one of its technology partners, Stealthbits to become sole Middle East distributor for Netwrix. Stealthbits and Netwrix had merged in January 2021. The partnership will enable CyberKnight customers to address challenges related to identifying and detecting data security risk as well as protecting, responding, and recovering from cybersecurity attacks.

Gartner predicts that through 2024, 80% of information governance programmes that do not include unstructured, semi-structured and structured data into the same governance programme will fail, up from 30% today. In addition, fragmented solutions in the data security market prevent organisations from building comprehensive security strategies to protect their sensitive and regulated data.

sionals to assess the personalities of candidates, including evaluating levels of honesty, and identify potential risks based on measurements of genuine emotional responses to questions during interviews and pre-employment testing.

These personality and risk assessments based on genuine emotion analysis allow HR teams to optimise their candidate selection processes by utilising highly accurate data with higher levels of predictability than was previously available. This service can also be used to conduct personality and risk assessments of existing employees and even external contractors and suppliers.

Spire Solutions has already begun large-scale proof-of-concept trials of its voice analytics service for a number of government organisations and enterprises the region. Spire Solutions will also be targeting law enforcement agencies, call centres and financial service providers with a solution for risk assessment based on Nemesysco’s LVA technology. At a later stage, Spire Solutions is planning to expand the geographic reach for Nemesysco’s solutions it is offering to include additional countries across the Middle East and selected countries in Africa.

DESC ties up with Thales for cybersecurity initiatives The Dubai Electronic Security Centre, DESC, has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Thales Group. As part of the agreement, the two parties will collaborate in different strategic initiatives to achieve the city cybersecurity vision. Both parties will work towards achieving the objectives of the cyber smart society and innovation domains within Dubai cybersecurity strategy.

Moreover, the parties will work towards developing the platform to improve the cyber resilience of the city and offering solutions to the government and semi government entities in Dubai. The partnership agreement coincides with the world’s increasing dependence on digital services, as a result of the Covid-19, which continues to highlight the importance of protecting technological infrastructure and cyberspace in order to ensure business continuity.

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CHANNEL

(left to right) Bard Myrstad, CEO and Erik Leung, COO, Simplifai; Mario M Veljovic, GM, VAD Technologies.

VAD Technologies to fast-track Simplifai’s ME market penetration Simplifai has entered into a strategic partnership agreement with VAD Technologies, one of the largest distributors of IT and technology services in the Middle East. VAD’s strategic partnership agreement with Simplifai covers Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman.

Simplifai develops automation solutions using artificial intelligence, AI, to help clients across

numerous industry sectors to grow and cut costs. The company has recently added several high-profile companies to their customer list, including Shaadi.com, a match making service with more than 35 million users globally, Nevigate, a global network service provider based in Singapore and The National Archives of Norway.

During the past six months, Simplifai has trained VAD’s employees and several business partners in Simplifai’s AI tools and systems, conducted a pilot test with a VAD customer, and established several sales processes that are ongoing and could materialise in new contracts.

Bård Myrstad, CEO of Simplifai said that the purpose of the deal is of course to drive sales in the Middle East, but there are additional mechanics in the agreement that incentivises both parties to contribute towards building up a permanent Simplifai subsidiary in the region.

It allows them to set up an immediate presence and fast-track market penetration, but without incurring substantial costs while doing so, he added.

Bulwark partners with Skurio for digital risk protection platform

JOSE THOMAS MENACHERRY, Managing Director, Bulwark Technologies.

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Bulwark Technologies, value-added distributor of IT security and cybersecurity in the Middle East has announced a new partnership with Skurio, a leader in digital risk protection technology. The deal brings an innovative new capability to Bulwark’s portfolio, adding a data centric approach to cybersecurity that is now available to businesses across the Middle East & Africa.

The Skurio Digital Risk Protection platform is a fully automated solution that searches the surface, deep and dark web for breaches of critical business data and potential cyber threats to an organisation. The solution offers protection to customers from risks and threats to revenue, reputation, and regulatory compliance, to keep them safe and minimise damage and costs from a breach.

Jose Thomas Menacherry, Managing Director, Bulwark Technologies said that with Skurio, they can offer every organisation the ability to reveal their spectrum of digital risk, so that they can take action to mitigate it. Skurio is an innovative solution that automates and penetrates outside the network for potential threats and thus addresses the current cyber threat landscape in the region, Thomas added.

CHANNEL

(left to right) Yaron Tal, CEO and Founder, Reposify; Melwin Dsouza, CEO, SecureNet.

SecureNet signs distribution agreement with Reposify SecureNet, a cybersecurity value added distributor headquartered in Dubai has announced a distribution agreement with Reposify, vendor of external attack surface management solutions.

SecureNet will market Reposify’s platform to resellers throughout the UAE. Organisations’ networks continue to disperse across multiple environments, the supply chain and beyond the visible perimeter. This is further accelerated by digital transformation initiatives

and the shift into remote work.

35% of breaches in recent years were caused by unknown exposures and vulnerabilities that could have been avoided. While attackers are continuously scanning the Internet for exposed assets to target, organisations rely on traditional risk assessment solutions built for known networks which leave major visibility gaps in their IT ecosystem.

Reposify’s external attack surface management platform empowers organisations with unparalleled visibility and tools to discover, remediate and continuously monitor for critical exposures, misconfigurations and shadow IT risks across their extended IT ecosystems.

Reposify’s Internet mapping technology combined with its big data and machine learning engines, generate an accurate and real-time digital footprint for every organisation. A wide range of security risks are automatically detected and prioritised by the platform in order for security and IT teams to resolve more issues in less time. Reposify is a subscription-based SaaS platform and requires no installation or setup.

Acronis acquires its South African partner Synapsys

PETER FRENCH, Managing Director, Synapsys.

Acronis has announced the acquisition of Synapsys, its long-time partner located in Cape Town, South Africa that specialises in distributing Acronis Cyber Protection Solutions through the service provider channel. Marking the latest move in the company’s accelerated growth plan, it is Acronis’ fourth acquisition in the past eighteen months.

After a planned transition period, Synapsys will be integrated into Acronis and will be responsible for all Africa sales of Acronis’ cyber protection solutions.

Synapsys is a channel-centric group of companies that delivers Acronis Cyber Protection Solutions to thousands of customers through a network of sub-distributors, resellers, and managed service providers, MSPs, in South Africa and across the continent. It comprises two businesses: Synapsys Systems, a specialist software distributor and the region’s Authorised Acronis Distributor for on-premises solutions since 2003, and Synapsys Distribution, which services the MSP market using the Acronis Cyber Cloud service provider platform.

The acquisition dovetails perfectly with Acronis’ ongoing Global, Local Initiative, which aims to provide expanded in-country access to the company’s worldwide resources. As demand for cloud and managed services increases around the world, it creates opportunities for service providers who deliver Acronis Cyber Protection Solutions. The Global, Local Initiative reflects the company’s commitment to stay close to its partners and help them grow their business while protecting their clients against modern threats.

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CHANNEL

Mindware signs distribution agreement for Cibecs Endpoint Cloud Mindware, one of the leading Value Added Distributors, VADs, in the Middle East and Africa, has signed a distribution agreement with Cibecs, a leading South Africa based provider of data management and protection technology. As per the agreement, Mindware will promote, distribute, and provide implementation services support across the Middle East for the vendor’s flagship Endpoint Cloud solution.

Cibecs Endpoint Cloud is a powerful cloud platform built for Azure, allowing IT departments and Managed Service Providers, MSPs, to easily manage highly distributed and remote workforces, centralise, consolidate, and secure business data remotely, meet compliance regulations and drastically reduce desktop support costs.

Mindware will primarily target MSPs and the government sector, two areas where Cibecs has traditionally had great success. MSPs need to help customers eliminate risk, manage data efficiently, reduce spend and achieve compliance. Cibecs is helping MSPs solve data management challenges and save over 50% on their end-user data support costs.

Cibecs is also very experienced in working within large government accounts. The solution can be deployed on-premise or in a locally hosted Azure cloud vault, respecting data sovereignty. The company’s patent-pending Zero Knowledge Encryption Key Management ensures that data is stored in the cloud without any compromise in security, which is a key priority for government agencies.

Mindware partners with Circularo to enter eSignature market

SILMI KHANFIR, Director of Cloud and XaaS, Mindware.

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Mindware has signed a partnership in the GCC region with Circularo. Circularo eSigning and Agreement Management Platform is quickly becoming a critical part of business continuity and remote work initiatives as many companies recognise the importance of signing contracts and other business documents securely online, both within and outside their organisation network.

The platform fits very well into many digital transformation and paperless initiatives as it enables the organisations to prepare, sign, track and organise agreements online in hours, not days. Circularo Digital Signatures are compliant with world-class standards of security, privacy, data protection, and electronic signature industry regulations.

It is one of very few international vendors being both certified by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, TRA, in the UAE, and at the same time, meeting the local data residency laws. The solution is fully arabised, providing great both right-to-left user experience for Arabic users and left-to-right for the English-speaking users.

Circularo provides the technology platform and Software-as-a-Service, SaaS, fully managed in Microsoft Azure. Its seamless Microsoft 365 online integration and built-in document management capabilities make a real difference. Mindware will provide 24x7 system monitoring and technical support. For enterprise customers, the company guarantees 99.95% uptime availability of the platform. The solution brings additional benefits to Microsoft customers who can leverage their existing investments.

CHANNEL

(left to right) Vivek Gupta, Co-Founder and COO, CyberKnight; Wael Jaber, VP of Technology and Services, CyberKnight.

CyberKnight launches ransomware solution stack Ransomware can cost companies millions of Dollars, as well as impact reputation. According to Gartner, the average cost of a ransomware payment in 2020 was approximately $178,000, a significant increase from $80,000 in 2019. In 2020, research has shown that the

ANAND CHOUDHA, Co-Founder and CEO, Spectrami.

average dwell time for ransomware was 13 days, with an average of 18 days of downtime reported.

Yet, based on Gartner’s analysis of clients’ ransomware preparedness, over 90% of ransomware attacks are preventable. By following

basic security fundamentals, security and risk management leaders can mitigate the risk. To support regional customers with prevention, detection, and mitigation of ransomware, CyberKnight has introduced a comprehensive solution stack which covers the entire attack cycle: l Next-generation endpoint security: EDR

by Crowdstrike; Browser Isolation by Cyberinc l External and internal threat intelligence: Deception by Attivo; Attacker-centric Intelligence by Crowdstrike l Phishing Defence, Security Awareness and Training: Anti-Phishing by Phishrod; AntiSpoofing by Valimail l User Behavioural Analytics: Stealthbits – Netwrix l Compromise assessment and incident response services: Crowdstrike CyberKnight offers channel partners in the Middle East comprehensive pre-sales and post sales services, so there is no specialised training programme required to effectively implement the ransomware solution stack at customer sites. CyberKnight’s technical teams have the product know-how required to architect, implement, and support the solutions, and in turn train partners, enabling them with the same expert capabilities to support their customers.

Tala Security signs Spectrami as value-added distributor in ME

Spectrami has partnered with Tala Security, the global leader in web application data protection and client-side security as their value-added distributor in the Middle East. As the value-added distributor for Tala Security in the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey, Spectrami will conduct technical and sales workshops, run proof of concept, extend pre-sales, implementation, and postsales support to its partners across the region.

Tala’s comprehensive portfolio includes both Tala-Protect and Tala-Detect ensuring comprehensive data flow analysis together with the means to control it. This innovative combination of capabilities ensures attacks are prevented in real-time, data privacy and integrity are assured and the need for costly and continuous administration or incident response is minimised. Tala’s solutions have no impact on website performance or user experience – and no code integration is required.

Tala Security’s ‘Global Data at Risk – 2020 State of the Web’ report which analyses the security posture of Alexa top 1,000 websites reveals a troubling lack of security controls required to prevent data theft and client-side attacks like Magecart, formjacking, cross-site scripting, and credit card skimming. These attacks exploit vulnerable JavaScript integrations that run on 99% of websites globally.

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CHANNEL

IFS expands service management business with acquisition of Axios Systems IFS has signed a definitive agreement to purchase Axios Systems, a global provider of cloud-based Enterprise Service Management, ESM, software.

Recognised as a leader in IT Service Management, ITSM, and IT Operations Management, ITOM, Axios Systems has built a reputation for the quality of its omnichannel service management solution.

IFS is where service and value for customers come first. In the recent launch of IFS Cloud and in its growth strategy, IFS delivered on its goal to bring to market technology and industry-specific capabilities that support the customers’ journey to digitalisation and help them evolve to become more outcome and service-led. More and more companies are turning to IFS to help them deliver when it matters most to their customers at the Moment of Service.

Over the years, IFS has significantly invested in its Service Management business, which grew over 100% year on year in 2020. The acquisition of Axios Systems adds further depth to IFS’s capabilities with

DARREN ROOS, CEO, IFS.

McAfee adds new partners to Security Innovation Alliance McAfee has announced new partnerships with leading Zero-Trust Network Access, ZTNA, vendors, providing enhanced security to ZTNA deployments for enterprise customers.

Appgate, Axis Security, and TransientX join the McAfee Security Innovation Alliance, SIA, programme, which will include certifying their integrations with McAfee technology as part of the SIA open-provider approach to Zero-Trust. This builds on McAfee’s existing zero-trust initiatives, including participation in Google Cloud’s BeyondCorp Alliance.

The shift to remote work over the past year has accelerated the need to secure access to business-critical apps and data. Recent polling

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JAVED HASAN, Global Head, Product Strategy and Alliances at McAfee.

shows that over half of workers in the US now work at home some or all of the time. Cloudnative app development with containers has nearly doubled in a year, placing more internal apps outside of the corporate data centre.

VPNs have not kept up with these changes, proving expensive to scale while complicating and slowing down cloud access. Enterprises

new ITSM and ITOM functionality that will help companies improve the design and automation of workflows, drive efficiency internally, and connect data across teams and systems to ultimately create opportunities to better serve its customers. The combination of IFS and Axios Systems is instrumental in extending IFS’s ambition to cement itself as the market leader in the Service space.

Like all elements of the IFS proposition, the customer can deploy Axios Systems’ Enterprise Service Management capabilities as a best-of-breed point solution or integrate it with other capabilities built into IFS Cloud. This puts IFS in a unique position to offer an end-to-end service solution that supports employees internally and in the field, as well as businesses as they deliver products, outcomes or indeed services. For the first time, customers will be able to connect both worlds and create a new level of visibility across their value chain so that they can delight customers in delivering great Moments of Service.

need a secure method to access their internal apps in the public cloud and datacentre efficiently from anywhere. By shifting away from VPNs to ZTNA, enterprises can reduce their cost and complexity, while providing faster access to critical resources.

The trends driving demand for secure access to business-critical apps and data are part of a larger movement to abstract the corporate network away from the datacentre to enable work from anywhere for a distributed workforce, providing connectivity and security as a service from the cloud in an architecture known as a Secure Access Service Edge, SASE. As enterprises move towards this architecture, the ability to protect their data and prevent threats outside of the datacentre perimeter is critical. The McAfee SASE security service, MVISION Unified Cloud Edge, performs threat and data protection at every control point in a single pass to help improve user experience and productivity, reduce the cost of security, and simplify management.

Together with access partners for ZTNA and SD-WAN, enterprises can shift to a high-security SASE architecture with industry-leading data and threat protection.

SECURITY

Top industry comments on $50M ransomware attack on Acer In the biggest ever ransomware attack, hackers have demanded $50 Million from Acer. According to reports, hackers have accessed Acer’s financial documents compromising Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerability. The REvil group which attacked Travelex last year is said to be behind this attack. Below are the comments from top industry experts.

MOREY HABER, CTO and CISO at BeyondTrust.

Now instead of asking for additional funding to purchase and implement security solutions, the message to the C-suite is more direct, we will be hacked, and we will experience ransomware at some point. For example, security professionals are now saying that their best defence is to have a proper plan to handle it when it does occur.

This includes well-rehearsed incident response plans and breach notification procedures.

As Acer has now become the latest victim, and the ransomware is allegedly $50 Million, these extra steps are now more important than ever before.

MORGAN WRIGHT, Chief Security Advisor at SentinelOne. The initial reporting indicates that Acer may have been compromised by exploiting the known vulnerabilities in the on-premise Microsoft Exchange server. The exploit was recently used by threat actors from China called Hafnium. Once information about the zero-day exploit becomes known, the race is on to build the countermeasures, patches, and get them to vulnerable customers in time. On the other hand, once the patch has been published, it is up to the end user to apply and test the patch.

Criminal organisations will never be first to market with novel exploits developed by nation states. The danger is they will always be a fast second.

PAUL BAIRD, Chief Technology Security Officer at Qualys.

GREGORY CARDIET, Security Engineering Director, EMEA at Vectra AI.

When attack claims begin to surface online, speculations quickly follow. If a business can address those reports swiftly, they can reduce concerns from customers, shareholders, suppliers, and the security community. Being honest and factual can help everyone know what is taking place, as well as show other companies how to address those same problems. In these instances, businesses should try to be as proactive and transparent as possible by issuing a prompt, factual and detailed response. Without this, rumours continue, and reputations can be irreparably damaged.

We are now in a second phase of an attack, where the speed of Exchange servers that are going to be infected by malicious actors are going to be discovered at an increased pace. On daily or hourly basis, companies of all sizes are going to be in the news for having an Exchange hack. This second wave of attack was already predictable.

In coming days focus will be where all other attackers try for a land grab, opportunistically using the exploit to compromise systems without a clear intent to use before all systems are patched; most target systems are eventually patched, and most people try to clean out their infrastructure and will know much later if they have been affected by a more silent offender.

SAM CURRY, CSO at Cybereason.

VENU VISSAMSETTY, VP Security Research, Attivo Networks.

Defenders can take the high ground when it comes to preventing future ransomware attacks, but it takes security maturity to do this. Companies must engage in programmes that minimise the impact and likelihood of ransomware; deploy prevention and recovery technology; get the right insurance in place and plan contingencies and ensure continuity of security operations.

All of this must be tested, regularly, and improved; and this involves all the departments of the organisation from legal to marketing to finance and IT.

The reported Acer ransomware attack shows that attackers use multiple campaigns to discover security weaknesses and get a foothold into organisations.

Organisations can still get ahead of these attacks.

Applying data cloaking and establishing a zero-trust architecture is critical for stopping attackers from getting deeper into the trust stack. By preventing attackers from discovering high privilege accounts in Active Directory and denying access to files, folders, or mapped network and cloud shares, attackers cannot locate or access the data they seek. This serves as a powerful defence against data theft and ransomware attacks.

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COVER STORY

AUTOMATING

BUSINESS PROCESSES

Top industry executives look at the drives of robotic process automation and how it is benefitting transformation of regional enterprises.

ALI AL SHAMI, Red Hat

STEPHEN GILL, Heriot-Watt University Dubai

FIRAS SAIFAN,Technology Strategies Middle East

WISSAM YOUSSEF, CME

GEORGES EL MIR, Schneider Electric

SANJUKTA RAY, DUBAI LEADING TECHNOLOGIES

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COVER STORY

RED HAT

INTEGRATING BUSINESS AND IT THROUGH PROCESS AUTOMATION Business process and decision modeling, are enhanced, while analytics come to the forefront of importance as dashboards and reports can be generated.

R

ed Hat Process Automation, which is part of the Red Hat Middleware portfolio, is a set of products for intelligently automating business decisions, processes, and operations.

Comprising comprehensive frameworks, integration solutions, runtimes, and more, this same portfolio helps businesses create a unified environment for application development and delivery.

Two of these are Red Hat Process Automation Manager and Red Hat Decision Manager, which are platforms for developing containerised microservices and applications that drive automation. The other is Red Hat Runtimes, which is a set of products, tools, and components for developing and maintaining cloud-native applications.

There are several drivers behind the demand for automated business processes that the suite previously mentioned provides. Firstly, better collaboration between IT and business is a certainty because business users are empowered to create end-user apps that seamlessly interact with runtime services.

Business process, decision modeling, and business rules management are also enhanced, while analytics come to the forefront of importance as dashboards and reports can be generated using advanced business activity monitoring.

Meanwhile, dynamic case management accounts for unstructured processes and uses complex multi-part forms across many devices and browsers, while Red Hat’s repository for business logic definitions is also hugely beneficial.

First and foremost, implementation is a business process automation challenge. How to deploy process automation technology that supports specific IT strategies must be established, especially since aging infrastructure often cannot accommodate new business requirements in the long-term. Therefore, organisations should focus on building a cloudnative foundation to avoid unmanageable complexities later.

There are also several other challenges related to the automation of business processes, including employee resistance, selecting inappropriate processes, difficulties automating end-to-end processes, and technical and operational issues that could arise.

The business process is a management practice used to automate tasks that are repeatable and have a common pattern, with a focus on optimisation by perfecting a process. Business processes are usually modeled with clearly defined paths leading to a business goal. This requires a lot of predictability, usually based on mass-production principles.

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ALI AL SHAMI,

Country Manager, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

Business process is a management practice used to automate tasks that are repeatable and have a common pattern However, many real-world applications cannot be described completely from start to finish including all possible paths, deviations, and exceptions.

Using a process-oriented approach in certain cases can lead to complex solutions that are hard to maintain.

Case management provides problem resolution for non-repeatable, unpredictable processes as opposed to the efficiency-oriented approach of BPM for routine, predictable tasks. It manages one-off situations when the process cannot be predicted in advance.

A case definition usually consists of loosely coupled process fragments that can be connected directly or indirectly to lead to certain milestones and ultimately a business goal, while the process is managed dynamically in response to changes that occur during run time.

Red Hat helps all clients with their respective transformation projects with an extensive global partner network that supports business automation projects. Red Hat partners are certified in process automation, as well as BPM approaches, business rules implementation, and system integration.

Integration with applications such as Siebel CRM, SAP HR, ChatBots and telephony are achievable in RHPAM using the custom Service Task implementation discussed in the External System Connectivity & API’s section.

However, given the current level of information, Red Hat believes a more scalable, maintainable and efficient approach would be to introduce an additional integration layer implemented as a modular set of microservices and focusing on cloud native development practices. ë

COVER STORY

TECHNOLOGY STRATEGIES MIDDLE EAST

LEVERAGING VENDOR PLATFORMS TO DELIVER CUSTOMISED SOLUTIONS TSME works with automation solution providers such as Software AG, Automation Anywhere, MongoDB, COGNIGY, Outsystems, APQC and provides customised solutions.

T

SME works with leading automation solution providers such as Software AG, Automation Anywhere, MongoDB, COGNIGY, Outsystems and APQC. Furthermore, it also has its own proprietary product such as CUBES that aid automation of organisational governance. This has enabled TSME to offer automation solutions to its customers.

TSME customers have an advantage of receiving a customised suite tailored to their requirements by opting for different services from different vendor partners. For instance, ARIS and Alfabet from Software AG lays the foundation and creates a robust framework for a sound automation implementation, while RPA from Automation Anywhere is a key automation tool.

Recent collaborations with Outsystems for their low-code platform and with MongoDB are now a part of the suite. Besides that, TSME’s proprietary tool CUBES automates operational governance.

At the beginning of this year, TSME has efficiently implemented RPA and BPM automation for Abu Dhabi Customs. This automation and re-engineering overhaul of its various processes will accelerate global trade in the region via Abu Dhabi ports.

BOTS is one of the biggest examples in present times for automation of processes. Instead of a big fleet of employees for a customer call centre, BOTS are rapidly gaining preference by businesses due to results that leading to enhanced customer service and cost benefits.

The four drivers for the ever-increasing demand for business process automation are also the benefits of the process itself.

PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVEMENT

Standardisation is key to success of businesses as it leads to building reputation in the long run. Automation is a big driver to eliminate redundant processes, increase standardisation in the bargain and limit any or all errors. This impetus to productivity is a big incentive to automate processes as it also translates into efficient and effective use of all resources that eventually increases profitability.

COST ADVANTAGE

Keeping costs low is vital in a highly competitive scenario where customers change loyalties only to opt for partners with lesser costs. It is therefore important to automate process that aid in cost reductions while also enhancing speed of delivery.

Firas Saifan,

Managing Director.

TSME has its own proprietary product called CUBES that aids automation of governance CUSTOMER RELATIONS

Collective impact of the above two drivers leads to the most important one – better customer relations that results in longevity of the partnership which plays a key role to success for any business.

These triple-crown factors of business, that is increased revenues, decreased costs and improved customer relationships propels automation.

Most of the challenges to automation are intangible in nature. Some of them are listed below: MINDSET

This is the single biggest challenge that hampers automation. Lack of alignment between the management and employees, fear of losing jobs to automation, lack of staff training to handle the changed processes are some of the mindset challenges that affect automation.

OBJECTIVES AND MEASUREMENT

Lack of a strategic road map along with anticipated gains results in failure of the plan. Commencing the change without definitive and measurable milestones will lead to confusion and doubt in the investment to automation and therefore may be stopped midway.

RIGIDITY AND AGILITY

Being agile and nimble versus taking up a big transformative commitment is key. While a foresight with a long-term automation readiness is imperative, phasing it out into smaller milestones with a levy to course change or correct is important. Lack of agility can result not only in financial losses but also loss of confidence for the team. ë

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COVER STORY

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

ROLLING OUT AUTOMATION IN INDUSTRIAL PLANT OPERATIONS Manufacturers should embrace open standards and interoperable, automation software components, much as the IT and technology industries have in recent years.

I

n various industrial sectors, new software tools such as the Schneider Electric Manufacturing Execution System, a complete control and supervisory system, enables remote control and monitoring of widely distributed, linked assets, helping to increase operational efficiency in a way that enables operators to make faster, error-free process decisions.

By accessing a seamless, reliable, and accurate data flow, operators see a complete picture of plant and network operations, enabling them to manage continuous improvement while providing the flexibility to adapt to changing market demands. Such agility can lower operations cost by up to 20% through saved workforce hours and optimised production.

Agile enterprises have a certain boldness not seen in traditional manufacturing or process settings. As opposed to making tentative moves, they embrace innovative automation technologies to make step change-level operational improvements.

Future industrial strategy should be founded on three core pillars: universal automation, sustainable efficiency, and software-centric automation. These create a firm base for protecting the environment and improving health and safety, whilst also enabling real-time data sharing and remote operation. This results in greater sustainability and improvements in productivity and cost savings, ensuring that can be scaled at pace.

Many industrial ecosystems are not open and interoperable by design. New technology often is not compatible and cannot be implemented easily into existing systems, which only slows an industry’s ability to evolve and improve industrial processes.

Instead, manufacturers should embrace open standards and interoperable, plug and produce, automation software components, much as the IT and technology industries have in recent years. When partners share insight and develop based on open standards, it becomes much easier to adopt the game-changing AI technologies that can transform industries for the better.

Modern manufacturing and process industries take an end-to-end and collaborative approach to automation design and operation. For example, leaders in the mining, minerals and metal industries have open systems that share information via structures such as integrated operations centers.

On the other hand, universal automation is the world of plug and

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GEORGES EL MIR,

Vice President Industrial Automation for Middle East and Africa.

Industrial strategy should be founded on three pillars: universal automation, sustainable efficiency, software-centric automation produce automation software components that solve specific problems in a proven way. Such an approach is particularly effective in logistics industries where coordination and integration between disparate vendor systems emerges as a critical success factor for enabling rapid product deliveries.

Other partnerships include ProLeiT, which provides software optimised for the consumer goods marketplace, including food and beverage, chemicals, and life sciences segments. And Schneider Electric also works with OSIsoft on industrial software. RIB offers a software platform for planning, costing and real-time construction monitoring, as one of the leading players in the broader field of building information modelling.

Schneider Electric’s business automation solutions can be found in every industry, including energy, FMCG, infrastructure and transportation and every country across the region. Companies Schneider Electric works with in the Middle East include Samir Abbas Hospital, Almarai, Education City, Qatar Foundation, ADNOC, and Kuwait Oil Company. ë

COVER STORY

HERIOT-WATT UNIVERSITY DUBAI

MODERN DAY WORK SATISFACTION ALSO DRIVING AUTOMATION For the digitally savvy worker, business process automation is a means of achieving efficiency, productivity and increasingly important, job satisfaction.

STEPHEN GILL,

M

odern employees are increasingly looking for meaning in their jobs – which cannot be found in routine, repetitive tasks. The demand for process automation has increased as an employee-facing tool not just as a customer-facing tool. For the digitally savvy worker, business process automation is a means of achieving efficiency, productivity and job satisfaction.

Moreover, businesses that understand the value of digital transformation recognise that automation allows them to get more done in less time, using less resources, and with less chances of manual error. As a result, the business realises significant time and cost savings, which ultimately improves customer satisfaction and the company’s bottom line.

The integration of various systems and tools can be tricky at times. Automation that occurs across multiple systems is incredibly useful but is also an incredibly complex process.

Process standardisation is one of the most challenging aspects of implementing automation.

In other words, the more complex the process, the more challenging and costly it is to implement automation. Hence, this requires working with an experienced IT consultancy that can

Businesses that understand digital transformation recognise that automation allows them to get more done in less time

Academic Head, School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences.

Modern employees are looking for meaning in their jobs, which cannot be found in routine, repetitive tasks help find the right solutions that talk to each other and that will allow you to capitalise on the many advantages of business process automation.

Business process automation use cases include employee onboarding eliminating the need for endless paperwork; invoice processing solving delayed PO approvals; and provisioning new users saving highly skilled IT talent the time spent on manual, repetitive tasks. Besides HR, Finance, and IT, many other functional departments such as sales and marketing can also benefit from business process automation.

One such example is sales automation that helps users manage all aspects of the sales cycle through a streamlined sales process so that business leads can be effectively converted into new customers by automating the important yet repetitive, time consuming tasks. ë

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COVER STORY

CME

EASE OF CUSTOMISATION DRIVING AUTOMATION PARTNERSHIPS It is impossible to have ready-made products that tailor to every enterprise requirement, and creating customised solutions will drive partnerships.

C

ME specialises in business process automation, providing a multitude of bespoke solutions that cater to specific client requirements and leverage new technologies like artificial intelligence, optical character recognition, Internet of Things, and more. For example, a smart infrared thermometer coupled with image recognition helps automating food safety processes by identifying the products and their temperate range for compliance purposes.

For medical claims, the HIIP platform automates pre-authorisation and approval management, benefitting administrators, claimants, and insurance companies. There are several other prominent CME automation solutions, including credit cards enrollment, radiology process, data governance in energy, and telco billing reconciliation.

There are two business process automation priorities that organisations commonly identify with – efficiency and cost reduction. These apply to every industry, and both are vital to sustainability. For example, automation eliminates manual efforts and human error. Whenever things are done manually, there is a higher probability for mistakes, and automation prevents such instances.

There are also common sub-objectives, such as compliance. Irrespective of sector, regulators have specific parameters that must be adhered to, but organisations cannot meet them solely through human interactions with systems. Crucially, digitalisation transforms business and operating models, implementing workflows and governance to ensure objectives are met.

The main business process automation challenge is existing legacy systems. The majority of today’s enterprises have been attempting to implement IT strategies for a long time now. Because they implemented different approaches, this resulted in legacy systems with basic workflows and functions.

However, such systems cannot achieve scalability, co-exist with new technologies, reduce the probability of human error, adhere to the latest compliance regulations, or automate advanced workflows.

Furthermore, it is not easy for employees to transition to a new system, resulting in internal resistance. Therefore, everyone must be aligned with organisational goals and support automation.

CME has various automation use cases. For banking, the company has a mobile app for credit card enrollment, with the application, data consent, and verification stages automated. Users scan their ID, get geolocated to avoid entering their details manually. Background checks

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WISSAM YOUSSEF,

Co-founder and CEO.

Automation eliminates manual efforts and human error

attain accurate information and are integrated in real-time with thirdparty systems.

Another example is the school management system for teachers to communicate better with families. CME digitised this process using tablets and phones, enabling teachers to send information to parents within minutes.

Besides access to information, consistency, and productivity, parent relationships and administration visibility have also become more robust.

In most cases, CME applications are developed from scratch and the main enabler is the company’s partnership with Microsoft. From a CME standpoint, this ensures specific requirements are met and particular workflows automated. Some tools are also leveraged through other market leaders.

For example, some companies use SAP or Oracle systems, with partners of choice really depending on their capabilities, requirements, and the industry in question. It is impossible to have a ready-made product that tailors to every enterprise requirement, and creating customised solutions for a specific enterprise or persisting challenge will always drive principal partnerships.

CME works with end users in various verticals, all of whom use the company’ products and solutions to automate their business processes.

For example, medical clinics implemented automation for radiologists to make accurate patient assessments and prioritise flows.

The smart infrared thermometer is used in the food supply chain solution in +40,000 restaurants to check products temperature, take corrective actions, and comply with regulations. The telecom phone billing solution is used by +40 million subscribers.

In the energy sector, real-time and secured data processes were automated. CME automation solutions span across several industries including banking, insurance, telecommunications, utilities, food, education, healthcare, retail. ë

COVER STORY

DUBAI LEADING TECHNOLOGIES

BEST OF BREED INTEGRATED SOLUTIONS TO MEET CUSTOMER NEEDS Offerings do not exist in silos, with focus on customer proposition and integrated solutions, through projects involving several software vendors.

A

ny business which places customer and employee engagement and communications at the heart of its operation benefits from automation.

This applies to all those sectors that use attendance and payments systems, client membership and loyalty programmes, and customer response processes.

Dubai Leading Technologies provides solutions for various sectors including FMCG; retail; leisure and hospitality; human resources, logistics; and government.

Dubai Leading Technologies also partners with global software provider, Ubility to offer comprehensive process automation in the employee communications sphere, through chatbots.

Dubai Leading Technologies works with Microsoft Azure for face verification and identity processes. It has formed a partnership with ESET for cybersecurity. For chatbot and response mechanisms it is using Ubility and for building management intelligent systems it is using Facilio.

Its offerings and products do not exist in silos, and customer proposition is focused on the provision of integrated solutions. Many of its projects involve technology of several software providers.

KEY DRIVERS AROUND AUTOMATION OF PROCESSES

The requirement for data analytics that can be used to increase efficiencies and improve performance across many business functions and operations within an organisation.

The need to minimize the potential of human error, and also for use in operations where human intervention might be detrimental through lack of consistency or exposure to uncontrollable external factors.

The need for the complete eradication of fraudulent malpractices, particularly in regards to attendance systems, or where weight or stock levels require accurate recording and logging The demand for increased efficiencies and consistency in responding to consumer and workforce queries, which an attendance system bolted by robotic chatbots can provide.

KEY CHALLENGES AROUND AUTOMATION OF PROCESSES

There is a human tendency to resist change and this reluctance can

SANJUKTA RAY,

CEO.

Its offerings and products do not exist in silos hinder the process.

Technical challenges whereby the process is slowed down due to lack of suitable connectivity or communications infrastructure.

Lack of proper knowledge and acumen at the implementation level could be detrimental to the execution and hinder the final outcome.

KEY IMPLEMENTATIONS INCLUDE

Weight automation solutions in Waste Management sector: Clients include Green Arabia; Suez and Accurate Meezan.

Membership and loyalty solutions in the government sector: Clients include, Sharjah Business Women’s Council; Sharjah Youth and Sajaya Young Ladies.

Attendance solutions across many sectors: Clients include, Pan Emirates; Tavola and Lafarge.

Cashless solutions across retail and leisure sector: Clients include, Origin of Management Company, Saudi Arabia.

HOMEGROWN SOLUTIONS INCLUDE

mAccess attendance solution - GPS capturing and face verification process for use by an organisation’s workforce, offering offline functionality.

Cashless solution – cashless transactions using NFC technology within a closed loop network, used by consumer facing organisations, largely from the leisure and retail sectors.

Membership and loyalty programme solution – Consistent and meaningful engagement with target audience and end-users, through personalized mobile applications. Applicable to multi sectors.

Weight Automation solutions – BLE and NFC enabled weight reading, applicable to waste management, logistics, warehousing and retail sectors. ë

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CHANNEL STREET

ADDING CLOUD, INTEGRATION GATEWAYS INTO PARTNER PROGRAMMES While in the past project creep, cost overruns, were part of large projects, AVEVA’s shift to digital can help partners make gains in those areas as well.

BY ARUN SHANKAR

T

he acceleration of digital transformation due to the challenges of the pandemic across all industries has triggered technology vendors to realign their partner programmes. A key initiative by industrial solutions vendor AVEVA, has been to familiarise channel partners with its recent cloud platform and gateway integration layers.

“For cloud, the model is changing in the Middle East. Earlier the Middle East was not a very cloud friendly environment. But after pandemic, regulations are easing, and we are finding customers are putting in their RFP and RFQ requirements,” says Dr Tariq Aslam, Head of Middle East and Africa, AVEVA. There is now the realisation that cloud does help to keep the costs down, and is necessary to face the customer and the internal workforce to

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increase the speed of operations.

AVEVA solutions hosted on Microsoft Azure face the end customers in the Middle East. “The relationship with Microsoft is a global one. We have a very good relationship, where we take them to some of our customers, and they take us to some of their customers,” says Dr Aslam.

To add the cloud in its go to market strategy, AVEVA has been providing its distributors with training and enablement. End customers are also offered a 90-day trial period to assess how asset performance and analytical insights can be generated using AVEVA’s cloud platform.

However, even prior to AVEVA’s adoption of the Microsoft Azure hyper scalar cloud platform, AVEVA system integrators who are active in the cloud SaaS space have been approaching the vendor for its cloud offerings.

CHANNEL STREET

Some AVEVA system integrator channel partners have already started on their cloud journey and are offering asset performance management and predictive analytics as a SaaS solution for large enterprises. “We are finding the system integrator part of our channel business is coming up with a number of innovative ideas,” reflects Dr Aslam.

This initiative is cost effective and gives a return for large enterprises, but is challenging for small and medium enterprises. “They are in discussions with us to build up the SaaS offering around EPM and to offer this to small and medium sized enterprises,” says Dr Aslam.

HIGHLIGHTS n Because of the importance of the MES layer, AVEVA partners with multiple ERP vendors to make this work. n

AVEVA solutions hosted on Microsoft Azure face

the end customers in the Middle East. n

The system integrator part of the channel is

coming up with a number of innovative ideas in cloud.

PARTNER PROGRAMME

n

The AVEVA partner programme includes distributors, large system integrators and niche system integrators. Some of AVEVA distributors include AITS across the Gulf, Peritus in Saudi Arabia, EBS in Kuwait and BASS in Egypt.

The role of distributors is to manage the channel across their geographies and they operate horizontally across all industries.

Industry expertise and vertical market solutions are provided by the system integrators.

“For each one of these partners we have separate programmes to enable and train them because their needs are different. System integrators are more focused on project support, while distributors are more focused on product and technology focus. We have different certifications and enablement programmes for them respectively,” says Dr Aslam.

While AVEVA is a strong player in oil and gas it has diversified significantly into other market segments. “If you look at Africa and Middle East we are also moving quite aggressively into mining, infrastructure and power,” he adds.

Amongst the key vertical markets where AVEVA operates are energy, oil and gas, manufacturing, food and beverages, mining, marine, infrastructure, smart cities, power and utilities.

AVEVA has also segmented its solutions into three categories including operational and control, asset performance management, and engineering.

it has diversified significantly into other market

AUTOMATING PRODUCTION

A flagship product that is helping AVEVA drive digital transformation into industries is its manufacturing execution system, MES. This connects the world of operational technology with information technology. Dr Aslam points

While AVEVA is a strong player in oil and gas

segments. n

AVEVA has segmented its solutions into three

categories, operational and control, asset performance management, engineering. n

MES layer is the glue between the IT and OT

systems and acts like a middleware. n

Medium to large system integrators would take

this work of deploying MES at the customer site. n

MES is the gateway to connecting with the ERP

layer.

DR TARIQ ASLAM,

Head of Middle East and Africa, AVEVA. out that AVEVA’s MES connects an enterprise’s ERP to the factory floor.

Whenever orders are generated in the ERP system, the MES helps to distribute these orders to the individual machines. Each order needs to be translated into a series of processes and steps on the factory floor. It is similar to connecting the office floor to the factory floor.

The MES layer is the glue between the IT and OT systems and acts like a middleware.

The MES is a central industrial bus where everything else can be connected and managed and controlled. It is also like an industrial API. MES is used in the industrial automation world, at a plant level, where there is production and an end-to-end control is required of the entire process. “You want to control that process flow through automation and that is where the MES layer will come in,” says Dr Aslam.

The MES layer is not required when commands need to be executed by individual machines, in a one-to-one fashion. However, for effective automation of an entire production floor, it is required to build the process end to end and to orchestrate and sync with the ERP application layer.

“When you want to connect an end-to-end production line, or when you want to connect the whole plant and monitor and manage the production as an end-to-end cycle, MES does it for you,” he explains. “MES is the gateway to connecting with the ERP layer.”

MES is typically implemented by AVEVA’S larger system integrators. “It is very heavy service work. Medium to large system integrators would take this work of deploying MES at the customer site,” clarifies Dr Aslam.

“But it is not part of everything that we sell.

It is not part of the digital twin solution, or when you are building an impact analysis,” for example, he points out.

Because of the importance of the MES layer, AVEVA partners with multiple ERP vendors to make this work. However, MES can also run independently, points out Dr Aslam.

With its recent emphasis on cloud solutions and industrial digital transformation, AVEVA’s go to market into multiple vertical industries in the Middle East and Africa, is likely to provide significant gains for its regional channel partners. ë

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CHANNEL STREET

DIGITAL INNOVATION IN VALUE-ADDED DISTRIBUTION Spectrami has digitally transformed its business to cope up with the new normal induced by Covid-19.

BY MANALI MISRA

T

he last twelve months have been challenging on all fronts. The Covid-19 pandemic has radically impacted the cybersecurity landscape. With the rise in remote work culture, the attack surface has become more distributed than ever. In 2020, the UAE alone saw a massive surge of 250% in the number of cyberattacks.

In terms of infrastructure, earlier it used to be all about securing customers’ network but now that perimeter network has moved away from office premises to people’s homes, cafes, and everywhere around the world. This became a big challenge, and no company was ready for a scenario where majority of the workforce has moved outside the office premises.

In current times, CISOs and the cybersecurity team not only have to open the networks, but also have to ensure that their assets are still secure. To tackle the accelerated pace of digital transformation, vendors and channel partners must innovate keeping in mind the security challenges. Anand Choudha, Co-Founder and CEO, Spectrami says that they are not only innovating because of a new strategy but also to adapt to the new normal.

Recently, Spectrami adopted AmiViz platform to transform its business digitally.

AmiViz is a one-of-a kind marketplace specially designed to serve enterprise resellers and customers. It serves as a classic example of innovation and disruption in the value-added distribution of solutions using technology as its core base.

While describing the CEC Virtual Lab of AmiViz Platform, Choudha points out that it simulates customer-specific environment in the cloud where they can virtually see the impact of the technology on the integrations. Choudha terms it as a big innovation as they are virtually being able to cater to the needs of the customers’ requirement of seeing the product perform as per their networks.

ANAND CHOUDHA,

Co-Founder and CEO, Spectrami.

Spectrami is not only innovating because of a new strategy but also to adapt to the new normal

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CHANNEL STREET

Most of the time you also need to understand the technology trends and be a leader in bringing some of the technologies

CTO helps in understanding the technology trends, the vendors who need to be on board and who are leading the innovation

Over the last ten years, Spectrami has developed end-to-end cybersecurity portfolio with leading-edge technologies. According to Choudha, they have been able to do that because of their approach of being connected with the customers, understanding the requirement, and then doing their internal research to find out the technologies that can help.

Choudha explains the external and internal role of a CTO in their company and why it is important. He says the CTO helps in understanding the technology trends, the vendors who need to be on board and who are leading the innovation.

Spectrami’s vendor extension model is all about bringing not just the established leading-edge technologies but also bringing in new technologies.

Whenever a new technology is brought to the region, the channel partners want to see how the technology works in the customer environments and the customers’ willingness to buy it.

Choudha demonstrates the importance of watching out for new trends by citing the example of Tenable and LogRhythm. He says that Spectrami was the first one to bring their technologies on board and after the initial struggle to establish them, today Tenable and LogRhythm are successful, multimillion Dollar companies. Most of the time you also need to understand the technology trends and be a leader in bringing some of the technologies, he adds.

For the new technologies, Spectrami acts as an extension model of the vendors in evangelising with customers. He stresses that Spectrami is a 100% channel company, and this is their way of contributing to all the things that they do for their resellers as well as for new vendors.

The security channel partners have adapted to digital technologies including cloud and opex model, but it has been very challenging. Choudha says that reseller partners are continuously finding ways to stay relevant with the cloud offerings where the vendors are keen on selling directly to the end users. However, few of them have successfully done their transformation on the services part.

Channel partners play an integral role where services need to be customised and technology transfer. A lot of migration services are involved along with integration with different clouds. Choudha says, this is where the reseller channel partners can play a big role and find a reason to be relevant to the end customers. The customers today are looking at integration and services partners and not just box pushers, Choudha concludes. ë

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The primary benefits of Sangfor HCI include simplicity, security, reliability, and costefficiency. Sangfor HCI has been simplified architecturally, it starts with two nodes and can be scaled out as needed. Management is made easy with ground-breaking drag and drop visualised operations.

Built on Sangfor’s powerful security capabilities, Sangfor HCI has been integrated with a wide range of security features such as distributed firewall and virtual application firewall to secure customer’s business. Reliability is always a top priority of product design, Sangfor HCI is no exception. A top-down and bottom-up reliability design has been implemented on Sangfor such as multi-data-copy, HA and backup and CDP to ensure the reliability of data plane and business plane.

When it comes to RoI, HCI is no doubt a better choice compared to traditional three-tier IT architecture, and in HCI, Sangfor delivers the best value out of customer’s investment. By

consolidating all the DC elements into a single platform, the hardware footprint as well as software footprint is drastically reduced. With a radically simplified architecture and easy-touse control plane, personnel investment can be massively saved, too. Not to mention the agility and shortened time to market that can be brought to customer’s business with Sangfor HCI. Sangfor HCI can be easily installed and configured with no complexity involved, it is like installing a Windows OS on your laptop, within half a day, the solution can be completely installed and run applications. An intuitive guiding wizard is involved through the whole installation and configuration process.

Sangfor has its own cloud management platform called SCP, Sangfor Cloud Platform.

SCP can be run on HCI as an option to turn HCI into a private cloud or managed cloud platform. All the cloud features including resource orchestration, multi-tenancy, billing and such are built on SCP to facilitate cloud transformation. Sangfor HCI starts from two nodes to sixty-four nodes for a single cluster deployment, with SCP included, hundreds of nodes can be deployed across multiple sites and managed centrally.

Sangfor HCI is well-designed and suitable to run in use cases like datacentre consolidation, running enterprise applications, data

FARHAN MANNAN KHAN, Country Manager, Sangfor.

protection and disaster recovery and cloud transformation. It is an ideal solution to transform legacy datacentre into a cloudoriented software-defined datacentre. Most enterprise applications can be run on HCI without any issue, these applications include database like Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, enterprise applications like CRM, ERP, HRM and industry applications like HIS, PACS, MES, SCADA. In addition to these traditional applications, Sangfor HCI recently added the capability to run containerised applications with its K8s-based PaaS solution.

Additionally, partners do not require any special skillset to set up Sangfor HCI as its design is simple. An IT generalist can easily set up Sangfor HCI with the help of the user manual. SecureNet has been appointed as a value-added distributor for UAE and Oman market and focus is to develop SI partners echo systems and develop key accounts in the region.

This content has been partially sponsored by the vendor.

What sets Seagate storage solutions apart from competitors

BIBIN GEORGE, Sales Representative MENA, Enterprise and Systems, Seagate Technology.

Seagate is the only enterprise storage manufacturer that designs and builds its entire system, including ASIC, as well as creates unparalleled partner integration and compatibility. Seagate has features like ADAPT, Autonomic Distributed Allocation Protection Technology, included with Seagate Systems which is Seagate’s next-generation erasure encoding solution. It replaces traditional RAID types with a protection scheme that distributes the parity across a larger set of HDDs or SSDs there by ensuring that rebuilds are up to 95% faster than traditional solutions.

The systems are designed to address a wide range of use cases including private cloud, back & recovery, video surveillance, big data analytics, AI, ML, and High-Performance Computing, HPC. Seagate’s trusted partners in each of these segments enable them to create solutions that add value to the end customer.

The X2U12 systems with the 16TB drives provide customers a great value in terms of cost per terabyte and when bundled along with trusted partners like Veeam, Commvault for Backup or Milestone, Genetec for Surveillance, helps both the SIs and VARs to offer the right solution at the right price.

ASBIS has over 30 years of experience in the Middle East market and a dedicated team for value solutions. We will work together with their existing base of SIs and VARs, as well as target the channel of trusted global partners to develop this business.

This content has been partially sponsored by the vendor.

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Genetec releases version 5.10 for Security Centre Genetec, a technology provider of unified security, public safety, operations, and business intelligence solutions, has announced a new version (v 5.10) of its flagship unified security platform, Security Centre. Among many new enhancements, this major new release allows more system components to run in the cloud, reducing the gap between cloud and onpremises security systems.

It also makes it easier to connect external systems and tap external data for use in dashboards, maps, and investigations without relying on complex, specialised integrations.

The new version of Security Centre brings enterprise video surveillance customers new options to facilitate their migration to the cloud as well as support flexible hybrid-cloud architectures.

Avaya Spaces adds AI enhancements, 61-person concert view Avaya has announced new capabilities for Avaya Spaces, the modern workstream collaboration, WSC, platform that offers evolved Unified Communications capabilities via a user’s preferred device. AI-enhanced meetings and simpler, integrated voice and video calling powered by Avaya OneCloud CPaaS, Com-

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munications Platform as a Service, can now extend existing on-premise calling technology with Avaya Spaces. New capabilities for Avaya Spaces include: l Enhanced calling: Easily contact anyone inside or outside the organisation via highquality voice or video. Search and merge

Taking a step further towards unified, enterprise Video-Surveillance-as-a-Service, VSaaS, the new version of Security Centre Omnicast the video management system of Security Centre enables the seamless use of tiered cloud and onpremises storage to manage short and long-term video archives according to customer needs.

It gives configuration flexibility and reporting capability and supports various scenarios for real-time or on-demand access to video footage stored in the cloud.

The Genetec Record Fusion Service can be used across the entire unified platform to enhance awareness and response, provide contextual information on dynamic maps, be visualised in operational dashboards, in investigative reports, or in the unified monitoring interface. The service supports a broad range of applications, from displaying user-defined and filtered information on a map with custom graphical elements, to combining various records from a wide variety of sources to create custom aggregate records that are useful to specific operators or roles. The Record Fusion Service increases agility, enables highly specific and relevant data to be quickly and easily added to the platform, and makes security operators more efficient in accessing timely, contextual information.

contacts from multiple devices, and transfer, merge and manage multiple concurrent calls for easy conferencing. l Create seamless workflows: Leverage APIs to easily take advantage of a wide range of off-theshelf and purpose-built integrations for CRM, customer support, RPA, robotic process automation, productivity and more. l AI enhancements to create more engaging meetings and reduce fatigue: Visually overlay speakers on top of presented material to better grab the attention of participants and keep them engaged. l Enjoy high-quality audio for calls and video meetings even at noisy locations including a busy home office. l Increase participation: Hold interactive meetings with thousands of participants and take advantage of a 61-person concert view.

Realising the power of OneCloud CPaaS, Avaya Spaces connects sophisticated workstream collaboration capabilities with existing enterprise telephony calling functions to form a unified, integrated, all-in-one solution, with zero disruption to the business. Users tap into unlimited abilities to integrate with business apps and tools they already love, enhancing employee experiences to create great customer experiences.

REAL LIFE

QIIG and SAP sign digital transformation partnership

ALI IBRAHIM AL ABDULGHANI, Group President and CEO, Qatar Islamic Insurance Group.

Qatar Islamic Insurance Group, QIIG, has entered into a digital transformation partnership with global technology company SAP to enhance customer services.

Supporting Qatar’s insurance innovation, QIIG and SAP channel partner Mannai Corporation will provide an integrated cloud platform application of SAP Customer Experience solutions and the SAP S/4 HANA real-time business suite. Using these solutions, QIIG can gain a single source for all information, streamline departments, and help to meet compliance on its stock listing on the Qatar Stock Exchange.

The formal contract for a period of three years was signed by QIIG Group President and CEO, Ali Ibrahim Al Abdulghani and Khalid Mannai, Vice Chairman, Executive Committee of Mannai Corporation.

At the forefront of innovation, QIIG is the first banking, financial services, and insurance, BFSI, provider in Qatar running on SAP’s end-to-end solutions while leveraging global best practices. Moving forward, QIIG aims to use an end-to-end application to fully automate its functional departments, helping in approval workflow, consolidating internal financial and technical reports.

DIFC Courts leverages virtual systems for influx of cases The Dubai International Financial Centre, DIFC Courts, has released its annual figures for the full year of 2020, with total a volume of 882 cases across all divisions.

The volume of cases of the main Court of First Instance, CFI, grew significantly in 2020, increasing by 41% year-on-year, signalling strong business confidence in the DIFC

Courts. The total value of claims across all divisions rose by 72% from 2019, with AED 9.95 Billion in claims value recorded. An average case value of AED 86.3 Million was recorded across the CFI, which also includes the Technology and Construction Division, TCD, and Arbitration Division, ARB, cases.

The Small Claims Tribunal, SCT, recorded

466 cases in 2020, with 47% of claims in the SCT originating from parties electing to use the DIFC Courts to resolve their disputes. Cases were driven primarily by breach of contract, which represented 51% of all cases in 2020, followed by employment, 25%, property and tenancy, 16%, and banking and finance, 8%.

Underlining the SCT’s increasing popularity for SME-related dispute resolution, the total value of claims recorded in 2020 was AED 55 Million.

As a part of the UAE Government’s commitment to effectively employ advanced technologies and digital platforms to continue services to the public, the DIFC Courts leveraged its digital infrastructure to stay connected with court users during Covid-19 restrictions.

Existing videoconferencing and teleconferencing facilities for applications and hearings were extended, as well as the issuing of digital Orders and Judgments, and court users were able to access all extensive eServices remotely.

During the pandemic the DIFC Courts also injected fresh digital systems for the registration of Wills; the new video conferencing facility can be accessed via a smartphone, tablet, or a desktop device. This new digital offering is in addition to an existing Virtual Registry, which allows those living overseas to create and register a DIFC Courts Will. Investors and former residents can access it from anywhere in the world and be connected, via video link, to a compliance officer sitting in Dubai.

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REAL LIFE

stc pay selects Red Hat OpenShift to diversify fintech services

KELLY SWITT, Senior Director, Financial Services Strategy, Ecosystem and Strategic Partnerships, Red Hat.

stc pay has chosen Red Hat to help in expanding its fintech services. stc pay uses Red Hat OpenShift, the enterprise Kubernetes platform, along with Red Hat integration and cloud storage technologies, to enable the portability of applications across any cloud to help accelerate the delivery of innovative applications and features to users.

To meet its goal of becoming a fintech industry pioneer, stc pay wanted a cloud-agnostic platform that would provide abstraction from the underlying hardware and automated provisioning across hybrid infrastructure and found this in Red Hat OpenShift.

On OpenShift, stc pay is running Red Hat AMQ, a messaging platform that helps enable real-time integration, and Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage. Red Hat Consulting helps accelerate the implementation with hands-on training to support stc pay teams in embracing agile practices such as DevSecOps. stc pay engaged Red Hat in the design and build phases of its platform, with close col-

laboration between the teams to optimise both the tools and the processes as it introduces its API-based microservices architecture. stc pay and Red Hat are also working closely with Temenos, a banking software provider that is relied on by more than 3,000 banks around the globe, to run Temenos Payments, a suite of payment processing solutions, and Temenos Transact, a digital core-banking solution, on OpenShift.

With its OpenShift-based platform that helps streamline application development and scalability, stc pay expects to improve time to market and employee productivity and anticipates an improvement in the availability, uptime and recovery of applications to enhance the user experience. Through continued collaboration with Red Hat, stc pay’s plans for future innovation include growth into new regions using multiple public cloud providers and expanding its work with ecosystem partners to introduce open finance into Saudi Arabia.

Nutanix helps Osool reduce disaster recovery cost by 65% Nutanix has announced that Osool, an independent, fully-fledged asset management company based in Bahrain, has successfully deployed Nutanix’ Xi Leap, a cloud-based DR-as-a-Service, DraaS, solution. The service, that meets the industry standard compliance attestations expected for a financial institution’s own compliance standards, has reduced the company’s DR cost by about 65% and helped Osool meet mandatory recovery point objective, RPO, and recovery time objective, RTO, requirements.

Osool claims that the shift from traditional DR to the Xi Leap service allowed it to cut its DR cost by approximately 65%. The company used this cost savings to enhance other services and shift budget to new projects to accelerate its digital transformation. There were immediate management benefits given that Xi Leap’s management tools and console

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were integrated with the Nutanix Prism interface, which Osool was already using for its HCI management, and the team was able to set up DR and initiate failover operations immediately with no learning curve to overcome.

In its tests, Osool found that Xi Leap was able to handle its larger SQL databases with no issues and noted that its end users had a seamless experience after a failover test moved operations to the Xi Leap cloud.

Osool was able to meet its mandatory RPO and RTO requirements using the new DR service.

The benefits of DR-as-a-service have been well documented. Infrastructure outages and disruptions continue to be common occurrences for many organisations. In 451 Research’s recent Voice of The Enterprise, Data Management and Disaster Recovery

ABDULLA OTHMAN AL ROWAIEI, Head of Information Technology at Osool.

2020 study, 30% of respondents reported that they had suffered an outage in the past two years. And outages are costly for businesses. The study found that nearly half the respondents had outages that cost their organisations over $100,000.

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REAL LIFE

HOW DIGITAL PRINTING IS DISRUPTING TRADITIONAL PRINTERS IN UAE

By providing six stations in one pass for smaller print runs, the Xerox Iridesse Digital Production Press is profitable option for existing offset printers.

R

AK National Printing Press was established in 1976 and has since become one of the largest printing companies in the Emirate. It has a vision of becoming the leading printing press in the Arab region, while adopting the latest technologies in the field of printing. RAK National Printing Press will continue investing in digital technology and printing to meet the needs of the local market whilst building a long-term relationship with customers.

Operating in the northern Emirates, RAK National Printing Press enjoys a trusted and ongoing relationship with a variety of high-profile clients including Government entities, Ministers, VIP customers and the RAK Rulers Court. “RAK National Printing Press is equipped with the latest digital press in the market and believes that digital printing is the future of print,” says Shahzeen Mir, Sales and Marketing Director, RAK National Printing Press.

After realizing the need to enhance their ability to deliver more jobs at a faster pace, whilst still maintaining high-quality results, RAK National Printing Press opted to upgrade their business with the Xerox Iridesse Digital Production Press that has unique features not available with other vendors. The system has the capability to produce a range of high-quality made-to-order boxes and custom-made print requests. RAK National Printing Press is one of the first printing presses to invest in specialty inks to further expand their services and grow their business.

The Xerox Iridesse Digital Production Press is a high speed, six station colour press that combines, four colour printing with up to two specialty dry inks. The dry inks could include metallic gold, metallic silver, clear dry ink and white ink, all used in one single pass. This digital production press uses a new formulation called High-Definition Emulsion Aggregate toner that achieves the smallest particle size yet for Xerox colour toners.

The High-Definition Emulsion Aggregate can deliver fine image control to ensure tints, gradients, fine text, lines, print as intended. With high-capacity feeding, stacking, and finishing, this digital press delivers more impact per printed page through digital specialty enhancements and colour FLX technology.

For RAK National Printing Press, the top features are now the ability to combine four-colour printing with two specialty dry inks in one single pass. This allows RAK National Printing Press

SHAHZEEN MIR,

Sales and Marketing Director, RAK National Printing Press.

RAK National Printing Press can deliver monthly volumes of up to

225,000

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impressions per month

REAL LIFE

to meet deadlines with high-speed capability, full width array, reduced running cost, inline finishing, extra-long sheets, and different types of media. With high-capacity feeding, stacking, and finishing, the Xerox Iridesse Production Press delivers more impact per printed page through digital specialty enhancements and colour FLX technology.

RAK National Printing Press aims to get a return for its investment by providing quality products through digital specialty enhancements and color FLX technology at top rated speeds - up to 120 pages per minute. Using different media like coated paper, uncoated paper, textured, specialty and average monthly volumes of up to 225,000 impressions per month, they are able to meet the requirements of end customers.

Xerox Iridesse Digital Production Press eliminates multiple presses and processes usually required for printing, increasing capacity and profits for customers. Full Width Array delivers additional image quality controls that previously required a service call which could disrupt print production, extending delivery times. According to Keypoint IntelligenceInfoTrends, digital print enhancement can result in a rapid return on investment as print service providers’ profit margins can be as high as 50 to 400%. RAK National Printing Press is one of the first printing presses in the UAE to invest in the Xerox Iridesse system. ë

RECENT INNOVATIONS FROM XEROX n Color accelerator module expanding inkjet applications and adding ink-saving automation n Addition of fluorescent pink to the Iridesse Production Press, enhancing metallics, white, clear color n New printers capable of higher volumes, more media, extended color options n AI-enabled media manager software that enables high-quality images with minimal set-up and staff time n Automated workflow updates to seamlessly print embellishments using FreeFlow Core 6.0

ADVANTAGES OF DIGITAL PRINTING n n n n

Fast turn-around of short runs Ability to print on demand Personalization and variable data Eco-friendly and safe

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GUEST COLUMN

SECURING APPLICATIONS AT THE PACE OF MODERN BUSINESS

Dor Zakai of NGINX writes about speed vs security in protecting modern apps and APIs at the pace of modern business.

T

he pace of modern business is driving a wedge between the way applications are developed and how they are protected. By harnessing modern infrastructure and applications, companies can better compete and adapt faster, but they could also be jeopardising security.

Today, 98% of organisations depend on applications to run or support their business. According to our most recent survey of the NGINX open-source community, the number of those apps built with microservices has grown from 40% in 2019 to 60% in 2020, with 54% of businesses using microservices in some or all of their apps.

By 2022, it is expected that 90% of all new apps will feature microservices architecture. These trends not only highlight the importance of modern applications to businesses, but the value of achieving speed and agility when it comes to their deployment.

Increasing number of organisations are likely moving the same way, migrating from the monolithic apps of old to cloud-native technologies while also implementing DevOps principles, and with good reason.

Customers, partners and employees don’t just demand more from your technology-driven services; they expect it. Markets don’t wait for companies to adapt; they simply forget about them.

This is why businesses are being forced to take action, ensuring their applications offer the best possible experience. But delivering these experiences requires a different approach to application development: a faster, more iterative approach that provides the flexibility businesses need to remain competitive.

DevOps, microservices and containers can all help to deliver this much sought-after application agility, overhauling old-fashioned approaches in favour of modern delivery methods. But what about other key considerations like protecting those apps and if security policies

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Markets don’t wait for companies to adapt; they simply forget about them can handle the pace.

Hackers launch an average of 2,244 attacks per day. That is one every 39 seconds. And a single successful malicious act is all that is required to wreak financial and reputational havoc on a business or even destroy it entirely.

It might sound drastic, but these are the odds organisations face today. However, despite the average cost of a data breach in 2020 weighing in at $3.86 Million per company, on average, only 5% of the apps in an organisation’s portfolio are properly protected.

Even more worrying is how much more sophisticated and wide-ranging the attacks are. Hackers no longer only target code. With 40% of attacks on web applications coming through APIs and that number expected to grow to 90% in 2021, higher walls simply don’t provide the required protection in modern environments.

Couple this increased threat level with faster and more frequent release cycles where security flaws can easily slip through the net, and it can quickly become a recipe for disaster.

No organisation wants to restrict agility or limit innovation.

Likewise, companies are not willing to put their data or that of their customers at risk. However, as the demands of modern business increase and modern application development is required to maintain a competitive edge, businesses are being forced to choose between the two. Either you go to market fast and are potentially exposed, or you operate slowly and securely. It should not be this way.

GUEST COLUMN

DOR ZAKAI, EMEA Senior Director for Solutions Engineering, NGINX at F5.

Business leaders understand the importance of security but also the need to get their apps to market fast Where once security policies were applied during the final stages of a release, the speed of deployments today makes it almost impossible. Given that there are an estimated 500 software developers for every security professional, the odds are not stacked in favour of app protection.

So, the ability to provide robust, consistent security across application architectures and infrastructure is hampered, with blame falling at no particular door. Business leaders under-

stand the importance of security but also the need to get their apps to market fast.

DevOps teams resent the slowing of deployment by SecOps and SecOps laments the lack of security controls DevOps provides. In fact, 48% of technical professionals see security as the major blocker to delivering software quickly.

It is clear that, for businesses to drive innovation and remain agile, the effectiveness of DevOps automation and its build once, run anywhere simplicity is crucial. So, what if a build once, adhere anywhere approach could be applied to security policies?

For an agile and secure way forward, businesses must find a way to integrate security into the lifecycle of an application, not apply it at the end of development or attempt to fix it with add-ons. Security and app development must not simply co-exist but become one.

The first change required is mindset. Old fashioned thinking has no place in a modern application development environment, and all

Old fashioned thinking has no place in a modern application development environment, and all parties should embrace the idea of securing apps

parties should embrace the idea of securing apps, not see it as a hurdle to be overcome. All teams should be pulling in the same direction, working toward the common goal of safe, highquality applications delivered at speed.

Integrated security needs to become a standard part of the development process, and the speed required for it to do so can be delivered in a number of ways, key among them being policy automation.

What is also required is a lightweight security solution that overcomes the limitations of checkbox web application firewalls. It must address the real security challenges facing modern DevOps environments by delivering high-performance, scalable security with consistent controls for web applications, microservices, containers and APIs. It should trigger fewer false positives and, crucially, it must be faster than other solutions.

Such a solution should be CI or CD-friendly, centrally managing and automating approved security controls to remove workflow bottlenecks and support shift left Dev initiatives. It should be supported by an experienced organisation and improve visibility while optimising performance.

If the above can be achieved, the friction between DevOps and SecOps is removed, and the fight between rapid deployment and security becomes a forgotten issue.

With the right tools and a more collaborative development culture delivering powerful, consistent protection that matches the pace of modern app development, businesses can achieve true peace of mind and deliver amazing experiences at speed. ë

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FIVE WAYS TO BUILD A STRATEGY TO MANAGE TECH DEBT Alex McMullan of Pure Storage writes about handling the tech debt of accelerated digital transformation in the wake of Covid-19.

I

n some respects, it is hard to imagine a time before Covid-19. A time in our society, the economy, and the business community, where things were less strained and before our world was turned completely upside down by the devastating impact of a deadly virus.

However, experts and industry would argue that even before Covid-19 was upon us, the world was already going through a period of great change.

For many years now, businesses have been under intense pressure to digitally transform or lose out to the competition. Whether businesses were focused on adapting to changing consumer shopping habits, taking advantage of the benefits of cloud or using software to create new revenue streams, change has been largely a reaction to society’s expectation for everything now which in turn has bled into customers’ expectations in our working life.

What is clear now is that the pandemic has amplified and accelerated this change. Last year, IDC predicted that more than half the global economy would turn digital by 2023. Whilst digital transformation was previously a slow burn for many companies, it instantly became an immediate imperative in order to survive.

Overnight, businesses were dealing with the challenges of meeting the demand for contactless payments, healthcare organisations had to scramble to ensure reliable, compliant telemedicine methods and small businesses had to reconfigure their entire offering to make it suitable for e-commerce.

As Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella aptly explained, the reality of Covid-19 meant that businesses were forced to implement two years’ worth of digital transformation in just two months.

Whilst the immediacy caused by the pandemic proved to business leaders that digital transformation projects could happen far faster than was previously thought possible, many IT departments were under such pressure to

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By automating as much as possible, time and resources can be freed up spin up technologies to support the business, that they often did not have the necessary time to complete their usual due diligence.

This involves the management of tech debt, the off-balancesheet accumulation of all the technology work a company needs to do in the future. If this is continually deferred then it can prevent companies from being competitive as they spend their time not on innovation but managing the challenges hidden in the architecture, for example modernising systems, simplifying applications, and retiring legacy databases.

In fact, in a recent McKinsey survey, CIOs reported that 10 to 20 percent of the technology budget dedicated to new products is diverted to resolving issues related to tech debt.

However, in the Covid-19 environment, the common challenges which typically hold back digital transformation projects do not simply go away. CIOs still have to grapple with old infrastructure which is not designed for the modern digital age in that they can’t support critical data services or business models needed today.

This legacy also makes it much more difficult to consolidate, migrate, scale, or provide access to data, causing IT teams to have to go through disruptive enterprise storage refreshes, which in turn cause unavoidable downtime and inconvenience which businesses cannot afford.

These challenges are amplified under the additional pressure and uncertainty caused by the pandemic, meaning IT departments cut corners on aspects such as governance, which in turn

GUEST COLUMN

ALEX MCMULLAN,

VP and CTO International, Pure Storage.

A strategy of total reliance on the latest software to mitigate tech debt should also be avoided

Businesses need to build a strategy that prioritises digital transformation and manages tech debt more sustainably increases tech debt later in the innovation cycle.

Now that the initial shock of the pandemic has arguably passed, businesses need to move from short term triage and build a strategy that prioritises digital transformation and manages this tech debt more sustainably. There are five main ways in which organisations can do this: #1 Align on IT and business strategy: By clarifying the overall business strategy and defining the capabilities needed at an enter-

prise level, businesses can build these into the overall roadmap and allocate the necessary resource and budget. #2 Prioritise automation and elevate human innovation: By automating as much as possible, time and resources can be freed up so that organisations can focus on creating a culture of innovation and enabling long-term thinking to drive revenue growth. #3 Choose flexible consumption models: Enterprises need to manage costs over time without a long-term contract, particularly in a period when it may be difficult to predict ongoing requirements. Therefore, by choosing flexible consumption models whereby you only pay for what you use, businesses can safeguard budgets when workloads are bound to fluctuate. #4 Secure the right talent and allocate it accordingly: By ensuring you have access to the right internal and external skills, businesses

can remove the risk of project delays, not being able to fulfil product demand to customers and that they do not have spare resources in the wrong places. For example, if an organisation only has teams focused on the delivery of short-term projects, then they will not be able to reduce the mounting tech debt. #5 Nurture and maintain employees as the world changes: It has been a tough year, and wholesale remote working has taken its toll on the mental and physical wellness of employees. Make sure they are being supported and educated as the world of work evolves. Further still, the dispersed workforce has led to a surge in ransomware attacks due to the wider attack surfaces in home networking and shared equipment.

Whilst the pandemic has taught organisations that fast change is indeed possible; it is now even more critical to balance the focus of that change on business agility in 2021. A strategy of total reliance on the latest software to mitigate tech debt should also be avoided, as shown by the recent Solarwinds Sunburst supply-chain attack.

There has to be an awareness that technology alone cannot solve these issues, a company’s culture and processes have to evolve with or ahead of the times. Businesses now face the challenge of getting the right balance in place between moving fast but doing it in a way that does not leave you with tech debt to solve at a later date. ë

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EXECUTIVE MOVEMENTS Schneider Electric appoints Manuel Alzugaray Rodrigues as Secure Power’s Gulf VP

SentinelOne appoints Ric Smith as Chief Technology Officer

Schneider Electric has appointed Manuel Alzugaray Rodrigues as Vice President for the company’s Secure Power division in the Gulf region. Rodrigues, who has over 16 years’ experience in the technology channel space, will now lead the company’s datacentre business across Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE. A computer systems engineering graduate of Boston University, Rodrigues joined Schneider Electric in 2014 as a sales manager.

His last role was as an IT Business Unit Sales Director in North America. Rodrigues will transfer from North America to the Gulf this month.

SentinelOne has announced the appointment of Ric Smith as Chief Technology Officer. With over 15 years of experience driving product development in pre and post-IPO companies, Smith will accelerate global R&D efforts and support the rapid growth of SentinelOne’s Singularity XDR platform across the endpoint, cloud, and IoT security markets.

Smith is a seasoned leader with a proven track record supporting product innovation during periods of rapid growth. Joining SentinelOne from Medallia, the market-leading Customer Experience, CX, platform, Smith oversaw engineering prior to and following the company’s IPO. Ric held multiple engineering leadership roles at Oracle prior to Medallia.

Harriet de Morton to lead Silver Peak Business Development

Kissflow appoints Vaidy Panchabikesan as Regional Sales Director

Epicor appoints Vibhu Kapoor as Regional VP for MEA, India

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, has announced the appointment of Harriet de Morton to lead Silver Peak Business Development in Middle East and South Africa. Prior to joining Aruba, Morton was Enterprise Sales Director, UAE at CommScope.

Morton has over 20 years of experience in sales, commercial management, and leading regional departments, within the IT and media sales sector, both in the UK and UAE.

With the rapid digital transformation in the Middle East being threatened by a shortage of skilled IT resources, Kissflow has set its sights on an aggressive expansion in the region, as it looks to empower employees at all organisational levels.

Vaidy brings with him 12+ years of sales and leadership experience and a proven track record in technical sales. Having previously led regional sales for Outsystems, his passion for Low code and No-Code platforms continues to keep him at the forefront of the industry as he now takes leadership of Kissflow’s regional operations. A key focus for Vaidy will be the strengthening of the company’s channel partner network across the MEA region.

Epicor Software has appointed Vibhu Kapoor as Regional Vice President for Middle East, Africa, and India. Prior to joining Epicor, Kapoor was with AntWorks. He has also worked with Infor, SAP, and Microsoft.

Kapoor has over 20 years of experience in partner ecosystem development, sales strategy, account ownership, channel development, P&L management, client acquisition, global business expansion and GTM strategy.

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